against the enemy's armed forces. It was inevitable that as the new
movement of opinion gathered force it should carry with it a conviction
that for operating against sea-borne trade sporadic attack could never be
so efficient as an organised system of operations to secure a real
strategical control of the enemy's maritime communications. A riper and
sounder view of war revealed that what may be called tactical commercial
blockade--that is, the blockade of ports--could be extended to and
supplemented by a strategical blockade of the great trade routes. In moral
principle there is no difference between the two. Admit the principle of
tactical or close blockade, and as between belligerents you cannot condemn
the principle of strategical or distant blockade. Except in their effect
upon neutrals, there is no juridical difference between the two.

Why indeed should this humane yet drastic process of war be rejected at sea
if the same thing is permitted on land? If on land you allow contributions
and requisitions, if you permit the occupation of towns, ports, and inland
communications, without which no conquest is complete and no effective war
possible, why should you refuse similar procedure at sea where it causes
far less individual suffering? If you refuse the right of controlling
communications at sea, you must also refuse the right on land. If you admit
the right of contributions on land, you must admit the right of capture at
sea. Otherwise you will permit to military Powers the extreme rights of war
and leave to the maritime Powers no effective rights at all. Their ultimate
argument would be gone.

In so far as the idea of abolishing private capture at sea is humanitarian,
and in so far as it rests on a belief that it would strengthen our position
as a commercial maritime State, let it be honourably dealt with. But so far
as its advocates have as yet expressed themselves, the proposal appears to
be based on two fallacies. One is, that you can avoid attack by depriving