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THE LEAGUE OF PEACE AND

A FREE SEA.

I.

Since President Wilson in 1916 revived the old proposals for a League of Peace, the idea of the "Freedom of the Sea" has come more and more to the front as one of its main objects. Not only has the increasing severity of the war emphasised the need of a stricter definition and regulation of belligerent rights at sea, and the need of providing them with an effective sanction, but the placing of this object in the forefront of the President's proposal was its one new feature.

The words in which he originally set forth his scheme were "A universal association of nations to maintain inviolate the security of the highway of the seas for the common, unhindered use of all the nations of the world." The modern idea of a universal association of nations, as distinguished from medieval and pre-national ideas, is as old as the 16th century. It originated in the "Grand Design" of Queen Elizabeth of England, and Henry IV. of France, and was embodied in their Treaty of 1596, to which the United Provinces were also a party. With the death of those two great sovereigns, the Grand Design died, but throughout the two succeeding centuries it was constantly revived, both by political philosophers and practical statesmen, till at the end of the Napoleonic Wars it came into existence as the "Holy Alliance." As all the world knows, it proved a curse to Europe, and, but for sea power, would have proved a curse to the world. Under the influence of the pre

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dominating Military Powers, it degenerated into an antidemocratic conspiracy, with effects so evil that Great Britain and the United States had to set up the Monroe Doctrine to prevent its machinations extending across the Atlantic. In this object the new-born doctrine was successful. But, in examining the conceptions which the term "Freedom of the Seas" connotes, it is of capital importance to remember that from the first the Monroe Doctrine had British naval power at its back, and that it was only in this direction that the opposition to the degenerate descendant of the "Grand Design" had any real success.

To clear the ground for a frank consideration of the issue, which President Wilson has raised, it is necessary to rid it of all that makes for confusion, and to isolate its meaning with all attainable precision. To begin with, it must be postulated that it has no relation to anything but a state of war. In peace-time, by universal admission, all seas are free. True, it was not always so. Till comparatively recent times certain States claimed to treat certain seas as territory over which they had jurisdiction and possession. So far as Narrow Seas were concerned, these claims were widely admitted. Venice, so long as she remained a Great Power, was able to enforce her claim to the Adriatic, even against such Powers as Spain, while the Baltic and the Black Sea were not rendered entirely free to commerce till 1856 and 1857. But when in the 16th century Portugal and Spain sought to extend the right to the oceans, it was resisted, and it was in violently disputing these claims that the British. sea power was born. It grew to manhood, moreover, in similar irreconcilable resistance to the Dutch when they, in their turn, sought to close the Far Eastern Seas in succession to the Portuguese, and were nevertheless disputing the British claim to the dominion of the Narrow Seas. That claim the British established as a result of the three Dutch Wars, but it remained a dead letter, only kept in mind by the exaction of the salute to the King's ships. Even this vanity by the end of the following

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