The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1916. THE BRITISH BLOCKADE.

Southland Times, Issue 17656, 14 February 1916, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1916. THE BRITISH BLOCKADE.

| There is one problem in regard to | the war that exercises the minds of [many good people. J>y the use of her groat navy Britain is attempting' at the present time to establish a complete blockade of Germany; in other j words Britain proposes to cut off. if she can, Germany’s supplies of raw material and food stuffs—everything that she requires to keep her industries .going and to feed her population. In short Britain would, if she could, bring the war to an end, not l;y defeating the German army, hut py starving it, even if the German people also starved. The good people wc have uTcrred to are busy asking themselves how far war can oc conducted on those lines consistently with the teachings of* Christianity and the principles of civilisation. AVell. if v.’e start out to adjust the practices or war to Hie doctrines of religion and humanity we are hound to end up in inconsistencies and contradictions of all sorts. Yon cannot say that war should hp confined io the armed men of the belligerents, for in war it unfortunately becomes a military necessit- --■> indict suffering and privation upon non-combatants. Suppose, lor instance, that the Gorman rush in August last had carried the enemy to the gates of Paris. The French

capital, being in a state of defence, would have resisted. The Germans would have attempted to reduce it by scige, and had the defences been sufficiently strong to hold out from reaching the armed defenders the Germans would have been justified in cutting off the food supplies altogether, and thuse starving the civilians locked up in the city. Or suppose that German navy had held command of the seas at the outbreak of the war. Britain depends largely for her supplies upon outside sources. If her food supplies, were stopped she would be starved into submission in a short time. Does anyone suppose that Germany would not have used her navy to prevent ships from entering or leaving British ports, or does anyone contend that she would not have been entitled to make use of her sea supremacy in that way? 11 is certainly a very distressing thing to road the appeals for milk for babies that are now being sent out from Germany to the United States. If these appeals are to he believed thousands aud thousands of babies in Germany, little innocents who have hurt nobody and are entitled to a reasonable chance to growing up healthy and strong, are in a piteous condition because the milk supply of Germany is now neither adequate nor satisfactory in quality. That is one of the horrors of war. But war is frankly horrible. The whole object of the Allies at the present time is to kill as many Germans as they can every day. Of the Germans who fall a very large proportion are breadwinners—husbands or fathers or brothers. When a British soldier kills a German father he deprives some little German child of its breadwinner and protector, and makes its course through life hard and difficult. It is simply another step to cut off the food supplies of the child itself, aud what we are trying to do to the enemy, the enemy is trying to do to us. The Germans are the very last people who can suggest any relaxation of the relentless rules of war. Britain would not expose Germany’s noncombatant population to hardships and suffering if she could avoid the necessity, but Britain is entitled to use her navy to deprive Germany of the materials which she needs for the manufacture of munitions and the supplies which she needs to feed her troops, and if in establishing the blockade with this object Britain causes suffering and death among the German people, that is war. Britain has no crime like the sinking of the Lusitania against her the mere wanton butchery of helpless unarmed men, women and children for no military purpose whatever. The blockade is strictly military in character. Britain's naval strength is so overwhelming that she can seriously attempt to -establish a condition of seige as against Germany. If she succeeds the effect upon the course of the war must be great, and whatever her scruples may be, however repellant the task may he to her sentiments of humanity, it would be an act of pure folly on Britain’s part to desist simply because the blockade entails suffering upon the civilian population of Germany. The first to sneer at such weakness would be the military leaders of Germany.