From these extracts we can now understand the additional refinement which it is desired to add to the long-suffering term 'Freedom of the Seas'; we also see how, under this heading, it may be proposed to raise at the approaching peace conference a discussion on even the most minute regulations of national law which bear in any way on international trade. So far, however, as the use of the term 'Freedom of the Seas' in this connexion is concerned, we must adopt the remark made by M. Pillet at the meeting of the Institute mentioned above, that this freedom of the seas would become the enslavement of the land.

Before quitting this topic, two remarks may be made. First, it is probably exceptional even for Germans to give to the term 'Freedom of the Seas' the extended signification just mentioned; Prof. Triepel, indeed, expressly repudiates it. Secondly, even if the extended meaning under consideration be given to the idea of the Freedom of the Seas, that freedom was, so far as Great Britain was concerned, enjoyed to the full by the world at large in the era which closed with August 1914. For the last seventy years Great Britain has thrown open even her local coasting-trade to all comers; and, with the exception of Australia, this concession is made throughout the whole British Empire. If the German writers who, in this connexion, refer with such malevolence to the forty Stützpünkte' of the British Empire were considering the freedom of the seas in war-time, the reference would be justifiable. German writers do in fact, from this standpoint, indict the geographical position of the British Isles and the distribution of the British Empire along the ocean-highways of the world. In peace-time, however, and for the purposes of peaceful intercourse, the seas were no less free with the forty Stützpünkte all in British hands than if they had been in the hands of forty different peoples.

The blunder here made by the German writers is due to the militarist habit of thought, which regards peace as the interval requisite for preparing the next war. Americans did not deem the peace-time freedom of the seas to be threatened by the fact that Gibraltar and Malta were under the same flag, any more than Great Britain deemed that this freedom was threatened by the

fact that both ends of the Panama Canal were under the control of the United States. A German sailing in prewar days from the Cameroons to Samoa might well have seen in the British flag at the Falkland Isles a menace (even a portent!) which he did not see in the Spanish flag at Fernando Po. But the menace would not have been to the peaceful penetrator as such. Quite the contrary was the case wherever the British flag flew, as Stier Somlo well knows. For these words are his :

'Our exports to Great Britain alone [in the year 1913] took the first place in our export trade; they amounted to 14.2 per cent. of the whole. Altogether Great Britain and her colonies took nearly 1800 million marks-worth of German goods. The value of German exports to British India approached three times the value of our exports to our colonies of German East Africa, German South-west Africa and the Cameroons. The value of our export trade to Australia and New Zealand alone was nearly five times as great as the value of our export trade to German South-west Africa.'

As his authority for this statement, Stier Somlo cites a German work published in 1916 and bearing the title, 'The English danger to the economic future of the German Empire'; there was no such danger to the German Empire or any other nation in the epoch ending with the summer of 1914. And, as regards the future, it is noteworthy that the Report of the Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to consider the position of the Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries after the War recommended, in March 1918, that Freedom of the Seas, in the sense of equal treatment of all flags in all ports should be a cardinal principle in our post-war policy' (p. 110).

'Freedom of the Seas,' which is an apt label for the idea that all vessels on the high sea are free from all sovereignty except that which they carry with them, and which is a passably apt label for the idea that all men are free and equally free to sail the sea and appropriate its contents and constituents, ceases to be an apt label when these ideas receive an accretion such as that just considered. The concept Equality' now dominates the concept 'Freedom'-equality of all in the communal use of the sea and of its accessories on land. This is truer

still of certain further accretions of meaning to which we will now refer for a moment. It has been proposed to impose certain restrictions (still in the name of freedom!) on the use of the sea as a res communis omnium, an international asset, as would prevent it from being perverted to purely nationalistic ends. One such proposal is to establish flat rates for the carriage of cargoes by all vessels between the same ports. Thus goods from (say) New York to Valparaiso would have to be carried at the same rate by all vessels, whether the goods were American, German or British and whether the vessel was German, British or American. The object is to prevent any one manufacturing and exporting and carrying country from so cutting rates of carriage to a port in a less developed country as would enable it to oust its rivals and, by monopolising the carrying trade, to monopolise other branches of industry. If one country established such a monopoly at one port, another country might be similarly successful at an adjacent port. Then might arise a rivalry between the railway and banking interests of two countries in the development of the intermediate and back areas. These nationalistic interests would each seek assistance in the struggle from the consular and diplomatic representatives of their countries; and thus that which began with a competition between sea-carriers of different countries might end in friction, disastrous to the peace of the world, between the states concerned. The proposal is, by forbidding discrimination in the rates of sea-transport, to stay the first steps of this descent into Avernus. It is, however, too remote from anything that can reasonably be called freedom of the seas for discussion here. We will only point out that there are other ways in which the shipping-lines of one country can steal a march on those of another country than by cutting rates; an illustration could be found in the system by which emigrants from Eastern Europe to America who had booked their passage with non-German steamship-lines were liable to such harassing treatment at German Control Stations '* as amounted to coercion to travel on German ships.

