immtMm 
 
 n 
 
 
SOME %*. 
 
 NEGLECTED ASPECTS 
 OF WAR, 
 
 By 
 CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, U. S. N. 
 
 Author of "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783," 
 " The Interest of America in Sea Power," etc. 
 
 Together with 
 
 THE POWER THAT MAKES FOR PEACE 
 
 By Henry S. Pritchett 
 
 Formerly President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
 
 And 
 
 THE CAPTURE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY AT SEA 
 
 By Julian S. Corbett 
 
 Lecturer in History to the Naval War Course 
 
 LONDON 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY, Ltd. 
 ico, Southwark St., S. E. 
 
Mi- 
 
 Copyright, i8gg, 
 By The North American Review Publishing Co. 
 
 Copyright, igoj, 
 By Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. 
 
 Copyright, 1907, 
 By A. T. Mahan. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published November, 1907 
 
 COLONIAL PRESS 
 
 ElectrotyPed and Printed by C. H. Simonds &* Co. 
 
 Boston, U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE cause of Universal Peace, upon which 
 so much of the world's attention has been 
 fixed this summer by the Hague Conference, can 
 progress surely to success only upon the same 
 conditions by which any other movement for good 
 reaches its goal. It will not be advanced, but 
 retarded, by neglecting diligently and calmly to 
 consider facts, to look them straight in the face ; to 
 see things as they are, and not merely as one would 
 wish to see them now, or as it is possible that our 
 descendants may be privileged to see in a future 
 happier age. 
 
 Among many perversions of thought and result- 
 ant exaggerations of statement, by the uncon- 
 ditional advocates of Arbitration, there is one 
 which underlies all others. This is, that War not 
 merely is an evil, which like other evils we should 
 labor to reduce, and ultimately to abolish; but 
 that, having reference to the existing state of 
 things, it is so essentially unreasonable and wicked 
 
 ft 9 | 
 
 13 
 
viii Preface 
 
 that there can be for it no necessity, nor justifi- 
 cation. From this point of view War serves no 
 purpose that cannot, — in the existing state of 
 things, — be otherwise and peacefully accom- 
 plished. It is merely killing people, a breach of the 
 sixth commandment, by those who call themselves 
 Christians; or, as one very prominent opponent 
 has said, — and I doubt not many have echoed, — 
 It is impossible to reconcile War with the teachings 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 This all amounts to saying that it is wicked for 
 society to organize and utilize force for the control 
 of evil. It will scarcely be denied that evil in 
 various forms now exists; not evil of thought or 
 word merely, but evil of act; of overt violence, 
 legal as well as extra-legal; evil aggressive, per- 
 sistent, insolent, and ultimately subversive, if 
 unchecked, of all social order and personal happi- 
 ness. Nor will it, I imagine, be denied, granted a 
 careful appreciation of conditions, that such tend- 
 encies towards violence arise from time to time 
 throughout huge homogeneous masses of mankind, 
 nations and races ; tendencies resting, indeed, not 
 upon ordinary criminal impulse, but upon ambi- 
 tions or necessities incident to their present posi- 
 tion, or present wants. Nor, again, can there be 
 
Preface ix 
 
 serious dispute that successful evil, supported 
 by organized force, sits often in peace upon a 
 throne, from which it can be deposed only by 
 force. | 
 
 The organizations of mankind called nations 
 have established over themselves agencies known 
 to us as governments; the objects of which are the 
 maintenance of internal order and prosperity, and 
 of the external rights and interests of the peoples 
 they represent. Could the people, having made 
 this disposition of the national functions, become 
 thereafter thoroughly neutral and passive as re- 
 gards the conduct of their affairs, as do most of the 
 stockholders in a corporation; could considera- 
 tions of administration and relations with other 
 peoples be abandoned with indifference to the 
 governments ; it may be conceivable that the pro- 
 prietors of the big estates thus constituted might 
 agree among themselves to administer in such wise 
 as to avoid quarrelling. Although the experience 
 of history, under absolute rulers, does not bear out 
 this pleasing supposition, corporations, small organ- 
 ized bodies, doubtless can reach agreement more 
 easily than do unorganized masses. As a matter 
 of fact, however, governments do not possess this 
 freedom of action, which, if held, we may presume 
 
x Preface 
 
 they would utilize with pure regard to the welfare 
 of those under them; as despotisms and directo- 
 rates notoriously do. Behind every government, 
 even the most absolute, lie the masses of the people, 
 with all the stormy impulses and pressing needs 
 that characterize the individual man, multiplied 
 by numbers, and intensified by the interaction of 
 complaint and mutual excitation, in social inter- 
 course and through the press. While a govern- 
 ment can in some degree modify and guide the 
 popular passion and interest thus aroused, its 
 powers in these directions are limited. Like all 
 elemental forces, popular pressure may be influ- 
 enced, but not withstood, j The time comes when 
 Government becomes merely the agency for its 
 exertion. The reins fall from the hands of the 
 ruler. Is it permissible, in such case, for the nation 
 or people threatened to supply that restraint which 
 can no longer be exercised by the native consti- 
 tuted authorities ? Is it right to resort to force to 
 withstand force? If so, there is War; or its 
 equivalent. 
 
 I do not say that the future may not show happier 
 conditions, for which the present should labor. I 
 speak only of the present. Of this present, an 
 eminent American has been quoted as saying that 
 
Preface xi 
 
 there is now no more reason for two nations to go 
 to war, than for himself and another to settle a 
 difficulty with clubs. Says another, similarly emi- 
 nent, " War settles only which nation is the 
 stronger." Both of these gentlemen had seen, 
 like myself, War free four million slaves, and 
 establish on this continent a united people; a 
 contribution towards the world's peace and the 
 welfare of North America, in sparing the expenses 
 of large standing armies, and the woes of probable 
 collisions, which not a dozen Hague Conferences 
 will effect. " War settles only which is the 
 stronger ! " The War of Secession then settled 
 nothing, except that the North was stronger than 
 the South. War, it appears, settled neither the 
 question of slavery nor that of the Union. In the 
 conditions which had previously existed, — present 
 then as our present is now, — in the hardening 
 opinions and feelings of the South, and the growing 
 resolve of the North to restrict slavery, it was, it 
 seems, quite possible to free the slaves and main- 
 tain the Union without war. The War did not 
 settle those questions. The assertion will not hold 
 water with those who can remember those ante- 
 cedent times, or who now will reflectively study 
 the successive stages of the agitation over 
 
xii Preface 
 
 slavery. According to the authority first quoted, 
 it would have been as possible to settle the 
 dispute by some equitable adjustment, as for 
 the two supposed combatants to lay down their 
 clubs. And this in the face of the long history 
 of efforts so to adjust, from the Missouri Compro- 
 mise of 1820 to the Kansas Nebraska Bill and the 
 Fugitive Slave Law of 1854, — the lifetime of 
 a generation. With all the advantages of a 
 united government, of the impassioned eloquence, 
 ardent patriotism, and love for the Union which 
 inspired Clay and Webster in their efforts to avert 
 the calamity by arbitration, by compromise, the 
 interest and feelings of the masses of men behind 
 them swept away all barriers. The strife of a 
 century reached through four years of war a 
 solution not otherwise possible. Yet the state- 
 ments quoted are but moderate among their kind 
 at Peace Conferences, j 
 
 A curious illustration of a tone of mind pre- 
 dominant in the agitation for Universal Arbitra- 
 tion, as now conducted, has come to me since the 
 preceding lines were written. I have received 
 from England the following letter, which, being 
 anonymous, has not the claim to privacy which 
 a signature carries. 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 "Sir: — 
 " I have just read your article in July ' National 
 Review ' on the subject of the ' Hague Conference ' 
 and deeply regret to find that you have used the 
 great talent God gave you for the welfare of man- 
 kind to uphold and encourage instead War which 
 is literally Hell upon earth, and the curse of 
 mankind, at this exceedingly critical period when 
 your opinion might have proved a feather weight 
 in the scale in favour of International Arbitration. 
 May God forgive you, and lead you to an altered 
 and better mind. 
 
 "A Lover of My Fellow Creatures." 
 
 To ask thus solemnly that God may forgive 
 a man is to pronounce his guilt before God. Why ? 
 Because of the antecedent assumption, that all 
 War is so certainly and entirely wicked, that a 
 man cannot without sin present before the audi- 
 ence of his kind such considerations as those 
 contained in the article, herein re-published, 
 "The Practical Aspect of War." That the 
 author thereof may be conscientiously assured 
 of the Tightness of his contention counts for 
 nothing; no opposite side of the case is ad- 
 mitted, as to War. The judge, in virtue of his 
 
xiv Preface 
 
 personal convictions, takes the seat of the Almighty, 
 and unhesitatingly declares the wickedness of his 
 fellow. Judgment is passed by one neither com- 
 missioned nor competent to it; a procedure as 
 unchristian in spirit, and in manifestation, as War 
 can be. And less useful; for, like the fanaticism 
 of the extreme total abstainers, it tends to divide 
 those who should work in mutual toleration for a 
 common object. 
 
 I must forbear extended discussion here, lest I 
 transfer the body of my text to the Preface. There 
 is, however, one fallacy in the line of thought under- 
 lying the Arbitration Movement, as too often engi- 
 neered, which must be clearly recognized; for 
 fallacies are in their working as insidious as 
 bacteria are in theirs. /It is quietly assumed, 
 apparently without a suspicion of mistake, that in 
 our highly organized society, — the society of 
 European civilization, — the individual man has 
 surrendered himself, soul and body, to the law; 
 and that, by analogy, states can do the same, all 
 that is needed being to ascertain a means. The 
 individual man has indeed surrendered much; 
 but there are large reservations, without which 
 law itself would be a hideous tyranny. The 
 individual has surrendered certain natural rights 
 
Preface xv 
 
 for varied motives; motives of evident interest; 
 motives in many of mere submission to force, as 
 with the criminal class ; motives in others of con- 
 science, of subjection of personal advantage to the 
 general weal. But alongside of this, always 
 latent, often expressed, runs the reservation of 
 conscience. To no law of man shall men concede 
 authority to make them do what conscience says 
 is wrong. The history of the ages witnesses to 
 the truth and power of this reservation. My own 
 time has seen it. Men are yet living who said, 
 " You may pass your Fugitive Slave Law ; we 
 will not obey." Seward's expression, " the higher 
 law," embodied this resolution; and that higher 
 law is not enacted in human courts. It will not 
 respect human decisions, and to the last day it 
 will use force, passive or active, when in its power 
 -so to maintain the right, as conscience gives it to 
 see it. 
 
 But some may urge that the story of the War of 
 Secession is by now but an echo 
 
 " Of old, unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago." 
 
 They have no application to our better present. 
 Better ! Is it better that men, in order to spare 
 
xvi Preface 
 
 their purses and their comfort, should arbitrate a 
 question of conscience, rather than stand up for 
 principle, and give their lives as did the men of 
 1 86 1, North and South, to maintain what they 
 believed to be fundamental right? If, indeed, it 
 be true that our present is thus essentially different, 
 the raw material of human nature has changed 
 more in these forty years than in twenty centuries 
 precedent. External conditions of offence, amen- 
 able to settlement only by force, have not changed. 
 Let those who think that they have recall that 
 within fifteen years Japan has twice found it essen- 
 tial to go to war on account of interests in Korea ; 
 interests by her esteemed so vital to her people and 
 their future that she could not with honor submit 
 the decision of them to any judgment but her own. 
 Let them study in contemporary journals, and 
 periodicals, or in more formal treatises., if such 
 there be, the transactions of the years immediately 
 preceding the recent war between Japan and 
 Russia, the contentions and actions of either party. 
 There is no law existent applicable to such cases. 
 And while the Hague Conference itself is sitting, 
 Japan has felt compelled for the third time to an in- 
 tervention, which is not War only because there is 
 no power to resist. Forcible intervention is in es- 
 
Preface xvii 
 
 sence War. The persuasion that War, as an 
 inevitable factor in history, is a thing of the past, 
 is a public prepossession which will disappear 
 \}' as men study questions of international relations 
 <v in their world-wide bearing; which very few 
 — do. J There are at this moment pending before 
 the world, unnoted by most, momentous differ- 
 ences which cannot be settled by arbitration, 
 because they involve the oppositions of nations 
 and races, and cannot be brought under the 
 head of any of those accepted conventions that 
 we call law. I Such are collisions of elemental 
 forces, amid which preparation for War will 
 play a mighty part, may insure peace, and may 
 determine the decisive solution. ^ 
 
 The phrase " honor and vital interests " em- 
 bodies the conscience of states. I Honor, or its 
 v cognate, honesty, speaks for itself ; neither man 
 nor nation should consent to that which is before 
 God a shame, to do, or to allow. " Vital " inter- 
 ests are those of the community, and of posterity. 
 They therefore are interests " in trust; " it belongs 
 neither to the government nor to the people of one 
 generation to abandon the decision of them to 
 an outside tribunal, — to commit to any legal body 
 that which law in itself is not competent to decide. 
 
xviii Preface 
 
 We speak of law with bated breath, as though it 
 were some self-existent Being; a reverence prob- 
 ably due to the superabundance of lawyers in 
 representative governments. Law in truth is 
 the creation of the state, of the people. It is a 
 functionary, with methods and powers by them 
 prescribed, as to any other official; and it de- 
 pends for its efficiency upon the physical force 
 behind it, of the state, —of the organized people. 
 When it is unable to act, as was the law of the 
 United States for four years in the seceding states, 
 — as pointed out by General Sherman, quoted in 
 the following articles, — the physical force of the 
 people, always its latent support, must be called 
 into active exertion ; and when it fails in particular 
 localities, through the timidity or weakness of in- 
 dividual citizens, — as apparently in New Orleans 
 some twenty years ago, and in other known 
 instances, — it is permissible for the community, 
 from whom law derives, to resume into its own 
 hands the duties of its delinquent servant. \ The 
 mandates of law are simply the register of past 
 decisions reached by the people upon precedent 
 conditions; and when unprecedented conditions 
 arise, law, unless ex post jacto, is paralyzed, for 
 want of mandate. A new decision must be taken ; 
 
Preface xix 
 
 a new instruction issued. A large proportion of 
 the questions embraced under honor and vital 
 interests to-day are precisely in that inchoate 
 condition, of non-decision and possibly even of 
 dispute, which cannot be brought under the head 
 of law. The question of Slavery was such. In- 
 numerable efforts were made to bring it into 
 harness by law, and to law. They failed, because 
 they were dealing with men's consciences, their 
 honor and vital interests; and so will fail at- 
 tempts thus to adjust other subjects of difference 
 mentioned in the following text. These rep- 
 resent a play of forces, moral as well as mate- 
 rial; and woe will be to those who dismiss 
 from their account the organized force we call 
 War. | 
 There is a third consideration, a further element 
 \ affecting War as a probable incident of interna- 
 tional relations, in the very changed character 
 of most governments within the last century. 
 " The people " have always greatly influenced 
 external political movement, because popular 
 feelings must weigh with rulers ; and also, doubt- 
 less, because governors, being usually of the same 
 flesh and blood as the governed, share the national 
 desires and modes of thought. Nevertheless, the 
 
xx Preface 
 
 order of rulers, few in numbers, once ruled in a 
 weightier sense than they now do; and by long 
 practice mastered and developed their business 
 to some useful extent from generation to genera- 
 tion. The influence of the people has now become 
 far more direct and consequently powerful. The 
 people, rather than their representatives, have 
 become the rulers ; but as yet they have not been 
 so long enough to learn their business. The im- 
 pulses of mankind remain ; the directive force, of 
 those who can and will spare time to comprehend 
 the conditions which affect international relations 
 has diminished. The rightfulness of a national 
 contention, the expediency of going to war, the 
 necessity of a state of preparation, will henceforth 
 be determined with continuously increasing influ- 
 ence by the people themselves. Until this inevi- 
 table change has proceeded long enough to produce 
 a maturity of education in the people at large, they 
 may save on the war budget ; but they will not be 
 equipped to control impulse by considerations of 
 instructed reason. Responsibility, also, when 
 distributed among the many instead of concen- 
 trated in the few, ceases to restrain. During this 
 transition period the danger of war will not be less, 
 but greater. Is it wrong to provide against such 
 
Preface xxi 
 
 a contingency ? or shall we meet it effectually by 
 grounding our arms ? 
 
 Believing as I do in the weight of the considera 
 tions here summarized, and convinced that the 
 cause of Peace itself is jeopardized by the exaggera- 
 tions and oversights of its noisier followers, I have 
 thought expedient to collect under one cover a few 
 articles, in which the rationale and justification of 
 War and of its procedure have been considered 
 under different aspects. Of these, one, the Moral 
 Aspect of War, has already been republished in my 
 book, " Lessons of the War with Spain." I have 
 thought permissible to bring it forward here again, 
 into immediate connection with the others, as 
 necessary to any complete treatment of the subject, 
 however elementary; and because the collection 
 thus made, being homogeneous in object, will be 
 available as a ground-work for future discussion — 
 for expansion — should the agitation against War 
 develop contrary to, or beyond, fact and reason. 
 
 In conclusion, I have to express my great obli- 
 gation to Mr. Henry S. Pritchett, formerly Presi- 
 dent of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
 nology, and to Mr. Julian S. Corbett, so well and 
 favorably known for the series of works on naval 
 subjects proceeding from his pen, beginning with 
 
xxii Preface 
 
 " Drake and the Tudor Navy," for their kindness 
 in acceding to my request to republish herein the 
 articles which will be found attributed to them. 
 I further owe it to them to say, explicitly, that, 
 beyond this kind permission and the articles them- 
 selves, they have no responsibility for any expres- 
 sion of fact or opinion that may be found between 
 the two covers of this book. 
 
 My thanks are also due to the several Maga- 
 zines, in which these papers first appeared, for 
 permission to reproduce them in this form. The 
 particular acknowledgments will be found under 
 the title of each article. 
 
 A. T. Mahan. 
 
 September, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 \ 
 
 The Power That Makes for Peace 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1907 
 By Henry S. Pritchett 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 The Moral Aspect of War 21 
 
 The North American Review, October, 1899 
 
 The Practical Aspect of War . . . . 55 
 
 National Review, June, 1907 
 
 ^ War from the Christian Standpoint ... 95 
 
 A Paper read before the Church Congress, Providence, Rhode 
 
 Island, November 15, 1900. 
 By Alfred T. Mahan, U. S. N. 
 
 The Capture of Private Property at Sea . 115 
 
 The Nineteenth Century and After, June, 1907 
 By Julian S. Corbett 
 
 < The Hague Conference of 1907, and the Ques- 
 tion of Immunity for Belligerent Mer- 
 chant Shipping 155 
 
 National Review, July, 1907 
 
 By Alfred T. Mahan, U. S. M 
 
 yS 
 
I 
 
 THE POWER THAT MAKES FOR PEACE 
 
4 
 
SOME NEGLECTED ASPECTS 
 OF WAR 
 
 THE POWER THAT MAKES FOR PEACE 
 By Henry S. Pritchett 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1907 
 
 FEW movements of the last half century have 
 commended themselves more to thoughtful 
 men than the present organized effort for the estab- 
 lishment of the principle of international arbi- 
 tration, and through this the securing of a world 
 peace. 
 
 The last decade in the history of the peace 
 movement is its best. The establishment of the 
 Hague Tribunal, the gift of Mr. Carnegie for a 
 fitting building for its meetings, and, above all, the 
 focusing of international attention upon the feasi- 
 bility of and necessity for international arbitration, 
 have marked real progress in the practical solution 
 
4 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 of the problem of world peace. Every friend of 
 humanity must feel encouraged at these steps, and 
 must have had his faith quickened for the work 
 of the future. That that work shall be a real one ; 
 that it shall lead not merely to international 
 gatherings, but to international agreements; that 
 it may make war not only less horrible, but less 
 frequent; that it may bring about a common 
 understanding under which questions of dispute 
 may be adjudicated by reason, not by force ; that 
 it may create a public opinion that shall prove a 
 powerful factor in restraining nations from war; 
 all these things we may reasonably hope for. 
 The movement will hasten them in just such 
 measure as it is led wisely, sanely, effectively. 
 
 Any such movement, which has to do with the 
 larger relations of mankind and which touches 
 fundamental human tendencies and qualities, is 
 likely to pass through a period of progress followed 
 by a period of depression. It is likely to receive 
 strength from unexpected sources and to be weak- 
 ened by unexpected defections. It is sure to 
 suffer from the lack of knowledge on the part of 
 those who oppose it; and it is equally sure to 
 suffer from the zeal of its own friends, who expect 
 more of an organized movement than any organi- 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace 5 
 
 zation can accomplish. \ The history of the present- 
 day peace movement is in some respects the ana- 
 logue of the history of the anti-slavery agitation 
 of a century ago. The movement against slavery 
 appealed, as does the movement against mili- 
 tarism, to the higher moral instincts and inspira- 
 tions of men. The men of the nineteenth century 
 saw clearly the vast evils of slavery, as the men 
 of the twentieth see clearly the evils of war and 
 of militarism. \ In proportion as one appreciates 
 such burdens to the social order, one is tempted 
 to be influenced by his emotions and to find him- 
 self stirred with indignation at a condition of affairs 
 which he seeks at once to remedy. It is at such 
 times that one is led to overestimate the power of 
 an organization and to assume that it can take 
 the place of the deeper underlying human educa- 
 tion which alone can deal with such conditions. 
 It is at such times that men are prone to become 
 the partisans rather than the advocates of a cause, 
 and to lose their perspective of social forces 
 and of human nature. The advocate of peace 
 is likely to be a real force in the progress of the 
 movement for world peace ; the partisan of peace 
 has an attitude of mind likely to injure rather than 
 to help the cause he supports. The man who is 
 
6 Same Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 so eager for world peace that he is ready to fight 
 for it has forgotten for the moment the long history 
 of our race and its rise from savagery to civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 As one profoundly interested in this movement, 
 I venture to call attention to certain fundamental 
 human qualities which must inevitably be reck- 
 oned with in any such movement, and to point out 
 at the same time certain directions in which our 
 neglect of these considerations may lead us to 
 hinder rather than to further our cause. 
 
 When we look back over the history of our race, 
 so far as we know it, it seems clear that man is 
 fundamentally a fighting animal. The fact that 
 he is a fighting animal is perhaps the most impor- 
 tant element in his evolution, and has had as much 
 to do as any other quality with the slow process 
 of improvement which has made the world of 
 to-day out of the world of fifty thousand years ago. 
 The whole process of civilization has been a 
 development out of a life of continuous fighting 
 and toward a life of comparative peace. 
 
 Just what this power is which has brought men 
 out of a life of warfare into a life of comparative 
 peace is a question about which men differ. Some 
 will answer vaguely that the power is a combi- 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace 7 
 
 nation of forces which have evolved the human 
 race; some call it religion; and many have be- 
 lieved during the last two thousand years that it 
 is Christianity. But however our notions may 
 differ as to what the power may be, there is no 
 difference as to the process. We know that the 
 process by which men have passed from a life 
 of warfare to a life of peace is nothing other than 
 the slow and sure process of the education of the 
 minds and of the consciences of men, and we 
 know further that this slow and sure process is 
 the only one that will ever bring a true world 
 peace. There are no short cuts by which men 
 may be made good, or by which men may be made 
 peaceful, though good men have sought in all 
 ages to find such. If the world could have been 
 saved by an organization, it would have been 
 saved a thousand years ago by the Christian 
 church ; if it could have been saved by legislative 
 enactment, it would have been saved centuries 
 ago by the parliaments of the nations ; if it could 
 have been saved by administrative process, it 
 would have been saved by the rulers who have 
 governed it for two thousand years. There is 
 no such royal road to peace. The world, if it is 
 ever to know universal peace, will find it only 
 
8 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 through that same slow process by which we have 
 attained our present civilization; and however 
 important peace congresses and international 
 agreements and international tribunals may be, 
 let us not lose our perspective of their true place 
 in this process. They are not the agencies which 
 are to do the real work, but are only the methods 
 by which public opinion is to be influenced and 
 quickened. 
 
