December 12, 1918 
LAND &? WATER 
The Freedom of the Seas — II : By Arthur Pollen 
LAST week we saw that the case for the seas being 
free to neutral trade in war is chiefly based upon 
the argument that, as private property when in 
an enemy's power on land is by international 
agreement safe from seizure and confiscation, it 
should enjoy a like immunity when, being in a neutral ship, 
it comes into an enemy's power at sea. And it was pointed 
out that this argument breaks down for the following four 
reasons : 
(i) Private property on land, so far from being immune 
from confiscation, can legally be, and in practice constantly 
is, seized on the plea of military necessity, when the owner 
may get no more satisfaction than a receipt, on which he 
mav recover from his own Government when the war is over. 
The statement, then, that private property is — even in 
theory — immune from seizure on land, is altogether mis- 
leading. 
(2) Were such property really and in practice immune, 
there would still be no parity of reasoning from land to sea, 
because property on land is, ex hypothesi, already in an 
invader's possession, and therefore useless to the national 
cause ; whereas similar property on board ship is in course of 
transit to those who can turn it to direct account in the war. 
(3) As Mahan has so brilliantly demonstrated, property 
not of direct use in military operations on land — even if in 
national possession — is at a standstill, immobile, cut off 
from adding to national credit, whereas to property at sea 
there attaches a trade function, which makes it an instrument 
of exchange, and the operation of this exchange automatically 
adds to national credit. Its seizure, then, is part of the 
attack on national credit, which is as legitimate a military 
target as the national army. 
(4) Finally, the operation of insurance in effect brings 
about a state of things in which, during war, there is no private 
property at sea at all — a proposition proved by the fact that 
the £600,000,000 loss of British hulls and cargoes in the last 
two years has resulted in shipowners and merchants being 
actually richer to-day than they were before the loss was 
incurred. The higher prices paid by the consumer show 
where the loss has actually fallen. 
We also saw that, when the private property argument 
was reduced to its true proportions, the real character of a' 
neutral who supplies a belligerent stands out clearly. He 
is seen to be in truth a volunteer belligerent. It is the status 
of this volunteer belligerent that we must next discuss. 
The Neutral Trader's Rights 
From all times, all countries have recognised that a private 
trader in a neutral country is absolutely within his rights 
when he engages in trade with either of two belligerents. 
His doing so cannot be regarded by the other belligerent as 
an immoral act, or as one that makes him liable to chastise- 
ment or punishment of any kind. It is the fact that there 
is no ownership of the sea in peace or war that is held to give 
this personal immunity to a neutral trader, an immunity 
that he would not, of course, enjoy if he were within the 
territorial jurisdiction of either belligerent on land. And 
those writers who speak with animosity about neutrals who 
engage in such trade not only misread the whole theory of 
international law, but are taking up a hne which is surely 
the very last that any advocate of Great Britain's stake 
in sea power could wish to support. If there were anything 
either illegitimate or ethically indefensible in neutrals trading 
with either belligerent, then those who engage the neutrals 
so to trade would surely share the guilt. Since the world 
began, never has any belligerent done such a roaring trade 
with neutrals as did Great Britain in the war that is just over. 
We should be exceedingly ungrateful if we forget the in- 
estimable advantages which we have gained by this moral 
liberty of neutrals to come in and practically to take sides. 
But for the nitrates, which the Allies were able to get from 
South America, we should have been even more handicapped 
in the production of propellants than would Germany have 
been, had we resolutely cut off her supply of cotton from the 
moment that war was declared. I have not by mc any 
complete statistics of what the Allies owed to all the neutral 
countries for things indispensable to them^ — things without 
which they could not possibly have won the victory. We 
were perhaps a little slow to realise how much we had to do 
in the way of producing new arms, how vast the production 
of shells of all kinds that we should need. It was some 
time, therefore, before our demands, upon the neutral world 
reached large dimensions. But if we take the case of the 
United States alone, a few figures throw a very instructive 
light on our ultimate reliance on non-belligerent support. 
