December 12, 1918 
LAND ^ WATER 
stopped, when its stoppage is certain and local by blockade, 
then the changes in the conditions of sea traffic have made 
it possible for an equally effective stoppage to be pelagic 
and universal — so that the distinction between blockade and 
non-blockade conditions has disappeared. And a comparison 
between admittedly legitimate operations of force on land, 
and the disputed operations at sea, shows that no ethical 
distinction can be made. If, then, any revision of bel- 
ligerents rights is to be made, reason points towards the 
re-establishment -of the doctrine maintained by Great Britain 
before 1856, viz.. That a I enemy property may always be 
stopped and ^l^zed at sea. 
This, of course, is not to say that modem conditions have 
not produced a great many new problems which call for 
solution, nor that there are not old claims the enforcement 
of which jars upon the modern mind. An example of the 
first arises from .the development of the submarine. An 
example of the second is the strict enforcement of T;he right 
of prize. There certainly is something mediasval in the cargoes 
intercepted and captured by a national force becoming the 
property, not of the nation but of the individuals fortunate 
enough to be employed in the operations which hav resulted 
in capture. Nor is the objection to the practice entirely 
removed by the division of the proceeds amongst the whole 
personnel of the Fleet. It is a practice which undoubtedly 
originated in times when .the pay of officers and men was 
infamously inadequate. The pay of both classes is better 
now than it was, but is still in many instances scandalously 
•small. It should not be left to the chances of war to mitigate 
the hardships which national -meanness inflicts on the national 
defenders. 
The Future of Sea Power 
No such revision as this, however, would meet the pro- 
gramme which President Wilson is reported to have in 
contemplation. We are told that he prop)oses a general 
naval disarmament and that his recommendation to Congress 
to continue the Vast increases of the American navy have 
been made to meet the contingency that Great Britain will 
refuse to comply. Wc can probably discount the idea that 
Mr. VVilson intends to adopt any threatening or ungracious 
tone towards this country. We know that many Americans 
would certainly resent the suggestion that the people of the 
United States were not fully alive to the service the British 
Fleet has rendered to the cause of liberty — to the plain 
truth that without the British Fleet Europe must have fallen. 
And it is generally accepted in America as self evident that, 
but for the British Fleet, Europe must have succumbed to 
Germany and the United States been compelled to fight, 
almost single-handed, the battle which they have now 
assisted us to win. So strongly do some Americans feel this, 
that statesmen like Mr. Roosevelt say plainly that the sea 
power of Great Britain should not be questioned at all, and 
writers like Mr. Frank Simmons say that it is for Great 
Britain to re-write the law of the sea as she pleases. Still, 
we must recognise that there are large bodies in America, 
some sentimentally humanitarian, some by conviction and 
association wholly pacifist, some by tradition inflexibly 
hostile to Great Britain — owing to our failure "to satisfy 
aspiration in Ireland — which seem to the great majority of 
Americans to be justified by the most elementary of human 
rights, and that all of these are ready to support any attack, 
open or covert, on this country. If, then, Mr. Wilson should 
feel compelled to challenge our traditional sea policy and to 
challenge it in an uncompromising spirit, he would be sure 
of a great deal, though not of unanimous, support from his 
countrymen. But apart altogether of any pro- or anti- 
British leanings, all parties in America are expecting great 
and far-reaching changes to follow from the defeat of auto- 
cratic militarism, and, if w^ demur to some of the proposals 
that seem plausibly justified by the world's -disgust with war 
and the threats thereof, all have a right to know plainly our 
reasons for standing apart. Not otherwise can our case be 
sanely and impartially judged. And, when our reasons are 
stated, we can be sure that the judgment will be generous, 
as well as just. 