 Nor can one afford to forget, when he seeks to 
 serve the cause of world peace, the elemental influ- 
 ences to which our human nature responds and 
 the fundamental virtues to which they give rise. 
 To bring about peace we cannot make human 
 nature over; we can hope only to discipline and 
 to refine it. That fighting spirit of our race, the 
 spirit that is in every man, the spirit that has been 
 ingrained in us by hundreds of thousands of years 
 of our race life, and that has played so great a 
 part in our evolution from barbarism to civili- 
 zation, is not wholly bad. It grew on the one side 
 out of aggressiveness, selfishness, suspicion; but 
 on the other side its roots went deep into the nobler 
 qualities of bravery, courage, loyalty, patriotism. 
 The whole process of civilization has been an 
 effort not to eradicate this spirit, but to discipline 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace . 9 
 
 and refine it; to retain the old-time virtues while 
 getting rid of the old-time vices. The man of the 
 highest civilization to-day is no less a fighter than 
 his savage ancestor of ten thousand years ago 
 but he holds the spirit of the fighter under the 
 discipline of self-control and of the law. We 
 could not, if we would, banish from our social and 
 political life the things which appeal to this fight- 
 ing spirit, because they pervade our whole civili- 
 zation, our literature, our language, our religion. 
 When a band of scholars rises to its feet and 
 breaks into that martial song, " Onward, Christian 
 Soldiers," it is the appeal to this old-time inbred 
 human spirit which stirs them, as well as the 
 motive of Christian duty and of Christian service. 
 For this reason it seems to me unwise in the 
 advocate of world peace to seek to banish such 
 patriotic sentiments and influences. Such a criti- 
 cism as has been made of the Jamestown Exposi- 
 tion, on account of the naval display which is to 
 be had in connection with it, seems to me, on the 
 whole, to hinder, not to further the cause of uni- 
 versal peace. To make such a criticism and to 
 urge the banishment from our everyday life of all 
 those things which appeal to the fighting spirit 
 of man is to forget the long story of human devel- 
 
io Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 opment. I It is to confuse symptoms with causes. 
 ,For it is not soldiers and cannon and ships which 
 make national quarrels, but the injustice, the 
 greed, the selfishness, the ambitions, and above 
 all the ignorance of man, which sets armies and 
 navies to their dreadful work. If we could to- 
 morrow destroy every war vessel and dissolve 
 every army, it would not insure universal peace, 
 any more than the destruction of all the liquor 
 in the world would bring about universal temper- 
 ance. I We serve best the cause of peace when we 
 recognize frankly the process out of which we 
 have come, when we deal clear-eyed with the 
 universal human spirit and the elemental human 
 tendencies, and when we lend ourselves to that 
 process which the power that makes for righteous- 
 ness has given us, the process of the education 
 of the great mass of mankind. It is when we take 
 a step in that slow evolution of education that we 
 take a real step toward a true world of peace. 
 A nation helps the cause of peace when it takes 
 official part in a world's congress for this cause, 
 but it works immeasurably more efficiently when 
 it deals justly and fairly with its own citizens and 
 with other nations. A university does well to 
 send its representatives to a peace congress, but 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace n 
 
 it does a real work for peace when it sends into 
 the world men who deal rightly with their fellow- 
 men. A corporation helps the cause of peace 
 best when it deals fairly, not only with its own 
 interests but with the interests of its employees. 
 A labor union aids the cause of peace most effect- 
 ively when it develops a policy of unselfishness 
 and fairness instead of a policy of selfishness and 
 greed. A soldier stands for peace when he uses 
 the military power justly, fairly, mercifully, i We 
 bring a world peace nearer when we so educate 
 the individual man as to bring about a common 
 understanding between men and between nations. 
 The first step to individual agreement is individual 
 confidence ; the first step to international peace is 
 international confidence and respect for the com- 
 mon motives of nations. And the first step in 
 common confidence and respect is common knowl- 
 edge and acquaintance. \ Ignorance of the motives, 
 of the ideals, of the purposes of those with whom 
 we have to do is the author, not only of armies 
 and navies, but of wars and battles.! 
 
 The old-time savage life was a life of isolation. 
 Each man held a suspicion and dread of his 
 neighbor which was in proportion to his ignorance 
 of his neighbor's purposes and ideals. The first 
 
12 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 steps of civilization were those which led to asso- 
 ciation and acquaintance; and these must be the 
 first steps in an international peace which is to be 
 lasting. Intellectual and social isolation has bred 
 more wars than hatred and revenge. 
 
 Among the many causes of our Civil War, one 
 which is seldom thought of was the intellectual 
 and political isolation of the Southern States. 
 The Southern leaders sincerely believed in i860 
 that they could organize a nation which could go 
 on perpetuating slavery in disregard of the public 
 opinion of the rest of the world. Had these leaders 
 been men in touch with the world's thoughts and 
 the world's ideals they would have known that 
 slavery was already dead, that no civilized nation 
 could long maintain it, that the world was already 
 ripe for its abandonment; and they themselves 
 realized before the war was half over that, even 
 if the Southern Confederacy were established, 
 slavery was gone. A nation pays a fearful price 
 for intellectual and moral isolation, a price paid 
 down in centuries of suffering and in the blood 
 of unnumbered battlefields. 
 
 However deeply we may regret war, however 
 sincerely we may desire peace, there are probably 
 few men who do not sincerely believe that for 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace 13 
 
 years to come our nation, in common with other 
 nations, must maintain an army and navy, what- 
 ever limitations may be placed on their develop- 
 ment. 
 
 I So long as an army and a navy are to be main- 
 tained, it is important that the men who make 
 up the military service shall be drawn from citizens 
 of the highest character. If we are to place in 
 the hands of men military power, it is above all 
 essential that they shall be men of high intelligence 
 and of high ideals.* 
 
 There has grown up in Europe, and in America 
 in recent years, amongst those active in the cause 
 of international peace, a disposition to discredit 
 and to belittle the military service ; a tendency to 
 discourage by all means young men of high char- 
 acter from entering the service of the army and 
 of the navy. 
 
 In the light of our history and of our development 
 this effort also seems to me against the interest of 
 the peace movement, not in favor of it. No citizen 
 or group of citizens can belittle the service of one's 
 country in any direction without striking a blow 
 at the same time at the deeper human qualities 
 of loyalty and patriotism which lie back of all 
 service and of all devotion. 
 
14 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 No man who will look carefully into the work 
 of the army or the navy can fail to realize that a 
 career in either branch of our military service 
 is one to which any man may give himself with the 
 fullest devotion and with the highest ideals. 
 Americans, as a rule, know little about the actual 
 work of either of these services, and few realize 
 that when a man enters the service of the army 
 or the navy, whether as officer or as enlisted 
 man, he enters a great school, a school in which 
 is taught not only the discipline of self-restraint, 
 of cleanliness, of devotion to duty, but also the 
 elements of an education. yAn enlisted man who 
 enters a regiment of the army, barely able to read 
 and write, comes out, if he be a man of ambition 
 and industry, at the end of three years, in posses- 
 sion of the fundamentals of an English education. 
 His officer stands to him not only in the relation 
 of military director, but in the relation also of a 
 teacher and of a friend. There is no career open 
 to an American boy, unless it be that of a teacher, 
 which offers a larger opportunity to minister to 
 the service of men than that of the army or navy 
 officer. 
 
 There are, to be sure, in both services men who 
 do not take their profession seriously; there are 
 
The Power That Makes for Peace 15 
 
 men who are lazy and who are indifferent; but 
 the great body of officers are earnest, hard- 
 working, patriotic men. There is no life to which 
 an American boy can give himself better worth his 
 metal than that which he can find in either of these 
 services. To belittle this life, to minimize its 
 value, to seek to place it under social condemna- 
 tion, is to strike a blow, not for peace but against 
 that inbred spirit which stands for courage and 
 loyalty and patriotism. For one cannot destroy 
 the old-time fighting spirit of the race without 
 weakening at the same time these elemental 
 human virtues. 
 
 Of the truth of this statement the world has 
 had an object lesson so striking that he who runs 
 may read. For more than twenty-five centuries 
 the Chinese have developed under a philosophy 
 which led them to discredit in every way the sol- 
 dier's life and to exalt in comparison with it the life 
 of commerce and of peace. In this matter the 
 philosophy of Confucius has been accepted by that 
 nation with a completeness and sincerity seldom 
 shown in the history of any religious or philosoph- 
 ical evolution. The Chinese have become essen- 
 tially a peaceful people. No nation needs to 
 fear their aggressions. Amongst them the pro- 
 
16 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 fession of the soldier has come to be considered 
 the lowest of all callings. 
 
 The result of centuries of education in this 
 philosophy is that China is at the mercy of all 
 the so-called Christian nations; but, what is 
 more serious, the process of eradicating the old 
 righting spirit has not only banished the worse 
 qualities of that spirit, but it has also rooted out 
 the old-time human virtues of loyalty and patriot- 
 ism. There are those who have read in the teach- 
 ings of Jesus Christ a similar lesson. " Blessed 
 are the peace-makers " has been taken to mean 
 " blessed are the peaceful." As a matter of fact, 
 one can scarcely find a greater contrast than is 
 shown in this respect between the philosophy of 
 Jesus Christ and the philosophy of Confucius. 
 Christ lived at a time when the burdens and 
 horrors of war were felt in every hamlet and in 
 every home. The military power held the social 
 order at its mercy. Yet He never sought to array 
 society against the soldier or the soldier's calling. 
 On the other hand, looking beneath the surface 
 of things, He dealt with the causes which made 
 men and nations selfish and cruel and warlike, 
 and to the soldier He said, " Live your life as a 
 soldier honestly, justly, mercifully," knowing full 
 
The Power That Makes lor Peace 17 
 
 well that he who lived the soldier's life in this 
 spirit served the cause of peace as truly as he who 
 advocated peace upon the housetops. 
 
 It is in view, too, of this age-long racial history 
 that I cannot make myself believe that the artificial 
 remedies which have been advocated as an antidote 
 for war have serious significance. The idea that 
 war can be made so dangerous that men will not 
 engage in it, or that peace can be arbitrarily 
 brought in by force, fails alike to take account of 
 our racial history and of the underlying influences 
 which move men. Such remedies have the same 
 significance in the social order that the Keeley 
 cure for drunkenness has in medicine. 
 
 The nation which should act on such a theory 
 might well expect to share the experience of a 
 doughty Confederate colonel who, after the Civil 
 War, returned with his war-worn and defeated 
 veterans to his native village and was twitted on 
 the fact that four years earlier he had boasted 
 that he and his men could lick the Yankees with 
 popguns. " So we could," answered the colonel 
 stoutly, " but the Yankees wouldn't fight that 
 way." 
 
 The truth is, there are no such short cuts to 
 peace. Dreadful as war is, there are some things 
 
18 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 even worse. Under certain circumstances a nation 
 will fight if it have left in it a spark of the elemental 
 human virtue. And the remedy for such condi- 
 tions lies far back of any influences which force 
 or arbitrary restrictions can create. 
 
 And so I venture, in this day of enthusiasm for 
 organization, to recall the fact that the cause of 
 universal peace which we advocate is really no new 
 thing, that it is nothing other than the cause of 
 universal education; not necessarily the educa- 
 tion of the school, but the education which 
 makes man understand man, which makes 
 state understand state, and which brings nations 
 into relations of confidence and trust with other 
 nations. Let us by all means further by these 
 formal gatherings the cause of international organi- 
 zation, but let us not lose our perspective with 
 respect to the organization, and the results which 
 it may accomplish. And let us by all means not 
 forget that the process which is in the end to bring 
 about the result is, after all, the same slow process 
 which has brought us up from savagery to the 
 civilization of our day. That process we may 
 hasten, but it cannot be done by disregarding our 
 age-long racial history or our inbred human 
 nature. 
 
The Power That Makes jor Peace 19 
 
 The beginning of the peace movement lies in 
 the promotion of common confidence and better 
 understanding, not in the effort to belittle and to 
 ostracize any class of citizens. The largest result 
 which it may hope to gain is by focusing public 
 attention, by creating a better understanding, by 
 replacing ignorance with knowledge, by creating 
 an international conscience. The real work will 
 always remain the work of educating the con- 
 sciences and the minds of the great mass of man- 
 kind. 
 
 It is through this slow process that we may 
 venture to hope that the time will come when 
 international differences shall be in the keeping 
 of international tribunals ; and it is by the further- 
 ing of this sure* process that the peace advocates 
 of to-day may hope to bring about a movement 
 which shall have as its consummation the deliver- 
 ance of the world from the burden and horror 
 of war. The cause of organized peace is worthy 
 of our race and of its highest representatives. 
 Let us hope that they may go forward in this 
 effort, not only with true enthusiasm, but also 
 with true judgment; that they may preserve a 
 fair perspective, realizing that the causes of war 
 lie far back ota rm i e sand navies, in the fundamen- 
 
20 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 tal qualities of human nature; and that such 
 organized effort will have force and value in 
 proportion as those who direct it preserve a true 
 vision and a serene judgment. / 
 
n 
 
 THE PEACE CONFERENCE AND THE 
 MORAL ASPECT OF WAR 
 
THE PEACE CONFERENCE AND THE 
 MORAL ASPECT OF WAR 
 
 By Alfred T. Mahan 
 
 North American Review, October % 1899. 
 
 TO determine the consequences of an his- 
 torical episode, such as the recent x Peace 
 Conference at The Hague, is not a matter for 
 prophecy, but for experience, which alone can 
 decide what positive issues, for good or for ill, 
 shall hereafter trace their source to this beginning. 
 The most that the present can do is to take note 
 of the point so far reached, and of apparent 
 tendencies manifested; to seek for the latter a 
 right direction; to guide, where it can, currents 
 of general thought, the outcome of which will 
 be beneficial or injurious, according as their 
 course is governed by a just appreciation of funda- 
 mental truths. 
 The calling of the Conference of The Hague 
 
 1 The references throughout this article are to the first of the 
 Hague Conferences in 1899. 
 
24 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 originated in an avowed desire to obtain relief 
 from immediate economical burdens, by the adop- 
 tion of some agreement to restrict the preparations 
 for war, and the consequent expense involved in 
 national armaments; but before its meeting the 
 hope of disarmament had fallen into the back- 
 ground, the vacant place being taken by the 
 project of abating the remoter evils of recurrent 
 warfare, by giving a further impulse, and a more 
 clearly defined application, to the principle of 
 Arbitration, which thenceforth assumed pre-emi- 
 nence in the councils of the Conference. This may 
 be considered the point at which we have arrived. 
 The assembled representatives of many nations, 
 including all the greatest upon the earth, have 
 decided that it is to arbitration men must look 
 for relief, rather than to partial disarmament, 
 or even to an arrest in the progress of prepara- 
 tions for war. Of the beneficence of the practice 
 of arbitration, of the wisdom of substituting it, 
 when possible, for the appeal to arms, with all 
 the misery therefrom resulting, there can be no 
 doubt ; but it will be expected that in its applica- 
 tion, and in its attempted development, the 
 tendencies of the day, both good and bad, will 
 make themselves felt. If, on the one hand, there 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 25 
 
 is solid ground for rejoicing, in the growing inclina- 
 tion to resort first to an impartial arbiter, if such 
 can be found, when occasion for collision arises, 
 there is, on the other hand, cause for serious 
 reflection, when this most humane impulse is seen 
 to favor methods, which by compulsion shall 
 vitally impair the moral freedom, and the conse- 
 quent moral responsibility, which are the distin- 
 guishing glory of the rational man, and of the 
 sovereign state. 
 
 One of the most unfortunate characteristics 
 of our present age is the disposition to impose 
 by legislative enactment — that is, by external 
 compulsion — restrictions of a moral character, 
 which are either fundamentally unjust, or at least 
 do not carry with them the moral sense of the 
 community, as a whole. It is not religious faith 
 alone that in the past has sought to propagate 
 itself by force of law, which ultimately is force of 
 physical coercion. If the religious liberty of 
 the individual has been at last won, as we hope 
 forever, it is sufficiently notorious that the pro- 
 pensity of majorities to control the freedom of 
 minorities, in matters of disputed right and wrong, 
 still exists, as certain and as tyrannical as ever was 
 the will of Philip II. that there should be no 
 
26 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 heretic within his dominion. Many cannot so 
 much as comprehend the thought of an English 
 bishop, that it was better to see England free than 
 England sober. 
 
 In matters internal to a state, the bare existence 
 of a law imposes an obligation upon the individual 
 citizen, whatever his personal conviction of its 
 rightfulness or its wisdom. Yet is such obligation 
 not absolute. The primary duty, attested alike 
 by the law and the gospel, is submission. The 
 presumption is in favor of the law; and if there 
 lie against it just cause for accusation, on the score 
 either of justice or of expediency, the interests of 
 the Commonwealth and the precepts of religion 
 alike demand that opposition shall be conducted 
 according to the methods, and within the limits, 
 which the law of the land itself prescribes. But 
 it may be — it has been, and yet again may be — 
 that the law, however regular in its enactment, 
 and therefore unquestionable on the score of 
 formal authority, either outrages fundamental 
 political right, or violates the moral dictates of the 
 individual conscience. Of the former may be 
 cited as an instance the Stamp Act, perfectly 
 regular as regarded statutory validity, which 
 kindled the flame of revolution in America. Of 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 27 
 
 the second, the Fugitive Slave Law, within the 
 memory of many yet living, is a conspicuous 
 illustration. Under such conditions, the moral 
 right of resistance is conceded — nay, is affirmed 
 and emphasized — by the moral consciousness of 
 the races from which the most part of the American 
 people have their origin, and to which, almost 
 wholly, we owe our political and religious tradi- 
 tions. Such resistance may be passive, accepting 
 meekly the penalty for disobedience, as the martyr 
 who for conscience' sake refused the political 
 requirement of sacrificing to the image of the 
 Caesar; or it may be active and violent, as when 
 our forefathers repelled taxation without repre- 
 sentation ; or when men and women, of a genera- 
 tion not yet wholly passed away, refused to violate 
 their consciences by acquiescing in the return of a 
 slave to his bondage, resorting to evasion or to 
 violence, according to their conditions or tempera- 
 ments, but in every case deriving the sanction for 
 their unlawful action from the mandate of their 
 personal conscience. 
 
 And let it be carefully kept in mind that it is 
 not the absolute right or wrong of the particular 
 act, as seen in the clearer light of a later day, 
 that justified men, whether in the particular 
 
28 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 instances cited, or in other noteworthy incidents 
 in the long series of steps by which the English- 
 speaking races have ascended to their present 
 political development. It is not the demonstrable 
 rightfulness of a particular action, as seen in the 
 dispassionate light of the arbiter, posterity, that 
 has chiefly constituted the merit of the individual 
 rebel against the law in which he beheld iniquity ; 
 the saving salt, which has preserved the health- 
 fulness of the body politic, has been the fidelity 
 to Conscience, to the faithful, if passionate, arbiter 
 of the moment, whose glorious predominance in 
 the individual, or in the nation, gives a better assur- 
 ance of the highest life than does the clearest intel- 
 lectual perception of the rightfulness, or of the 
 expediency, of a particular course. One may 
 now see, or think that he sees, as does the writer, 
 with Lincoln, that if slavery is not wrong, nothing 
 is wrong. It was not so clear half a century ago ; 
 and while no honor is too great for those early 
 heroes, who for this sublime conviction withstood 
 obloquy and persecution, legal and illegal, it 
 should be never forgotten that the then slave 
 States, in their resolute determination to maintain 
 by arms, if need be, and against superior force, 
 that which they believed to be their constitutional 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 29 
 
 political right, made no small contribution to 
 the record of fidelity to conscience and to duty, 
 which is the highest title of a nation to honor. 
 Be it by action or be it by submission, by action 
 positive or by action negative, whatsoever is not 
 of faith — of conviction — is sin. 
 
 The just and necessary exaltation of law, as 
 the guarantee of true liberty, with the consequent 
 accepted submission of the individual to it, and 
 the recognized presumption in favor of such sub- 
 mission, have tended to blind us to the fact that 
 the individual, in our highest consciousness, 
 has never surrendered his moral freedom, — his 
 independence of conscience. No human law 
 overbears that supreme appeal, which carries the 
 matter from the tribunal of man into the presence 
 of God; nor can human law be pleaded at this 
 bar as the excuse for a violation of conscience. It 
 is a dangerous doctrine, doubtless, to preach that 
 there may be a " higher law " than obedience 
 to law; but truth is not to be rejected because 
 dangerous, and the time is not long past when the 
 phrase voiced a conviction, the forcible assertion 
 of which brought slavery to an end forever. 
 
 The resort to arms by a nation, when right 
 cannot otherwise be enforced, corresponds, or 
 
 
30 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 should correspond, precisely to the acts of the 
 individual man which have been cited; for the 
 old conception of an appeal to the Almighty, 
 resembling in principle the mediaeval trial by 
 battle, is at best but a partial view of the truth, 
 seen from one side only. However the result may 
 afterwards be interpreted as medicative of the 
 justice of a cause, — an interpretation always 
 questionable, — a state, when it goes to war, 
 should do so not to test the rightfulness of its 
 claims, but because, being convinced in its con- 
 science of that rightfulness, no other means of 
 overcoming evil remains. 
 
 Nations, like men, have a conscience. Like 
 men, too, the light of conscience is in nations 
 often clouded, or misguided, by passion or by 
 interest. But what of that ? Does a man discard 
 his allegiance to conscience because he knows 
 that, itself in harmony with right, its message to 
 him is perplexed and obscured by his own infirm- 
 ities? Not so. Fidelity to conscience implies 
 not only obedience to its dictates, but earnest 
 heart-searching, the use of every means, to ascer- 
 tain its true command; yet withal, whatever the 
 mistrust of the message, the supremacy of the con- 
 science is not impeached. When it is recognized 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 31 
 
 that its final word is spoken, nothing remains but 
 obedience. Even if mistaken, the moral wrong 
 of acting against conviction works a deeper injury 
 to the man, and to his kind, than can the merely 
 material disasters that may follow upon obedience. 
 Even the material evils of war are less than the 
 moral evil of compliance with wrong. 
 
 " Yes, my friend," replied to me a foreign 
 diplomatist to whom I was saying some such 
 things, " but remember that only a few years ago 
 the conscience of your people was pressing you 
 into war with Great Britain in the Venezuelan 
 question. " " Admitting," I replied, " that the 
 first national impulse, the first movement of the 
 conscience, if you like, was mistaken, — which 
 is at least open to argument, — it remains that 
 there was no war ; time for deliberation was taken, 
 and more than that can be asked of no conscience, 
 national or personal. But, further, had the final 
 decision of conscience been that just cause for 
 war existed, no evil that war brings could equal 
 the moral declension which a nation inflicts upon 
 itself, and upon mankind, by deliberate acquies- 
 cence in wrong, which it recognizes and which it 
 may right." Nor is this conclusion vitiated by 
 the fact that war is made at times upon mistaken 
 
32 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 conviction. It is not the accuracy of the decision, 
 but the faithfulness to conviction, that constitutes 
 the moral worth of an action, national or indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 The general consciousness of this truth is 
 witnessed by a common phrase, which excludes 
 from suggested schemes of arbitration all questions 
 which involve " national honor or vital interests." 
 No one thing struck me more forcibly during the 
 Conference at The Hague than the exception taken 
 and expressed, although in a very few quarters, 
 to the word " honor," in this connection. There 
 is for this good reason; for the word, admirable 
 in itself and if rightly understood, has lost mate- 
 rially in the clearness of its image and superscrip- 
 tion, by much handling and by some misapplica- 
 tion. Honor does not forbid a nation to acknowl- 
 edge that it is wrong, or to recede from a step 
 which it has taken through wrong motives or 
 mistaken reasons; yet it has at times been so 
 thought, to the grievous injury of the conception 
 of honor. It is not honor, necessarily, but sound 
 policy, which prescribes that peace with a semi- 
 civilized foe should not be made after a defeat; 
 but, however justifiable the policy, the word 
 M honor " is defaced by thus misapplying it, 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 33 
 
 The varying fortunes, the ups and downs of 
 the idea of arbitration at the Conference of The 
 Hague, as far as my intelligence could follow them, 
 produced in me two principal conclusions, which 
 so far confirmed my previous points of view that 
 I think I may now fairly claim for them that they 
 have ripened into opinions, between which word, 
 and the cruder, looser views received passively 
 as impressions, I have been ever careful to mark 
 a distinction. In the first place, compulsory 
 arbitration stands at present no chance of general 
 acceptance. There is but one way as yet in 
 which arbitration can be compulsory; for the 
 dream of some advanced thinkers, of an Interna- 
 tional Army, charged with imposing the decrees 
 of an International Tribunal upon a recalcitrant 
 state, may be dismissed as being outside of practical 
 international politics, until at least the nations are 
 ready for the intermediate step of moral compul- 
 sion, imposed by a self-assumed obligation — by a 
 promise. In the general understanding, compulsory 
 arbitration as yet means only the moral compulsion 
 of a pledge, taken beforehand, and more or less 
 comprehensive, to submit to arbitration questions 
 which rest still in the unknown future; the very 
 
 terms of which therefore, cannot be foreseen, A!- 
 
34 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 though there is a certain active current of agitation 
 in favor of such stipulations, there is no general dis- 
 position of governments to accede, except under 
 very narrow and precise limitations, and in ques- 
 tions of less than secondary importance. 1 
 
 Secondly, there appears to be, on the other 
 hand, a much greater disposition than formerly 
 to entertain favorably the idea of arbitration, as a 
 means to be in all cases considered, and where 
 possible to be adopted, in order to solve peaceably 
 difficulties which threaten peace. In short, the 
 consciences of the nations are awake to the wicked- 
 ness of unnecessary war, and are disposed, as a 
 general rule, to seek first, and where admissible, 
 the counterpoise of an impartial judge, where such 
 can be found, to correct the bias of national self- 
 will; but there is an absolute indisposition, an 
 instinctive revolt, against signing away, before- 
 hand, the national conscience, by a promise that 
 any other arbiter than itself shall be accepted in 
 questions of the future, the import of which 
 cannot yet be discerned. Of this feeling the vague 
 and somewhat clumsy phrase, " national honor 
 
 x The attempt at the recent Second Conference of the Hague 
 to frame a list of subjects to be of obligatory arbitration, and 
 the excessively colorless character of the subjects admitted, will 
 be fresh in the memory of those who have followed the pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 35 
 
 and vital interests/ ' has in the past been the ex- 
 pression; for its very indeterminateness reserved 
 to conscience in every case the decision, — " May 
 another judge for me here, or must I be bound by 
 my own sense of right? " 
 
 Under these circumstances, and having reached 
 so momentous a stage in progress as is indicated; 
 by the very calling together of a world conference 
 for the better assuring of peace, may it not be 
 well for us to pause a moment and take full account 
 of the idea, Arbitration, on the right hand and on 
 the left ? Noble and beneficent in its true outlines, 
 it too may share, may even now be sharing, the 
 liability of the loftiest conceptions to degenerate 
 into catchwords, or into cant. " Liberty, what 
 crimes have been wrought in thy name ! " and 
 does not religion share the same reproach, and 
 conscience also? Yet will we not away with 
 any of the three. 
 
