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The latest solemn joke is the British reason for suspending permission for us to export certain commodities to Holland and Scandinavia, such as clover seeds, hides, tanning materials, linen thread and apples. His majesty's government cannot allow this nefarious traffic to proceed further because Great Britain is already faced with a large bill for detention caused to neutral steamers which were taken into Kirkwall and, after long delay, found innocent and released without coming before a British prize court.

The New York Times dispatch from London says Great Britain is shutting down on our exports to neutral Europe because of the growing bill with which Great Britain is being pressed by neutral governments for demurrage and other expenses incurred by taking suspected ships into Kirkwall and other ports for examination. So far as is known, no machinery exists at present for adjusting these claims because many of the cargoes never actually reached the prize court. When shippers ask for compensation they are referred to the prize court, which thus far has declined to consider their claims, on the ground that they have no standing. in court.

In the history of international law, is there anything to compare with this situation? International law requires England to find on a neutral steamer for Scandinavia proof of the presence of contraband with German destination. The proof must be found on the steamer, which may not otherwise lawfully be taken into port to be unloaded, ransacked and detained.

But his majesty's cruisers take such neutral vessels into Kirkwall and there unload, ransack and detain them. No evidence is found to justify taking goods or steamer before the British prize court, for they are innocent. Therefore, British justice can devise no means to reimburse the ransacked goods for damage and the steamer for detention, caused by a belligerent that had no right to touch them at all.

That is British Joke 349.

Query: Would his majesty's government be as impotent if faced with the problem of suggesting a means for some other belligerent to make amends for similar damage lawlessly done to British steamers and goods, if Great Britain were neutral in this war? History has no lesson that is clearer than British insistence upon the rights of neutrals in war time.

But the jest does not end here. His majesty's government, faced with the insoluble problem of providing justice for acknowledged damage to innocent goods and vessels lawlessly seized, cuts the Gordian knot by ordering vessels and goods off the seas.

That is British Joke 350.

Some day, when this war is over, or perhaps earlier, a Mark Twain will arise in America capable of writing the proper supplement to the text-books on international law.

In the meantime, the three White Books of our official diplomatic correspondence, issued by the State Department, upholds the best standards of British humor, or lack of it.

-Sept. 21, 1916.

The Freedom of the Seas

A MENACE TO THE WORLD

The interests of the world are so bound together in this advanced stage of commercial and social development that no nation can apply any policy which breaks up the fabric of international relations without doing serious injury to many nations.

A case in point is the death of the New York nurse in Germany from infection caused by the lack of rubber gloves in her work of ministering to the wounded. Great Britain had put a ban on the attempt of the American Red Cross to send such gloves to Germany. The protests of the American ambassador at London had failed to obtain a relaxation of the British refusal to admit rubber hospital supplies into the enemy's country. The assurances of Mr. Gerard, American ambassador at Berlin, that he himself would undertake to see that the rubber gloves proffered by the American Red Cross were applied solely to the charitable purpose for which they were intended, had no better result. Great Britain has persisted in her insuperable obstacles to American humane impulses and has added to the sufferings and the hazards of those who are devoting themselves to the alleviation of suffering in Germany.

This effect of British sea power upon an American nurse, and doubtless upon the entire hospital person

nel of a great country with which we are in friendly relations, is one manifestation of the infinite possibilities of control of the oceans when it is vested in the hands of one nation. Another such manifestation out of the hundreds which have developed since the war began is seen in the embargo just placed upon logwood by Great Britain. Logwood is the basis of the only natural dyes which have proved a satisfactory substitute for aniline dyes, now under the ban of the British admiralty, much to the distress of the American manufacturers. Britain has prohibited the exportation to America and other neutral countries of this wood, most of which has been coming from Jamaica. The British manufacturers, however, can get all they want of it.

Like the prohibition of the supply of rubber gloves to Germany, the withholding of logwood from the United States is based upon Great Britain's unquestioned supremacy on the sea. It is made possible by the power of the British navy, which deprives American manufacturers of an essential product while it assures to their British rivals an uninterrupted supply of the same product.

If exclusive rights on the sea are to remain the accepted rule in the future as they have been in the past, Great Britain might as well have them as any other power. But the time is past when the world can af

ford to intrust such power over life and of commerce to any nation. The control of the seas should be vested, not in a nation nor in a group of nations, bent upon the exploitation of their sovereignty for their own selfish purposes, but in a council of all the maritime nations, pledged to administer its trust for the benefit of the entire world. That is the only solution of the problem.-Dec. 9, 1915.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE'S "GER

MAN TIGER"

Whether Lord Northcliffe is authorized, or not, authoritatively to announce British policies, no doubt he is able to voice the sentiments and feelings of a considerable portion of the British people. In his address to "at least" 50,000,000 Americans, therefore, what he says doubtless reflects a measure of British opinion, especially as what we are about to quote coincides perfectly with a recent pronouncement of President Runciman, of the British Board of Trade and a member of the privy council. Describing what he characterizes as "tigerish' German qualities, and professing to believe that Great Britain has the "German Tiger where we want him," he concludes:

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Finally, the main policy of Great Britain is: First, to keep German ships off the sea so long as a single German soldier remains in allies' territory and so long as an indemnity to Belgium, France and Russia is unpaid.

If that be the main British policy, and events should enable Great Britain to carry it out, the nearly 5,000,000 tons of German merchant ships that are laid up in all parts

of the world will be about as useful as "a painted ship upon a painted ocean," because they will rust into useless hulks long before Germany could pay such an indemnity as doubtless will be exacted, should the allies win the war. It would mean, not the annihilation of German seaborne trade, but that the conduct of that trade would fall into British hands, largely, and the development of it would be subject to British regulation. If in this manner some 5,000,000 tons of shipping is to be withheld from use because it happens to be German-owned, 5,000,000 tons of other shipping will have to take its place, and who can supply it but Great Britain? It means, in short, that the price that Great Britain intends to exact from Germany, if she can, will be the permanent relinquishment by Germany of her merchant marine. Thus the most formidable competitor upon the seas that Great Britain has met during the past three-fourths of a century will be permanently disposed of.

