The broad fact as to coal is that France is not selfsupporting. She produces 41 million tons and consumes 63 millions. On the other hand, Germany is a large exporter, her total production being 278 million tons. The Minette ironfields of France are largely dependent on German coal, a fact which has been a grave hindrance to their development. If France recovered her frontiers of 1870, her disadvantage in the matter of coal would be even greater (by 5,500,000 tons) than before. There remains the question of the Saar basin, and the 1814 frontier, or even an improvement on that frontier. The major part of this coalfield (350 square miles) lies within the borders of Rhenish Prussia; 194 square miles lie in the Bavarian Palatinate; and 186 square miles in German Lorraine. The total reserve is estimated at 16,548,000,000 metric tons. A return to the 1870 frontiers would restore the German Lorraine portion of the field to France; a return to the 1814 frontiers would add a substantial part of the Rhenish Prussia portion; and of course further frontier adjustments of the frontier in favour of France are not impossible.

Unfortunately the Saar coal is not reckoned suitable for conversion into coke; and it is coke that is required for the Lorraine ironfields, so that the cession to France of the German share of the Saar fields would not help to solve the smelting question. If the Minette district is connected, by a development of the canal system, with Dunkirk, it is possible that England may help to supply the deficiency; but it is probable that, for some time to come, the ironfields will have to depend on Germany for the necessary coal; and this will no doubt not be lost sight of in the consideration of terms of peace. It is obvious that this immense transfer of potash and iron would be beset with difficulties, and that some dislocation would be inevitable. The fact that it is in the power of the Allies to dictate terms to Germany ought, however, to falsify Mr Coleman Phillipson's prophecy that the surrender to France of the German Minette would be a blow to Europe.'

J. R. MORETON MACDONALD.

Art. 11.-THE 'FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.'

1. The Freedom of the Seas. By Charles Stewart Davison. New York: Moffat, 1918.

2. The Freedom of the Seas. By Michael Cababé. Murray, 1918.

3. Die Freiheit der Meere und das Völkerrecht. By Prof. Fritz Stier Somlo. Leipzig: Veit, 1917.

4. Die Freiheit der Meere und der künftige Friedensschluss. By Prof. Heinrich Triepel. Berlin: Springer, 1917. 5. Das Problem der Meeresfreiheit und die deutsche Völkerrechtspolitik. By Prof. Wilhelm van Calker. Jena: Fischer, 1917.

GEOGRAPHERS compute that the waters cover the globe's surface to the extent of nearly 72 per cent. of the whole. All this area, with negligible deductions, is 'free,' in the sense that no State claims dominion or sovereignty over it. The meaning of this freedom may be summarised as follows. Vessels, whether sea-craft or air-craft, are subject to no other sovereignty than that of the State to which they belong. Navigation and the transport of men and goods are free to all States and the citizens of all States on and under and over the sea, by all available means of locomotion; nowhere is any restriction imposed by any authority external to the vessel as regards cargo or load-line or equipment or route; no seaconstable cries Halt' or 'Move on'; nature alone can close the thoroughfare. As with the sea, so with all that therein is. Fishing is open to all; so are the extraction of salt or other organic matter, the gathering of marine plants, amber, etc., and the utilisation of the sea for the generation of electric power, and so forth.

The freedom thus sketched is, of course, not utter licence. It must be exercised with due regard to the rights of others. This condition operates, apart from the right to treat the pirate as a common enemy, in two ways. Firstly, every vessel, public or private, carries with it the sovereignty of its own State, and every unjustified violation of that sovereignty may be ground for diplomatic action; secondly, injuries wrongfully caused to one vessel by another, as by negligence, may entitle the injured party to obtain redress in municipal courts.

In addition to these general limitations, special limitations may have been created by treaty; e.g. certain Powers have, by Conventions, given to each others' cruisers power to enforce on their nationals certain rules designed to protect the North Sea Fisheries and Submarine Cables and to facilitate the suppression of the slave-trade in the Indian Ocean.

One of the main grounds on which the freedom of the seas, in the sense of the exclusion from all parts thereof of all dominion or sovereignty of individual States, has been based as a legal principle, deserves special mention here for a reason which will appear in the sequel. Since the early part of the 17th century, when Grotius was contesting the extravagant claims of Spain and Portugal, the theoretical basis on which the supporters of Mare Liberum have mainly relied has been the impossibility of taking effective possession of the open sea. " The true foundation of the rule that the open sea is not the subject of sovereignty,' said Westlake (International Law,' i, 160), is the fact that it is not capable of occupation, i.e., of permanent effective possession.

At this point certain German writers, of whom Stier Somlo may be taken as representative, raise a novel contention. With a reference to the modern developments of ship-building they combine a reference to the number and world-wide diffusion of British naval bases, in order to establish the assertion that Great Britain does in fact exercise, directly or indirectly, an effective possession over the world of seas, to the subversion of the main pillar of Grotius' Mare Liberum. Stier Somlo writes (p. 51):

'The conception of the vastness, the infinity, of the sea in no way excludes the existence of certain special avenues to its highways-avenues the arbitrary opening or closing of which amounts to the exercise of domination over the sea. Let us here think but of Gibraltar, the possession of which constitutes the key to the narrow door of the world-ocean; of the English Channel which, dominated by the castled crag of Dover, marks the approach to the Atlantic Ocean; of Malta,

[which] dominates the highway to the East from the basins of the West and therewith the entrance to the Orient. From Aden at the outlet of the Red Sea England brings the

waterways under her cannon. . . . All the enormous amount of shipping that comes from East Asia by way of the Indian Ocean must put in at the English watch-post of Singapore. . . . Think of Hong Kong and above all of the Cape of Good Hope, which at one time was the key of the Indies! . . . The idea of dominion over the sea is not to be understood in a pedantic manner, out of correspondence with realities. It is not a question of disposing a row of ships at the least distance from one another which is consistent with the prevention of passage, like a chain of sentinels on land, but of seriously hindering trade and navigation.'

Numerous other passages of a similar purport might be cited from recent German writings. Their significance can best be appreciated if we consider an additional refinement which it has been proposed to import into the idea of the freedom of the open sea in normal times. This seems to have been for the first time promulgated at the meeting of the Institute of International Law in 1910 under the sponsorship of M. de Lapradelle; it is insisted on by Stier Somlo, in the following words (p. 52): 'We must get rid of the mistake that the freedom of the seas consists merely in, and is satisfied by, the naked possibility of navigating the sea. This childish conception is always open to attack. No: it is concerned with the exploitation of the sea's highways in the interests of passenger- and goods-traffic. Implied in this is not only unhindered passage over the water itself but also the freedom to enter such ports as necessity demands while on the journey, to take in provisions and fuel at these ports, to obtain labour there for loading and unloading cargo, to engage in the exercise of world-trade, both export and import, without being exposed to other burdens than those which are inevitably imposed by individual states in the interests of their revenue and trade as distinguished from the prosecution of a trade-war.'

Such hindrances, it is said, can easily be placed by Great Britain in the way of German trade in a variety of ways, through transactions with companies or small states, without having recourse to legislation. Such obstacles must be eliminated. The possibility of our world-trade and of a genuine colonial policy is inseparable,' says Stier Somlo (p. 75), from the attainment of a freedom of the seas in time of peace in the sense of a removal of all hindrances to navigation and to overseas trade.'