 The conviction of a nation is the conviction 
 of the mass of the individuals thereof, and each 
 individual has therefore a personal responsibility 
 for the opinion he holds on a question of great 
 national, or international, moment. Let us look, 
 each of us, — and especially each of us who fears 
 God, — into his own inner heart, and ask himself 
 
36 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 how far, in his personal life, he is prepared to 
 accept arbitration. Is it not so that the reply 
 must be, " In doubtful questions of moment, 
 wherever I possibly can, knowing my necessary, 
 inevitable proneness to one-sided views, I will seek 
 an impartial adviser, that my bias may be cor- 
 rected ; but when that has been done, when I have 
 sought what aid I can, if conscience still commands, 
 I must obey it. From that duty, burdensome 
 though it may be, no man can relieve me. Con- 
 science, diligently consulted, is to the man the 
 voice of God ; between God and the man no other 
 arbiter comes.' ' And if this be so, a pledge 
 beforehand is impossible. I cannot bind myself 
 for a future of which I as yet know nothing, to 
 abide by the decision of any other judge than 
 my own conscience. Much humor — less wit — 
 has been expended upon the Emperor of Ger- 
 many's supposed carefulness to reject arbitration 
 because an infringement of his divine rights; a 
 phrase which may well be no more than a blunt 
 expression of the sense that no third party can 
 relieve a man from the obligations of the position 
 to which he is called by God, and that for the 
 duties of that position the man can confidently 
 expect divine guidance anc) help. Be that as i\ 
 
The Moral Aspect 0} War 37 
 
 may, the divine right of conscience will, among 
 Americans, receive rare challenge. 
 
 It has been urged, however, that a higher 
 organization of the nations, the provision of a 
 supreme tribunal issuing and enforcing judgments, 
 settling thereby quarrels and disputed rights, 
 would produce for the nations of the earth a 
 condition analogous to that of the individual 
 citizen of the state, who no longer defends his own 
 cause, nor is bound in conscience to maintain his 
 own sense of right, when the law decides against 
 him. The conception is not novel, not even 
 modern; something much like it was put forth 
 centuries ago by the Papacy concerning its own 
 functions. It contains two fallacies. First, the 
 submission of the individual citizen is to force, 
 to the constitution of which he personally contrib- 
 utes little, save his individual and general assent. 
 To an unjust law he submits under protest, 
 doubtless often silent; but he submits, not because 
 he consents to the wrong, whether to himself 
 personally or to others, but because he cannot 
 help it. This will perhaps be denied, with the 
 assertion that willing, intelligent submission to 
 law, even when unjust, is yielded by most for the 
 general good, One has, however, only to consider 
 
38 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 the disposition of the average man to evade pay- 
 ment of taxes, to recognize how far force daily 
 enters into the maintenance and execution of law. 
 Nations, on the contrary, since no force exists, 
 or without their volition can exist, to compel them 
 to accept the institution of an authority superior 
 to their own conscience, yield a willing acquies- 
 cence to wrong, when they so yield in obedience 
 to an external authority imposed by themselves. 
 The matter is not helped by the fact of a previous 
 promise to accept such decisions. The wrong- 
 doing of an individual, in consequence of an ante- 
 cedent promise, does not relieve the conscience 
 thus rashly fettered. The ancient warning still 
 stands, " Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh 
 to sin." For the individual or the nation, arbi- 
 tration is not possible where the decision may 
 violate conscience; it therefore can be accepted 
 only when it is known that interest merely, not" 
 duty, will be affected by the judgment, and such 
 knowledge cannot exist antecedent to the difficulty 
 arising. 
 
 There is a further — a second — fallacy in 
 the supposed analogy between the submission of 
 individuals to law, and the advocated submission 
 of states to a central tribunal. The law of the 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 39 
 
 state, overwhelming as is its power relatively to 
 that of the individual citizen, can neither bind nor 
 loose in matters pertaining to the conscience. 
 Still less can any tribunal, however solemnly 
 constituted, liberate a state from its obligation 
 to do right; still less, I say, because the state 
 retains, what the individual has in great part lost, 
 the power to maintain what it believes to be right. 
 Many considerations may make it more right — 
 I do not say more expedient — for a man or for a 
 nation, to submit to, or to acquiesce in, wrong than 
 to resist; but in such cases it is conscience still 
 that decides where the balance of justice turns 
 distinctly to the side of wrong. It is, I presume, 
 universally admitted, that occasions may arise 
 where conscience not only justifies, but compels, 
 resistance to law; whether it be the Christian 
 citizen refusing to sacrifice, or the free citizen to 
 subject himself to unconstitutional taxation, or 
 to become the instrument of returning the slave 
 to his master. So also for the Christian state. 
 Existing wrong may have to be allowed, lest a 
 greater wrong be done. Conscience only can 
 decide ; and for that very reason conscience must 
 be kept free, that it may decide according to its 
 sense of right, when the case is presented. 
 
40 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 There is, therefore, the very serious considera- 
 tion attendant upon what is loosely styled " com- 
 pulsory" arbitration, — arbitration stipulated, that 
 is, in advance of a question originating, or of its 
 conditions being appreciated, — that a state may 
 thereby do that which a citizen as towards the 
 state does not do; namely, may voluntarily 
 assume a moral obligation to do, or to allow, 
 wrong. And it must be remembered, .also, that 
 many of the difficulties which arise among states 
 involve considerations distinctly beyond and higher 
 than law as international law now exists ; whereat 
 the advocated Permanent Tribunal, to which the 
 ultra-organizers look, to take cognizance of all 
 cases, must perforce be governed by law as it 
 exists. It is not, in fact, to be supposed that 
 nations will submit themselves to a tribunal, the 
 general principles of which have not been crystal- 
 lized into a code of some sort. 
 
 A concrete instance, however, is always more 
 comprehensible and instructive than a general 
 discussion. Let us therefore take the incidents 
 and conditions which preceded our recent war 
 with Spain. The facts, as seen by us, may, I 
 apprehend, be fairly stated as follows: In the 
 island of Cuba, a powerful military force, — gov- 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 41 
 
 ernment it scarcely could be called, — foreign to 
 the island, was holding a small portion of it in 
 enforced subjection, and was endeavoring, unsuc- 
 cessfully, to reduce the remainder. In pursuance 
 of this attempt, measures were adopted that 
 inflicted immense misery and death upon great 
 numbers of the population. Such suffering is 
 indeed attendant upon war; but it may be stated 
 as a fundamental principle of civilized warfare 
 that useless suffering is condemned, and it had 
 become apparent to military eyes that Spain could 
 not subdue the island, nor restore orderly condi- 
 tions. The suffering was terrible, and was un- 
 availing. 
 
 Under such circumstances, does any moral 
 obligation lie upon a powerful neighboring state? 
 Or, more exactly, if there is borne in upon the 
 moral consciousness of a mighty people that such 
 an afflicted community as that of Cuba at their 
 doors is like Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, 
 and that the duty of stopping the evil rests upon 
 them, what is to be done with such a case of 
 conscience? Could the decision of another, 
 whether nation or court, excuse our nation from 
 the ultimate responsibility of its own decision? 
 But, granting that it might have proved expedient 
 
42 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 to call in other judges, when we had full knowledge 
 of the circumstances, what would have been our 
 dilemma if, conscience commanding one course, 
 we had found ourselves antecedently bound to 
 abide by the conclusions of another arbiter? For 
 let us not deceive ourselves. Absolutely justi- 
 fiable, nay, imperative, as most Americans believe 
 our action to have been, when tried at the bar of 
 conscience, no arbitral court, acceptable to the two 
 nations, would have decided as our own conscience 
 did. A European diplomatist of distinguished 
 reputation, of a small nation likeliest to be un- 
 biassed, so said to me personally, and it is known 
 that more than one of our own ablest international 
 lawyers held that we were acting in defiance of 
 international law as it now exists ; just as the men 
 who resisted the Fugitive Slave Law acted in 
 defiance of the statute law of the land. Decision 
 must have gone against us, so these men think, 
 on the legal merits of the case. Of the moral 
 question the arbiter could take no account : it is 
 not there, indeed, the moral questions must find 
 their solution, but in the court of conscience. 
 Referred to arbitration, doubtless the Spanish 
 flag would still fly over Cuba. 
 There is unquestionably a higher law than 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 43 
 
 Law, concerning obedience to which no other 
 than the man himself, or the state, can give account 
 to Him that shall judge. The freedom of the 
 conscience may be fettered or signed away by 
 him who owes to it allegiance ; yet its supremacy, 
 though thus disavowed, cannot be overthrown. 
 The Conference at The Hague has facilitated 
 future recourse to arbitration, by providing means 
 through which, a case arising, a court is more 
 easily constituted, and rules governing its proce- 
 dure are ready to hand ; but it has refrained from 
 any engagements binding states to have recourse 
 to the tribunal thus created. The responsibility 
 of the state to its own conscience remains unim- 
 peached and independent. The progress thus 
 made and thus limited is to a halting place, at 
 which, whether well chosen or not, the nations 
 must perforce stop for a time; and it will be wise 
 to employ that time in considering the bearings, 
 alike of that which has been done, and of that 
 which has been left undone. 
 
 Our own country has a special need thus care- 
 fully to consider the possible " consequences of 
 arbitration, understood in the sense of an ante- 
 cedent pledge to resort to it ; unless under limita- 
 tions very carefully hedged. There is an un- 
 
44 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 doubted popular tendency in direction of such 
 arbitration, which would be " compulsory " in 
 the highest moral sense, — the compulsion of a 
 promise. The world at large, and we especially, 
 stand at the opening of a new era, concerning 
 whose problems little can be foreseen. Among 
 the peoples, there is manifested intense interest 
 in the maturing of our national convictions, as 
 being, through Asia, new-comers into active 
 international life, concerning whose course it is 
 impossible to predict; and in many quarters, 
 probably in all except Great Britain, the attitude 
 toward us is watchful rather than sympathetic. 
 The experience of Crete and of Armenia does not 
 suggest beneficent results from the arbitration of 
 many counsellors; especially if contrasted with 
 the more favorable issue when Russia, in 1877, 
 acting on her own single initiative, forced by the 
 conscience of her people, herself alone struck the 
 fetters from Bulgaria; or when we ourselves last 
 year, rejecting intermediation, loosed the bonds 
 from Cuba, and lifted the yoke from the neck of 
 the oppressed. 
 
 It was inevitable that thoughts like these should 
 recur frequently to one of the writer's habit of 
 thought, when in constant touch with the atmos- 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 45 
 
 phere that hung around the Conference, although 
 the latter was by it but little affected. The poet's 
 words, " The Parliament of man, the federation 
 of the world," were much in men's mouths this 
 past summer. There is no denying the beauty 
 of the ideal, but there was apparent also a dispo- 
 sition, in contemplating it, to contemn the slow 
 processes of evolution by which Nature commonly 
 attains her ends, and to impose at once, by con- 
 vention, the methods that commended themselves 
 to the sanguine. Fruit is not best ripened by 
 premature plucking, nor can the goal be reached 
 by such short cuts. Step by step, in the past, 
 man has ascended by means of the sword, and 
 his more recent gains, as well as present condi- 
 tions, show that the time has not yet come to 
 kick down the ladder which has so far served 
 him. Three hundred years ago, the people of 
 the land in which the Conference was assembled 
 wrenched with the sword civil and religious peace, 
 and national independence, from the tyranny of 
 Spain. Then began the disintegration of her 
 empire, and the deliverance of peoples from her 
 oppression ; but this was completed only last year, 
 and then again by the sword — of the United 
 States. 
 
46 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 In the centuries which have since intervened, 
 what has not " justice, with valor armed," when 
 confronted by evil in high places, found itself 
 compelled to effect by resort to the sword? To 
 it was due the birth of the United States, not least 
 among the benefits of which was the stern experi- 
 ence that has made Great Britain no longer the 
 mistress, but the mother, of her dependencies. 
 The control, to good from evil, of the devastating 
 fire of the French Revolution, and of Napoleon, 
 was due to the sword. The long line of illustrious 
 names and deeds, of those who bore it not in vain, 
 has in our times culminated — if indeed the end 
 is even yet nearly reached — in the new birth of 
 the United States by the extirpation of human 
 slavery, and in the downfall, but yesterday, of 
 a colonial empire identified with tyranny. What 
 the sword, and it supremely, tempered only by 
 the stern demands of justice and of conscience, 
 and the loving voice of charity, has done for India 
 and for Egypt, is a tale at once too long and too 
 well known for repetition here. Peace, indeed, 
 is not adequate to all progress ; there are resist- 
 ances that can be overcome only by explosion. 
 What means less violent than war would in a 
 half-year have solved the Caribbean problem, 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 47 
 
 shattered national ideas deep rooted in the pre- 
 possessions of a century, and planted the United 
 States in Asia, face to face with the great world 
 problem of the immediate future ? What but the 
 War of 1898 rent the veil which prevented the Eng- 
 lish-speaking communities from seeing eye to eye, 
 and revealed to each the face of a brother ? Little 
 wonder that a war which, with comparatively 
 little bloodshed, brought such consequences, was 
 followed by the call for a Peace Conference ! 
 
 Power, force, is a faculty of national life; one 
 of the talents committed to nations by God. Like 
 every other endowment of a complex organization, 
 it must be held under control of the enlightened 
 intellect and of the upright heart; but no more 
 than any other can it be carelessly or lightly 
 abjured, without incurring the responsibility of 
 one who buries in the earth that which was in- 
 trusted to him for use. And this obligation to 
 maintain right, by force if need be, while common 
 to all states, rests peculiarly upon the greater, in 
 proportion to their means. Much is required of 
 those to whom much is given. So viewed, the 
 ability speedily to put forth the nation's power, by 
 adequate organization and other necessary prepa- 
 ration, according to the reasonable demands of 
 
48 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 the nation's intrinsic strength and of its position 
 in the world, is one of the clear duties involved 
 in the Christian word " watchfulness," — readi- 
 ness for the call that may come, whether expect- 
 edly or not. Until it is demonstrable that no 
 evil exists, or threatens the world, which cannot 
 be obviated without recourse to force, the obliga- 
 tion to readiness must remain; and, where evil 
 is mighty and defiant, the obligation to use force — 
 that is, war — arises. Nor is it possible, ante- 
 cedently, to bring these conditions and obligations 
 under the letter of precise and codified law, to 
 be administered by a tribunal. The spirit of 
 legalism is marked by blemishes as real as those 
 commonly attributed to " militarism," and not 
 more elevated. The considerations which deter- 
 mine good and evil, right and wrong, in crises 
 of national life, or of the world's history, are 
 questions of equity often too complicated for 
 decision upon mere rules, or even upon principles, 
 of law, international or other. The instances of 
 Bulgaria, of Armenia, and of Cuba, are entirely 
 in point; and it is most probable that the conten- 
 tions about the future of China will afford further 
 illustration. Even in matters where the interest 
 of nations is concerned, the moral element enters ; 
 
The Moral Aspect 0} War 49 
 
 because each generation in its day is the guardian 
 of those which shall follow it. Like all guardians, 
 therefore, while it has the power to act according 
 to its best judgment, it has no right, for the mere 
 sake of peace, to permit known injustice to be 
 done to its wards. 
 I The present strong feeling in favor of arbitra- 
 tion, throughout the nations of the world, is in 
 itself a subject for congratulation almost unal- 
 loyed. It carries indeed a promise, to the cer- 
 tainty of which no paper covenants can pretend; 
 for it influences the conscience by inward convic- 
 tion, not by external fetter. But it must be 
 remembered that such sentiments, from their 
 very universality and evident laudableness, need 
 correctives, for they bear in themselves a great 
 danger of excess or of precipitancy. Excess is 
 seen in the disposition, far too prevalent, to look 
 upon war not only as an evil, but as an evil un- 
 mixed, unnecessary, and therefore always unjusti- 
 fiable; while precipitancy, to reach results con- 
 sidered desirable, is evidenced by the wish to 
 impose arbitration, to prevent recourse to war, 
 by a general pledge previously made. Both 
 frames of mind receive expression in the words of 
 speakers, among whom a leading characteristic 
 
50 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 is lack of measuredness and of proportion. Thus 
 an eminent citizen is reported to have said: 
 " There is no more occasion for two nations to go 
 to war than for two men to settle their difficulties 
 with clubs.' ' Singularly enough, this point of 
 view assumes to represent peculiarly Christian 
 teaching. In so doing, it wilfully ignores the truth 
 that Christianity, while it will not force the con- 
 science by other than spiritual arguments, as 
 " compulsory " arbitration might, distinctly rec- 
 ognizes the sword as the resister and remedier of 
 evil in the sphere " of this world." 
 
 Arbitration's great opportunity has come in the 
 advancing moral standards of states, whereby the 
 disposition to deliberate wrong-doing has dimin- 
 ished; consequently, the occasions for redressing 
 wrong by force are less frequent to arise. In view 
 of recent events however, and very especially of 
 notorious, high-handed oppression, initiated since 
 the calling of the Peace Conference, 1 and resolutely 
 continued during its sessions in defiance of the 
 public opinion of the world at large, it is pre- 
 
 1 Lest this be misunderstood to be an allusion to the recent 
 measures of Japan in Korea, I renew here the caution that in 
 this article all references to the Peace Conference are to that of 
 1899. 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 51 
 
 mature to assume that such occasions belong 
 wholly to the past. Much less can it be assumed 
 that there will be no further instances of a com- 
 munity believing, conscientiously and entirely, that 
 honor and duty require of it a certain course, 
 which another community with equal integrity 
 may hold to be inconsistent with the rights and 
 obligations of its own members. It is, for in- 
 stance, quite possible, especially to one who has 
 recently visited Holland, to conceive that Great 
 Britain and the Boers are alike satisfied of the 
 substantial justice of their respective claims. It 
 is permissible most earnestly to hope that, in 
 disputes between sovereign states, arbitration may 
 find a way to reconcile peace with fidelity to con- 
 science, in the case of both ; but if the conviction 
 of conscience remains unshaken, war is better than 
 disobedience, — better than acquiescence in recog- 
 nized wrong. The great danger of undiscrimi- 
 nating advocacy of arbitration, which threatens 
 even the cause it seeks to maintain, is that it may 
 lead men to tamper with equity, to compromise 
 with unrighteousness, soothing their conscience 
 with the belief that War is so entirely wrong that 
 beside it no other tolerated evil is wrong. Witness 
 Armenia, and witness Crete. War has been 
 
52 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 avoided; but what of the national consciences 
 that beheld such iniquity and withheld the 
 hand? 
 
 Note. — This paper was the means of bringing into the 
 author's hands a letter by the late General Sherman, which 
 forcibly illustrates how easily, in quiet moments, men forget 
 what they have owed, and still owe, to the sword. From 
 the coincidence of its thought with that of the article itself, 
 permission to print it here has been asked and received. 
 
 New York, February 5th, 1890. 
 
 Dear General Meigs, — I attended the Centennial 
 Ceremonies in honor of the Supreme Court yesterday, four 
 full hours in the morning at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
 and about the same measure of time at the Grand Banquet 
 of 850 lawyers in the evening at the Lenox Lyceum. 
 
 The whole was superb in all its proportions, but it was no 
 place for a soldier. I was bidden to the feast solely and 
 exclusively because in 1858 for a few short months I was an 
 attorney at Leavenworth, Kansas. 
 
 The Bar Association of the United States has manifestly 
 cast aside the Sword of Liberty. Justice and Law have 
 ignored the significance of the Great Seal of the United 
 States, with its emblematic olive branch and thirteen arrows, 
 " all proper," and now claim that, without force, Law and 
 moral suasion have carried us through one hundred years 
 of history. Of course, in your study you will read at leisure 
 these speeches, and if in them you discover any sense of 
 obligation to the Soldier element, you will be luckier than 
 I, a listener. 
 
 From 186 1 to 1865 the Supreme Court was absolutely 
 
The Moral Aspect of War 53 
 
 paralyzed: their decrees and writs were treated with con- 
 tempt south of the Potomac and Ohio ; they could not sum- 
 mon a witness or send a Deputy Marshal. War, and the 
 armed Power of the Nation, alone removed the barrier and 
 restored to the U. S. courts their lawful jurisdiction. Yet, 
 from these honied words of flattery, a stranger would have 
 inferred that at last the lawyers of America had discovered 
 the sovereign panacea of a Government without force, 
 either visible or in reserve. 
 
 I was in hopes the Civil War had dispelled this dangerous 
 illusion, but it seems not. 
 
 You and I can fold our hands and truly say we have done 
 a man's share, and leave the consequences to younger men 
 who must buffet with the next storms; but a Government 
 which ignores the great truths illuminated in heraldic lan- 
 guage over its very Capitol is not yet at the end of its woes. 
 
 With profound respect, 
 
 W. T. Sherman. 
 
 
Ill 
 
 THE HAGUE CONFERENCE AND THE 
 PRACTICAL ASPECT OF WAR 
 
THE HAGUE CONFERENCE AND THE 
 PRACTICAL ASPECT OF WAR 
 
 By Alfred T. Mahan 
 
 National Review ', June y 1907. 
 
 IMMEDIATELY after the adjournment of the 
 first Hague Conference, to which I had the 
 honor of being a delegate, I was asked to write a 
 paper upon some general bearings of the questions 
 there entertained for discussion. This I did under 
 the title of the Moral Aspect of War ; x considering 
 on what grounds, and how far, it was justifiable 
 for a nation at the present stage of civilization 
 to sign away beforehand its power of moral 
 action, in undefined and unforeseen instances, 
 under the plea, to me specious and misleading, 
 of submitting to an impartial third party a question, 
 not of interests, nor of facts, but of right and 
 wrong, and therefore of conscience. I held that 
 in such decisions a nation — as a man — might 
 seek counsel, but could not abdicate responsibility. 
 
 1 « North American Review," October, 1899. 
 
58 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 Therefore it could not rightfully commit itself 
 to such a course, in advance, except for such cases 
 as admitted of clear definition; reserving to its 
 own determination matters of moral obligation. 
 
 To give again my arguments in detail is not here 
 pertinent; but in one particular I may properly 
 repeat, because it leads directly to my present 
 theme, thus linking this article to its predecessor. 
 I urged that it is not to be supposed that nations 
 will antecedently submit themselves to a tribunal, 
 the general principles of which have not been 
 crystallized into a code of some sort. A Court of 
 Arbitration, however constituted, should have laid 
 down for its guidance and governance certain 
 established rules, or body of precedents, which 
 by common agreement have reached the authority 
 of law, and so may justly be styled law inter- 
 national; a code, to which appeal may be made, 
 and upon which decision shall rest unchallengeable. 
 Under present circumstances, when a case shall 
 have arisen, and be pending, its characteristic 
 features apparent, the nations concerned will know 
 how far they can trust themselves, as a substitute 
 for such a code, to the existing state of international 
 law, undigested for final formal acceptance; but 
 there is not the same assurance for an unknown 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 59 
 
 incident of the future. Where an antecedent 
 body of accepted law is wanting, arbitration be- 
 comes a matter of personal beliefs or opinions on 
 the part of the arbitrators ; just as many so-called 
 treatises on international law express the views 
 of the writers, frequently discordant, as to what 
 law ought to be, rather than a definition of what 
 it is. Such a definition in fact is impossible, be- 
 cause there is not a law. Law, strictly so called, 
 presupposes a law-maker; and for international 
 law the law-maker has not yet come into existence. 
 Particular nations have made treaties innumerable, 
 which are laws unto the contracting parties, for 
 they have power to frame and impose them; but 
 not laws to other states over whom they have not 
 power. 
 
 The Hague Tribunal has already, in its brief 
 existence, furnished a striking illustration of the 
 dangers which may be apprehended from sub- 
 mitting to it questions of right, as distinct from 
 questions of fact, until by an agreement certain 
 principles have been established, and their bearings 
 in some measure defined by applying them to 
 specific possible cases, thus making laws ; analogy 
 from which might support action of the court if 
 an unforeseen case arise. The instance is none 
 
60 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 the less striking because the nations referring it 
 did so with full knowledge of the matter and inter- 
 ests at stake, and of the existing condition of inter- 
 national law. It merely makes all the stronger 
 the argument that it is unsafe to bind oneself 
 beforehand to submit cases that are not yet fore- 
 seen. In the case of a delinquent state, com- 
 pelled by armed force to settle the claims of its 
 creditors, the Hague Tribunal has decided that in 
 the subsequent payments the citizens of the 
 states which thus resorted to arms to get back 
 their money were entitled to be the first paid ; and 
 great has been the indignation of those whose 
 moral sense repudiates all recourse to force for such 
 purposes. That this judgment rested technically 
 upon the ground that the delinquent state had 
 offered special guarantees only to the blockading 
 nations, illustrates aptly the surprises that may 
 await those who go to arbitration before details 
 as well as principles are settled. In a pamphlet 
 put forth under the auspices of a prominent Peace 
 Association I find the following comment : " The 
 decision has been much criticized, as appearing to 
 encourage force in debt collecting ; but, in seeking 
 a strictly legal solution, the arbitrators may have 
 been forced to ignore the ethical question in- 
 
The Practical Aspect oj War 61 
 
 volved." This supposed opposition between pre- 
 sumed ethical right and strict law had better be 
 adjusted, before a question involving ethics is 
 submitted to a tribunal liable to fluctuations of 
 opinion, as the individual members composing 
 it vary. It can scarcely be alleged that anything 
 like an international consensus now obtains as to 
 the ethical propriety of forcing a nation to pay 
 its creditors. I do not pretend to say which 
 course is right from the moral standpoint; but, 
 as international law till now has tolerated the 
 forcible collection of such debts, I own to thinking 
 that the peoples who by resort to authorized meth- 
 ods obtained redress for all parties were entitled 
 for their trouble and expense to have the first lien 
 upon the security pledged. Others do not think 
 so, and there you are. On either side of the dis- 
 sent is a highly respectable body of opinion ; but 
 that of the judges goes. There is neither settled 
 principle nor adverse precedent, and the result is 
 a grudging acquiescence by the last served. 
 
