and principal points of distribution. This power is the real fruit of
victory, the power to strangle the whole national life. It is not until
this is done that a high-spirited nation, whose whole heart is in the war,
will consent to make peace and do your will. It is precisely in the same
way that the command of the sea works towards peace, though of course in a
far less coercive manner, against a continental State. By occupying her
maritime communications and closing the points of distribution in which
they terminate we destroy the national life afloat, and thereby check the
vitality of that life ashore so far as the one is dependent on the other.
Thus we see that so long as we retain the power and right to stop maritime
communications, the analogy between command of the sea and the conquest of
territory is in this aspect very close. And the analogy is of the utmost
practical importance, for on it turns the most burning question of maritime
war, which it will be well to deal with in this place.

It is obvious that if the object and end of naval warfare is the control of
communications it must carry with it the right to forbid, if we can, the
passage of both public and private property upon the sea. Now the only
means we have of enforcing such control of commercial communications at sea
is in the last resort the capture or destruction of sea-borne property.
Such capture or destruction is the penalty which we impose upon our enemy
for attempting to use the communications of which he does not hold the
control. In the language of jurisprudence, it is the ultimate sanction of
the interdict which we are seeking to enforce. The current term "Commerce
destruction" is not in fact a logical expression of the strategical idea.
To make the position clear we should say "Commerce prevention."

The methods of this "Commerce prevention" have no more connection with the
old and barbarous idea of plunder and reprisal than orderly requisitions
ashore have with the old idea of plunder and ravaging. No form of war