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 assured 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 shores 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 circumstances, 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 Japan; 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
circumstances? 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
assumes, 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
attitude 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 attitude 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 attitude 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 anticipated that a complete freedom of the sea
will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not
controlling the ocean, are given reasonable assurances 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 Canal, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal, 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
anticipates 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 competitive 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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