THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17572, 16 May 1919, Page 6

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.

AN. INTELLIGENT AMERICAN

VIEW

At about the tune when Germany first, '.eahsed that the Allied blockade must soouvr or later begt-t such a shortage ul raw mater.als as to make it impossiDio for her to continue the war, she dug up from th« ancient records of maritime lustory the phrase "freedom of the Seas/ and included it among the many specious catchwords and formulae which siio accustomed to sprinkle throughout her written and spoken propaganda. The freedom of the seas (says the ''Soientiii;; American") is the most fair and seemly child in a litter which inciudes many another offspring of German cunning; and she brought it forth, or rathp.r gavo id re-birth, in the very hour when she was planning to establish upon the seas with her U-boats a reign of tyranny and murder, which should make the ferocities of a Morgan or Captain Kidd shrink into msignoiicance.

Mare clausum (closed sea) and mare liberum (free sea) are terms which weve used several centuries ago in a controversy that arose out of the claim, made by various States, that they had the right to exclusive dominion over extensive areas of the high sea. Grotius wrote a work in 1609 entitled "Free Sea,"' and to Brynliershcnk we,are indebted for a book, De douunio mans (concerning the control of tine sea), published in 1702 in which he laid down the principle, tbp+. a maritime State thould have dominion over the sea only a?; far as a cannon shot could protect it. That was ihreo miies. The formula was accepted, and upon it has been established that three-mile strip along the coastline known as Territorial Water, of which we have heard so much during the. recont h ar. GERMANY'S ATTEMPT TO CONFUSE THE ISSUE. Novr, when Germany realised that the right of blockade, universally recognised, was destined to bring her to Her knees by depriving her of materials !or her armies, she sought to confuse the issue by disinterring the long-buried question of mare fibernum. or free sea : and hoisting it as a protest against the British blockade. But in this subterfuge she fooled no ons, and least of all j i.he United States. For as soon as we entered tho war, we screwed down the clamps of the blockade tighter than before, even to the extent of holding in the riii.lson a whole fleet of Dutch ships, laden with food, professedly for Hoi-1 land and presumably for Germany, and finally commandeering them as an offset to the depredations of the freedom-of-the-seas-loving German. It is w<fl. understood by all the Allies, and by nobody better than by President Wilson, that Germany reintroduced the phrase for the sole purpose of getting the thought into the public mind that the predominance of the Allied Fleets, and especiaiiy of that of Great Britain, was a ;ieri! to the modern freedom of the seas. They wanted to instil the idea that Great* Britain had created her vast Navy, not for the legitimate purpose of acting as a bond to tie together the elements of her widely-scattered empire, but. as a means of illegitimate control of the sea routes for her own individual profit, and as a hindrance to the commercial expansion of other nations.

The Attorney-General of the United States has recently warned us that [there is an active'and widespread revival of German propaganda. The warning is timely, for the enemy is working overtime in the effort to create jealousy, rivalry, and mistrust among the nations who are sitting in judgment upon him. And in no direction .'s he more active than in his efforts to create suspicion of the lately demonstrated strength of th"c British Navy. "Beware!" whispers the Hun. "You see what she did to Germany; it will be your turn next." Now what, the British Fleet did to German naval piracy and terrorism was what it has done to every form of terrorism .-»n the high sens for a century past—she crushed it out. •And when the Hun. the master mis-chief-mak«?r of all the ages, points to jthfi surrender of his whole Fleet i« the North Sea and cries "Beware!" none knows better than himself that this 1 amazing spectacle was a£ crowning dem. onstration of the fact that to-day, as yesterday, the British Fleet is the ; guardian ■of the seas against any such I monstrous attack upon its " freedom" H<V that which the Fleet helped so nobly to repel. And if, in its Herculean task of holding the enemy in its own ports until the [day of r-urrender, Great Britain has had ! to'double the strength of a, Fleet, which was already a heavy drain upon her resources; and if in the effort to preserve I t-he freedom of the seas and act as common carrier for the Allied cause, she has lost one-half of her vast merchant i marine, she will bear both the burden and the loss without a whimper, content with- the knowledge that, when Freedom called, the ships that fly the White Ensign were there to pay the price, staggering though it has proved to be. BRITAIN'S FLEET HER "MONROE DOCTRINE." The supremacy of her Fleet is the "Monroe Doctrine" of the British Empire; indeed the maintenance of this wj.premioy id even more vital to her security than is the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine to the security of the United States. A violation of the Monroe Doctrine would not necessarily imperil our existence as a nation; whereas it is well understood that a defeat of the British Fleet would sound the ! doath-knell of the whole British Empire. Unlike the United States, which is entirely self-supporting and geographically a unit, the British Empire consists of "an island no larger than some of our smaller States, which is the seat of the Imperial Government and the heart of the system, with numerous outlying