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Page 25
It is because Great Britain's sea power, though still superior, has
declined relatively to that of other states, and is no longer supreme,
that she has been induced to concede to neutrals the principle that
the flag covers the goods. It is a concession wrung from relative
weakness--or possibly from a mistaken humanitarianism; but, to
whatever due, it is all to the profit of the neutral and to the loss
of the stronger belligerent. The only justification, in policy, for
its yielding by the latter, is that she can no longer, as formerly,
bear the additional burden of hostility, if the neutral should ally
himself to the enemy. I have on another occasion said that the
principle that the flag covers the goods is forever secured--meaning
thereby that, so far as present indications go, no one power would be
strong enough at sea to maintain the contrary by arms.
In the same way it may be asserted quite confidently that the
concession of immunity to what is unthinkingly called the "private
property" of an enemy on the sea, will never be conceded by a nation
or alliance confident in its own sea power. It has been the dream of
the weaker sea belligerents in all ages; and their arguments for it,
at the first glance plausible, are very proper to urge from their
point of view. That arch-robber, the first Napoleon, who so
remorselessly and exhaustively carried the principle of war sustaining
war to its utmost logical sequence, and even in peace scrupled not to
quarter his armies on subject countries, maintaining them on what,
after all, was simply private property of foreigners,--even he waxes
quite eloquent, and superficially most convincing, as he compares the
seizure of goods at sea, so fatal to his empire, to the seizure of a
wagon travelling an inland country road.
In all these contentions there lies, beneath the surface plausibility,
not so much a confusion of thought as a failure to recognize an
essential difference of conditions. Even on shore the protection of
private property rests upon the simple principle that injury is not to
be wanton,--that it is not to be inflicted when the end to be attained
is trivial, or largely disproportionate to the suffering caused. For
this reason personal property, not embarked in commercial venture, is
respected in civilized maritime war. Conversely, as we all know, the
rule on land is by no means invariable, and private property receives
scant consideration when its appropriation or destruction serves the
purposes of an enemy. The man who trudges the highway, cudgel in hand,
may claim for his cudgel all the sacredness with which civilization
invests property; but if he use it to break his neighbor's head, the
respect for his property, as such, quickly disappears. Now, private
property borne upon the seas is engaged in promoting, in the most
vital manner, the strength and resources of the nation by which it is
handled. When that nation becomes belligerent, the private property,
so called, borne upon the seas, is sustaining the well-being and
endurance of the nation at war, and consequently is injuring the
opponent, to an extent exceeding all other sources of national power.
In these days of war correspondents, most of us are familiar with the
idea of the dependence of an army upon its communications, and we
know, vaguely perhaps, but still we know, that to threaten or harm the
communications of an army is one of the most common and effective
devices of strategy. Why? Because severed from its base an army
languishes and dies, and when threatened with such an evil it must
fight at whatever disadvantage. Well, is it not clear that maritime
commerce occupies, to the power of a maritime state, the precise
nourishing function that the communications of an army supply to the
army? Blows at commerce are blows at the communications of the state;
they intercept its nourishment, they starve its life, they cut the
roots of its power, the sinews of its war. While war remains a factor,
a sad but inevitable factor, of our history, it is a fond hope that
commerce can be exempt from its operations, because in very truth
blows against commerce are the most deadly that can be struck; nor is
there any other among the proposed uses of a navy, as for instance the
bombardment of seaport towns, which is not at once more cruel and less
scientific. Blockade such as that enforced by the United States Navy
during the Civil War, is evidently only a special phase of
commerce-destroying; yet how immense--nay, decisive--its results!
It is only when effort is frittered away in the feeble dissemination
of the _guerre-de-course_, instead of being concentrated in a great
combination to control the sea, that commerce-destroying justly incurs
the reproach of misdirected effort. It is a fair deduction from
analogy, that two contending armies might as well agree to respect
each other's communications, as two belligerent states to guarantee
immunity to hostile commerce.
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