LIBERTY OF THE SEAS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11671, 11 April 1916, Page 1

LIBERTY OF THE SEAS.

GERMAN VERSION. Professor • von Stenger, in , the '.' Kreutz Zeitnng," discourses on what has become the fashionable cant phraee in* Germany, " Liberty of the seas." His article is an attack or?: those Liberal German papsrs, such : as tho "Frankfurter Zeitung," -which assumes that,tho " future," freedom of. the seas canirot be secured without the assent of Great Britain. 'For Professor yon Stenger such liberty is only. possible with Britain, left entirely out of it. Ho "proves" this by characteristic arguments. If one of the parties to suclh «in international agreement bo stronger thau the others, he contends, the treaty has only a .spurious force, for " Power rules Right." Tho first, condition for securing the liberty of th© seas, he announces, is that the German fleet arid German colonial possessions should be so strong that neither Britain nor Russia, nor the United States could liavo any aspii'ations towards, .world-domination-reven,if they should unite for that purposed. Such a German Power would bef sufficient "protection for the liberty of the seas, and -would bs better than the " nicest"! of treaties arranged in long conferences, lasting many months. But there is, for Germany, a further reason for not taking part- in any conference for regulating the new sea right. At such a conference, tho question of the-use of submarines would be sure to be raised, and- there -would b? some danger of j their use against commercial ships beI ing forbidden. It is easy to under- | stand that Germany cannot tako part ;in any discussion on this submarinequestion; for it is only by the help of the .submarines that -we can hope to secure the liberty* of the seas. The future compilers of glossaries of political and' diplomatic terms will evidently have to interpret "liberty of the seas" as meaning " German worlddomination." But is if not rather awkward that, at a time when 1 German diplomats and pamphleteers are -working hard' to< persuade the neutral countries that Germany is tho disinterested champion t>f their rights against perfidious Britannia, German professors of the von Stenger order should bo giving i away, in this barefaced' fashion what. Germans really are aiming at. J ' STILL "THE LIBERTY." j Bv -way of a diversion, Count Re- ! ventlo-w declares in the '-Deutsche I Taaeszeitmig." that the advocates of I Europeans" are traitors in the ! holy -war against England. Tho " Mit- ! tof Europeans." he affirms, are prei pa-rins the minds of the German people ' for peace -with England on tho basis 1 "that England shall dominate on sea I and Germany on land." Ho cites warnings uttered by Herr I Ballin, of the Hamburg-Amerik, and i Herr Craszmann, the. president of the l Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, as | showing that the effect of the Mittol- ; Europa movement is to distract the j attention of the German people from the duty of securing the liberty of the seas. This article, emanating from the circles around the Emperor that are constantly at "war with the Ultra-Con-servatives -who still cling to the 3ssmarckian conception of a _ Germany ' powerful on land) only, and' in alliance' | -with Rxissia, shows; how the political I truce in Germany is steadily weaien-