CHAPTER XVIII

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

We have seen that the problem of peace cannot be solved without at the same time avoiding the economic conflicts now sundering the nations.

We have seen that these divisive interests which are real and vital, can be accommodated neither by the force of good will alone (although good will is essential), nor by an appeal to national unselfishness nor by proposals which merely mean the perpetuation of the _status quo_.

We have also seen that in the last instance force, or at least the threat of force is necessary, that this force cannot be applied by the United States alone or by a group of two or three beneficent powers, but only by an all-inclusive league of nations, acting according to established rules and with a machinery previously elaborated. Only so can a programme of peace be made effective.

Such a programme will consist of three elements. The first is the freedom of the seas; the second is a joint imperialism; the third is the promotion of an economic internationalism.

The freedom of the seas is necessary because without it the other elements cannot be supplied. No division or joint use of colonies will promote peace unless each nation is a.s.sured of continuous access to such colonies. A promise of the products and the profits of the backward countries will not satisfy a nation if it believes that at the first outbreak of war it will be deprived not only of colonial but also of all commercial rights.

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In recent decades the problem of the freedom of the seas has grown in significance as access to the oceans has become more important and the nations increasingly interdependent. To-day trans-oceanic colonies are worthless, commerce is insecure and a satisfactory economic life at home difficult without such access. In peace the vessels of all nations may travel anywhere, but in war a belligerent's merchant vessels may be seized and confiscated and her sh.o.r.es blockaded. She may even be deprived of the right to import goods through neighbouring neutral countries.

In the advocacy of the freedom of the seas the United States has taken a leading part, while England has pursued a policy of obstruction. In this respect England has been a menace to the world's peace. She has stood fairly consistently against a modernisation of naval law; has insisted on the right of capture of merchant vessels and the right to blockade, and in the present war has reverted, under grave provocation it is true, to the most rigorous maritime repression. It is by means of our influence on England that we can take the first step towards creating a better international system.

If we are to become friends with England, the price must be the freedom of the seas. It may seem incongruous to suggest as a condition of friendship that our friend weaken herself, but as will later be indicated such a surrender of rights by Great Britain might in the end redound to her security and greater strength. The reason is obvious.

The insecurity of each nation is the weakness of all. So long as a nation is insecure it will arm. So long as one nation arms all must arm. Moreover, England is peculiarly vulnerable. The British Empire is threatened whenever any nation seeks an outlet to the sea. Nations will build navies against Great Britain so long as {248} without navies their commerce and colonies are threatened.

The case of the German-British conflict is in point. England lies on Germany's naval base. It is an unfortunate thing for Germany, and indeed for England, but it is a geographical fact and unalterable. For Germany this situation is tolerable so long as peace endures, but when war breaks out, all her commerce is stopped. The future of Germany depends upon her developing industrially to a point where she can no longer feed her population from her own farms. She needs, if not colonies, at least markets. She requires a foreign base for her industry and uninterrupted access to that foreign base both in war and peace. She can be throttled, strangled, starved under the present usages of sea war. The war may not be of her own making. In other words twenty or fifty years of commercial development may be swept away at a moment's notice in a war, declared, it may be, by England for purely commercial purposes.

To these apprehensions of the Germans, England may answer that in peace times German commerce is secure. But immunity in war as well as in peace is necessary. Therefore, the Germans do what other nations would do in like circ.u.mstances, take the matter into their own hands. They build a navy strong enough to make England hesitate to attack their merchant marine. It is an understandable attempt to protect what is an absolutely vital interest. But for Germany to build a navy capable of measuring arms with the British Navy is intolerable to Great Britain.

It is useless for Germany to protest that she will not use her fleet aggressively. So long as she can use it aggressively, she is a menace to England's life. England must prevent Germany from building {249} a navy equal in power, for if she is defeated at sea, her fate is sealed.

Germany must be threatened on land by France and Russia or she will be able to devote her energies exclusively to her navy and thus out-build England. Given this situation, an Anglo-German war is inevitable.

