various conferences of seeking to limit rather than to encourage the use of new instruments of warfare.

The feeling of horror in this country when the Lusitania was blown up makes any discussion of the military results of that kind of warfare unnecessary; for no matter how effective it may be, the world will not accept a rule of war under which an event like that may lawfully occur.

It seems to be clear, however, that submarine warfare against merchant shipping can be carried on without the sure destruction of life which follows the torpedoing of a vessel without warning. But the possible risk of life, even when the crew and passengers are allowed time to take to the boats, is one from which all nations will shrink when they come to consider in conference what use of the submarine shall be permitted, and as the countries with less powerful navies will probably insist upon being allowed to make up for their inferiority by the use of the submarine as against merchantmen, the question of the limitations under which such use shall be permitted will be hard to answer. This question may be made easier of solution by improvements in submarines; and may be disposed of altogether by changes in the laws of contraband and blockade.

Whether Great Britain's attempts to cut off Germany from commercial intercourse with the rest of the world are producing adequate results or not, we do not know and probably will not know until the close of the war. What we do know is that all the forces that sea power controls are in operation substantially unhampered by any limitation, except as to privateering, which has been suggested or agreed to in the last hundred years; and that everything is being accomplished which can be accomplished by the capture of belligerent private property at sea, by the capture of enemy goods in neutral vessels and by the application of the doctrine of contraband and blockade and continuous voyage. If the war ends, not because of the exhaustion of food, cotton, copper, rubber or something else from a supply of which the sea power of Great Britain cuts

off Germany, but because of direct killing, wounding and capturing of men; if the judgment very recently expressed by Hilaire Belloc is correct, that the future historian of the war will undoubtedly ascribe the issue of it in the main to exhaustion of men, the results of the economic pressure of British sea power will not be adequate; and in that event there will be little danger of any novel rights under which that pressure may have been exerted being permanently incorporated in international law.

But if those results are adequate, if the future historian of the war will ascribe the issue of it not to exhaustion of men but to the inability of Germany to get material out of which to manufacture arms and ammunition or to get food for its people-what then? Will Great Britain, as many people fear, insist that the orders in council of March 11, 1915, and the other orders which may have contributed to the successful isolation of Germany shall be accepted in the future as a part of international law, regardless of whether the general opinion of jurists has or has not so accepted them in the past?

I do not for a moment believe it.

So far as such orders authorize the detention of cargoes carried in neutral ships, except for the violation of an effective blockade or under the principle of contraband, the orders themselves, as I have shown, contain a recital that certain acts of Germany gave Great Britain "the unquestionable right of retaliation." That fact whoever is considering what the attitude of Great Britain will be in relation to the law of the sea in the future must not forget. Nor must he forget-especially at moments when he is told that international law has permanently disappeared from the sea, that the progress of a century towards the freedom of the seas has been lost-that whenever England and France are called upon in this war to decide upon a course of action there is always in their minds the thought of Belgium and the most valuable industrial portions of France in the hands of Germany in consequence of an admitted violation

of international law. Great Britain will not ask the world to accept any practice upon which she entered because she felt driven to it as an act of retaliation.

So far as such orders attempt to prevent the people of an enemy country from getting food and raw materials through adjacent neutral countries to which they have been brought across the sea, the enforcement of such orders is not practicable except in a war to which all the great nations of Europe are parties. It is impossible to think of any two single nations, like France and Italy, for example, when at war trying to cut each other off from trade with Great Britain and America and in order to do it effectively, each attempting to prevent Germany, Austria, Spain, Russia, Holland, Denmark or Sweden from exporting to the other any food, copper or cotton imported from England or America. Great Britain will not ask the world to accept different laws of the sea according as many nations or few are fighting.

If, however, Great Britain after the war, announces that every measure which helps to cut off an enemy from obtaining merchandise which is transported by sea any part of the way from the country of its origin must be deemed to be authorized by the laws of the sea in wars to which the great powers are parties or in which she is opposed by some particular nation or nations, what course will any country in danger from such a doctrine adopt? What will Germany do, as it is, if she is defeated and believes that the orders in council and extensions of the principle of contraband have defeated her, unless the fear of them for the future is removed? The world has heard for years of her chest of gold collected in anticipation of this war. For future wars she will fill tanks with oil and warehouses with copper and cotton and rubber; she will raise the import duties on foodstuffs until agriculture will become profitable enough to ensure a production when needsd that will feed all her people. Every nation sufficient unto itself will be the only safe rule.

Great Britain has never wished such results as these. She will not wish such results in the future. She will not insist upon anything that will tend to bring them about. To do so would be to act in conflict with the spirit of the instructions of the British Government in 1907 to its delegates to the second Hague Conference and the whole tendency of everything she has ever done or suggested at any conference of nations from the Declaration of Paris to the Declaration of London. It may be that for a short time after the war, while the picture is fresh in her memory of the ships of Germany shut up in the ports where they found shelter at the opening of the war, and of her own merchantmen still carrying as before the commerce of the world, it will be easy to stir up opposition to the surrender of any part of the power which goes with naval predominance. But not for long. If it was essential to the interest of Great Britain in 1907 that "every effective measure necessary to protect the importation of food supplies and raw material should have the sanction of the law of nations," what has occurred in this war to make it less essential? Is Great Britain surprised that she has kept her food supply protected? Did she not feel just as certain in 1907 that with her relative preponderance in naval armament preserved she could always drive Germany's commerce from the sea and protect her own? If the termination of the war shall mean that the orders in council have gained the victory for the allies, will that mean that in all future wars Great Britain need have no anxiety about her supply of food and raw materials? Has she found, or does she see the prospect in the future of finding, some new weapon with the use of which she can by herself make that supply absolutely secure? On the contrary, are not the new instruments of destruction which have appeared in this war arguments why every nation should seek the sanction that all nations can grant, rather than rely, even the greatest of them, upon their own power?

The same policy that dictated Great Britain's offer in

1907 will counsel her not to press for the recognition of any new rights at sea which if exercised by a hostile combination in future might imperil her supply of food and raw materials, but rather to renew her offer to abolish contraband and even to add to it an offer to abolish blockade, except as a strictly military operation like the siege of a town. When there is no longer the question of contraband or blockade, and neutral vessels, sail freely into the ports of belligerents, there will naturally follow those limitations of the use of mines at sea for which Great Britain and America have striven in the past.

It is probably true that the movement in which the United States has been a leader in The Hague Conferences and which until shortly before the war made constant headway in Great Britain, to abolish the capture of belligerent private property at sea, has been checked in both countries. The feeling has grown that the power which her naval predominance gives to Great Britain to drive from the sea the shipping of the military powers, she should not give up without receiving in return agreements by the great powers to limit the building of additional ships of war, so that their relative naval strength shall remain as at present, and to limit the size of their standing armies.

The war has proved, if any proof were needed, that to preserve with anything like certainty its mercantile marine a nation must have the best navy, not merely a good navy. So far as its ocean-borne shipping is concerned, Germany might just as well have had no navy at all. In the future as in the past there will be two possible ways by which the shipping of any country may be made secure, one by a successful race for naval supremacy with Great Britain, the other by an agreement not to start such a race. The agreement will be enormously less expensive than the race. It is reasonable to say that the rest of Europe will be willing to make the agreement.

If in exchange for granting the freedom of the seas Great Britain can obtain, not merely a limitation of naval arma