Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/137

Rh maritime interests were in one scale, and in the other the general interests of all Continental nations. The first Napoleon's Continental system was the outcome and the evidence of this belief. It is now seen that it is not at all a question of England's interests on the one side and those of Continental nations on the other, but of maritime power as such against all other forms, of power, and that Continental nations, in so far as and just in proportion as they are maritime powers too, have precisely similar interests to those of England in the matter. It now begins to be pretty clearly seen that France could never have been crushed in the last war by the simple dead weight of Germany's military power, if she had not, some fourteen years before, recklessly signed away her maritime power. The Zollverein has annually some £40,000,000 of produce afloat. Had France sequestrated this property on the first shot fired against her, and put a veto on German commerce