 In these cases, whatever be thought of the 
 methods, the sufferers had little claim to sympathy, 
 and the principle at stake, though novel and im- 
 portant, can hardly be said to touch vital interests 
 or national honor : but how far does the experience 
 
62 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 encourage nations, antecedently to knowledge of 
 the questions that may arise, and with a body of 
 formulated law as yet meagre, to intrust to such a 
 tribunal matters which may involve vital interests, 
 such as the United States conceives to be embodied 
 in the Monroe Doctrine? or of moral propriety, 
 which many Americans thought violated in the 
 particular decision? When a case has arisen, a 
 government may know the extent to which it 
 commits itself in accepting arbitration; but for 
 the unforeseen future what standards are there 
 whereby to measure what the tribunal will do, or 
 will not? what the maximum and minimum 
 limits of its action, which by the hypothesis we 
 have bound ourselves antecedently to accept? 
 Is it practical to consign vital interests or national 
 honor to so uncertain an issue, by failing to reserve 
 them ? Indeed, would not the more prudent course 
 be to state explicitly what character of cases would 
 be submitted, and to reserve all others? This 
 question much resembles that so much discussed 
 of the powers of the General Government and 
 of the several States in the American Union. 
 If the nations are to confederate, should there not 
 first be a Constitution? It is true that healthy 
 constitutions grow, even when so rigidly guarded 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 63 
 
 as that of the United States ; but through centuries 
 of diplomacy the practice of nations has been 
 slowly growing into a noteworthy bulk of prece- 
 dents, material available for codification, after dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Whether such codification is as yet practicable 
 may be doubted, in view of the extensive argu- 
 mentation still conducted by diplomacy over the 
 bearing of so-called principles on current questions : 
 but could it be effected in any degree, and defi- 
 nitely accepted by all the great nations, it would 
 carry so far a certain assurance of justice, and 
 thus to a great extent would limit the decisions of 
 an arbitral body to a finding on the facts, to which 
 principles or rules already established, and known 
 beforehand, would be applied. So far as a man 
 or a nation knows the tests that will be used, he 
 or it can afford to mortgage his conscience in 
 advance ; because adequately assured that right — 
 to which principles apply — will not suffer, 
 although interests, which depend upon the facts, 
 may. But, really to be known, the principles must 
 not be merely general in statement, but specific 
 in their application to the range of international 
 relations under consideration. Such application 
 may fail of completeness, but should be attempted. 
 
64 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 Nothing is final, but none the less finality is a 
 proper aim. An instance of such a compilation 
 is the series of rules to govern the practices of 
 war by land and sea in certain defined matters, 
 drawn up by the first Hague Conference, and by 
 it recommended for adoption to the governments 
 represented. 
 
 Now, such formulation of principles and rules, 
 as far as it may go, is a tangible and practical 
 substitute for war; and where approved and ac- 
 cepted will to its extent avert war. Meanwhile, 
 for the adjustment of unforeseen differences that 
 continually arise, and will arise, we now have the 
 established methods of diplomatic correspondence, 
 and negotiations in their various orders, to which 
 the last resort is war. War is one of the estab- 
 lished methods of settlement. The practical 
 aspect of war therefore is that it is a means, 
 possibly crude and partial in operation, but for 
 which as yet no satisfactory alternative has been 
 devised, whereby a nation enforces a claim to 
 what it considers essential interest or national 
 honor. The recent collection of debts from one 
 or more South American States was an act of 
 war ; was war, though there was no formal procla- 
 mation, little bloodshed, and no treaty of peace. 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 65 
 
 What practical substitute was there for such 
 action ? As far as I understand, none, except the 
 view formulated, but not yet accepted generally 
 by creditor nations, that a delinquent state should 
 not be compelled to pay. I believe there was no 
 question that the debts were due. The facts were 
 admitted, but the question of principle was raised 
 whether a government owed to its own citizens 
 to collect such debt; or whether, as in blockade 
 running, they must accept the consequences of 
 their risks, in this case of lending on doubtful 
 security. Evidently, if states are to arbitrate, 
 this question of principle should be determined 
 beforehand. As it is, all we have gained from the 
 particular example is an evidence that arbitration, 
 to be generally satisfactory, should proceed on 
 principles formally recognized, and sufficiently 
 developed in application to be a check upon a 
 court's decisions. No international method can 
 endure unless generally satisfactory. It is a 
 general dissatisfaction which now seeks to dis- 
 establish war ; but to be successful it must present 
 an alternative that shall be workable, and not 
 merely alluring. I strongly suspect that as yet a 
 tempting prospect is taken for a solid reality. 
 These cases have presented, in miniature, the 
 
66 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 sequence of cause and effect which up to the most 
 serious international dispute issues in war, and 
 which as yet in many cases can have no other 
 outcome than war, or the retreat of one of the 
 parties. Such retreat is usually because not strong 
 enough to act ; it results from inadequate material 
 power. It may not be overt; that is, the state 
 which conceives itself or its people injured, may 
 not go so far in its measures as to necessitate 
 retreat. The South American States were under 
 moral obligation to pay their debts ; they refused, 
 and they retreated. Under pressure of force 
 they discharged, or made provision for discharging, 
 a moral duty which they had before declined. In 
 the case of some States of the American Union, 
 which at one time refused to meet their indebted- 
 ness to British subjects, no threat of force was 
 made, nor measure looking to force undertaken. 
 It was not expedient ; for, whatever the outcome, 
 war would have cost too much in every way. 
 The facts in neither case alter the question of 
 moral obligation, nor is this affected by the partic- 
 ular action in either. But the practical bearing 
 and value of war, its practical aspect, is shown in 
 both instances. In the one, war compelled pay- 
 ment; in the other, power to fight enabled the 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 67 
 
 debtor to be obstinate in his refusal, to gain, let 
 us say, time to develop his resources and meet his 
 obligations. In neither was concession made to 
 the moral aspect of the question. Each was 
 simply a practical exhibition of the influence of 
 physical force. 
 
 Is such employment of physical force as here 
 illustrated a practical factor in the affairs of the 
 world? and is it a necessary factor? The neces- 
 sity is part of the practicality ; for, if there be an 
 adequate and better alternative, it certainly is not 
 practical to cling to the worse. I think the deter- 
 mining consideration is this. Is the course of 
 human conduct, individual or national, determined 
 more by moral influences or by physical pressure ? 
 by considerations of right and wrong, or by the 
 needs of the body — food, drink, clothing? If 
 we call ambition, or the love of adventure and 
 action, a moral motive, these certainly count for 
 much with those not in bodily need. I presume 
 that in the career of Napoleon there is manifested 
 beyond anything else the consuming necessity for 
 the faculties of an intensely gifted man to find 
 vent in corresponding action; and in degree 
 smaller men, or nations through their rulers, feel 
 and yield to the same impulse. And there are 
 
68 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 nobler motives, love of country or of race, liberty, 
 religion, all prompting to extend influence or to 
 resist wrong. Hampden's refusal to pay ship- 
 money, that of the American colonists to submit 
 to the stamp and tea duties, rest on the principle 
 of no taxation except through representation. 
 The smallness of the exactions involved places the 
 resistances on the level of vindicating moral 
 principle; but, after all, the principle itself rests 
 upon the need of the individuals of a community 
 to preserve to themselves, under adequate guar- 
 antee, the necessaries and conveniences of life. 
 In last analysis, and in by far the greater part, 
 is it not so that bodily necessities, or, worse, bodily 
 desires, chiefly move men and nations? What 
 precipitated the outside barbarians, the migration 
 of the peoples, upon the Roman Empire ? Bodily 
 impulses; pressure from behind and alluring 
 civilization in front. What for long checked the 
 movement ? Resistant bodily organization of phys- 
 ical force, the prevision of Caesar. What to-day 
 is precipitating the outside world upon the Amer- 
 ican continents — men forsaking their families, 
 families their homes and kindred, the sacred 
 associations of centuries, in search of material 
 betterment? From the east and from the west, 
 
The Practical Aspect 0} War 69 
 
 from Europe and from Asia, the flood impends; 
 in that v from Europe regulated by force, the force 
 of national tradition organized in power, control- 
 ling and absorbing the foreign elements; in the 
 Asiatic instance excluding, also by force; force 
 which is invoked by those who fear the effect of 
 increasing numbers and cheaper labor upon their 
 own material welfare. Is there in any of these 
 movements a moral motive upon which dependence 
 can be placed for restraint, and to which appeal 
 may be addressed? Or is the successful control 
 so far exercised simply that of organized physical 
 force, retarding consequences in order that adjust- 
 ment may take place, as did Caesar? If so, what 
 more practical? and what is organized physical 
 control but war in posse ? — nay, rather, it is war 
 in esse. 
 
 Again, look, which are to-day the most aggressive 
 nations, in the sense of seeking external expansion ? 
 I here use the word " aggressive " in no invidious 
 or condemnatory sense, but in that neutral moral 
 signification which inheres in its derivation, of 
 motion towards an end to be attained, or a some- 
 thing needed — a phase of the world-wide struggle 
 between the haves and the have-nots. Are they 
 not Germany, Japan, Russia? And why? Am- 
 
70 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 bition? I scarcely think so, except as perception 
 of national necessities by a government, and desire 
 to provide for them, may be so called. The motive 
 which impels them may be touched and influenced 
 by moral considerations, good or bad; but the 
 prime characteristic is material. Food, drink, 
 clothing, are the simplest expression of the bodily 
 demands; but to these the refinements of civili- 
 zation have given a development beyond mere 
 exigency to reasonable comfort. Provision for 
 these requires space proportioned to numbers, 
 and it requires also opportunity. The numbers 
 of Germany and Japan press for larger room, and 
 for a wide extension of commercial opportunity; 
 both which are wanted to feed their millions, to 
 give them meat with their bread. They are 
 have-nots; the former aggressive careers of the 
 maritime states, Great Britain and France, the 
 as yet superabundant territory of the United States, 
 place them in the class of the haves. Russia, 
 less cramped for mere territory, needs sea room. 
 Doubled back again upon herself, as in 1856 and 
 1878, she now lies convulsed, in labor of the free- 
 dom which happier conditions of inter-communi- 
 cation with other states might have brought to her 
 as it has to them. The children are come to the 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 71 
 
 birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. 
 Hemmed in so far successfully on the Black Sea 
 and towards the Indian Ocean, she has seen 
 herself baffled again in the third and last remaining 
 solution of a problem involving the material 
 well-being of her population. At a critical mo- 
 ment of national expansion Russia has been foiled, 
 because in face of an inevitable " irrepressible 
 conflict " she had neglected to prepare for war. 
 I do not defend her recent conduct ; I merely note 
 her need. As far as my not too profound knowl- 
 edge of the circumstances goes, it has been impos- 
 sible to refuse my sympathy to Japan in the pre- 
 cedent events which constituted the occasion for 
 the war. But, as distinct from its occasion, the 
 cause lay deep in the material pressures resting 
 upon either nation. Will you meet such a conflict 
 on the one side or the other, or on both, by an 
 appeal to a moral argument of such doubtful 
 vindication as the wrongfulness of war, with the 
 moral alternative of submission to an extraneous 
 court of unsympathetic strangers? There can be 
 legal decision upon a legal point, where a law exists ; 
 but can there be true ethical fairness without 
 sympathetic intuition of national difficulties, and 
 can sympathy hold an even balance? Why 
 
72 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 should I trust the crying needs of my children to 
 the decisions of another than myself? Is it, 
 indeed, moral to do so? Is not material force, 
 after all, the one practical arbiter between two 
 opposing material impulses, because as things 
 have been, and are, it alone gives rest? Such 
 opposition of material forces may merely exert the 
 effect of war. It may not bring war ; yet again it 
 may. To this Japan and Russia both appealed ; the 
 fittest in this respect won out ; and so long as she 
 remains fittest the result promises permanency. 
 In putting forward these truths of material 
 pressure with a bareness perhaps somewhat brutal, 
 I must not be understood to justify, far less to 
 advocate, the predominance of material consid- 
 erations over moral. I simply look existing facts 
 in the face, which is in strict accord with my pro- 
 posed point of view — the Practical Aspect of War ; 
 the place of War in the economy of the world which 
 now is, and the possibility of shortly replacing it 
 with some alternative equally efficacious and less det- 
 rimental, the world remaining the same. I believe, 
 with full intensity of personal conviction, that when 
 moral motives come to weigh heavier with man- 
 kind than do material desires there will be no war, 
 and coincidentally therewith better provision of 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 73 
 
 reasonable bodily necessities to all men. But 
 the truth still remains as stated by Jesus Christ 
 twenty centuries ago, that between material and 
 moral motives men and nations must commit them- 
 selves to a definite choice ; one or the other — not 
 both. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. By 
 His own definition Mammon applies as clearly to 
 the simplest bodily necessities, to the mere food 
 and clothing, as to the grossest insolence of luxury. 
 The question is not of the degree of the devotion, 
 but of the service chosen, of the Master. This 
 will be either the moral motives summed up in the 
 phrase Kingdom of God, or the material. So 
 far as the advocacy of peace rests upon material 
 motives of economy and prosperity, it is the service 
 of Mammon ; and the bottom of the platform will 
 drop out when Mammon thinks that war will pay 
 better. The common sense of mankind recog- 
 nizes the truth of this affirmation. We speak of 
 mixed motives; but we know that, be they two 
 or many, one alone receives true allegiance and 
 will prevail. The others may modify or hamper ; 
 to one alone belongs the title " master; " and we 
 have common proverbs and common experience 
 that the service of the moral assures in the end 
 sufficiency of the material. 
 
74 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 I believe that the time is coming when conviction 
 of this truth will take place in practice, and that 
 indications of its distant arrival can be seen; but 
 meantime, I now also see in profoundest peace an 
 ignoble struggle, not for enough, but for wanton 
 profusion; motives strictly material asserting 
 themselves unblushingly in mutual conflict for 
 mastery ; nay, peace and arbitration advocated on 
 the most purely material grounds. I distrust the 
 spirit of a civilization that would have stopped, 
 if it could, the intervention of the United States 
 between Spain and Cuba. It was a fresh assertion 
 of the superiority of material considerations in a 
 decision essentially moral. That the question 
 was thus regarded I had an interesting demonstra- 
 tion. It happened that I was in Rome at the time 
 war was declared, and dined in company with 
 several of the diplomatic body. " Oh yes," said 
 one of them to me, "it is all very well to talk of 
 sympathy with the Cubans and Spanish mis- 
 government. The truth is the United States 
 wants Cuba." I inferred this to be the general 
 standpoint. Now, I am particularly qualified 
 to speak impartially as to my countrymen's 
 attitude ; for I myself thought if we went to war 
 we had better take Cuba, the military importance 
 
The Practical Aspect o] War 
 
 of which to our position has been evident ever 
 since we became a nation. I was out of sympathy 
 with the self-denying resolution of Congress, 
 which in advance pledged us to non-acquisition; 
 but I entirely believe that it represented the pre- 
 dominant feeling in America. In other words, 
 the motive of the war, whether mistaken or not, 
 was moral ; and to it therefore material argument 
 should not be addressed. It is non-pertinent ; an 
 expression which has a less courteous equiva- 
 lent. 
 
 If it be true, as I have expressed my own con- 
 viction, that moral motives are gaining in force 
 the world over, we can have hope of the time when 
 they shall prevail ; but it is evident that they must 
 prevail over all nations equally, or with some 
 approach to equality, or else discussion between 
 two disputants will not rest on the same plane. 
 In the difference between the United States and 
 Spain, I suppose the argument of the United 
 States, the moral justification to itself of its pro- 
 posed action, would be that misgovernment of 
 Cuba, and needless Cuban suffering, had contin- 
 ued so long as to show that Spain was not capable 
 of giving good government to her distant depend- 
 ency. There was no occasion to question her 
 
76 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 desire to give it, the honesty either of her asser- 
 tions or measures to that end; but it was quite 
 apparent that it was not in her to give effect to her 
 efforts. Now, presuming Spain to take that 
 view, it is conceivable (to the imagination) that 
 her rulers might say, " Yes, it is true, we have 
 failed continuously. The Cubans have a moral 
 right to good government, and as we have not been 
 able to give it them, it is right that we should step 
 out." But, assuming Spain unequal to such 
 sublime moral conviction and self-abnegation, 
 what was the United States to do, as a practical 
 matter? What she did was perfectly practical; 
 she used the last argument of nations as inter- 
 national law stands ; but, suppose she had gone to 
 arbitration, upon what grounds would the Court 
 proceed? What the solid pre-arranged basis of 
 its decision, should that be that Spain must 
 evacuate Cuba? Is there anything in the present 
 accord of states, styled International Law, that 
 would give such power? And, more pertinent 
 still, are states prepared now to concede to an 
 arbitral Court the power to order them out of 
 territory which in its opinion they misgovern, 
 or which in its opinion they should not retain 
 after conquest? e. g., Schleswig Holstein, Alsace 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 77 
 
 and Lorraine, the Transvaal, Porto Rico and the 
 Philippine Islands? 
 
 Or, take another impending and very momen- 
 tous instance, one fraught with immeasurable 
 issues. If I rightly appreciate conditions, there 
 is, among the English-speaking communities bor- 
 dering the Pacific, a deep instinctive popular 
 determination, one of those before which rulers 
 have to bow, to exclude, from employment in the 
 sparsely settled territories occupied by them, the 
 concentrated crowded mass of mankind found in 
 Japan and China. More than anything else this 
 sums up the question of the Pacific. Two seas 
 of humanity, on very different levels as to numbers 
 and economical conditions, stand separated only 
 by this artificial dyke of legislation, barring the 
 one from rushing upon and flooding the other. I 
 do not criticize an attitude with which, whether I 
 approve or not, I can sympathize ; but as I look 
 at the legislation, and contrast the material condi- 
 tions, I wonder at the improvidence of Australasia 
 in trusting that laws, though breathing the ut- 
 most popular conviction and purpose, can protect 
 their lands from that which threatens. " Go 
 home," said Franklin to a fellow colonist in the 
 days of unrest in America, " and tell them to get 
 
78 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 children. That will settle all our difficulties." 
 Fill up your land with men of your own kind, 
 if you wish to keep it for yourselves. The Pacific 
 States of North America are filling up, and, more 
 important, they back solidly upon, and are polit- 
 ically one with, other great communities into which 
 the human tide is pouring apace ; yet in them, too, 
 labor may inflict upon its own aims revolutionary 
 defeat, if for supposed local advantage it embar- 
 rasses the immigration of its own kind. It is 
 very different for those who are severed from their 
 like by sea, and therefore must stand on their own 
 bottom. All the naval power of the British Empire 
 cannot suffice ultimately to save a remote com- 
 munity which neither breeds men in plenty nor 
 freely imports them. 
 
 We speak of these questions now as racial, and 
 the expression is convenient. It is compact, and 
 represents truly one aspect of such situations, 
 which, however, are essentially economical and 
 territorial. In long-settled countries race and 
 territory tend to identity of meaning, but we need 
 scarce a moment's recollection to know that race 
 does not bind as do border lines, nor even they as 
 do economical facts. Economical facts largely 
 brought about the separation of America from 
 
The Practical Aspect oj War 79 
 
 Great Britain; economical facts brought about 
 the American Union and continue to bind it. The 
 closer union of the territories which now constitute 
 the British Empire must be found in economical 
 adjustments; the fact of common race is not 
 sufficient thereto. Now, economical influences 
 are of the most purely material order — the order 
 of personal self-interest; in that form at least 
 they appeal to the great majority, for the instructed 
 political economists form but a small proportion 
 of any community. Race, yes ; territory — coun- 
 try — yes; the heart thrills, the eyes fill, self- 
 sacrifice seems natural, the moral motive for the 
 moment prevails; but in the long run the hard 
 pressure of economical truth comes down upon 
 these with the tyranny of the despot. There are, 
 indeed, noble leaders not a few, who see in this 
 crushing burden upon their fellow millions an 
 enemy to be confronted and vanquished, not by 
 direct opposition, but by circumvention, relieving 
 his sway by bettering environment, and so giving 
 play to the loftier sentiments. But that these 
 men may so work they need to be, as we say, in- 
 dependent, released from the grip of daily 
 bread; and their very mission, alike in its suc- 
 cess and its failures, testifies to the preponder- 
 
80 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 ant weight of economical conditions in the social 
 world. 
 
 Nor in the social world only. We shall not 
 see aright the political movement of the world 
 at large, the course of history past and present, 
 until we discern underlying all, consciously or 
 blindly, these primitive physical necessities, direct- 
 ing the desires of the peoples, and through them 
 the course of their governments. Rightly do we 
 call them economical — household — for they come 
 home to the many firesides whence their stern 
 exactions have exiled politics and sentiment; and 
 herein, in the weight of struggling numbers, lies 
 the immensity of their strength. Race and country 
 but furnish a means for organizing and fortifying 
 their action, bringing to it the sanction and inspira- 
 tion of the loftier motives embodied in these conse- 
 crated words. But these holy names, while facili- 
 tating and intensifying local action, by the same 
 means separate nation from nation, setting up 
 hearthstone against hearthstone. Hence implicit 
 war is perennial; antagonism lurks beneath the 
 most smiling surface and the most honest inter- 
 changes of national sympathies. We have but 
 to note the wave of emotion which passed over the 
 United States at the first hint of possible hostilities 
 
The Practical Aspect oj War , 81 
 
 with Japan, and the suggestion that the Anglo- 
 Japanese alliance might bring about collision with 
 the two peoples. As far as appeared from all 
 observable signs, the great majority of Americans 
 had sympathized most cordially with Japan in the 
 recent struggle; and I have thought to note clear 
 indications that the American Press was becoming 
 more and more deeply convinced of the common 
 interests which should bring into unpledged 
 accord the general external policies of Great 
 Britain and the United States. It needed only 
 the reading of the treaty to see that its particular 
 obligation would not arise, unless war led the 
 United States to seek to deprive Japan of terri- 
 tory — a most impossible contingency; but not 
 every one has copies of treaties immediately 
 accessible, nor takes the pains to consult them. 
 National sentiment, like family feeling, is a perma- 
 nent force, the influence of which, thus startled, 
 deflects national sympathy and policy as a magnet 
 does a compass. 
 
 Little more than a generation ago, who so dear 
 to Americans as Russia? then perhaps the only 
 European government which, whatever the spring 
 of its motives, cordially sympathized with that of 
 the United States in the War of Secession; how 
 
82 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 few her friends in her recent struggle with Japan. 
 It will be said with justice, as well as appositeness, 
 that just such transient indications of the insta- 
 bility of national sympathies, here to-day, there 
 to-morrow, prove the need of arbitration to avert 
 war. Certainly, if no other means can be found. 
 To go to war on questions of mere feeling, or on 
 occasional offence, is far from practical. As a 
 matter of fact, however, such occasions now 
 rarely threaten war. Time to solve them is 
 usually obtained by the ordinary means of diplo- 
 macy, and the premature intrusion of a third 
 party is rather an irritation than a help. Not 
 every case of conscience calls for a confessor, nor 
 every dispute for an arbitrator. But where feeling 
 is rooted in permanent conditions, arises from them, 
 and grows with their continuance, or their in- 
 crease, you have a radically different proposition. 
 Such is the legislation of exclusion considered a 
 few lines back. It rests upon material motives, 
 and acts by the material implements of organized 
 force; and thus acting it is practical (not neces- 
 sarily right) in aim and in methods. But these 
 methods, whether directed against persons or 
 goods, are essentially war ; defensive or offensive, 
 as it may please either race to regard it ; and the 
 
The Practical Aspect of War S3 
 
 popular feeling which underlies is implicit war in a 
 most dangerous form, liable at a breath to bring 
 people to the very verge of hostilities, and that 
 with an impetus very likely to carry them over. It 
 is necessary to recognize that measures of external 
 policy which find their origin in such popular 
 sentiment, or political conviction, present to the 
 government concerned internal problems, as really 
 such as those more commonly so called; and, 
 because internal, they from their very nature cannot 
 be committed to external decision, except that of 
 force. Force, the issue of war, carries with it to 
 the populace a practical weight of conviction, 
 with which no other arbiter can vie. The Monroe 
 Doctrine, indeterminate in scope because it has 
 steadily grown, and of which therefore finality 
 cannot be affirmed, is a matter of external policy; 
 but the national conviction, internal compulsion, 
 would not permit a government, in face of an 
 immediate question, to submit it to arbitration. 
 If, in the absence of any present issue, it were pro- 
 posed to submit the Monroe Doctrine for definition 
 and limitation to some high Court of Arbitration, 
 to determine whether it should have international 
 acceptance, and how far, I am not qualified to 
 say whether the people of the United States would 
 
84 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 acquiesce in their government entertaining the 
 proposal; but sure I am that if any European 
 state should attempt now to annex some part of 
 American territory, the suggestion to arbitrate 
 would be rejected overwhelmingly. Further, such 
 prior determination by a Court would be a precise 
 instance of what I have styled codification — I 
 hope not too loosely. 
 
