LAND ^ WATER 
December 5, 1918 
Now let us take what the World would call a parallel 
case at sea. Germany, believing that Great Britain would 
be neutral and that France can be conquered in four months, 
secretly prepares a blow, the weight and pace of which is 
to be irresistible. It is presupposed that Belgium will not 
fight, and that France will not be ready. In preparing it 
enormous quantities of guns and munitions have been manu- 
factured, vast factories have been built or extended to make 
this provision possible. But, of raw materials actually 
needed in war, and of stores of food, wool, oils, fats, etc., 
needed to support a large population in a long war, Germany 
has provided herself only with sufficient for a short period. 
To her surprise she finds that England comes into the war, 
and in three months it becomes obvious that, instead of get- 
ting the victory in four months, she runs considerable risk 
of being beaten at the end of four years. If she is to fight 
for so long a period, she will need enormous quantities of 
things — chiefly food and prqpellants. Cotton is an indispens- 
able part of these latter, and of cotton she has very little. 
Accordingly she gets into relation with a neutral trader in 
the United States, who sends over a cargo of 10,000 bales. 
It is bought by a German consignee and paid for. It is not 
technically contraband, the vessel carrying it is stopped by 
a British ship. It has all the marks of private property at 
sea. 
What is the difference between this cotton and let us say 
a similar quantity of cotton lying in a warehouse at Antwerp ? 
To the British, the cotton on board the neutral ship is enemy 
private property, just as to the German the cotton lying at 
Antwerp is enemy private property. But the cotton on board 
is in transit from America to Germany. The cotton at Ant- 
werp is where it is, and by no conceivable circumstances could 
it ever be transferred to the enemy army, which has been 
driven beyond Ypres. The first is, therefore, a proposed 
addition to German national wealth. The second can never 
become an addition to Belgian national wealth. There is 
then, so far as the essentials of the situation are concerned, 
no parallelism at all. 
Next, however, there is another aspect about this trans- 
action for an account of which I will refer the New York 
World, and my readers, to page 144 of Mahan's War of 1812, 
It is this famous, much quoted passage which he explains 
that the claim for "private property" possesses peculiar 
interest as involving " a play upon words to the confusion of 
ideas, which from that time to this has vitiated the arguments 
upon which have been based a prominent feature of American 
policy. " He insists on the enormous difference between 
property at a standstill on land, and property used as an 
instrument of exchange. The first is as unproductive as 
money in a stocking. The other is like money in circulation. 
It is on national prosperity that war depends and goods in 
circulatiofl are the life blood of national prosperity. It is 
the operation and not the thing that the belligerent aims at. 
The goods seized may belong to an individual. It is the 
nation that profits by the interchange and it is the nation 
with which one is at war. "To stop such circulation," says 
Mahon, "is to. sap national prosperity ; and to sap prosperity, 
upon which war depends for its energy, is a measure as truly 
military as is killing the men whose arms maintain war in 
the field." 
When Mahan has killed a fallacy it is, perhaps, a work of 
supererogation to make a show of killing it again. But the 
facts of this war are so illuminating that it is impossible to 
resist drawing attention to them. And their importance lies 
just in this, that modern commercial practice makes it obvious 
that in war time there is never any private properly at sea at 
all ! Recall for one minute the notorious fact that the world's 
shipping has suffered to the extent of 13,000,000 tons by enemy 
action in the last four years. Remember that between four 
and five thousand ships, many of them with priceless cargoes, 
have been sent to the bottom. The total loss cannot be far 
short of a thousand million pounds, of which at least six 
hundred million must have fallen on British shipowners a;nd 
British merchants — had the property destroyed been private 
property. But it is a simple matter of fact that those ship- 
owners who have lost their ships are far richer than those 
whose ships have survived, and we hear of no bankruptcies 
amongst the merchants. How is this paradox explained ? 
It is simply that the practice of insurance transfers the value 
of all ships cargoes at sea from the nominal owners to the 
underwriters, who, by the premiums which they exact, in 
turn transfer it to the public that purchases the cargoes of 
ships that survive. The ten thousand million pounds damage, 
done by the German submarine, has fallen, not on the tutelary 
owner of the ship or the nominal consignee of the goods. 