Nor is the situation in the North Sea unique. Once this conflict of interest begins, it spreads everywhere. Germany may not have Morocco or Tripoli because with a foothold and a naval base on the Mediterranean, she could exert pressure there in order to change conditions elsewhere. Similarly the Pacific commerce of Russia is at the mercy of j.a.pan; her Black Sea traffic at the mercy of Turkey, or whoever controls Turkey, her Baltic Sea traffic at the mercy of Germany, Denmark and England. No wonder Russia demands Constantinople, which will at least open the inner doors of the Black Sea. But if she gets Constantinople, she controls the whole Danube traffic of Austria, Hungary and Roumania, and she herself is menaced by British and French fleets at Malta, Gibraltar and Aden.

What is the probable, or at least possible, policy of Russia in such circ.u.mstances? Not immediately, not inopportunely, but in the right season? Clearly it is to build a navy which will secure her control of the Mediterranean and thus protect her outgoing trade from Odessa and Batum as well as her incoming trade. Although not pre-eminently a naval power, Russia must ultimately seek to accomplish what Germany tried to do--make it dangerous for England to menace her Mediterranean and Red Sea trade even in war times. But to secure naval supremacy in the Mediterranean means to threaten Egypt and India, thus breaking the neck of the {250} British Empire. Given the present unfreedom of the sea, therefore, Great Britain's vital interests oppose those of Russia as they now oppose those of Germany.

This is the meaning of the historic British policy of the right of capture at sea, the right of blockade, the right to use naval power to work injury to the trade of hostile countries and to prevent colonial expansion. The policy is a menace to the British Empire and to the independence of Great Britain herself. It stimulates other nations to outbuild Great Britain. And in the end that is at least a possible contingency. If a generation or two from now Russia and Germany should unite, Russia attacking in the Mediterranean and aiding Germany in the North Sea, the British Empire would be put to a severe test. There might be no way of saving Egypt and India or Holland and Denmark and these outposts gone, Great Britain might be menaced and attacked at leisure. If her navies were defeated she would starve. The rules of naval warfare, which Britain has so long upheld, would be turned against her.

It is thus to Great Britain's real interest to surrender this doctrine.

In the present war it has been of value, but only because Germany and Austria were surrounded by powerful enemies, and all adjacent neutral powers with sea bases were small enough to be intimidated. The blockade of a nation is to-day of little value unless adjacent nations can also be blockaded. The railroad unites all land nations. If France had been neutral in this war, Germany could not have been blockaded, for a British threat to blockade France would have thrown her into the arms of Germany. Even if Italy had remained neutral, an effective blockade might have forced Italy into the war on the side of the Teutonic powers. England is using a weapon {251} which at the most means a serious loss to her enemies but which effectively turned against her would mean instant death.

There are certain powerful groups in England who are obstinately opposed to any revision of the sea law in favour of neutral and belligerent nations. They feel to-day, as Pitt felt in 1801, when the doctrine was advanced that a neutral flag might protect enemy's property. "Shall we," asked Pitt, "give up our maritime consequence and expose ourselves to scorn, to derision, and contempt? No man can deplore more than I do the loss of human blood--the calamities and distresses of war; but will you silently stand by and, acknowledging these monstrous and unheard-of principles of neutrality, insure your enemy against the effects of your hostility!... Whatever shape it a.s.sumes, it (this doctrine) is a violation of the rights of England, and imperiously calls upon Englishmen to resist it, even to the last shilling and the last drop of blood, rather than tamely submit to degrading consequences or weakly yield the rights of this country to shameful usurpation."[1] This doctrine, rather than accept which Pitt was willing that England should fight to the death, was quietly accepted by Great Britain in the Declaration of Paris (1856) and, half a century later (1909), the Declaration of London protected neutral rights even more strongly. But the spirit of Pitt is by no means dead.

The Declaration of London failed of ratification in Parliament partly because of mere factional opposition and partly because of ancient pride in England's naval supremacy. It was held that Britain being the strongest naval power should uphold all naval rights {252} and all necessary naval aggressions both against belligerents and neutrals.

The argument advanced in support of this position is that so long as the enemy disregards international law in land warfare Britain has the right to disregard the laws of sea war. If Germany violates Belgium's neutrality, why should England surrender her power to put the maximum pressure upon her unscrupulous enemy?