There is something for the people of the United States seriously and gravely to consider in these identical statements issued by President Runciman and Lord Northcliffe. Should differences arise, as they may, between the United States and Great Britain, in the competition between the two nations in their quests for foreign markets for their surplus products, and in the building up of their shipping with which to carry on their foreign trade, and these differences should lead to misunderstandings eventuating in war, it might easily happen that the peo ple of the United States would develop qualities that the British would regard as "tigerish," and that

it would become necessary for Great Britain to subject American shipping, and thus American foreign trade, to such regulation as Great Britain would deem proper, should Great Britain be the victor in such

a war.

That is to say, the policy Britons intend to apply to German shipping, if the allies succeed in winning the present war, is the policy that Great Britain regards as best calculated to serve British ends. Germany, for the moment, is the contemplated victim. The victim, the next time the application of the policy may be necessary for the furtherance of British interests, may happen to be the United States-would, most likely of all other nations, be the United States.

Of course, such a fate may be spared our shipping if we pursue the course we have pursued for the past half century or more or voluntarily depending upon foreign. (chiefly British) shipping for the conduct of our foreign trade, and of allowing American shipping to disappear utterly from the seas. In that case the development of foreign markets for our surplus products, to the extent that there would be any such development, would be subject to such regulation, no doubt, as Great Britain should determine would cause the least interference with the development of British foreign commerce.

Great Britain plans that the outcome of the present war, in short, shall be the strengthening of Great Britain's grip upon the mastery of the seas. If we presume to contest that mastery, we may properly, and very wisely indeed, adequately prepare to protect ourselves, or subject our shipping, our foreign trade and

our country to such restraint and humiliation as Great Britain expects to apply to German shipping, German foreign trade, and Germany, if she can.-Jan. 8, 1916.

ENGLAND'S BAD BET

"Mistress of the Seas" has been a picturesque name for England, but not an exact designation. England has been, rather, the trustee of the seas. Other nations have permitted her to hold the keys to the narrow gates of the oceans so long as she observed a certain degree of fairness. If she administered decently her custodianship of Gibraltar, nations were willing to forget that she came by that important rock under clouded circumstances. If she used properly her control of the Suez Canal, nations ceased to question the methods by which Disraeli gobbled that great cut to the east. Nations have not asked England "How did you get it?" but "Are you using it rightly?"

But now England seems to be regarding the seas as property in fee simple. The trusteeship is to be used as a club, striking neutral as well as foe. Command of the sea is to be used as command of the world. Not every one in England is blind to the follow of such procedure, else there would not be such internal debate over the wisdom of the proposed blockade. An English writer on naval affairs, Archibald Hurd, sounds in the Fortnightly Review the note of warning to the trustee :

"The enemy's peril arises from the fact that he cannot use the sea to obtain supplies; ours from the fact that we can, and that we are abusing our sea power, thus, it not imperiling our eventual victory, at any rate delaying it

and making it far more costly than it need be."

Mr. Hurd sees that England is on the way to lose an economic bet so large that losing it would ruin her. He sees that England has made her fat living off the sea because she used it honestly. But now, as he says:

"Every condition on which our welfare depends has undergone a change since hostilities opened except the command of the sea, and on that support we are leaning to an extent which may lead to unfortunate consequences. Sea power is merely the maritime expression of man power and money power; money power depends on economic power. We have been withdrawing and are withdrawing thousands of men from factories and workshops, with the result that our exports have fallen; we are using 25 per cent. of our merchant navy for the war, with a corresponding shortage of tonnage for commercial purposes."

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England's sea power, hitherto so craftily administered as to be unobjectionable to most of the nations, is what has held together the British empire. Nations have not all appreciated how huge that power is. Britain, drawing the velvet glove from the hand of steel, will show them, and the very act must arouse a spirit of antagonism throughout the world. Men have seen what dominion of the sea means when honestly used. Now they will see what it means when the dominant power decides to disobey the spirit and the letter of the law of the world.-Jan. 29, 1916.

REAL BASIS OF SEA

DOMINION

If the military and naval value to a nation of numerous thoroughly up-to-date shipyards, with experienced and trained shipbuilders, has

not yet been completely demonstrated to the American people during this European war, then the case of the United States is absolutely hopeless. hopeless. All the world has seen that, not militarism, but navalism, dominates the world, and that navalism is synonymous with Britishism.

The sustaining power of the British navy is the British merchant marine, while the British navy safeguards British mercantile shipping from serious injury, in which the navy is fortified through British possession of controlling strategic bases that dominate all of the trade routes of the world. But British

war and merchant ships are predicated upon dominant British shipbuilding. It is inconceivable that Great Britain could be the dominant sea power that to-day she is if the nation were dependent upon other countries for its warships or its people were dependent upon other countries for their merchant ships.

It is not too much to say that, today, the foreign trade of the world is conducted by permission of Great Britain. The growth of the world's foreign trade serves Britain's ends. It is an endless chain of profit to Britons. For any nation seriously to contest British maritime supremacy is to court destruction. And this is so because Britons believe that successful rivalry of British sea dominion means the passing of the Great Britain that, for centuries, the world has grown accustomed to.

The basis of this is British control of the world's shipbuilding. If she does not do the carrying for all the world, her shipbuilders build most of the ships engaged in the world's carrying, a condition satisfactory to Britons, because the ar

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