 It is perhaps too anxious a forecast, but one 
 naturally inquires how far this process of inter- 
 national control over quasi-external matters of 
 policy may go; whereunto it may grow? If 
 representations might have been made to Great 
 Britain in 1899 concerning her relations to the 
 Transvaal, taking political and warlike action 
 within a territory of recent acquisition and con- 
 ditioned sovereignty, shall it go on to suggesting 
 arbitration should there again be Irish insurrec- 
 tion ? But, barring such flights of an untempered 
 imagination, (how far is arbitration qualified to 
 adjust on solid foundations the political control 
 of regions where strong economical forces are 
 struggling to assert themselves, notably the Pacific ? 
 Take the conspicuous instance of the Hawaiian 
 Islands. Their area and resources, to be sure, do 
 not bulk very largely in an estimate of force 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 85 
 
 simply economical; but their geographical situa- 
 tion gives them great military importance, and 
 so contributes to the determination of that 
 political control which artificially regulates 
 commercial movement and economical rela- 
 tions. The islands are a big factor in the 
 question of the Pacific. Now, by the census of 
 1900, in a population of 154,000, there were 61,000 
 Japanese and 26,000 Chinese, between whom 
 there may be assumed a solidarity of interest, for 
 which it is conceivable that Japan under some 
 circumstances might feel induced to stand sponsor. 
 Whatever the reasons then may have been, it is 
 understood that some ten years ago she testified 
 uneasiness at the prospect of American annexation, 
 which since then has taken place. The white 
 population is 28,000. On the other hand, the 
 group is much farther from Japan than from the 
 United States, which cannot but see in them a 
 potential military danger if in the hands of a 
 foreign Power. This is quite as reasonable a 
 cause for uneasiness as the fortunes of what, after 
 all, is a very small fraction, and that an expatriated 
 fraction, of the Japanese people. Let us suppose 
 that by a surprise, like that of the Russian fleet 
 by Admiral Togo, the islands should pass into the 
 
86 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 possession of Japan, and that the world should then 
 throw itself between the opponent nations, crying 
 " Arbitrate ! " upon what principles would the 
 Court proceed? To what sort of a bargain 
 would either nation be committing itself? What- 
 ever the good-will and integrity of the Court, it 
 would be a leap in the dark; and, for my part, 
 unless the world can absolutely guarantee that 
 there shall never again be war, I do not see how 
 the United States can run the risk of an adverse 
 decision. 
 It is in ignoring such considerations as those 
 I cited in this paper — the general question of the 
 Pacific, the need of Russia for the sea, the require- 
 ments of expansion by Germany and Japan, the 
 case of Cuba, .the Monroe Doctrine — that rests 
 much of the fallacy of the unconditional advocates 
 of arbitration. They are not looking upon the 
 world as it now is, but upon an ideal, which the 
 future may fulfil but the present has not reached. 
 At a recent gathering an eminent American has 
 said that war decides only which nation is the 
 stronger. If by this was meant, as probably was, 
 that war is not a moral arbiter, does not settle an 
 ethical question, it is incontestable. We should 
 have long outlived the idea underlying the ordeal 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 87 
 
 of battle, that war is an appeal to the God of Hosts 
 to judge a quarrel. We retain the expression, 
 perhaps; but it is an archaic poeticism, better 
 abandoned because misleading. War now is, and 
 historically long has been, waged on a basis of 
 asserted right or need; and what it does help to 
 determine is that which is known in physics as the 
 resultant of forces, of which itself is one ; the others 
 being the economical and political necessities or 
 desires of the contending parties. The other 
 forces exist, aggressive, persistent; unless con- 
 trolled by the particular force we call war, in posse 
 or in esse, they reach a solution which is just as 
 really one of force, and may be as unrighteous, 
 and more so, than any war. For instance, except 
 for war, Southern slavery probably would still 
 exist. This is actually the state of the world at 
 the present moment; and while a better balance- 
 wheel than war may be conceived, it is at present 
 doing its work fairly well. The proper temper in 
 which to approach arbitration is not by picturing an 
 imaginary political society of nations and races, but 
 the actual one now existing in this tough old world. 
 The globe on which we dwell bears witness to 
 us intermittently that it undergoes recurrent 
 processes of adjustment, between conditions un- 
 
SS Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 evenly distributed and forces in opposition to one 
 another. Doubtless, some time before we settle 
 down to the state of the moon, adjustment will 
 give us a period of stagnation and permanence; 
 but so long as the imprisoned forces are struggling 
 for room, and a balance is not reached, either by 
 the subjection of some or equal opportunity for 
 all, we will have to expect and acquiesce in occa- 
 sional explosions. To a certain limited extent a 
 third party, man, arbitrates at times, establishing 
 a control of intellect which rather guides than 
 represses. The steam which moves his navies 
 and his railroads is that which mutilates Mar- 
 tinique or blows off the top of Vesuvius. It is 
 much the same with the series of political events 
 which testify to the movement of economical 
 forces. These are more masterful now than two 
 centuries ago, because the popular will which 
 prompts them has emancipated itself from the 
 personal arbiters, the popes, kings, and aristoc- 
 racies, of the earlier dates. We are, so to say, 
 more directly in contact with the primitive impulses 
 of mankind, and on a grander scale. We can see 
 more deeply what it all means, or may mean; 
 not the whole, nor yet to the bottom, but still more 
 than formerly. The forces are blind, perhaps; 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 89 
 
 none testify to this with greater conviction than 
 some of those who hope most from the thought of 
 controlling them by arbitration ; who by excluding 
 war from the resorts of mankind would expect 
 an adjustment more permanent than that which 
 these forces, unrepressed, but not unmodified, 
 can reach for themselves. 
 
 Is the idea practical ? Is it more practical than 
 War has proved ? The latter is accompanied by 
 an immense waste of energy and of substance. 
 So is steam; yet just now it is the great motor of 
 the world. Economize, doubtless, to the utmost, 
 by bettering your processes. Reduce the fre- 
 quency of actual war by such measures as may be 
 practicable; but simultaneously and correlatively 
 make it more efficient, and therefore less wasteful 
 of time and of energy. At present this is being 
 done generally, and is probably more immediately 
 practical to the repression of war than any methods 
 of arbitration can soon be made. Do not lose 
 sight of the fact that all organized force is in 
 degree war, and that upon organized force the 
 world so far has progressed and still progresses. 
 Upon organized force depends the extended 
 shield, under which the movements of peace ad- 
 vance in quietness; and of organized force war 
 
90 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 is simply the last expression. To law and to 
 beneficence organized force supplies the instru- 
 ment, which the body gives to the spirit. Europe 
 has well nigh reached a condition of internal 
 stability, but she has reached it by war and she 
 maintains it by preparation for war. The wants 
 of mankind have been the steam of progress; 
 they have not merely turned the wheels of the 
 engine, they have burst the bonds of opposition 
 and enabled the fitter to enter upon the unim- 
 proved heritage of the unfit. Where such bonds 
 still exist, there must be a conflict of forces, and 
 it passes the power of mere intellect with legal 
 theories of justice and injustice, of prescriptive 
 rights, to keep the contest within bounds, unless 
 it can bring to its support physical aid. The one 
 practical thing to hold it in abeyance is that the 
 several forces, including military power, should 
 show what is in them by the adequacy of their 
 development. 
 
 If with wealth, numbers and opportunity, a 
 people still cannot so organize their strength as 
 to hold their own, it is not practical to expect that 
 those to whom wealth and opportunity are lacking, 
 but who have organizing faculty and willingness 
 to fight, will not under the pressure of need enter 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 91 
 
 upon an inheritance which need will persuade / 
 themselves is ethically their due. What, it may 
 be asked, is likely to be the reasoning of an intelli- 
 gent Chinese or Japanese workman, realizing the 
 relative opportunities of his crowded country 
 and those of Australia and California, and rinding 
 himself excluded by force? What ethical, what 
 moral, value will he find in the contention that his 
 people should not resort to force to claim a share 
 in the better conditions from which force bars 
 him? How did the white races respect the policy 
 of isolation in Japan and China, though it only 
 affected commercial advantages ? I do not in the 
 least pronounce upon the ethical propriety of 
 exclusion by those in possession — the right of 
 property, now largely challenged. I merely draw 
 attention to the apparent balance of ethical argu- 
 ment, with the fact of antagonistic economical 
 conditions; and I say that for such a situation 
 the only practical arbiter is the physical force, of 
 which war is merely the occasional political 
 expression. 
 
 In the broad outlook, which embraces not merely 
 armed collision, but the condition of preparation 
 and attitude of mind that enable a people to put 
 forth, on demand, the full measure of their physical 
 
92 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 strength, — numerical, financial and military, — to 
 repel a threatened injury or maintain a national 
 right, War is the regulator and adjuster of those 
 movements of the peoples, which in their ten- 
 dencies and outcome constitute history. These 
 are natural forces, which from their origin and 
 power are self-existent and independent in relation 
 to man. His provision against them is War; 
 the artificial organization of other forces, intrinsic- 
 ally less powerful materially, but with the ad- 
 vantage which intelligent combination and direc- 
 tion confer. By this he can measurably control, 
 guide, delay, or otherwise beneficially modify, 
 results which threaten to be disastrous in their 
 extent, tendency, or suddenness. So regarded 
 War is remedial or preventive. 
 
 I apprehend that these two adjectives, drawn 
 from the vocabulary of the healer, embody both 
 the practical and moral justification of war. An 
 ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It 
 will be well that we invoke moral power to help 
 heal the evils of the world, as the physician brings 
 it to bear on the ills of the body; but few are pre- 
 pared to rely upon it alone. We need material 
 aid as well. The dykes of Holland withstand by 
 direct opposition the natural mission of the North 
 
The Practical Aspect of War 93 
 
 Sea to swallow up the land they protect. The 
 levees of the Mississippi restrain and guide to 
 betterment the course of the mighty current, 
 which but for them would waste its strength to 
 devastate the shores on either hand. These two 
 artificial devices represent a vast expenditure of 
 time, money, and energy; of unproductive labor 
 so-called; but they are cheaper than a flood. 
 The police of our great cities prevent the outburst 
 of crime, the fearful possibilities of which manifest 
 themselves on the happily rare occasions when 
 material prevention has from any cause lapsed. 
 The police bodies are a great expense; but they 
 cost less than a few days of anarchy. Let us not 
 deceive ourselves by fancying that the strong 
 material impulses which drive those masses of 
 men whom we style nations, or races, are to be 
 checked or guided, unless to the argument of a 
 reasonable contention there be given the strong 
 support of organized material power. If the 
 organized disappear, the unorganized will but 
 come into surer and more dreadful collision. 
 
IV 
 
 WAR FROM THE CHRISTIAN 
 STANDPOINT 
 
WAR FROM THE CHRISTIAN STAND- 
 POINT 
 
 By Alfred T. Mahan, U. S. N. 
 
 A Paper Read before the Church Congress, Providence, Rhode 
 Island, November 15, 1900 
 
 F[ considering my subject, — War from the 
 Christian point of view, — I assume that the 
 test to which the idea of War is to be brought, and 
 by which resort to it is to be justified or condemned, 
 is to be sought in the acts and teaching of the 
 Divine Founder of Christianity, our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and in the writings of those His immediate 
 followers and Apostles that are accepted by the 
 Christian Church as part of the revelation divinely 
 inspired, and to her committed. For this discus- 
 sion I recognize no other standard, however 
 apparently exalted and humane. Such other 
 standard may to some seem higher than that of 
 Christianity, but it is not the Christian standpoint. 
 I admit, of course, that any inferences of my own, 
 drawn from the standards I accept, however con- 
 
98 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 elusive they may be to myself, are, like all human 
 reasonings, subject to dispute by others ; and that 
 even the general consensus of Christian opinion 
 through long ages, though powerful in cumulative 
 effect, is not to be considered final, for I am not 
 aware of any authoritative utterance of the Church 
 in the matter. 
 
 In approaching the consideration of War from 
 the Christian standpoint, one is immediately con- 
 fronted with the fact, to which he must address him- 
 self, that there exists at the present day in many 
 of the Christian community an uneasy feeling 
 that War, because of the painful incidents attend- 
 ing it, cannot in any way or in any degree be recon- 
 ciled with the profession and practice of Chris- 
 tianity. This feeling, let me say in passing, is, in 
 my opinion, not of Christian origin, but has rather 
 been imported into and imposed upon Chris- 
 tianity by those alien to its beliefs, or defective in 
 their tenure of them. Christianity deplores War 
 as an evil; it does not, as exemplified by its 
 highest exponents, reject it as necessarily evil. 
 The most conspicuous apostles of the extreme 
 position in condemning War are not now Christian 
 believers. In illustration of this remark I would 
 cite on the one hand Herbert Spencer, Frederic 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint 99 
 
 Harrison, and John Morley; on the other the 
 present Bishop of Durham, 1 whose position in 
 deprecation of War appears to me as advanced 
 as is consistent with conservative recognition of 
 Christian authorities. 
 
 This feeling, that War is irreconcilable with 
 Christianity, if it becomes conviction, rejects im- 
 plicitly the proposition that War is remedial; for, 
 so far as this proposition is true, viz., that War 
 is a remedy for greater evils, especially moral 
 evils, War is justified. War, in short, is justified 
 as an element of human progress, necessitated by 
 a condition of mankind obviously far removed 
 from Christian perfection, and, because of this 
 imperfection, susceptible of remedy. 
 
 This, in brief, is my proposition. It does not 
 commit me to the position that War is in all 
 circumstances justified as a means of redressing 
 wrong, nor to the defense of wars of any particular 
 character. Dynastic wars, wars of conquest, wars 
 clearly unrighteous, with these I have nothing 
 to do. I affirm merely the general proposition: 
 that in the present imperfect and frequently 
 wicked state of mankind, evil easily may, and often 
 
 x The late Bishop Westcott, who has died since this paper 
 was read. 
 
ioo Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 does, reach a point where it must be controlled, 
 perhaps even destroyed, by physical force ; and if 
 the evil-doer has the means to resist, and does 
 resist, by force, the obligation to destroy the evil, 
 and the evil-doer, if need be, still exists. The 
 result then is War. 
 
 I do not appear before you, therefore, as an 
 apologist for War, in the modern colloquial sense 
 of the word " apology." I do not feel myself 
 hampered by any uneasy distrust of the soundness 
 of my cause. I affirm that War, under conditions 
 that may and do arise, is righteous ; and, further, 
 that under such conditions it is distinctly an 
 unrighteous deed to refrain from forcibly redressing 
 evil, when it is in the power of thine hand to do 
 so. 
 
 On the other hand, to clear the ground of boot- 
 less discussion, I admit willingly that War is — 
 not evil — but an evil; a very different thing. 
 Amputation is an evil, but it is not evil. I admit 
 that, were the universal world living a life of 
 Christian perfection, War would be unnecessary 
 and wrong ; and, finally, as the world is doubtless 
 progressing, I gladly concede the duty of mini- 
 mizing the frequency of War. 
 
 At the same time, I grievously suspect some of 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint 101 
 
 the modern suggested substitutes for the arbitra- 
 ment of War, and notably that of obligatory resort 
 to a court of arbitration. I conceive that, on 
 the one hand, the sense of nationality is still too 
 strong; and on the other, that the interests and 
 sympathies of peoples are too intertwined, by the 
 present closeness of communication, to admit 
 of impartiality. Where would have been found 
 an impartial arbitrator in the late war in South 
 Africa? The whole world seethed with bias on 
 the one side or the other. What do most think of 
 the impartiality of the arbitration tribunal — for 
 such it was — which decided the election to the 
 Presidency of the United States between Hayes 
 and Tilden, in 1877? 
 
 I have affirmed that under some conditions it is 
 unrighteous not to use force to the extent of War. 
 It will be asked, What conditions — from the 
 Christian standpoint? In reply, I apply St. 
 Paul's words: "Whatsoever is not of faith — of 
 conviction — is sin." ' For the nation, as for the 
 individual, conscience must be the judge; nor, 
 in my judgment, is the national conscience justi- 
 fied in turning a case over to arbitration until it is 
 satisfied that the matter is such that the decision 
 
 1 Romans, xiv, 23. 
 
102 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 either way will not violate its conscientious con- 
 Iviction of right. 
 
 It is not needless to remark how grave a burden 
 of obligation this lays upon citizens who are alive 
 to Christian obligation, to exhaust the spiritual 
 privileges of prayer, and of power with God, 
 which He has given to them. It is not needless to 
 say this; for, while I have seen much utterance 
 upon recent questions of national interest, often 
 fierce denunciation, clerical and lay, of one thing 
 I have been privileged to see little; and that is 
 the calm reminder, clear of all political expression, 
 that the prayer of Christians can certainly obtain 
 from on high the guidance of the national con- 
 science. No check on an unrighteous war can 
 equal this. 
 
 It will be objected to me — and accurately — 
 that so far I have only given the standard by which 
 the justice of a war is, in my opinion, to be decided, 
 from a Christian standpoint; that I have quietly 
 assumed and affirmed, — not proved, — that War 
 is ever justifiable from a Christian standpoint. 
 This is true ; I proceed to this argument. 
 
 There are certain contentions with which I pre- 
 sume an audience like this will not expect me to 
 deal. For instance, that War is forbidden by the 
 
War }rom the Christian Standpoint 103 
 
 commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," taken 
 arbitrarily out of an extensive code which elsewhere 
 commands the killing of men for several specified 
 offenses. Or again, that the imagery of the Bible 
 is to be pressed into service : that our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is the " Prince of Peace ; " z oblivious of the 
 other image that " In righteousness He doth 
 judge and make War." a Again, there are argu- 
 ments for the permissibility of War, to professing 
 Christians; for example, the failure to condemn 
 it, either explicitly, or by clear inference, or 
 to require abandonment of their profession by 
 converted soldiers, such as the centurion Cor- 
 nelius. 3 These, being familiar, I shall not 
 repeat. 
 
 Nor do I adopt for my own the argument of the 
 virtues developed by War: self-sacrifice, endur- 
 ance, etc. Like the sufferings of War, these are 
 to my mind incidental, not of the essence. Neither 
 do I accept the view of some respectable authorities, 
 that War is a final appeal to the judgment 
 of God. On the contrary, this directly traverses 
 my own position, which is, that, a case 
 
 1 Isaiah, ix, 6. 
 
 * Revelations, xix, 1 1 - 1 3 
 
 3 Acts, x. 
 
104 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 of possible war arising, God has given us a 
 conscience, with revealed data, and necessary 
 faculties for decision; I, therefore, should no 
 more expect enlightenment as to His judgment 
 upon the case, by recourse to War, than I should 
 by tossing a penny. The one method no more 
 than the other has the sanction of His Word; 
 indeed the casting of the lot has the greater, 
 though insufficient, sanction. The last instance 
 of resort to this means, ' in order to ascertain 
 God's will, preceded the giving of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 War is the employment of force for the attain- 
 ment of an object, or for the prevention of an 
 injury. If the object be wrong, the action is also 
 wrong; here is no question. But how if the 
 object be right ? Does our Lord, do His Apostles, 
 by act or by word, teach or imply that it is wrong 
 to use force to attain a righteous end? By their 
 teaching, is such use of force always the doing 
 evil that good may come ? 
 
 I think not; personally, I am sure not. Non- 
 resistance to evil is one of the leading traits of our 
 Lord's character; the fact emphasizes the signif- 
 icance of His use of force, not on His own behalf, 
 
 1 Acts i, 24 - 26. 
 
War front the Christian Standpoint log 
 
 to expel the sacrilegious from the Temple. 1 He 
 is the Lamb dumb before the shearer, who also 
 forbids railing accusations; yet from His lips 
 issue the words, " Go ye and tell that fox; " 2 and, 
 " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers ! " 3 
 
 The one positive act of the expulsion of the 
 money-changers, for which I am not aware that 
 He had the warrant of official authority, indorses 
 the use of force upon due occasion, notwithstand- 
 ing His numerous utterances in favor of generally 
 opposite conduct. But these latter also, in my 
 judgment, have been much twisted from their true 
 significance by neglecting to take into account 
 those other words of His own, " It is the spirit that 
 quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing;" 4 or, as 
 St. Paul has it, "The letter killeth, the spirit 
 giveth life." 5 Stripped of such qualification, 
 the commands, " Give to him that asketh thee," 6 
 " Resist not evil," > would, even in individual con- 
 
 1 S. Matthew, xxi, 12 ; S. Mark, xi, 15 ; S. Luke, xix, 45 ; S. 
 John, ii, 15. 
 
 2 S. Luke, xiii, 32. 
 
 3 S. Matthew, xxiii, 33. 
 
 4 S. John, vi, 63. 
 
 5 2. Corinthians, iii, 6. 
 
 6 S. Matthew, v, 42. 
 
 7 S. Matthew, v, 39. 
 
106 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 duct, in the present imperfect conditions of the 
 world, result in transferring all property to the 
 idle and all control to the vicious. 
 
 Our Lord's utterances against the use of force 
 would, I apprehend, be found to fall under two 
 principal divisions, the exemplars of which would 
 be: (i) " Resist not evil, him that will take thy 
 coat forbid not to take thy cloak also; "   and, (2) 
 " Put up thy sword within its sheath," 2 "My 
 kingdom is not of this world." 3 
 
 As regards non-resistance to evil, it seems to 
 me certain that these commands, at most, are to 
 the individual Christian, as concerning his own 
 individual rights and their vindication. There 
 is in them no warrant to surrender the rights of 
 another, still less if he is the trustee of those 
 rights. This applies with double emphasis to 
 rulers, and to nations; for these, in this matter, 
 have no personal rights. They are guardians, 
 trustees, and as such are bound to do their best, 
 even to the use of force, if need be, for the rightful 
 interest of their wards. 
 
 Personally I go farther, and maintain that the 
 
 1 S. Matthew, v. 39-41. 
 
 2 S. John, xviii, 1 1 . 
 
 3 S. John, xviii, 36 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint 107 
 
 possession of power is a talent committed in trust, 
 for which account will be exacted ; x and that, under 
 some circumstances, an obligation to repress evil 
 external to its borders rests upon a nation, as 
 surely as responsibility for the slums rests upon the 
 rich quarters of a city. In this respect I call to 
 witness Armenia, Crete, and Cuba; without, 
 however, presuming myself to judge the con- 
 sciences of the nations who witnessed withouf 
 intervention the sufferings of the first two. 
 
 On the point before us : As regards the use of 
 force in municipal regulation, St. Paul is explicit : 
 " The ruler beareth not the sword in vain, for 
 he is a minister of God, an avenger to execute 
 wrath upon him that doeth evil." 2 But if the 
 evil-doer, through numbers or otherwise, is strong 
 enough to oppose effective resistance, is the ruler 
 then to sheathe his sword? Assuredly not, in 
 principle; and in practice only if conscience 
 affirms that it is best for the state. Here you have 
 War, — internal war ; civil war perhaps, or a mob 
 ruling the city. If, now, the evil-doer — the 
 aggressor, or the oppressor — be not within your 
 borders, but without, in what is the variation of 
 
 1 S. Matthew, xxv, 14-29. 
 3 Romans, xiii, 4. 
 
108 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 principle? The sword again must defend the 
 right, and you have external War. 
 
 Suffering follows : wounds, death, bereavement, 
 economical distress, anxieties multifold. Con- 
 cerning these things, they are a large part of the 
 account; but awful as they are, and to be taken 
 into account, they are not the essence of the 
 matter. Shall the nation do right, and suffer? 
 or do wrong, and be at ease? What would be 
 the answer of Him who commanded not to fear 
 the destruction of the body, as compared with that 
 of the soul? Is militarism really more deadening 
 to the spirit than commercialism ? or than legalism ? 
 
 As regards the utterances of our Lord which 
 apparently discourage resort to force : " Put up 
 thy sword," and " My kingdom is not of this 
 world, for if it were then would my servants fight," 
 they have doubtless had upon the minds of men 
 an effect that is in direction just; but dispropor- 
 tioned, and disregardful also of qualifying words 
 and circumstances. 
 
 The close of our Lord's career on earth intro- 
 duced into the energizing of the Christian dispen- 
 sation changes of a momentous character, to which 
 He frequently alludes. Thus, before His passion, 
 " / was not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint 109 
 
 house of Israel;" 1 after His resurrection, " Go 
 ye, and make disciples of all the nations." 2 Again, 
 " Unless I depart, the Comforter will not come 
 unto you; " 3 this, with all the far-reaching conse- 
 quences of the coming of the Holy Ghost, is famil- 
 iar to us all. We are less apt to remark, but it 
 bears strongly on the subject of War from the 
 Christian standpoint, the strictly analogous utter- 
 ance : " Now, he that hath no sword, let him sell 
 his cloak and buy one ; for, the things concerning 
 Me have an end." 4 The spiritual things concern- 
 ing Him ended not then, nor since; but, unless 
 the sword was to be bought for ornament, not for 
 use, the use of it in the approaching stage of His 
 dispensation is recognized, — nay, authorized. 
 Those who have read Mozley's " Ruling Ideas in 
 Early Ages," may recall the just emphasis laid by 
 him upon the necessity, not merely of permitting, 
 but of enjoining practices which the present times 
 require, yet which after times under the guidance of 
 God may outgrow ; explicitly the personal obliga- 
 tion of the individual Avenger of Blood. Our 
 Lord, contemplating His death, did not merely 
 
 1 S. Matthew, xv, 24 ; Romans, xv, 8. 
 
 a S. Matthew, xxviii, 19. 
 
 3 S. John, xvi, 7. 
 
 * S. Luke, xxii, 36, 37. 
 
no Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 countenance, but commanded the provision of 
 the sword, and with it, by legitimate implication, 
 the use of it. St. Peter, by misunderstanding of 
 our Lord's purpose and necessary death, and 
 prematurely — because the end was not yet — 
 used the sword wrongfully, and was rebuked ;   
 but the general command was not rescinded. 
 
 Further, the full force of this remarkable com- 
 mand will scarcely be realized, unless we view it 
 in connection with the reference which He Him- 
 self made to its antecedents. " When I sent you 
 without purse, and scrip, and shoes, 2 lacked ye 
 anything? And they said, nothing. Then said 
 He unto them, But now, he that hath a purse let 
 him take it, and likewise his scrip : and he that 
 hath no sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one ; 
 for the things concerning Me have an end." 3 
 
 On the first mission of the Twelve, under the 
 dispensation of His presence in the flesh, our Lord 
 had specially directed them to go without the 
 preparations which men ought normally to make 
 as a matter of mere prudent provision ; they were 
 then to rely, under the dispensation of the moment, 
 
 1 S. John, xviii, 10, n; S. Matthew, xxvi, 52-54. 
 
 2 S. Luke, x, 4 ; S. Matthew, x, 9, 10. 
 
 3 S. Luke, xxii, 35-37. 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint in 
 
 upon a Providential care beyond the common — 
 supernatural. On this second occasion He directs 
 them to neglect no ordinary precaution, but, for 
 the probable emergencies of life, to rely upon 
 usual human provisions. Among these, by express 
 command of the sword, He clearly recognizes the 
 need of, and sanctions the resort to, self-defense 
 by arms ; and that in the fullest sense consistent 
 with righteousness. Nor is it without significance 
 that He places the need of the sword before that of 
 a garment; useful, if not indispensable. And 
 again, it is not without significance that the 
 authority of the sword and the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost coincide in date ; for with the Holy Ghost 
 comes the illumination of the Christian conscience, 
 to which the power of the sword can securely be 
 committed. 
 