This is the more reason for frankness because the President's 
own explanation of our traditional naval policy is not in 
consonance with the facts at all. Our reason for maintain- 
ing a supreme navy for all these years has nothing whatever 
directly to do with the size of armies maintained either in 
Europe or elsewhere. When, for instance, the United States 
was distracted by a civil war and a larger proportion of the 
male population was put under arms than any community 
had ever armed and drilled before in history, the size of the 
American armies made no difference to the requirements of 
our naval strength. A supreme navy is vital to us because 
the safety of our sea communications is a vital interest. It 
is not merely our trade and prosperity — it is the very da}' by 
day existence of the people of Great Britain and Ireland 
that depends wholly upon the continuity of our supplies from 
overseas. The islands which are the core of the British 
Empire then, being islands, exist in virtue of sea power 
only. 
Next, because our sea power has been adequate to our 
secure national home life, it has also been adequate to ensure 
the maintainance of national contact with the outlying 
elements of the Empire of which Great Britain is the centre. 
Many countries possess colonies and dependencies besides 
Great Britain. But the British Empire is the only political 
unit composed entirely of communities whose sole physical 
communication is by sea. The United States owns such 
possessions as Porto Rico, Guan and the Phillipine Islands. 
Their total population is but a fraction of the hom.e popula- 
tion. / 
Their loss would not destroy a national community. 
But the population of India, Australia, South Africa, and 
Canada, exceeds the population of the British Isles nearly 
ten times over. The cohesion of these commonwealths and 
peoples constitute our national hfe. 
British Domestic Safety 
It is one of Mr. Wilson's fourteen points that all countries 
should reduce their armaments to what is necessary for their 
domestic requirements. The point is numbered four, and 
the actual wording is as follows ; — 
"Adequate guarantees given and taken that national 
armaments will be reduced to the last point consistent with 
domestic safety. " 
No one would probably dispute that our pre-war military 
forces hardly exceeded this minimum. Who will dispute 
that a fleet capable of maintaining the domestic wholeness 
of the British Empire is the last point to which the British 
Navy should be reduced consistent with domestic safety ? 
Unless this point is grasped, the whole English case is 
necessarily misunderstood. 
It follows from the premiss that the defeat of the German 
army and the ehmination of military autocracy of the 
Hohenzollerns do not by themselves afford any relief from 
the burden of naval armaments to this country. The elimina- 
tion of the Germany navy, however, makes a profound 
difference. If you add to this that Russia for some years 
will probably be either non-existent poHtically, or if existent 
certainly pacifist, and add to that again that what used to be 
Austria will in future be a number of independent republics 
with those that were maritime wholly friendly to Great 
Britain — then the difference in the naval position will be 
recognised as still more pronounced. But considerable navies 
wiU still survive, and unless all the nations agree to merge 
the obligations of self-defence in a common undertaking, 
then Great Britain will have to maintain its traditional 
policy, which is to possess a navy superior to any combina- 
tion that can be brought against it. 
Now the reason alleged for urging naval disarmament, 
if we are to judge by Mr. Wilson's speech to the Senate of 
January 22nd, is that the maintenance "here and there of 
preponderant naval armaments is incompatible with a sense 
of safety and equality. " Does this statement bear examina- 
tion ? For 100 years before war broke out the British Navy 
has generally been superior to all the navies of the world 
combined. Did this superiority in fact result in any wide- 
spread sense among other nations that they were neither safe 
nor on an equality with us ? Has any commercial or political 
interest of other nations suffered thereby ? Omit from 
consideration altogether whatever debt the world may owe 
us for our services in the last four years and ask, is there any 
contra account ? The Germans, it is true, did maintain 
that it was British navalism that stood between the Father- 
land and its rightful place in the sun. But it is surely suffi- 
cient answer to this complaint to say, first, that, despite 
the British Navy, Germany's merchant shipping rose in a 
generation from a few score of tons to over 5,000,000, her 
sea-borne trade from a negligible sum to an equality in 
value with our own ; her military navy from non-existence 
to the second place. By British navalism Germany meant 
such a use of British naval force as she herself would un- 
doubtedly have adopted had circumstances put such force 
at her disposal. Is not the essence of the matter not the 
existence of a superior navy — which elementary considera- 
tions of defence justify the British Empire in possessing — 
but the spirit behind its use that alone could make naval 
preponderance a menace to other peoples ? And on this, 
does not a hundred years' experience supply a respectable 
prescription ? 