These Control Stations were first established in 1894 ostensibly in order to prevent emigrants from Russia from bringing the infection of cholera

Akin to the last-mentioned proposal and (like it) unbefittingly affiliated to the assertion of Freedom of the Seas,' is a proposal to secure by international arrangement a uniform and high standard of safety and health and comfort on board ship for the mercantile marines of the world. If this matter continued to be left, as at present, to national legislation,* it might be that some countries, less exacting than others, might obtain an undeserved advantage in the international competition for sea-trade; the fear of this might, moreover, deter any given country from legislation otherwise desirable in itself. The attitude which all Englishmen would instinctively adopt towards this proposal is that, if its acceptance would improve the lot of the British merchantseaman, it is more welcome than any proposal which might be made with verbal exactitude in the name of the freedom of the seas.

We now turn to the consideration of the Freedom of the Seas in time of war, a topic which in itself, and apart from the questions so acutely raised during the last four years, is far less important than that of the freedom of the sea in time of peace. In its wildest and widest form a demand for the freedom of the sea in war-time would, if conceded, mean that hostilities could only take place in the territorial waters of the belligerents, and that merchant-ships should be as free as in time of peace to carry all cargoes to all destinations. Treating this as outside serious discussion, we find ourselves confronted by two main questions: (1) How much, if anything, of the freedom of the seas (as hitherto understood by us in this article) is left to a belligerent? (2) How much is taken away from a neutral? We will deal with these questions in the order indicated.

into Germany. A Board of Trade Committee, presided over by Sir Alfred Booth, has reported on the ways in which they were perverted to the purposes of unfair competition. See the Report, already mentioned, pp. 8-10, 16, and 96. The Committee recommends (p. 113) that the free transit of German and Austrian vessels through the Inter-Oceanic Canals (Suez, Panama, etc.) should be made conditional on the free passage of persons across the territory of the Central Powers, and vice versa.

*The Report of the Departmental Committee just mentioned shows (p. 114) some of the fraudulent ways in which the ships of one country can, if so minded, defeat the measures taken by another country in this direction.

War destroys the freedom of the seas for each belligerent so far as his enemy is concerned. This is unquestionable with regard to public vessels. Subject to some minor exceptions-e.g. vessels engaged in coastfisheries and hospital-ships-it is true of private-owned ships; but one of the urgent questions of the hour is whether that shall continue to be the case. A demand for the immunity of private property from capture at sea has been made for over a century in the name of the freedom of the seas. Let us first look at the matter in the light of principle.

What is the object of maritime war? M. Dupuis gives an admirable answer in his 'Le Droit de la Guerre maritime d'après les doctrines anglaises Contemporaines' (Paris, 1899). He asserts that it is the suffering, actual or prospective, of the peaceful population of a belligerent State which determines the end of a war; the destruction of armies is only a preliminary operation. Imagine the army of a country to have been utterly beaten and finally put out of action by an enemy whose army, nevertheless, halts at the frontier; why should the vanquished State yield to the will of the victor? The factor which decides it to yield is not the military defeat but the use which the enemy can make of that defeat-the occupation of its territory, the disorganisation of its national life, the interruption of the social and economic relations of its citizens, the imposition on them of intolerable restraints, the application to them of such cumulative pressure that they must ultimately comply with the conqueror's demands. Land-war only attains its ends by the burdens which it casts, or which it is in the power of a conqueror to cast, on the mass of the population.

The same holds good of sea-war. The destruction of a fleet is, by itself and apart from its ulterior consequences, only the issue of a naval tournament. So long as the losing sovereign's land remains intact and he continues to exercise his authority in his territory, assuring his subjects a secure existence and the continuance of their home and foreign trade, the loss of his fleet need not trouble him. It may, of course, open the way to the debarcation on his territory of enemy troops and military stores, and he may at the same time find