 As regards the words, " My kingdom is not of 
 this world," they are, if rightly understood, as 
 true now as ever. St. Paul after the Lord's 
 departure reaffirmed, " The weapons of our war- 
 fare are not carnal. ,, J In physical coercion of 
 material evil the sword acts within its sphere ; it 
 has no power over intellect, or moral assent, nor 
 should it dare to assume such power. Attention, 
 
 1 2 Corinthians, x, 3, 4. 
 
ii2 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 however, fails to observe that our Lord's con- 
 secutive expression accepts without implication 
 of rebuke the probable course of an earthly 
 state, confined, in redressing evil, to earthly 
 weapons. " If My kingdom were of this world 
 then would My servants fight, that I should 
 not be delivered unto the Jews." * Every in- 
 dependent state is a kingdom of this world. Its 
 subjects, or citizens, if confronted by the prospect 
 of innocent blood being shed, or of their Ruler 
 being slain (their government destroyed), are 
 justified in resisting by force. Material evil-doing 
 would be met by physical force, and our Lord 
 intimates no condemnation. He who knew all 
 things, and could at will summon twelve legions of 
 angels, 2 understood what the case demanded, and 
 could properly refrain from what after all, had 
 He summoned them, would have been the use of 
 force supernatural; just as He abstained in His 
 temptation from supplying His wants by His 
 supernatural power. 3 He willed at His betrayal 
 to allow violent evil to work its will ; for He and 
 He alone, then knew that in the counsels of God it 
 
 1 S. John, xviii, 36. 
 
 * S. Matthew, xxvi, 53. 
 
 * S. Matthew, iv, 3-7. 
 
War from the Christian Standpoint 113 
 
 was determined that that was the hour of the 
 Powers of Darkness. 1 
 
 Such knowledge we do not possess. We have 
 our natural faculties; we have the revelation of 
 God's will in the Bible ; and we have the promise 
 of the Holy Ghost for guidance. We have, further, 
 the sword committed to us for a present distress, 
 which in the recent light of Armenia, of Cuba, and 
 of China, it is not too much to affirm has not yet 
 passed away. These are our leading data ; upon 
 which, as to action, conscience must reach its 
 decision, and issue its mandates. 
 
 If I am asked what are we to think when two 
 consciences, both presumably equally honest and 
 Christian, reach opposed conclusions as to right 
 and wrong, I am not concerned, in reply, to give 
 definitions. It is sufficient in such cases simply 
 to recognize the fact, upon which turns all St. 
 Paul's argument in Romans xiv. : " To him who 
 accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is 
 unclean." Such a one, individual or nation, must 
 obey his conscience. To this dilemma of con- 
 science as to War, Peace presents a close analogy 
 of its own. In the Providence of God, or through 
 the weakness of man, the most successful govern- 
 
 1 S. Luke, xxii, 53. 
 
ii4 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 ment is that carried on by communities of free 
 | men, of which it is a commonplace that a healthy 
 opposition, the clash of parties, conscientiously 
 differing, is an inevitable feature. The why of 
 this may be an interesting philosophical specula- 
 tion; but for practical purposes we need only to 
 recognize the fact. The case is precisely analogous 
 to that of two nations warring for a principle ; of 
 which our own history furnishes an illustration in 
 the war between the North and the South. The 
 marriages most successful in the development of 
 a complete union are doubtless those where the 
 virtues of one complement the defects of the 
 other; but in such cases there is necessarily 
 counter-action as well as accord. Honest collision 
 is evidently a law of progress, however we explain 
 its origin ; whether that be in the ordinance of God, 
 or in the imperfection of man. 
 
THE CAPTURE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 
 AT SEA 
 
THE CAPTURE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 
 AT SEA 
 
 By Julian S. Corbett 
 
 The Nineteenth Century and After \ June, 1907 
 
 "AS things stand at present," writes Professor 
 £** Perels in the last edition of his Interna- 
 tionale Seerecht, " we cannot count on the exemp- 
 tion of private property at sea from capture in 
 the near future. The main factor is that the 
 British Government since the Declaration of Paris 
 has maintained an attitude of persistent and 
 determined resistance to all movements for reform- 
 ing the laws of maritime warfare." Publicists of 
 almost all countries, including our own, have been 
 expressing themselves in similar terms, and we 
 are warned by some of our best international 
 lawyers that there is growing up abroad a mass of 
 hostile opinion on the subject which it is unsafe 
 for us to ignore. Professor Perels' words con- 
 veniently focus for us that alleged mass of opinion, 
 
n8 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 and since he was formerly Admiralitatsrath and 
 is now Departements Direktor in Reichs-Marine 
 Amt and Professor in the Berlin University, we 
 may take his formula as something like our official 
 arraignment at the bar of Europe. But before 
 examining the charge with a view to preparing 
 a defence it is wise at once to enter a claim to vary 
 the indictment. We do not deny the " persistent 
 and determined resistance.' ' We merely beg to 
 submit that our " persistent and determined 
 resistance " has been " to all movements for re- 
 forming the laws of maritime warfare in the 
 interests of the great military States." 
 
 It is true that some of our most respected au- 
 thorities would persuade us that the exemption 
 of private property at sea from capture is particu- 
 larly to our own interests, because we possess the 
 largest, and therefore, as they assume, the most 
 vulnerable mercantile marine, and because we 
 rely for our sustenance more than any other nation 
 on seaborne supplies. But this is a military 
 question, on which our publicists are not safe 
 guides. It involves strategical considerations, 
 which clearly they have not taken into account, 
 and their view is not shared by the Navy. It 
 is a view, however, which is seriously urged by 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 119 
 
 serious people, and we must return to it. For the 
 present it is enough to claim that the leading facts 
 in the history of the movement create a prima 
 facie case that exemption is for the benefit of 
 weak fleets and powerful armies. Started origi- 
 nally by a French abbe, the idea was first embodied 
 in a treaty by Frederick the Great, a man who had 
 had practical experience of how gravely the vulner- 
 ability of commerce at sea may affect the progress 
 of a Continental war. When he was in alliance 
 with Great Britain it did not occur to him to make 
 the suggestion. It was the newborn Republic of 
 America that proposed it to him; and he wisely 
 agreed, since the arrangement made it impossible 
 for the United States ever to make war on him at 
 all. Similarly, the United States was wise to get 
 the sanction of so great a figure to the principle 
 of immunity, since her budding commerce was 
 always at the mercy of her one enemy so long as 
 capture was permitted. With material advantages 
 so great and obvious in hand it can convince no- 
 body to talk of lofty and disinterested ideals. 
 
 Next it was Napoleon who put forward the new 
 doctrine, and sought to establish it by the revo- 
 lutionary violence of his " Continental System." 
 In 1866, Austria, cooped up in the head of the 
 
i2o Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 Adriatic by the menace of a superior Italian fleet, 
 declared for it. Italy, similarly threatened by 
 France, had already done so. Again, in 1870 
 Prussia magnanimously intimated that, true to 
 the sublime principles of Frederick the Great, 
 it was her intention, whatever France did, to treat 
 as sacred all innocent private property at sea. 
 
 When the buffalo found the lion in his path, 
 he exclaimed, with a superb gesture, " For my 
 part, I mean to remain true to my vegetarian 
 principles." 
 
 Now to examine the charge more seriously and 
 with what temper we can. For it must be under- 
 stood that our friends abroad make their accusa- 
 tion opprobriously. We are represented as stand- 
 ing in the way of human progress, of obstructing 
 for our own selfish ends the march of civilization, of 
 seeking to perpetuate the methods of barbarism, 
 of thwarting the disinterested aspirations of nobler 
 nations to mitigate the severity of war and human- 
 ize its practice. And all this because, as they say, 
 we refuse to complete the work of the Declaration 
 of Paris by consenting to give to private property 
 at sea that complete sanctity which it is unblush- 
 ingly alleged to enjoy in warfare on land. So 
 shocking does such depravity sound that in many 
 
Capture 0} Private Property at Sea 121 
 
 cases our serious and high-minded journalism, 
 which is so dear to us, is beginning to ask, in its 
 most moving and conscientious tones, if we are 
 to be the last of all nations to recognize this sacred 
 duty to humanity. 
 
 Were it not that this particular attitude towards 
 the question was so ludicrous it would be difficult 
 to treat it with patience. Such a charge against 
 ourselves is peculiarly hard, seeing that we have 
 to our credit a record in respect of the mitigation 
 of war which no nation can pretend to rival. There 
 is no nation that can point to such a concession 
 to the public opinion of the world against interest 
 as we made in consenting, in 1856, to the doctrine 
 of " Free ships, free goods." At the time it was 
 widely regarded, and is still so regarded, as de- 
 priving us of one of the most powerful weapons in 
 our armory; and yet for the sake of goodwill 
 amongst nations, for the sake of softening the 
 hardships of war to neutrals, we surrendered 
 that right. For centuries we had clung to it as 
 essential to the maintenance of our sea power ; yet 
 a higher and more farsighted wisdom pressed for 
 the almost quixotic sacrifice, and it was done. Can 
 any nation show a sacrifice beside it? Let him 
 who can cast the first stone at us now. 
 
122 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 To add to the unreasonableness of our accusers, 
 instead of acknowledging handsomely the lengths 
 to which we went on that occasion, they rail at 
 us because we will not extend the principle to the 
 complete immunity of private property at sea. As 
 though the one principle had anything to do with 
 the other. " You might as well say," said Sir 
 William Harcourt during a debate on the 
 point in 1878 — and surely he, whether as a 
 Liberal humanitarian or an international lawyer, 
 should carry weight enough — " You might as 
 well say that the extension of the Great Western 
 Railway would be an extension of the Great North- 
 ern. They do not go in the same direction, they 
 have not the same object, they are not parallel 
 in any respect.' ' Nothing can serve better for 
 clearing the subject of fallacies and exhibiting 
 the true grounds of the British attitude than to 
 follow out the line of reasoning which the great 
 international jurist indicated in opposing the idea 
 on that occasion. 
 
 If the ideas which determined the status of 
 private property in war be traced back to the 
 dawn of modern international law, we shall find 
 Grotius, in 1625, and Bynkershoek a century later, 
 giving as an axiom the right to confiscate or destroy 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 123 
 
 all property whatsoever belonging to an enemy 
 wherever found. The axiom was quickly modified 
 by Vattel, who wrote during the Seven Years' 
 War. While admitting the abstract right, he 
 maintained that its exercise should only be per- 
 mitted as far as it is called for by the purposes of 
 war. Here we have the first application of the 
 true theory of war to the question. We make 
 war not for the purpose of doing the enemy all 
 the harm we can, but to bring such pressure to bear 
 upon him as will force him to do our will — that 
 is, will convince him that to make peace on our 
 terms is better than continuing to fight. Now, 
 the indiscriminate plunder of private property and 
 its wanton destruction, while causing an immense 
 amount of individual suffering, do not contribute 
 in the most forcible way to the kind of pressure 
 that is needed. Consequently, it had already 
 become the practice for an invading enemy to 
 treat private property with a certain respect, or 
 rather, perhaps, economy, and to endeavor to 
 set some restraint upon its indiscriminate plunder 
 and destruction. 
 
 It is to this movement is due the oft repeated 
 but wholly unfounded assertion that private 
 property ashore, unlike private property at sea, 
 
124 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 has been made generally immune from capture. 
 It is further asserted that this immunity was due 
 to a growing sense of humanity and a Christian 
 desire to mitigate the horrors of war. Now, this 
 is the kind of assertion which makes plain and 
 practical people impatient with international law 
 and blinds them to its value and reality. It is 
 just one of those expressions which jurists let slip 
 from a mere habit of the pen. Of this particular 
 statement, that the restrictions in question were 
 due to a growing sense of humanity, there is no 
 real evidence whatever. Humanity may have been 
 a contributory cause, but, if we turn from the loose 
 expressions of jurists to the dry light of the orders 
 actually promulgated by invading generals, we 
 see at once that the real reason of the restrictions 
 was strategical and military, and not moral at all. 
 Take, for instance, the earliest case as typical — 
 the rule of Gustavus Adolphus against plunder- 
 ing: "If it is so please God that we beat the 
 enemy either in the field or in his leaguer, then 
 shall every man follow the chase of the enemies; 
 and no man give himself up to fall upon the pillage 
 so long as it is possible to follow the enemy, " 
 etc. This germ idea that pillage actually lessens 
 your power to exert the necessary pressure was 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 125 
 
 further developed by the rules of Frederick the 
 Great ; but he took a long step further. For that 
 great master of war recognized not only that 
 pillage demoralized and weakened the weapon 
 with which the pressure had to be exerted, but that 
 pillage and destruction were not the most profitable 
 or effective ways of exercising your rights over the 
 enemy's property. To deprive the enemy's people 
 of their power to produce was both to destroy the 
 value of your conquest and its power of maintain- 
 ing your troops. To protect the goose and enable 
 her to continue laying her golden eggs was the 
 only sound policy. He therefore insisted on the 
 method of exercising his war right by levying 
 contributions and making requisitions. By this 
 means he at once maintained the temper of his 
 weapon and made the pressure of the occupation 
 more lasting, more powerful, and more directly 
 coercive to the collective life of the enemy. To 
 say that he abandoned his right over enemy's 
 property is to play with words. " If an army is in 
 winter quarters in an enemy's country," he writes 
 in his General Principles 0} War, " the soldiers 
 receive gratis bread, meat, and beer, which are 
 furnished by the country." And again: "The 
 enemy's country is bound to supply horses for the 
 
126 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 artillery, munitions of war, and provisions, and 
 to make up any deficiencies of money.' ' The 
 truth is that no restraint of the old rule of Grotius 
 and Bynkershoek is to be found that does not oper- 
 ate to the military or strategical benefit of the 
 belligerent, not one that does not directly increase 
 the pressure which the invading force is seeking 
 to exert to achieve its end. The principle reached 
 its clearest expression during the Franco-German 
 war, where it was absolutely essential to German 
 success that they should not goad the French 
 people into guerilla warfare, as Napoleon had done 
 in Spain, by permitting irresponsible exercise of 
 belligerent rights over private property. By the 
 German orders of 1870 no requisition could be 
 made except by general officers or officers in com- 
 mand of detached corps. 
 
 The system worked admirably, and, on the 
 whole, as mercifully and with as little individual 
 suffering as is possible in war. The object of an 
 invasion — the means by which it exerts the neces- 
 sary pressure — is to produce a stagnation of 
 national life. This the German invasion did effect- 
 ively, and the stagnation grew deeper and more 
 intolerable the more it was prolonged, till submis- 
 sion was recognized to be the lesser evil. But 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 127 
 
 all this was not done merely by the victories of 
 armies. It was done by the exercise of belligerent 
 rights over enemy's property : of the right to seize 
 and consume it ; of the right to control roads and 
 railways and inland waters, so as to prevent its 
 flow and render commerce impossible except in so 
 far as it suited the belligerent ; and of the right to 
 carry military execution against it in case of resist- 
 ance by its owners. Without the right to requisi- 
 tions and contributions, without the right to con- 
 trol civil communications, it could not be done. 
 War, as is universally admitted, would become 
 impossible. Nations cannot be brought to their 
 knees by the mere conflict of armies, any more than 
 they can by the single combats of kings. It is 
 what follows victory that counts — the choking of 
 the national life by process of execution on prop- 
 erty, the stagnation produced by the stoppage of 
 civil communications, whether public or private. 
 Here is a picture of what the process meant, 
 drawn by the able pen of a man who saw it face 
 to face in 1870: 
 
 " In occupied towns officials receive no salaries, 
 professional men no fees. The law courts are 
 closed. Holders of house property can get no 
 
128 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 rent. Holders of land can neither get rent, nor 
 can they cultivate the soil or sell their crops. 
 The State funds pay no dividends, or, if they do, 
 all communication between occupied and unoccu- 
 pied districts being broken off, the dividends can- 
 not be touched. Railway dividends are equally 
 intangible, and perhaps the line on which the 
 shareholder has especially counted is in the hands 
 of the enemy." 
 
 This is what conquest of territory means — 
 the prostration of the national life; and this is 
 why conquest of territory is the means by which 
 land warfare seeks to gain its end. 
 
 With this picture in our minds df the way in 
 which private property is dealt with ashore, and 
 the way in which it is made to contribute to the 
 victor's object, let us turn to the sea, and inquire 
 in what manner its treatment there is less moral, 
 less human, or less necessary, if war is to be waged 
 at all. To begin with, we note that in some 
 respects private property has never been so badly 
 treated at sea as it has been on land ; at least, in 
 modern times and in regular warfare it has never 
 been the subject of indiscriminate plunder. The 
 ruthless scramble for loot, which led to the acutest 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 129 
 
 suffering and cruelty ashore, was no part of sea 
 capture. Prizes were taken by orderly act of 
 war, were regularly condemned, and the proceeds 
 divided amongst the captors in cool blood and by 
 authority. Again, at sea immediate military exe- 
 cution was never the penalty for resisting inter- 
 ference with private property, as it always was, 
 and in some cases still is, ashore. The real reason 
 why capture at sea got a bad name was due to 
 privateers, by whom the greater part of it was done, 
 and who in some areas, and particularly in the 
 Mediterranean, were often guilty of unspeakable 
 horrors. The evil was early recognized by Great 
 Britain, and during the Seven Years' War an Act 
 was passed forbidding the granting of commissions 
 to vessels under a certain tonnage, in order to 
 ensure that the work should be done by respectable 
 merchant captains, and not by mere smugglers 
 and pirates. It is not, of course, pretended that 
 this law was made from merely philanthropic 
 reasons, any more than was our concession about 
 " free ships, free goods." Though a sense of 
 honor did enter into it, the chief reason was that 
 we found ourselves unable to control the lawless- 
 ness of small privateers, and felt that neutrals, 
 whom we did not wish to exasperate, had a legiti- 
 
130 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 mate cause of complaint. Now the abuse is no 
 longer possible, since the Declaration of Paris 
 abolished privateering. Over and above this 
 great mitigation of the hardships of warfare against 
 private property at sea, there must also be taken 
 into consideration the spread of the practice of 
 marine insurance, which now distributes the 
 initial loss by individuals over the general capital 
 of the nation. The result is that even the most 
 convinced advocates of the change, both at home 
 and abroad, admit that the argument from inhu- 
 manity is untenable. The Lord Chancellor, him- 
 self our strongest advocate of reform, has plainly 
 declared that " no operation of war inflicts less 
 suffering than the capture of unarmed vessels at 
 sea." 
 
 The truth is that the sea service, in demanding 
 the retention of its right to general capture, asks 
 no more than what is universally granted to the 
 land service. It asks no more than to exercise 
 war rights over property in so far as, in the words 
 of Vattel, it is called for by the purposes of war — 
 in so far as the pressure necessary to bring peace 
 cannot be exerted without it. It asks only to be 
 allowed to produce that stagnation of the enemy's 
 life at sea which an army is permitted to produce 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 131 
 
 ashore by conquest of territory. And how can 
 such stagnation be produced? Not by conquest, 
 for conquest of the sea is impossible. The sea 
 cannot be the subject of ownership. You cannot 
 do more, however complete your ascendency, 
 than deprive your enemy of his use of the sea ; you 
 can do no more than deny him that part of his 
 national life which moves and has its being on the 
 sea. This is what we mean when we speak of 
 " command of the sea," and not " conquest of the 
 sea." The value of the sea internationally is as 
 a means of communication between States and 
 parts of States, and the use and enjoyment of 
 these communications is the actual life of a nation 
 at sea. The sea can be nothing else, except a 
 fishing-ground, and fishing is comparatively so 
 small a factor in war nowadays that it may be 
 eliminated from the question. All, then, that we 
 can possibly gain from our enemy upon the sea 
 is to deny him its use and enjoyment as a means 
 of communication. Command of the sea means 
 nothing more nor less than control of communica- 
 tions. It occupies exactly the same place and 
 discharges the same function in maritime warfare 
 that conquest and occupation of territory does in 
 land warfare. If one is lawful and necessary, 
 
132 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 so is the other; if both are lawful and necessary, 
 then each connotes the legality and necessity of 
 the means by which alone the condition of stagna- 
 tion can be brought about. 
 
 At sea this condition is produced by dealing 
 with private property on exactly the same principle 
 as on land — that is to say, in the most economical 
 and effective manner. By its capture and con- 
 version to the use of the navy we make it contribute 
 directly to the force and economy of our weapon, 
 and by an orderly system of prize regulations we 
 do it without in any way demoralizing our per- 
 sonnel or goading the enemy's people to irregular 
 retaliation. By no other means can we do what 
 ashore is done by contributions and requisitions — 
 that is, by no other means can we make enemy's 
 property serve to a merciful and speedy end to 
 hostilities. By this means also we control the 
 enemy's communications, we paralyze his sea- 
 borne commerce, we sever him from his outlying 
 territory. By no other means can we mercifully 
 and effectively deprive him of all the sea can give 
 him, and produce the state of stagnation of his 
 maritime life that conquest of territory does of 
 his life ashore. By the victories of fleets alone it 
 can no more be done than by the victories of armies. 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 133 
 
 If, then, in this way we test the doctrine of im- 
 munity of private property in the cold light of the 
 theory of war — if we keep in mind that war 
 consists of two phases — firstly, the destruction of 
 the enemy's armed forces, and, secondly, of pres- 
 sure on the population to produce stagnation of 
 national life, we see the answer to our great 
 military neighbors is complete. When they ask 
 us to abandon the right of capture of private 
 property at sea — of dealing with it, that is, in the 
 most merciful and effective way for achieving the 
 purposes of war — we reply, We will do so when 
 you abandon the right of requisition and contribu- 
 tion. And when they ask us, as in effect they do, 
 to give up the right of controlling sea communica- 
 tions, we reply, We will do so when you give up 
 the right to control roads, railways, and inland 
 waters. If they go further — as they fairly may — 
 and ask, " What about the hardship of detaining 
 the crews of captured merchantmen? " we answer, 
 " We will abandon that means of stopping your 
 commerce also, when you abandon forced labor 
 of the civil population ashore.' ' It is all a reductio 
 ad absurdum. Without the exercise of such rights 
 both conquest of territory and command of the 
 sea become nugatory and war impossible. 
 
134 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 But our opponents may reply, We do not ask 
 you to give up control of communications. We 
 would leave you commercial blockade. But is 
 this what they mean? It is true that many of 
 them except commercial blockade from their 
 claim, but what the Lord Chancellor demands is 
 entire exemption of private property, " unless 
 really contraband or its place of destination be a 
 beleaguered fortress." This, of course, amounts 
 to a complete prohibition of our right to control 
 communications except for the purpose of destroy- 
 ing the enemy's armed forces. It prohibits it 
 for the purpose of the secondary process of pres- 
 sure, and is entirely inadmissible. The Chan- 
 cellor's meaning is at least perfectly clear. What 
 is difficult to believe is that those who express 
 themselves less roundly can really mean anything 
 else. Let us examine what the position of these 
 men leads to. In effect they say, We admit your 
 abstract right to capture private property at sea, 
 but deny that its general capture on the high seas 
 is necessary for the purposes of war. This point 
 of view is so plausible that it has highly commended 
 itself to our own advocates of immunity. Ignor- 
 ing the whole theory of maritime warfare, that it 
 is a mere question of controlling communications, 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 135 
 
 they argue as though all we could gain from gen- 
 eral capture on the high seas is the paltry value 
 of the goods seized. It was just Lord Granville's 
 attitude at the momentous meeting of the Secret 
 Committee of the Council on the eve of the Seven 
 Years' War, when, on the question of whether 
 admirals at sea should be ordered to seize French 
 merchantmen, he declared he was against " vex- 
 ing your neighbors for a little muck." If we 
 regard the mere value of the property captured, 
 this is true enough. It represents no more than 
 the captor's attempt to subsist his fleet on the sea 
 he commands, as ashore an army is subsisted on the 
 territory it conquers. But the attempt never leads 
 to much. The best we can do at sea by a complete 
 conversion of all we can lay hands on is but a 
 trifle compared with what is gained ashore by 
 the process of contribution, requisition and forced 
 labor. It is, indeed, not a little hard that the 
 military Powers should scold us for nibbling this 
 sorry crust when they habitually gorge themselves 
 on baskets of loaves. 
 
 But though intrinsically the capture of property 
 on the high seas has an almost negligible military 
 value, as a deterrent its value is beyond measure. 
 For it is an essential part of the process of destroy- 
 
136 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 ing the enemy's commerce by control of sea com- 
 munication. Blockade alone — even if blockade 
 in the old sense were still possible — will not do. 
 In their best days blockades were never thoroughly 
 effective. It is the feeling that a ship and her 
 cargo are never safe from capture from port to 
 port that is the real deterrent, which breaks the 
 heart of merchants and kills their enterprise. But 
 this is a point on which all may not agree. It 
 matters little, for it is not the one that is fatal to 
 our reformers' claim. 
 
 The fatal point is this — that if you admit the 
 only form of blockade that is possible under 
 present conditions, and refuse the right of general 
 capture, you establish a law so unfairly advan- 
 tageous to Great Britain that no other Power could 
 possibly be expected to assent to it, and we our- 
 selves would certainly not have the effrontery to 
 propose it. 
 
 The current conception of effective blockade 
 is that agreed upon between England and Russia 
 in 1 80 1 : the port blockaded must be watched by 
 ships anchored before it or stationed sufficiently 
 near to make egress or ingress obviously dangerous. 
 All countries have adopted this idea. But this was 
 before the days of torpedoes. The idea was, as 
 

 Capture of Private Property at Sea 137 
 
 actually expressed in certain Dutch treaties, that 
 the blockading ships should be as close in as was 
 compatible with safety from the enemy's coast 
 defence. The defence in those days was guns. 
 But what now of mobile defence ? Is a blockading 
 fleet entitled to be so far out as to be beyond 
 torpedo-boat or destroyer range? If so it must 
 be completely out of sight, and egress and ingress 
 cannot be manifestly dangerous, and the blockad- 
 ing squadron must be cruising far from the port 
 and far from territorial waters. If such distant 
 and invisible blockade is not to be recognized as 
 effective, then effective blockade is now impossible, 
 and no means of controlling sea communications 
 remains except general capture. It follows, then, 
 that if the Continental Powers admit our right 
 to control communication and deny us general 
 capture, they must recognize such distant blockade 
 as effective and lawful. 
 
