people had little concern. International quarrels would tend to take the
form of the mediaeval private disputes which were settled by champions in
trial by battle, an absurdity which led rapidly to the domination of purely
legal procedure. If international quarrels could go the same way, humanity
would have advanced a long stride. But the world is scarcely ripe for such
a revolution. Meanwhile to abolish the right of interference with the flow
of private property at sea without abolishing the corresponding right
ashore would only defeat the ends of humanitarians. The great deterrent,
the most powerful check on war, would be gone. It is commerce and finance
which now more than ever control or check the foreign policy of nations. If
commerce and finance stand to lose by war, their influence for a peaceful
solution will be great; and so long as the right of private capture at sea
exists, they stand to lose in every maritime war immediately and inevitably
whatever the ultimate result may be. Abolish the right, and this deterrent
disappears; nay, they will even stand to win immediate gains owing to the
sudden expansion of Government expenditure which the hostilities will
entail, and the expansion of sea commerce which the needs of the armed
forces will create. Any such losses as maritime warfare under existing
conditions must immediately inflict will be remote if interference with
property is confined to the land. They will never indeed be serious except
in the case of complete defeat, and no one enters upon war expecting
defeat. It is in the hope of victory and gain that aggressive wars are
born. The fear of quick and certain loss is their surest preventive.
Humanity, then, will surely beware how in a too hasty pursuit of peaceful
ideals it lets drop the best weapon it has for scotching the evil it has as
yet no power to kill.

In what follows, therefore, it is intended to regard the right of private
capture at sea as still subsisting. Without it, indeed, naval warfare is
almost inconceivable, and in any case no one has any experience of such a