It was practically from about midsummer, 1915, that it 
first became clear that, unless we drew on the United States 
for engineering machinery of all kinds, ,sheet and bar steel, 
copper of all forms and many other metals, neither England 
nor France could ever reach the level of munition production 
necessary for the kind of war we had to fight. By the begin- 
ning of 1916 we realised that, even with all our importations 
of machinery and raw material, we still could not keep pace 
with our necessities, and should further have to enlist American 
manufacturers to produce finished guns and finished shells 
for us. The extent of the help that we received may be 
gathered from the following facts. The exports of domestic 
raw materials and manufactured products from the United 
States to Great Britain were on average up to 1914 about 
five or six hundred milUon dollars a year. In 1915 they had 
risen to nine hundred millions, in 1916 to over fifteen hundred 
mOlions, and in 1917 to over two thousand millions. 
American exports to Europe were in 1916 double what they 
were in 1914 and in 1917 more than fifty per cent, greater 
than in 1916. And it should be borne in mind that the bulk 
of the 1917 exports were all goods ordered in the previous 
year, and would have been due for dehvery in Europe whether 
American had became belligerent or not. 
Now, when we look at these figures, we must bear in mind 
that these vast importations were by no means confined to 
the kinds of private property that would not be liable to 
capture in the neutral ship. Enormous quantities represented 
finished weapons, cordite, TNT and other explosives, saddlery, 
military lorries, tanks, aeroplane engines, and manufactured 
parts and partly finished material of all kinds, guns, shells, 
bombs; etc. Certainly for eighteen months before America 
ceased to be neutral, the American miners and metal dealers, 
farmers and the grain brokers, engineering shops and the 
ordnance works, were as unneutral as individuals and organisa- 
tions could conceivably be. "But had the war ended in a 
draw, Germany would have had no possible just cause of 
quarrel with the American producers and exporters. They 
were all doing a thing admittedly within their rights. Yet 
they were doing an unneutral thing, a belhgerent thing, a 
tiling which, as a simple matter of fact, implied a service 
such that, had we lacked it, we simply could not have gained 
that ascendancy over the German army in 1916 and 1917 
that we actually established. On what thedry of inter- 
national law then can such action be defended ? The country 
as a country is neutral, the government is_ neutral, yet an 
enormous part of national activities are enlisted in the interests 
of one belligerent. How is it that the other belligerent is 
entirely without any moral right to resent so terrific, so 
decisive, an intervention ? 
Condrtioned by the Law of Force 
We find the answer in a right understanding of the theory 
of war. Let us go back to the famihar definitions. War is 
a conflict of armed forces. It is decided in the favour of one 
side, when the armed forces of the other have prevailed and 
left the country of the defeated side open to invasion and 
consequent paralysis. In a conflict of armed forces, clearly 
it is the rules of dynamics that hold the field. But, as the 
forces are human, it is dynamics qualified by the elementary 
and common instincts of right and wrong to which all civilised 
nations instinctively defer. Hence the mere laws of force 
are qualified, for example, by such a regulation as we have 
referred to already, The private property of the subject of 
an enemy country which comes into the power of an invader 
cannot be plundered or destroyed recklessly. It can only be 
requisitioned for recognised purposes and in a formal manner, 
when it must be paid for, or an account of the seizure given, 
on which the deprived owner may ultimately be able to 
recover. This limitation follows from the admitted rule 
that war is made against the enemy's State and the armed 
force which it organises, and not against the unarmed indivi- 
duals, subjects of that State, who are not component parts 
of the armed forces. Another rule which derives from this 
is that unfortified places may not be bombarded. The idea 
here is that if an inhabited place is turned into a fortified 
position which is part of a military hne of defence, then the 
army that defends it is responsible for the safety of the ■ 
civilians within the place. It can either send them out 
beyond the reach of fire or the army itself can come out and 