 Now let us see how the law would work. In the 
 case of war with France (which, being the most 
 unlikely one, may be taken with least offence), it 
 would be admissible for us to station a squadron, 
 say, off Yarmouth and stretch a chain of cruisers 
 from the Lizard to Cape Ortegal, and declare a 
 blockade of the whole of the French Atlantic 
 
138 Same Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 and Channel ports. Then, after due notice, every 
 neutral and every Frenchman leaving a French 
 port or consigned to one that appeared on the 
 scene would be liable to be captured and sent in 
 for judgment for attempted breach of blockade. 
 The same liability, moreover, by the law of ultimate 
 destination, would attach to such ships in transitu 
 in any part of the world. In the case of Russia 
 or Germany a similar situation could be set up 
 still more easily, assuming we had once obtained 
 a working command of the sea. On the other 
 hand, it would be practically impossible for all 
 these three Powers combined to set up such a 
 situation against us; unless, indeed, in the unim- 
 aginable eventuality of their being relatively 
 strong enough to maintain a blockading chain from 
 Finisterre through the Faroes to the coast of Nor- 
 way. It is a pure question of geography. If, 
 then, the doctrine of permitting blockade in its 
 sole possible form and refusing general capture 
 were adopted, we could always paralyze the 
 ocean-borne commerce of any of the great military 
 Powers, while they, being unable to blockade 
 effectively, and not being allowed to make prizes 
 on the high seas, could not possibly touch ours. 
 It is not to be believed that your well-meaning 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 139 
 
 advocates of justice between nations can really 
 intend an arrangement so grossly unjust. Clearly 
 there is but one alternative — either you must 
 leave the law as it is, or adopt the candid proposal 
 of the Chancellor and abolish capture of private 
 property altogether, saving only contraband and 
 military blockade. And what the Chancellor's 
 proposal would mean must be kept clearly in mind. 
 It would permit us to deal with private property 
 for the purpose of overpowering the armed force 
 of the enemy, and deny us the right to use it for 
 reaping the fruit of success. 
 
 Turning now from the Continental Powers to 
 America, we find that the best naval opinion there 
 is entirely with us. The contention on which we 
 rely is really this — that the right to capture 
 merchantmen and their cargoes does not depend 
 on the primitive right over enemy's property so 
 much as on the right and necessity of controlling 
 our enemy's communications. Let us see how it 
 is treated by Captain Mahan, who, above all men, 
 by his genius and learning is entitled to give 
 judgment. His declaration is the more remarkable 
 because America has always been the most promi- 
 nent champion of immunity and the most ardently 
 convinced that in advocating the reform she was 
 
140 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 upholding the cause of civilization, humanity, and 
 justice. This belief with the mass of the people 
 has survived her taking rank as a great naval 
 Power, and must be treated with respect. For all 
 their practical plain sense the Americans are 
 idealists at heart, more so, perhaps, than any other 
 people, and it therefore required no little courage 
 and the deepest conviction for Captain Mahan to 
 stand up and tell his countrymen their feeling of 
 magnanimity was false, mistaken, and contrary to 
 plain sense and justice. Yet so he does in his 
 latest work The War of i8i2 i calmly, cogently, 
 and without flinching. In that work he discloses a 
 ripe study of the theory of war which none of his 
 others contain in the same degree — and for the 
 full development of that theory, be it remembered, 
 we are indebted mainly to the Germans themselves 
 — and here is the result of its application to the 
 question before us : 
 
 " The claim for private property [he says] . . . 
 involves a play upon words, to the confusion of 
 ideas, which from that time [that is, from Na- 
 poleon's Continental System] to this has vitiated 
 the arguments upon which have been based a 
 prominent feature of American policy. Private 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 141 
 
 property at a standstill ... is the unproductive 
 money in a stocking hid in a closet. Property 
 belonging to private individuals, but embarked 
 in the process of transportation and exchange, 
 which we call commerce, is like money in circula- 
 tion. It is the life-blood of national prosperity, 
 on which war depends, and as such is national 
 in its employment, and only in ownership private. 
 To stop such circulation is to sap national 
 prosperity, and to sap prosperity, on which 
 war depends for its energy, is a measure 
 as truly military as is killing of the men 
 whose arms maintain war in the field. Prohibi- 
 tion of commerce is enforced at will when an 
 enemy's army holds a territory. If permitted it 
 inures to the benefit of the conqueror. ... It 
 will not be doubted that, should a prohibition on 
 shore be disregarded, the offending property 
 would be seized as punishment. . . . The seizure 
 of enemy's merchant ships and goods for violating 
 the prohibition against their engaging in com- 
 merce is what is commonly called the seizure of 
 private property. Under the methods of the last 
 two centuries it has been in administration a 
 process as regular legally as is libelling a ship for 
 an action in damages; nor does it differ from it in 
 
142 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 principle. The point at issue is not ' Is the 
 property private ? ' but ' Is the method conductive 
 to the purposes of war ? ' Property strictly 
 private on board ship, but not in process of cir- 
 culation, is for this reason never touched, and to 
 do so is considered as disgraceful as a common 
 theft." 
 
 He then proceeds to justify on these grounds the 
 consistent attitude of the British Government, 
 and to remind his countrymen that, had their 
 ideas prevailed in 1861, there could have been no 
 blockade of the Southern coast and the Union 
 could only have been maintained at the cost of 
 hundreds of thousands more lives, if, indeed, it 
 could have been maintained at all. 
 
 It is easy, of course, to dismiss Captain Mahan's 
 theory of private property at sea being national 
 in its employment as mere casuistry, but that will 
 not serve. The truth it expresses will remain. 
 We have a moral and indefeasible right at sea as 
 well as on land to prohibit and stop, so far as we 
 can without cruelty or unnecessary hardship, 
 the flow of enemy's commerce, on which her 
 resources for war depend as truly as they do upon 
 armies and fleets. If private men in the face of 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 143 
 
 this admitted right choose to ignore the state of 
 war and still embark their property in commerce, 
 they do so with their eyes open and must not 
 complain of the consequences. Let them keep 
 their property quiet at home and it will not be 
 touched — at least by the sea service. 
 
 There still remains to be dealt with the argument 
 upon which our own idealists chiefly rely. It is 
 an argument to which allusion has been made 
 already, but has nothing to do with morality, 
 justice, or humanity. For though it is obvious 
 between the lines that our advocates of reform 
 are as sincerely moved as the Americans by an 
 ideal of Christian progress, Briton-like they do 
 not talk about it. With us such things are felt, 
 not spoken. We prefer to offer material, selfish 
 reasons for the faith that is in us, and consequently 
 our idealists argue that the recognition of the 
 sanctity of private property at sea would be a 
 distinct military advantage to ourselves, and, 
 moreover, as is also usual in such cases, that if 
 we do not seize the opportunity to recognize it 
 now it will not occur again. " I trust," says the 
 Lord Chancellor, referring to President Roose- 
 velt's proposal to have the thing settled at the 
 coming Hague Conference: 
 
144 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 " I trust that his Majesty's Government will 
 avail themselves of this unique opportunity. 
 [How familiar is the phrase ! ] I urge it not upon 
 any ground of sentiment or humanity (indeed, no 
 operation of war inflicts less suffering than the 
 capture of unarmed vessels at sea), but upon the 
 ground that on the balance of argument, coolly 
 weighed, the interests of Great Britain will gain 
 much from a change long and eagerly desired by 
 the great majority of other Powers." 
 
 So, then, it is for military reasons that we are 
 to consent to have the teeth pulled upon which 
 we have relied for so many generations, and to 
 " abandon in great measure," as Captain Mahan 
 has put our case, " the control of the sea, so far 
 as useful to war." Let us, then, frankly examine 
 these military reasons which the Lord Chancellor 
 sets forth for they are not at once convincing. 
 Indeed, it is obvious that the Lord Chancellor 
 has not brought to bear upon the subject the pro- 
 found study of war with which his great predeces- 
 sor, Lord Hardwicke, enlightened our councils 
 during the Seven Years' War. We might even 
 beg seriously that before he gives the weight of his 
 high reputation and exalted office any further to 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 145 
 
 the movement he would read and re-read that 
 masterly series of letters which the greatest of 
 the Chancellors addressed to the Duke of New- 
 castle and others during the most successful war 
 we ever waged. 
 
 The main military or strategical argument that 
 is urged is that, as we have the greatest amount of 
 private property afloat, and rely more than anyone 
 upon commerce for our resources, we stand to 
 lose most by the maintenance of the existing law. 
 " Our merchant marine/   says the Chancellor, 
 " is vulnerable in proportion to its size and ubi- 
 quity." This is a tremendous assumption, natural 
 enough to one who has made no study of the reali- 
 ties of war; but we may venture to assert that it 
 is one which our naval staff would certainly hesi- 
 tate to endorse. To point out its fallacy com- 
 pletely would require a whole excursus on the 
 British ideas of commerce protection, and possibly 
 the disclosure of matters which the Admiralty had 
 better keep to itself. But plain sense will suggest 
 difficulties in accepting this very common view. 
 Everyone must know that a cruiser's capacity for 
 destroying commerce is not unlimited. How very 
 limited it is the Chancellor clearly has not well 
 considered. A cruiser can scarcely take more 
 
146 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 than one ship at once, and to overhaul and ascertain 
 the nationality of a ship takes time. She cannot, 
 moreover, be in two places at once, and the sea 
 is wide. To reach a station where she may 
 safely begin her operations (unless we have 
 entirely lost command of the sea) she will burn 
 coal — she will want plenty to get back again; 
 the time, consequently, during which she can 
 pursue her depredations is very limited indeed. 
 These simple matters, so real to naval officers, 
 are usually ignored by civilians. The broad 
 truth is that if we look at the matter from the point 
 of view of practical warfare, and not pure mathe- 
 matics, we shall see that there is at least a case for 
 the opposite of the Chancellor's postulate. The 
 greater the bulk of commerce, the more difficult 
 does it become to make any serious impression 
 upon it. The greater the bulk, the larger will be 
 the percentage that is beyond the utmost predatory 
 capacity of the enemy's fleet. Thus it is at least 
 arguable that the invulnerability of the mass of 
 sea-borne commerce increases with its bulk and 
 ubiquity. To carry the matter further is impos- 
 sible in this place. It must suffice to have pointed 
 out that the Chancellor's postulate cannot be 
 swallowed whole until it has been well seethed 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 147 
 
 in salt water. In the process it might entirely 
 change color. 
 
 Take, again, another similar argument. " The 
 principal necessities of England's Navy," writes 
 Professor Sheldon Amos, " are to protect her 
 commerce, defend her coasts, and overpower the 
 enemy : it is obvious if the Navy could be relieved 
 of any one of these functions, so much the more 
 disposable it would be for the efficient discharge 
 of the other two." Here, of course, we are even 
 further from salt water than with the Chancellor; 
 but the passage, teeming as it does with error, has 
 been seriously quoted abroad. How do the 
 Professor and those who complacently cite him 
 imagine that we can defend our coasts without 
 defending our trade, or do either without over- 
 powering the enemy ? It is all one — all a matter 
 of getting control of the common communications. 
 Unless and until we do that we have not over- 
 powered the enemy, and we have not gone the best 
 way about defending our coasts and commerce. 
 Casual cruising against our commerce we can 
 ignore, if necessary, in the process of getting 
 control, so small nowadays is the reach and capac- 
 ity of cruisers and so great the bulk of our com- 
 merce. As for serious fleet attacks upon it, we 
 
148 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 can desire nothing better. It is all very well to 
 talk of overpowering the enemy, of seeking out the 
 enemy's fleet and destroying him, but for this he 
 must let you get at him. That was always our 
 great difficulty ; and there is no means so good for 
 making him expose himself as attacking his com- 
 merce with your fleet and tempting him to 
 attack yours with his. If our commerce 
 were made as sacred from capture as an 
 ambassador it would give little or no relief to our 
 battle fleets, while, on the other hand, if we were 
 denied the right to attack enemy's commerce we 
 should lose the one sure and rapid means of forcing 
 his battle fleet to a decision. 
 
 This brings us to the final part of the argument. 
 It is freely contended that while the immunity 
 of sea-borne commerce would greatly relieve the 
 strain of defence, it would scarcely affect our 
 power of attack. The grinding power of offence 
 which we exercised by attack on commerce in the 
 old wars is recognized, or not denied. But it is 
 asserted that since Napoleonic times, when these 
 wars came to an end, the conditions have entirely 
 changed. The change has taken place in two 
 ways. Firstly, by the Declaration of Paris we 
 are no longer able by general capture to prevent 
 
Capture 0} Private Property at Sea 149 
 
 the enemy's commerce being carried in neutral 
 ships ; and, secondly, it is contended that the vast 
 development of inland communications has made 
 Continental nations practically independent of 
 sea-borne trade — that is, in so far as exerting 
 pressure to compel peace is concerned. Here 
 again we have two of those breezy generalizations 
 which trip so gaily from the pens of international 
 jurists, as though they were not laden and tangled 
 with a nexus of practical considerations, complex 
 and indeterminate to the last degree, and entirely 
 beyond even approximate measurement. They 
 seem airily to neglect the fact that the capacity of 
 neutral shipping and of inland communications 
 is not unlimited, and to ignore the well-known 
 difficulty of forcing trade to flow healthily out of 
 the channels into which it has settled itself. Neu- 
 tral ships are always fairly well full of their own 
 business, and if you suddenly throw upon them the 
 extra work of even one considerable mercantile 
 marine, they will either be unequal to the task or 
 freights must leap up to a seriously disturbing 
 degree. The case of railways and inland naviga- 
 tion is treated with even a less appreciation of what 
 actually happens in war. The capacity of rail- 
 ways is even less elastic than that of neutral ships. 
 
150 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 In peace time their carrying capacity, for plain 
 reasons of business, is seldom much beyond the 
 traffic which accrues in supplying the actual 
 necessities of the nation, and to calculate that with 
 the intolerable extra strain that is always thrown 
 upon them by the paramount exigencies of a great 
 war they would still be able to deal with an equiva- 
 lent of the normal sea-borne traffic is simply to 
 ignore universal experience and the elementary 
 facts of commerce. Even were it possible in any 
 reasonable time to get land communications to 
 bear all their ordinary peace traffic as well as the 
 war traffic and that of the paralyzed mercantile 
 marine, the dislocation of national life and action 
 must at least produce so great a shock to trade, 
 industry, and, above all, credit as to be a strategical 
 blow of the highest order. It is at least a possi- 
 bility of drastic offence that we, who are so weak, 
 and must always be so weak in the means open to 
 the great military Powers, cannot afford to forego. 
 I know it is argued by some of our most respected 
 and earnest journals that our position and the 
 peace of the world would gain a real solidity by 
 the sacrifice, and a real motive for the growth of 
 armaments would be removed, because we should 
 thereby demonstrate that our Navy is meant 
 
Capture of Private Property at Sea 151 
 
 only for defence. But that is a point incapable 
 of demonstration, simply because it is not true. 
 Our Navy is under certain circumstances intended 
 for offence. Such circumstances, happily, are 
 remote, but it is sheer fatuity to think they cannot 
 possibly arise. Not only is no real and crushing 
 defence possible without attack, but in cases where 
 we are the injured party and no redress can be had 
 except by war, then direct offence is necessary. 
 It is a distasteful subject, above all to the higher 
 Liberalism, where the desire to unarm is keenest. 
 But it has to be faced, and must be faced without 
 false sentiment, as Sir William Harcourt faced it in 
 the great debate already cited : 
 
 " There is only one security [he said] for a great 
 naval Power : as far as you can and as soon as you 
 can to sweep the enemy from the seas. Not only 
 must we preserve our right to fight against the 
 navy of our enemy, but to capture all the ships 
 it possesses and all the means it possesses by which 
 we may be attacked. It is the legitimate arm of 
 this great Empire — the arm by which we defend 
 our extended Empire. I go a great deal farther. 
 There is no security in war unless we are strong 
 for offence as well as defence. " 
 
 It is true. We cannot make ourselves stronger 
 
152 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 for defence or for doing our part in preserving the 
 peace of the world by casting away our most 
 trenchant and well-approved weapon. It was 
 not the custom at King Arthur's Court for his 
 knights to equip themselves for their holy quests 
 by discarding their spears and trusting to shield 
 and dagger. 
 
 In conclusion, it is necessary to enter a protest 
 against one other argument, which is too often 
 advanced by the advocates of immunity, and par- 
 ticularly from commercial centres. Failing to see 
 they have involved themselves in a question 
 which is mainly one of strategy and war-plans, and 
 unable to grasp the force of the naval objection, 
 they do not scruple to suggest that the opposition of 
 naval officers arises from their desire for prize- 
 money. It is to be hoped they scarcely grasp how 
 wanton an insult they offer to a great and honor- 
 able Service and how deeply the suspicion is 
 resented. No one in touch with the ungrudging 
 devotion of the modern naval officer could believe 
 for one moment that he would permit so sordid a 
 consideration even to color the advice he gave his 
 country on so high a matter. It is intolerable the 
 slander should be repeated as often as it has been. 
 Prize-money has nothing whatever to do with the 
 
Capture 0} Private Property at Sea 153 
 
 matter. Many officers indeed are of opinion that 
 for the good of the Service alone the system should 
 be abolished, There might be cases in time of 
 war, as there were in days gone by, when prize- 
 money might warp a man's sense of duty. There- 
 fore, they say, let it go — to whom you will. What 
 is good for the Service is good enough for us. 
 Chambers of commerce may find difficulty in 
 appreciating the depth and reality of the sentiment. 
 Could they but do so they would never permit the 
 prize-money argument to sully their petitions 
 again. The reason why naval officers urge with 
 heart and soul the retention of the old right of 
 capture is because they know not how to make 
 war without it, nor can any man tell them. 
 
VI 
 
 THE HAGUE CONFERENCE: THE QUES- 
 TION OF IMMUNITY FOR BELLIG- 
 ERENT MERCHANT SHIPPING 
 
THE HAGUE CONFERENCE: THE QUES- 
 TION OF IMMUNITY FOR BELLIG- 
 ERENT MERCHANT SHIPPING 
 
 A 
 
 By Alfred T. Mahan 
 
 National Review \ July % 1907 
 
 T the present day, when maritime commerce 
 has taken on unprecedented proportions, 
 and constitutes a very large factor in the power of 
 states, there should naturally be some surprise 
 aroused by the proposition to exempt from the 
 operations of war a financial feature so important 
 to the war- waging ability of a belligerent, and at the 
 same time so easily accessible to an enemy. The 
 paradox — for such it is — - is in part the survival 
 of an opinion generated by particular interests at 
 a period when circumstances, though essentially the 
 same as now, were in some details different. It is 
 still more due to a misapplication of terms, accord- 
 ing to the proverb, " Give a dog a bad name, and 
 hang him." By ingeniously, though certainly 
 honestly, qualifying maritime capture as the seizure 
 
158 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 of " private " property, a haze of misunderstanding 
 has been thrown over the whole subject, investing 
 it with the proverbial fallacy of a half-truth. The 
 property undoubtedly is private in ownership; 
 but this is only a part, and the smaller part, of the 
 issue involved. 
 
 This misconception has doubtless been furthered 
 by the fact that maritime capture, as practised 
 during the last great maritime wars, and still 
 allowed by international law, is the direct de- 
 scendant of piracy. As an argument against an 
 existing condition, this circumstance is really no 
 more valid than the fact that men are descended 
 from apes — if so they be ; but it is, nevertheless, 
 telling. If we could distinctly remember, either 
 personally or historically, men in the state of apes, 
 it could not but affect involuntarily our way of 
 looking at men now; we might at least be more 
 humble. Concerning seizure of property at sea, 
 the race has kept a continuous traditional knowl- 
 edge of its early methods, with a resultant impres- 
 sion of its principles. The day when, as well in 
 peace as in war, a strange sail was more likely than 
 not to be an enemy in intention, whom you would 
 have to fight in order to preserve your good and 
 your life, was perpetuated nearly to our own times. 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 159 
 
 Piracy at sea is the seizure of property by persons 
 unauthorized by a national authority, even though 
 the owner be an enemy and the time one of war. 
 Before national regulation was instituted, this had 
 been a universal condition, an era of free fighting, 
 when every merchantman was prepared to turn 
 robber if occasion offered. The tendency re- 
 mained after regulation had become a well- 
 defined system, because evasion of the law and of 
 its ministers was facilitated by the slowness with 
 which intelligence of marauders could be trans- 
 mitted, even throughout a limited area like the 
 Caribbean Sea ; and the imperfections of maritime 
 police, at a period when national cruisers were pre- 
 occupied with strictly belligerent operations, gave 
 additional impunity. Privateers also, though reg- 
 ulated vessels, under bonds to a national authority, 
 were nevertheless out simply for what they could 
 make; and the conditions which favored piracy 
 weakened the hold of responsibility upon them. 
 Kidd began as a suppressor of piracy the career 
 which ended on the gallows. While the majority 
 of captains and owners in the later days were men 
 of integrity, no more inclined than the average 
 business man to take a dishonest advantage, 
 there were doubtless many entirely unscrupulous, 
 
160 Some Neglected Aspects o] War 
 
 whose only test in opportunity was the danger 
 of detection; and the very habit of appropriating 
 another man's property by main force, however 
 lawful and subject to subsequent legal procedure, 
 doubtless fostered a disposition to irregular acqui- 
 sition. Although a recognized — and, indeed, a 
 necessary — use of national resources for a na- 
 tional exigency, privateering inherently and his- 
 torically had a tendency towards piracy, and piracy 
 is but another name for robbery. The brutal 
 excesses associated with the word were only 
 incidental accompaniments of the practice, the 
 essence of which was the taking of property without 
 due authorization of law. 
 
 The payment of prize money, upon which of late 
 years has fastened much of the odium cast upon 
 maritime capture, no doubt also derives in some 
 measure from the days of piracy. To privateering, 
 however, it had another distinct relation. It was 
 a necessary incident, calculated to stimulate 
 private exertion, unremunerated otherwise, to 
 come to the help of the state and to weaken the 
 enemy. In the beginning the pirate took the 
 goods when and as he pleased ; but the regulated 
 privateer sent his prize into port. If an enemy, 
 there had to be at least formal condemnation and 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 161 
 
 partition; while if a neutral, arrested for trans- 
 gressing international obligations, the decision of 
 a prize court was essential to the validity of the 
 transaction. In both cases there was not only 
 seizure of property, but subsequent appropriation 
 to the seizer. The process differed in nothing 
 from any other legal condemnation, except that 
 the goods for the most part went to the individual, 
 not to the state — a circumstance not without 
 analogies, such as the share of an informer; but 
 attention has fastened somewhat exclusively upon 
 the gain of the captor, and the violence, actual or 
 potential, by which he obtained the property of the 
 captured. In this has been seen the gist of the 
 transaction; precisely as in war itself, to which 
 such capture is an incident, attention has fastened 
 upon the overt use of organized force to accom- 
 plish a political end, wholly oblivious of the fact 
 that the whole security of society — itself the end of 
 all politics — rests upon force so efficiently organ- 
 ized, and so unassailable in power, that it rarely 
 has to appear. Such force is so quiet in operation 
 that its very existence is overlooked. All the same, 
 it is paid for in the shape of legal machinery, from 
 the single policeman to the last court of appeal; 
 just as international peace is largely secured and 
 
1 62 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 paid for by the military machinery, from the private 
 soldier up to the sovereign authority of the nation, 
 in which rests the awful power to set the wheels 
 in motion. 
 
 Prize money thus became to popular appre- 
 hension the exponent, as it were, of maritime 
 capture in war. It summed up the ethics, and the 
 practical aspect, of the system from which it 
 derived — a curious inconsequence, but extremely 
 human. Prize money was the robber's gain, 
 maritime capture the robber's trade, the sufferer 
 the robber's victim. The property was styled 
 " private," and was regarded in no other aspect 
 even by men who were, or from their occupation 
 and knowledge should have been, perfectly con- 
 scious of the economical difference between prop- 
 erty in rest and property circulating in commercial 
 exchange; men who understood the financial 
 dependence of a state upon the commerce main- 
 tained by its citizens, and who knew that there is 
 practically no such thing as private — individual — 
 losses distinguished from the loss of the community 
 to which the individual belongs. Logically, of 
 course, there is such a distinction ; but practically 
 it seems strange, at this late day of economic dis- 
 cussion, to hear losses by maritime capture spoken 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 163 
 
 of as individual losses which will not substantially 
 affect the community — the state. Lord Palmer- 
 ston is quoted triumphantly as saying that no 
 powerful country was ever vanquished by losses 
 to individuals. Yet we are continually being told 
 that it is an economic commonplace that there is no 
 such thing as one state deriving real advantage 
 by entailing disadvantage upon its neighbor; 
 the community of states being such that what 
 one member suffers recoils more or less upon 
 each of the others. To transfer this statement 
 to a community of individuals is reasonable and 
 obvious. The loss of one is the loss of all; and 
 this, with curious inconsistency, will be admitted 
 at a later stage of the argument, pointing out the 
 extensive range of individuals interested in, and 
 injured by, maritime capture — the producer, 
 the transporter, the handler, the broker, the mer- 
 chant, the banker — no one of whom may be the 
 owner of the particular property seized. Last of 
 all it might be added, were not the argument too 
 double-edged, and drives too close home to serve 
 the purpose, the national treasury suffers. As 
 between the belligerent nations, the loss of one 
 may be the loss of both; but it is the proportion 
 of loss and the power to bear loss which deter- 
 
164 Some Negected Aspects 0} War 
 
 mine the balance of war and the settlements of 
 peace. 
 