This argument, however, begs the whole question, whether it is to Britain's real advantage that the naval law go back to what it was in the days of Pitt and Napoleon instead of being progressively liberalised. Britain is not only the greatest naval but overwhelmingly the greatest maritime nation in the world. She has something to gain and everything to lose from a reaction towards the unregulated sea-warfare of 1801 (and 1916); she has much to gain and little to lose from the establishment of a true freedom of the sea.

So long as England persists in a reactionary naval policy she will be menaced by every nation which feels itself menaced by her, and by every future development of naval warfare. The harshness of the British att.i.tude in this matter of naval warfare leads to such brutal reprisals as that of the German submarine campaign against merchantmen. That campaign was not without its influence in laming the commercial activity of Great Britain; had the war broken out ten years later, with Germany better equipped with submarines, the result might have been far more serious. A future submarine war carried on by France against England might be disastrous to the island kingdom. Even the German campaign, hampered as it was by the fewness and remoteness of the German naval bases, might easily have had a crippling effect upon British industrial life but for the pressure brought to bear {253} upon Germany by the United States. In the long run England cannot have it both ways. She must either defend her commerce from submarines alone or else accept a revision of the naval law.

Fortunately there are men in Great Britain who accept this broader view. "One of the promises of victory," writes the Englishman, H.

Sidebotham, "is that Great Britain will be able to review her whole naval policy in the light of the experience gained in the war. Sir Edward Grey has himself indicated that such a review may be appropriate in the negotiations for peace after victory has been won."[2]

Towards such a change in att.i.tude the public opinion of the United States can largely contribute. While the majority of Americans side strongly with Britain and her allies, they make little distinction in their thought between a detested German militarism and a detested British navalism. Our traditional att.i.tude is one of hostility to the pretensions of the mistress of the sea. "How many more instances do we need," writes Prof. J. W. Burgess, "to demonstrate to us that the system of Colonial Empire with the dominance of the seas, and the unlimited territorial expansion which it claims, is not compatible with the freedom and prosperity of the world? Can any American with half an eye fail to see that our greatest interest in the outcome of this war is that the seas shall become free and neutral, and that, shall they need policing, this shall become international; that the open door for trade and commerce shall take the place of colonial restrictions or preferences, or influences and shall, in times of peace, be the universal principle; that private property upon the high seas shall be inviolable; that trade between neutrals in time of war shall be entirely {254} unrestricted, and that contraband of war shall have an international definition?"[3]

Even if England did not recognise her true national interest in a revision of the sea-law, we could not co-operate with her in any broad attempt to establish the conditions of peace in Europe without such a surrender on her part of rights which have become indefensible. It is not, of course, to be antic.i.p.ated that a complete freedom of the sea will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not controlling the ocean, are given reasonable a.s.surances of safety for their commerce and colonial development, each new war will merely lay the seeds of new wars.

To establish the freedom of the sea, five things are desirable:

(1) The abolition of the right of capture.

(2) The abolition of the commercial blockade. This would permit the blockading of a naval port or base, the exclusion or destruction of naval vessels, the searching of merchant vessels for absolute and conditional contraband, and the blockade of a city or port where the naval blockade was merely the completion of a land blockade, but it would give to all ordinary merchant vessels, either enemy or neutral, the same access to enemy ports that they enjoy in peace, without any further delay than is necessary for the prevention of non-neutral acts by merchantmen.

(3) The establishment of international prize courts and the submission of controversies to such courts.

(4) The internationalization of such straits as the Dardanelles, the Suez Ca.n.a.l, the Panama Ca.n.a.l, the Kiel Ca.n.a.l, the Straits of Gibraltar, as far as that can be achieved by international agreement.

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(5) Establishment of an international naval convention and of an international body to enforce its decisions, to which international body all powers, naval and non-naval, should be admitted.

An Anglo-American agreement to enforce such a convention could be made the corner-stone of an international organisation, open to all nations.

A naval force of neutral powers would enforce the freedom of the sea in the interest of England's enemies and in her own interest. With such an agreement in force much of the present naval rivalry would lose its meaning. If German commerce were safe in time of war, if she could not be blockaded and her ships captured, she would have a weaker interest in building against England. She might still desire a fleet to bombard enemy coasts or to invade England, but even without such a navy she would have a large measure of security. She might well prefer to forego some of her naval ambitions in order to secure British friendship. In any case even a naval disaster would not be so utterly crushing to England nor so great a hardship to Germany as under present conditions.

