But, in fact, the claim to Freedom of the Seas has never been placed so high, for two restrictions have always been admitted-the one is the right of a belligerent to seize contraband of war, and the other that neutral trade must not interfere with warlike operations. On the latter ground military blockades have always been admitted, a military blockade being the blockade of a naval port or a port against which siege operations are in progress. But this right has not yet passed unquestioned for commercial blockades--that is, blockades whose object is the prevention of trade without any direct relation to specific military operations. The legitimacy of such blockades has frequently been disputed, particularly in America, on the ground that neutral trade with belligerents is free so long as it is not carried on with a port against which operations are actually in progress.

The contention that neutral trade with a belligerent should enjoy its natural freedom, so long as it does not interfere with operations, is undoubtedly of great weight, but it has never availed to undermine the general feeling that commercial blockade is a legitimate operation of war to which neutrals should submit. The reason is that in the initial proposition there lies a fallacy. Trade is essentially reciprocal, and trade with a belligerent is not solely neutral trade; it is also belligerent trade, and here the rights of neutrals come into direct conflict with the rights of one belligerent to prevent the trade of his enemy if he can. It is a very practical difficulty. For it is obvious that if a belligerent is free to carry on his commerce in neutral ships, his enemy will scarcely be able to exercise more effective pressure from the sea than if belligerent trade were free altogether. Naval warfare would then be hardly more important than if interference with trade were barred. entirely. To meet this obvious injustice to Naval Powers, neutrals, in derogation of their liberty upon the seas, have always conceded the right of commercial blockade, as well as the right to seize contraband of war. By the first, a dominant Naval Power can still prevent

the national life of his enemy being nourished by neutral agency; and, by the second, he can prevent him receiving by the same means the sinews of war.

III.

From the foregoing considerations it is clear that, as a question of practical international politics, Freedom of the Seas means nothing more than liberty of neutrals to trade with belligerents subject to the time-honoured restrictions of blockade and contraband. Descending from idealistic conceptions to the questions which a world congress would have to decide, we find the sole matter is how and to what extent these two derogations from free intercourse between neutrals and belligerents are to be allowed to continue.

The outstanding new factor in the old problem is the deplorable extent to which both derogations have been strained in the course of the present war. The powerful belligerents that have been arrayed against one another have, apparently, taken the law into their own hands and pushed it farther and farther beyond the old limits as the revolutionary developments of the art of war drove them from exigency to exigency. And neutrals have sullenly acquiesced, partly because they realised the consequences of those developments, and partly because at no point did a new step or a refusal of redress seem to justify a resort to arms. But this acquiescence was only possible in view of a settlement at the end of the war. As President Wilson recently told the American Senate for all the world to hear-"A radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary to make the sea free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind." The pronouncement clearly adumbrates not only a reversal of recent develop

ments, but a larger measure of freedom than that which was regarded as established before the war began.

"It need not be difficult," he added, "either to define or to secure the Freedom of the Seas, if the Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it." So far as the words are an inspiring exhortation to face and overcome the difficulties. by mutual effort, all men will give cordial assent. But if we are to see fruition, the first step is to realise the difficulties. Those who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and shrunk from each unwilling advance, know that they are not small. Some, at least, of those advances have even been felt as possibly inseparable. consequences of certain developments of war conditions which it is beyond the power of Governments to control.

Taking first the question of contraband, it is to be noted that so long as nations fought with comparatively small standing armies, and comparatively few weapons and simple material, it was possible to restrict the list of contraband to comparatively few articles easily earmarked as material of war. But when armies and the services that feed them become indistinguishable from the nation, and when the vast concourse of fighters and workers calls to its aid all the resources and commodities known to a highly developed modern science, the list of war material tends to expand so rapidly that it is almost impossible to fix for it a logical or stable limit.

Similarly with blockade. So long as it was possible --subject only to weather conditions--for a squadron to lie close off an enemy's port indefinitely, or until it was dislodged by superior naval force, there was no difficulty about framing rules for blockade. But with the advent of the mine, torpedo and submarine, the conditions which made for simple regulation disappeared. The result has been not only that the latitude allowed. to a blockader has had to be greatly extended, but the regulations as to what is permissible have lost their old precision, and the door is open for indefinite claims on both sides.

Nor do the difficulties and uncertainties raised by modern developments end here. They seem also to stand in the way of seeking a solution on the lines of distinguishing between military and commercial blockade, which weighty neutral opinion favours. For when the nation merges into the army, and when, as a direct result of the evolution of the mechanical and scientific aspect of modern warfare, the whole country is organised as a war base, military and commercial blockades become almost indistinguishable.

In this connection, moreover, it must not be overlooked that another profound modification has set in with the vast development of inland communications. Their relative importance to national life, as compared with sea communication, has greatly increased, and has given to armies an unprecedented increase of power. It is not only that armies have become relatively more mobile than fleets, but as the vast hosts that make the armies of today against an enemy's country, they automatically set up a commercial blockade of a severity that fleets were never able to compass. To deny to naval forces what cannot be denied to military forces is by no means an easy matter, if justice to all men is to be done, and yet such injustice would seem to be unavoidable if Freedom of the Sea in any sense is to be a permanent condition of war.

It is evident, then, as soon as we approach the question in a serious spirit, that, with all the goodwill in the world, the difficulties of finding an antidote for the intolerable conditions that have arisen is by no means easy. And the main reason is that the recent extensions of belligerent interference with neutral trade are not due merely to the caprice or convenience of powerful groups of nations, but are a direct reaction upon unstable. conceptions of International Law, which has arisen from the normal evolution of war material

IV.

Enough has now been said to show that the question which has been laid on the international table is full of thorns, and is one in which are involved the most fundamental conceptions that have hitherto governed the regulation of naval warfare. This being so, the first need is to get rid of all expressions which tend to mask the issue.

The form of words which President Wilson has chosen to embody his lofty aspiration is not entirely free from this danger. "Freedom of the Sea" is one of those ringing phrases which haunt the ear and continue to confuse judgment. Until its distracting iteration is silenced, we cannot hope to make progress to better things. It does not accurately convey his meaning, for in its literal sense it does not embody a practical policy, and it is a practical policy that he is recommending to the world. For the reasons already given, Freedom of the Seas cannot exist so long as naval warfare is allowed to exist, since without some substantial measure of permission to command the sea navies, except as the mere adjuncts of armies, cease to have a meaning.

It is no poet's dream of absolute Freedom of the Sea that he is asking the nations to consider. If it were so, no Naval Power-however attractive the dream-could listen. What he really asks for is a restriction of belligerent rights as against neutrals. That is a practical policy that can be received by all with sympathy-even with hope. For all must deplore some at least of the recent extensions of belligerent interference with neutral commerce, and the waste and suffering they have caused without adding materially to the effect of naval action on the issue of the war. There are few to be found who would not welcome saner and more humane regulations, even at the cost of diminishing to some extent the influence of Naval Power. But such regulation, however far it can be carried, must always fall far short of absolute Freedom of the Sea.