It has been met by doubling and trebling the prices of the 
things which the man in the street buys. It is obvious from 
this that what is destroyed in British ships is really the 
property of the British nation, and that what is destroyed 
in neutral ships going to an enemy is really the property of 
the enemy nation. 
Grasp this fact and then the character of the neutral trader 
becomes apparent. He is a person who, for the sake of gain, 
has gone to the help of one of the two belligerents. He is 
doing a thing which, if his country did it, would involve 
that country in war. As a public act, it would be a belligerent 
act. International law permits the private individual to 
engage in this traffic, which is belligerent traffic, at a certain 
risk. International law limits his risk to the inconvenience 
of the search, the detention, and, perhaps, the ultimate capture 
and confiscation of his ship. International law exposes him 
to no risk of life or limb. It even permits the neutral to 
resist capture by force, with no worse fate than would befall 
a belligerent warship in like case. But it cannot alter the fact 
that this act is hostile. 
{To be continued.) 
Clemenceau : By H. M. Hyndman 
THERE are historic characters whose entire lives 
have been made up of dramatic episodes. 
Clemenceau may be classed as one of these remark- 
able men. From his youth until to-day, he has 
played important parts in one great drama — the 
rise and development of the French Republic. He was put 
in gaol, as a medical student, under the reign of Napoleon III., 
for referring to a date which registered an effort towards 
Republican rule. Having taken his doctor's degree, he 
devoted himself, after a stay in the United States, to gratu- 
^itous treatment of the sick in one of the poorest districts of 
Paris. There he gained the confidence of his fellow-citizens 
as a thoroughgoing Radical. In that capacity, he rushed to 
the front when the disaster of Sedan, and the complete failure 
of the Imperial Government, decided the Parisians to take 
affairs in the capital intotheir own hands. 
Clemenceau was one of the foremost in proclaiming the 
downfall of the empire. Elected Mayor of Montmartre, he 
displayed remarkable faculties of organisation and popular 
leadership. He took upon himself the control of the whole 
district and put fresh life into every department of municipal 
administration, raising and drilling troops also for the 
National Atmy. He gained the confidence of the people of 
Montmartre so completely that they sent him by a great 
majority as their member to the reactionary Assembly of 
Bordeaux. There he found himself with Louis Blanc and 
other stalwart Republicans face to face with a majority 
composed -of the most hide-bound clerical and monarchical 
bigots. After helping to resist their harmful policy, he was 
suddenly called back to Paris by the growing power of the 
extreme revolutionary section, "immediately afterwards he 
plunged into the struggle of the Commune, and did his utmost 
to save the lives of Generals Lecomte and Thomas, who, having 
attempted to disarm the citizens, were speedily put to death. 
Now, Clemenceau 's political adventures began in good 
earnest. His policy as Mayor of Montmartre did not find 
favour with Pyat, Vermorel, and the other extremists of 
the new Government of Paris. Their methods of persuasion 
took a formidable shape. A warrant was issued for his 
arrest. Which, had it been carried out, would probably have 
caused his summary removal. Happilv, there was a young 
Brazilian who precisely resembled Clemenceau. Him the 
fanatics took, and were making ready to argue out of the 
error of his ways by a volley of musketry, when they dis- 
covered that shooting the wrong man would fail to convince 
the popular member for Montmartre. Meanwhile, Clemenceau 
had escaped to the provinces, where he endeavoured to stir 
up the people to resist the invading Germans to the death. 
He heartily supported Gambetta in his vigorous effort to 
reorganise the armies of France against the enemy, and was 
one of the few who voted at Bordeaux for still carrying on 
the war, even when the national cause seemed hopeless. 
All this was fine work ; for the risk he ran, with the police 
of the Bordeaux Government and the reactionaries of the 
provinces, who objected to his Radicalism, was almost as 
great as that which he incurred from the extreme Com- 
