Page:The League of Nations and freedom of the seas.djvu/17

 interest of the Military Powers to confuse the two tracks. They will, undoubtedly, use every device to keep them confused, for only by fostering the unhappy confusion which well-meaning men have hastily introduced can they destroy the balance between Naval and Military Powers, and so become the arbiters of the destinies of their weaker neighbours.

Above all should these smaller nations beware of putting themselves in line on this question with the Military Powers. The temptation is great. Their sufferings as neutrals during the present war have been so severe that their tendency is to snatch at the first means that seems to promise relief in the future. Their troubles are directly traced to the extension of belligerent interference upon the sea to which new developments in war conditions have inevitably led, and it is naturally in Freedom of the Seas they see the only remedy. But in truth their sufferings at sea are only a symptom of the underlying cause. The fundamental difficulty is that the vitality of nations has become so much a common vitality that no nation can fully enjoy a state of peace while other nations are at war. Neutrality as it formerly existed has ceased to be possible, and Freedom of the Seas would be only an alleviation, not a cure. The only real remedy is a League of Nations which would prevent war, but a League of Nations could not permit neutrality as a right—any more than by the English common law a citizen had the right to stand aside when