Naturally the value of such an arrangement would depend upon the belief of the nations in its faithful enforcement by all the signatory powers.

International promises fall in value as wars come to be fought by powerful coalitions instead of by individual nations, each immensely weaker than the whole group of neutral powers. When all nations of the first rank become engaged actively or by sympathy, the truly neutral powers are too weak to exercise much influence. They cannot compel the belligerents even to live up to their acknowledged agreements. What in such cases is the value of a naval convention between England and Germany, which neither of the {256} nations believes that the other will observe in the day of trial?

The difficulty is a real one as the uncontrolled savagery and the unnumbered violations of international law during the present war amply prove. It is this doubt as to whether opposed groups will live up to their agreements, or whether neutral groups will enforce such agreements, that strikes at the root of international, as also of national cohesion. If we believe that our neighbors will not pay their personal property taxes, it is highly improbable that we will pay ours; a nation, which believes that its enemy will violate an agreement antic.i.p.ates such action by violating the agreement first.[4] Yet without such international agreements no international concert is possible. Moreover the very condition, which made agreements so perishable during the present war (the number and strength of the belligerents and the weakness of the neutrals) is one which itself is likely to be remedied by agreements made in advance. If Germany, England, France, Italy and Russia have even a qualified sense of security concerning their over-sea possessions and their commerce, they will be less likely to enter into these hostile, world-embracing coalitions, which rob such agreements of so much of their value.

Especially would this be true if certain terms of the agreement--such as the {257} neutralisation of strategic water-ways--could be effected in peace times. In any case this evolving and increasing half-trust in agreements is one of the fragile instruments with which we must work.

If, therefore, an international arrangement were made, or a series of compacts were formed between individual nations, by which, for example, a group of powers promised to attack any nation violating these naval agreements (even if it pleaded counter violations by the enemy) a basis of faith in the new arrangements would be laid.

There would remain, however, the question of colonies. So long as there is no principle by which the colonial opportunities of the world can be distributed, we shall have compet.i.tive nationalistic imperialism and the constant threat of war.

[1] Quoted by H. Sidebotham. "The Freedom of the Seas." "Towards a Lasting Settlement," by various authors; edited by Charles Roden Buxton, London, 1915, p. 66.

[2] H. Sidebotham, _op. cit._, p. 63.

[3] "The European War of 1914. Its Causes, Purposes and Probable Results," Chicago, 1915, p. 142.

[4] Some of the German defenders of the Belgian invasion claim that the Germans were convinced that had they not used Belgium as a base for military operations, England or France would have done so at the first convenient moment, though possibly with Belgium's consent (which, however, Belgium had no legal right to give). Whether or not this fear was justified, it is evident that violations and proposed violations of international law by one group of belligerents led to violations by the other, reprisals were answered by counter-reprisals, and grave breaches of international law by all belligerents were defended on the ground that the opponent would do, or had done, the same.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE HIGHER IMPERIALISM

One of the greatest difficulties in the problem of working out an international colonial policy is our neglect of the immediate and overwhelming influence of colonies, as of other economic outlets, in the provocation of destructive wars. Until the nations recognize that wars are in the main wars of interest, fought for concrete things, and unless such things can be utilised with some regard to the desires of all nations involved, war cannot be avoided.

If these questions of interest were merely a matter of short division, of so much trade to be distributed, the problem, though difficult, would be easier of solution. But in many cases a single, indivisible prize must be awarded. There is only one Antwerp, one Trieste, one Constantinople, and there are many claimants. Is Russia to control the Yellow Sea or is j.a.pan? Is the Persian Gulf to be British, Russian or German? Is the present division of colonial possessions to be maintained or is there to be a new distribution, from which some nations will gain and others lose? What is to decide what colonies shall belong to what nation or what share each nation shall have in the profits of exploitations? These and a hundred other questions indicate the wide range of complicated economic interests which to-day divide nations and ill.u.s.trate the difficulty of establishing a basis of agreement.