Page:The League of Nations and freedom of the seas.djvu/14

 when the whole world has become to so large an extent possessed of a common vitality, when the life of every nation has become more or less linked by its trade arteries with that of every other, the force of an oecumenical sea interdict has become perhaps the most potent of all sanctions. It is, moreover, one that can be applied without inflicting the inhumanities which other forms of coercion entail. For a League, therefore, whose object is to make an end of the inhuman practice of war it is a sanction which it would be folly to deny itself. Yet if absolute Freedom of the Seas is to be a fundamental article of its constitution that sanction cannot be applied. There would still, of course, remain the sanction of non-intercourse, but without the full sea interdict it would lose more than half its force, and often be too slow and weak in its action to be effective. In too many cases the only trustworthy sanction would still be open war, in which armies alone could bring vital pressure to bear.

To bring the truth of this view home to those who are unfamiliar with the mystery of sea-power is no easy task. To many it will seem to be no more than an obscurant clinging to the past with which they are resolved to break; and naturally enough, when we remember how often opposition to human progress is little else. But in this case the charge of mere obscurantism will not hold. The latest expressions of considered opinion are too weighty and too