 All this seems to me to be obvious, and I trust 
 I may be fortunate enough to make it more obvious 
 in the course of this paper ; for it certainly is not at 
 present sufficiently so to those who write on the 
 other side. " To the average mind/' says one, 
 " the proposition that private property on sea 
 should be treated on the same basis as private 
 property on land seems almost self-evident.' ' 
 Passing without remark for the present the circum- 
 stance that private property on land is by the 
 momentary conqueror treated precisely as to him 
 seems expedient for the purposes of the war, the 
 alleged self-evidence is such as can be reached in 
 any case where all circumstances of difference are 
 overlooked or ignored. No doubt the average 
 mind is content to accept superficial resemblance, 
 and to inquire no more ; but it might be asked of 
 a teacher to go so far beneath the surface as to 
 recognize the fundamental difference between a 
 dollar in a stocking and a dollar in circulation. 
 This also is obvious, though not superficial; and 
 the " private property " embarked on merchant 
 vessels is private property — money's worth — in 
 circulation. Transportation is accumulative circu- 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 165 
 
 lation; and, from a clear military point of view, 
 the object aimed at, by the method of seizing 
 vessels and cargoes at sea, is to stop the 
 increase of the enemy's wealth by circulation, by 
 stopping the transportation of his goods, of what- 
 ever character. This is the essence of the matter ; 
 the fact of the property being private in ownership 
 is a mere incident ; and in making it the forefront 
 of the argument lies the fallacy which has misled 
 its supporters as to the principles at stake. The 
 question of expediency is another and different 
 consideration, which must be otherwise treated. 
 History furnishes us abundant illustration of 
 the divergent status and effect of property at rest 
 and property in circulation, in peace as well as in 
 war. In America now, at each recurrent harvest, 
 the question of transportation, of circulating the 
 products of the ground, gives rise to anxious dis- 
 cussion, carried far into the realms of high finance 
 as bearing upon the national prosperity. Without 
 transportation, the farmer's crop becomes his 
 dollar in the stocking; rather worse than better, 
 inasmuch as for his wants coin is better than barter. 
 Were the country at war, and the enemy hoped to 
 increase embarrassment by denying transportation, 
 is it to be supposed that he would not, to the 
 
1 66 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 extent of his power, order the railroads to stop 
 carrying? If disobedience ensued, is it likely that 
 the offending property would not be confiscated? 
 Is not property continually liable to confiscation, 
 partial or total, for breach of law? But the 
 farmer's ploughs, and other agricultural imple- 
 ments, his household furniture, all his property 
 unavailable for circulation, and therefore essen- 
 tially " private," would not be touched ; nor is the 
 corresponding property of individuals at sea liable 
 now to seizure. Not being embarked for circu- 
 lation — for commerce — it is truly private, and 
 for long over a century has been strictly respected. 
 In war the career of Napoleon has furnished a 
 striking evidence of the effects of stopping circu- 
 lation. I find, in the argument of an advocate 
 of immunity for " private property " at sea, the 
 statement that " Napoleon was not overthrown 
 by the commercial losses of French merchants, 
 but by the battle of Waterloo." Doubtless many 
 causes contribute to each result, and in the appor- 
 tionment of weight differences of opinion must 
 arise; but I should say that foremost among the 
 causes of Napoleon's fall was the fact that to the 
 products of France, so wealthy in her fields, 
 vineyards, and manufactures, circulation was 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 167 
 
 denied by the fleets of Great Britain. The cessa- 
 tion of maritime transportation deranged the entire 
 financial system of France, largely dependent upon 
 foreign custom. She could neither raise revenue 
 nor borrow ; both money and credit were want- 
 ing. That these conditions existed is histor- 
 ically certain, as is also that they reacted upon the 
 government in financial embarrassment. This 
 in turn provoked the Continental System, not 
 merely for retaliation, but to compel Great Britain 
 to peace; and the attempt to enforce compliance 
 with the Continental System led to the war with 
 Russia and to the subsequent uprising of Europe 
 against the Emperor. Meanwhile, great as was 
 Napoleon's passion for war, sheer need of money 
 had driven him on to recurrent hostilities, the suc- 
 cessful issue of which enabled him in some degree 
 to recoup his treasury by direct assessment, — 
 war indemnities, — and indirectly by quartering his 
 armies indefinitely upon the conquered. This 
 was for him only a partial alleviation, it is true, but 
 it was something. It alone, in some small part, 
 could compensate for the paralyzing loss of revenue 
 caused by the cessation of maritime transportation ; 
 and the enemy enforced this privation by the sei- 
 zure of " private property " at sea. As for Water- 
 
1 68 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 loo, however decisive as a particular battle, it was 
 but the last blow of a series — the capping stone 
 of the misfortunes of 1812-14. The downfall of 
 Napoleon was due to the fact that for a series of 
 years he had been wasting his armies, the manhood 
 of France, her human capital, in unsuccessful at- 
 tempts to restore her finances and to compel Great 
 Britain to cease from capturing private property 
 at sea. Recall Metternich's words to him in 181 3 : 
 " Sire, I have seen your soldiers; they are chil- 
 dren." 
 
 The instance is extreme, but in extreme illustra- 
 tions demonstration is most apparent ; and, though 
 extreme, it is not unparalleled. It is not likely, 
 indeed, that we shall again see so predominant a 
 \ naval power as that of Great Britain then. Let 
 us, however, before quitting this part of the subject, 
 note that the United States, by the same instru- 
 mentality, and by the operation of the same 
 causes, was in 18 14 forced to abandon all the con- 
 tentions for which in 181 2 she had gone to war. 
 She possessed in abundance the raw material of 
 wealth, but there was no circulation. The corn, 
 cotton, and tobacco were harvested, and there they 
 remained, piled up, but unavailable. " Our 
 finances are in a deplorable state," wrote Monroe, 
 
\ 
 
 Belligerent Merchant Shipping 169 
 
 the Secretary of State. " The means of the coun- 
 try have scarcely been touched, yet we have neither 
 money in the Treasury, nor credit." " Even in 
 this State [Maryland] the Government shakes to 
 the foundation." Why? Because the transpor- 
 tation of private property by sea, whether coast- 
 wise or foreign, was successfully prohibited by 
 the enemy. 
 
 Fifty years later the Southern Confederacy suf- 
 fered in like manner from the naval power of the 
 Union — to it as extreme and irresistible as that 
 of Great Britain had been to Napoleon. The vast 
 store of wealth locked up in its cotton-fields was 
 unavailable, because denied transportation. To 
 analyze and demonstrate the precise character and 
 amount of the effect thus produced upon the for- 
 tunes of the Confederacy would be a work of 
 minute and protracted examination, the material 
 for which probably exists ; but it is scarcely rash 
 to affirm that the embarrassment caused by the 
 depreciation of the currency and the emptiness 
 of the Treasury, permeating all classes of the com- 
 munity, had a dissolvent effect not only upon 
 society, but upon the armies. In this connection 
 I venture to support my argument by the high 
 authority of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, himself 
 
170 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 a soldier, not a seaman, in the War of Secession. 
 In his appreciative address upon General Lee at 
 the centennial birthday of that great captain, he 
 markedly affirms the decisive effect of the blockade 
 — the " air-pump," to use his apt simile — which 
 was enforced by seizing the " private property " 
 that sought to violate it. Lee himself is quoted. 
 " Thousands of our soldiers are barefooted, a 
 greater number partially shod, and nearly all 
 without overcoats, blankets, or warm clothing;" 
 and later, in the dead of winter, " Further depend- 
 ence upon abroad can result in nothing but increase 
 of suffering and want." Better conditions of 
 transportation and finance would have protracted 
 the war, and subjected the endurance of the North 
 to a test it might have been unable to meet. Let 
 it be recalled that before Vicksburg, two years be- 
 fore Lee's surrender, General Grant was troubled 
 with doubts as to the effect of further disappoint- 
 ments upon the Northern people. It is no rash 
 claim that both Napoleon and the Confederacy 
 were overthrown mainly by measures which de- 
 pended for their energy upon the seizure of 
 11 private property " upon the seas. This needs 
 to be clearly indicated, for another advocate of 
 immunity, on " self-evident " grounds, has affirmed 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 171 
 
 that " in the American Civil War the Confederate 
 commerce was blockaded at every port, but it was 
 the victory of the Union army which decided the 
 contest." The destruction of the Confederacy's 
 intercourse with the outer world, like some deep- 
 seated local disease, poisoned the springs of life, 
 spreading remorselessly through innumerable hid- 
 den channels into every part of the political frame, 
 till the whole was sick unto death. 
 
 The essence of the question involved in the 
 seizure of " private property " at sea is transporta- 
 tion; and with three such conspicuous instances 
 within a century its effectiveness is historically 
 demonstrated. The belligerent state, in the exer- 
 cise of a right as yet conceded by international law, 
 says in substance to its adversary, " I forbid your 
 citizens the maritime transportation of their 
 commercial property. Articles of whatever char- 
 acter, including the vessels which carry them, vio- 
 lating this lawful order will be seized and con- 
 demned.' ' Seizure is made contingent upon move- 
 ment ; otherwise the property is merely bidden to 
 stay at home, where it will be safe. All this is in 
 strict conformity with the execution of law under 
 common conditions; and the practice is now 
 regulated with a precision and system consonant 
 
172 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 to other legal adjudication, the growth of centuries 
 of jurisprudence directed to this particular subject. 
 Its general tendency I have indicated by certain 
 specific instances. It is efficient to the ends of 
 war, more or less, according to circumstances; 
 and by distributing the burden over the whole 
 community affected it tends to peace, as exemption 
 from capture could not do. If the suffering of 
 war could be made to fall only on the combatants 
 actually in the field, the rest of the nation being 
 protected from harm and loss by the assured 
 ability to pursue their usual avocations undis- 
 turbed, the selfishness of men would more readily 
 resort to violence to carry their ends. 
 
 In support of the widespread effects of interrup- 
 tion to transportation, I gladly quote one of the 
 recent contendents for immunity of " private prop- 
 erty " from maritime capture. Having on one 
 page maintained the ineffectiveness of the seizure, 
 because individual losses never force a nation to 
 make peace, he concludes his article by saying : 
 
 "The question interests directly and vitally 
 thousands of people in every country. It is of 
 vital importance to those who go down to the sea 
 in ships, and those who occupy their business in 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 173 
 
 great waters. It appeals not only to every ship- 
 owner, but also to every merchant whose goods 
 are shipped upon the sea, to every farmer whose 
 grain is sent abroad, to every manufacturer 
 who sells to a foreign market, and to every 
 banker who is dependent upon the prosperity of 
 his countrymen." 
 
 I can do little to enhance this vivid presentation 
 by an opponent ; yet if we add to his list the butch- 
 ers, the bakers, the tailors, shoemakers, grocers, 
 whose customers economize; the men who drive 
 drays to and from shipping, and find their occu- 
 pation gone; the railroads, as the great common 
 carriers, whose freights fall off; the stockholders 
 whose dividends shrink ; we shall by no means have 
 exhausted the far-reaching influence of this inter- 
 meddling with transportation. It is a belligerent 
 measure which touches every member of the hostile 
 community, and, by thus distributing the evils 
 of war, as insurance distributes the burden of 
 other losses, it brings them home to every man, 
 fostering in each a disposition to peace. 
 
 It doubtless will not have escaped readers famil- 
 iar with the subject of maritime prize that so far 
 I have not distinguished between the interruption 
 
174 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 of transportation by blockade and that by seizure 
 on the high seas. The first, it may be said, is not 
 yet in question; the second only is challenged. 
 My reason has been that the underlying military 
 principle — and, as I claim, justification — is the 
 same in both; and, as we are dealing with a 
 question of war, the military principle is of equal 
 consideration with any other, if not superior. The 
 effect produced is in character the same in both. 
 In efficacy, they differ, and their comparative 
 values in this respect are a legitimate subject for 
 discussion. In principle and method, however, 
 they are identical; both aim at the stoppage of 
 transportation, as a means of destroying the re- 
 sources of the enemy, and both are enforced by 
 the seizure and condemnation of " private prop- 
 erty " transgressing the orders. 
 
 This community of operation is so evident that, 
 historically, the advocates of exemption of private 
 property from confiscation in the one case have 
 demanded, or at the least suggested, that blockade 
 as a military measure cannot be instituted against 
 commerce — that it can be resorted to only as 
 against contraband, or where a port is " invested " 
 by land as well as by sea. This was Napoleon's 
 contention in the Berlin Decree ; and it is worthy 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 175 
 
 of grave attention that, under the pressure of 
 momentary expediency, the United States more 
 than once, between 1800 and 181 2, advanced the 
 same view. This I have shown in my history 
 of the War of 181 2. * Had this opinion then 
 prevailed, the grinding blockade of the War of 
 Secession could not have been applied. If we 
 may imagine the United States and the Confed- 
 erate States parties to a Hague Conference, we 
 can conceive the impassioned advocacy of re- 
 stricted blockade by the one, and the stubborn 
 refusal of the other. This carries a grave 
 warning to test seeming expediency in retaining 
 or yielding a prescriptive right. There is no 
 moral issue, if my previous argument is correct; 
 unless it be moral, and I think it is, to resort 
 to pecuniary pressure rather than to bloodshed to 
 enforce a belligerent contention. As regards ex- 
 pediency, however, each nation should carefully 
 weigh the effects upon itself, upon its rivals, and 
 upon the general future of the community of 
 states, before abandoning a principle of far- 
 reaching consequence, and in operation often 
 beneficent in restraining or shortening war. 
 
 It has been urged that conditions have so 
 
 1 Vol. i. pp. 146-148. 
 
176 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 changed, through the numerous alternatives to 
 sea transport now available, that the former 
 efficacy can no longer be predicated. There might 
 be occasional local suffering, but for communities 
 at large the streams of supply are so many that the 
 particular result of general popular distress will 
 not be attained to any decisive degree. Has this 
 argument really been well weighed? None, of 
 course, will dispute that certain conditions have 
 been much modified, and for the better. Steam 
 not only has increased rapidity of land transit for 
 persons and goods ; it has induced the multiplica- 
 tion of roads, and enforced the maintenance of 
 them in good condition. Thanks to such mainte- 
 nance, we are vastly less at the mercy of the seasons 
 than we once were, and communities now have 
 several lines of communication open where formerly 
 they were dependent upon one. Nevertheless, 
 for obvious reasons of cheapness and of facility, 
 water transport sustains its ascendency. It may 
 carry somewhat less proportionately than in old 
 times; but, unless we succeed in exploiting the 
 air, water remains, and always must remain, the 
 great medium of transportation. The open sea is 
 a road which needs neither building nor repairs. 
 Compared with its boundless expanse, two lines 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 177 
 
 of rails afford small accommodation — a circum- 
 stance which narrowly limits their capacity for 
 freight. 
 
 In a less degree the same advantage inheres in 
 natural watercourses. For construction and 
 maintenance, streams like the Thames, the Rhine, 
 the Hudson, and even the Mississippi with its 
 levees, do not approach in cost the easiest of land 
 routes; while for facility of traffic in large quan- 
 tities no four-track railroad approaches them. In 
 them Nature has laid the road on the generous 
 scale which she has granted to water, and main- 
 tains it largely by her own action. For such per- 
 manent reasons, coasting trade, national or inter- 
 national, continues between points which have 
 unbroken land communication, even in competi- 
 tion with highly developed railroad systems. The 
 tonnage annually freighted on the Great Lakes 
 of North America exceeds six millions; yet all 
 points on those lakes can communicate with each 
 other by land. Waiving, therefore, the cases of 
 continents, between which there is no land com- 
 munication, as Europe and America, and of islands 
 like Great Britain, Japan, Australia, it is plain 
 that water transportation must continue to fill a 
 very large place in that circulation of merchandise 
 
178 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 which we call commerce. This means that it must 
 remain, as it now is, a factor in a system, a great 
 and important wheel in a complicated machinery 
 of interchange. If this is so, impairment of it 
 must materially derange the whole, to the detri- 
 ment of the nation. 
 
 We need not go very far to seek contemporary 
 illustration of the influence of diminished trans- 
 portation. The American difficulty of moving 
 the crops offers a precise analogy to the effect of 
 stopping ocean traffic. At present that recurrent 
 embarrassment is not merely a question of finance, 
 of ampler currency. It is due also to insufficient 
 railroad lines and rolling stock — that is, to trans- 
 portation deficiencies. It matters not whether 
 such deficiency is, as we say, original, or that it 
 results from impairment, such as the depredation of 
 an enemy. The point is the insufficiency, not the 
 cause of such insufficiency; in fact, it may profit- 
 ably be noted that in the immediate instance the 
 embarrassment exists in the face of conditions, the 
 gradual growth of which permitted foresight and 
 provision to meet them. How manifold more 
 injurious and disturbing if the cause were a sudden 
 dislocation of the transportation system by war, 
 throwing a new and unexpected burden upon 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 179 
 
 roads presumably no more than adequate to a 
 usual maximum of traffic ! The very scale upon 
 which commerce is now conducted, the facilities, 
 conveniences, luxuries, which it has introduced 
 into ordinary households, while swelling its vol- 
 ume, have made greater and more far-reaching the 
 effects of any obstruction. The stoppage of a 
 coasting-trade, the closing of a few principal ports 
 of entry, would so congest the trunk lines of a 
 national system that the influence would be felt 
 instantly in every shop and household, and speedily 
 in the national treasury. People also are now more 
 luxurious, less hardened to bear, impatient over 
 privations which their predecessors would hardly 
 notice. The phrase " artificial wants " is no 
 vain expression. 
 
 For an example, consider France, a country 
 exceptionally fortunate in maritime and landwise 
 position. She has three coast-lines, of which the 
 longest is upon the great ocean itself. There 
 no narrow passage, as the Channel, nor short 
 seaboard, as in the Mediterranean, embarrasses 
 her access to the outer world. She has, besides, 
 several land frontiers — Belgium, Germany, Switz- 
 erland, Italy — by any one of which she may 
 receive supplies. These relatively numerous points 
 
180 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 of contact with the outside world — pre-eminent 
 among them being Belgium and the Bay of Bis- 
 cay — make the situation of France unusually 
 favorable, when compared with most countries 
 having Continental boundaries. All cannot be 
 conceived shut at the same time, and the guaran- 
 teed neutrality of Belgium presents an alternative 
 nearly absolutely secure. Nevertheless, as a 
 mere question of transportation, if we suppose only 
 Havre, Nantes, and Bordeaux closed to commerce, 
 there can be little question that the additional 
 burden of local handling, and subsequent railway 
 carriage, thrown upon, say, Antwerp and Marseilles, 
 would sharply test the system of distribution by 
 railroad ; and the collection of customs at the land 
 frontier would introduce further impediments. 
 To utilize German ports in addition would involve 
 a greater circuit, every mile of which — as, indeed, 
 of that through Belgium — would add to the ex- 
 pense of the consumer by all the heavier charge 
 and more meagre supply of a lengthened and 
 overweighted land carriage. 
 
 Such derangement of an established system of 
 sea transportation is more searching, as well as 
 more easy, when the shipping involved has to pass 
 close by an enemy's shores ; and still more if the 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 181 
 
 ports of possible arrival are few. This is conspicu- 
 ously the case of Germany and the Baltic States 
 relatively to Great Britain, and would be of Great 
 Britain were Ireland independent and hostile. 
 The striking development of German mercantile 
 tonnage is significant of the growing grandeur, 
 influence, and ambitions of the empire. Its 
 exposure, in case of war with Great Britain, and 
 only in less degree with France, would account, 
 were other reasons wanting, for the importunate 
 demand for naval expansion. Other reasons are 
 not wanting; but in the development of her mer- 
 chant shipping Germany, to use a threadbare 
 phrase, has given a hostage to Fortune. Except 
 by the measure advocated, and here opposed, of 
 exempting from capture merchant vessels of a 
 belligerent, with their cargoes, as being " private 
 property,' ' Germany is bound over to keep the 
 peace, unless occasion of national safety — vital 
 interests — or honor drive her, or unless she 
 equip a navy adequate to so great a task as pro- 
 tecting fully the carrying trade she has laboriously 
 created. The exposure of this trade is not merely 
 a matter of German interest, nor yet of British. 
 It is of international concern, a circumstance 
 making for peace. 
 
1 82 Some Neglected Aspects oj War 
 
 The retort is foreseen : How stands a nation to 
 which the native mercantile shipping, carrying 
 trade, is a distinctly minor interest, and therefore 
 does not largely affect the question of transporta- 
 tion? This being maintained by neutrals, the 
 accretion of national wealth by circulation may 
 go on little impaired by hostilities. The first most 
 obvious reply is that such is a distinctly specialized 
 case in a general problem, and that its occurrence 
 and continuance are dependent upon circum- 
 stances which frequently vary. It lacks the ele- 
 ments of permanence, and its present must there- 
 fore be regarded with an eye to the past and future. 
 A half-century ago the mercantile marine of the 
 United States was, and for nearly a century before 
 had been, a close second to that of Great Britain ; 
 to-day it is practically non-existent, except for 
 coasting-trade. On the other hand, during the 
 earlier period the thriving Hanse towns were 
 nearly the sole representatives of German shipping, 
 which now, issuing from the same harbors, on 
 a strip of coast still narrow, is pressing rapidly 
 forward under the flag of the empire to take the 
 place vacated by the Americans. 
 
 With such a reversal of conditions in two promi- 
 nent examples, the problem of to-day in any one 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 183 
 
 case is not that of yesterday, and may very well not 
 be that of to-morrow. From decade to decade 
 experience shifts like a weather-cock; the states- 
 man mounted upon it becomes a Mr. Facing- 
 Bothways. The denial of commercial blockade, 
 the American national expediency of 1800, sug- 
 gested by such eminent jurists as John Marshall 
 and James Madison, would have been ruinous 
 manacles to the nation of 1861-65. A govern- 
 ment weighing its policy with reference to the 
 future, having regard to possible as well as actual 
 conditions, would do well before surrendering 
 existing powers — the bird in the hand — to 
 consider rather the geographical position of the 
 country, its relation to maritime routes — the 
 strategy, so to say, of the general permanent situa- 
 tion — and the military principles upon which 
 maritime capture rests. In that light a more 
 accurate estimate will be made of temporary tac- 
 tical circumstances, to-day's conditions — such, for 
 instance, as set forth by the present Lord Chan- 
 cellor of Great Britain. 1 In his letter, favoring 
 immunity from capture for " private property," 
 disproportionate stress is laid upon the dangers 
 of Great Britain, the points which make against 
 
 1 The Times of October 14, 1905. 
 
1 84 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 her; a serious tactical error. The argument 
 from exposure is so highly developed, that the 
 possible enemies whose co-operation is needed to 
 secure the desired immunity for " private " 
 property might well regard the request to assist 
 as spreading the net in the sight of the bird; a 
 vanity which needs not a wise man to detect. On 
 the other hand, the offensive advantage of capture 
 to Great Britain, owing to her situation, is, in 
 my judgment, inadequately appreciated. 
 
 The writer has fallen into the mistake which our 
 General Sherman characterized as undue imagina- 
 tion concerning what " the man on the other side of 
 the hill " might do; a quaint version of the first 
 Napoleon's warning against " making a picture 
 to yourself." The picture of Great Britain's 
 dangers is overdrawn; that to her enemies — 
 " the full measure of the mischief we could do to a 
 Continental nation " — is underdrawn. It would 
 seem as if, in his apprehension, " the disastrous 
 consequences   which would flow from even slight 
 depredations by commerce destroyers on British 
 shipping " could find no parallel in the results to 
 a Continental trade from British cruisers. France 
 or Germany, for example, shut off from the sea, 
 
 x Indirect, I presume. — A. T. M. 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 185 
 
 can be supplied by rail from, say, Antwerp or 
 Rotterdam; but it is apparently inconceivable 
 that, in the contingency of a protracted naval 
 war, the same ports might equally supply Great 
 Britain by neutral ships. Alternate sea routes 
 close, apparently automatically; only alternate 
 land routes stay open. Thus undue weight is 
 laid upon defensive motives, where the offensive 
 requires the greater emphasis. The larger mer- 
 chant tonnage of Great Britain involves a greater 
 defensive element, yes; but are not defensive 
 conditions favorably modified by her greater 
 navy, and by her situation, with all her western 
 ports open to the Atlantic, from Glasgow to 
 Bristol and round to Southampton? And is not 
 the station for such defence identical with the 
 best for offence by maritime capture? The 
 British vessels there occupy also a superior position 
 for coal renewal; the difficulty of which for an 
 enemy, threatening the Atlantic approaches to 
 Great Britain, seems too largely discounted by 
 imaginations preoccupied with hostile commerce 
 destroyers. 
 
 The concluding sentence of Lord Loreburn's 
 letter contains a warning familiar to military 
 thought. " Great Britain will gain much from 
 
1 86 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 a change long and eagerly desired by the great 
 majority of other Powers. ' ' The wish of a possible 
 enemy is the beacon which suggests the shoal. 
 The truth is, if the British Navy maintains supe- 
 riority, it is to the interest of her enemies to have 
 immunity from capture for "private property;" 
 if it falls, it is to their interest to be able to capture. 
 The inference is safe that probable enemies, if 
 such there be, and if they entertain the wish as- 
 serted, do not expect shortly to destroy the British 
 Navy. 
 
 While unconvinced by the reasoning, it is re- 
 freshing to recognize in this letter a clear practical 
 enunciation which sweeps away much sentimental 
 rhetoric. " I urge [immunity for private property] 
 not upon any ground of sentiment or humanity 
 (indeed, no operation of war inflicts less suffering 
 than the capturing of unarmed vessels at sea), but 
 upon the ground that on the balance of argument, 
 coolly weighed, the interests of Great Britain will 
 gain much from the change." I more than doubt 
 the conclusion; but its sobriety contrasts pleas- 
 antly with the exuberances, " noble and enlight- 
 ened action," " crown of glory," and the like, with 
 which it pleases certain of our American advocates 
 to enwreathe this prosaic utilitarian proposition. 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 187 
 
 A possibility which affects the general question 
 much more seriously than others so far considered, 
 is that of neutral carriers taking the place of a 
 national shipping exposed to capture under present 
 law. This is one phase of a change which has 
 come over the general conditions of carrying trade 
 since the United States became a nation, and 
 since Great Britain, three-quarters of a century 
 afterwards, formally repealed her Navigation 
 Acts. The discussion preceding this repeal, to- 
 gether with the coincident Free Trade movement, 
 preceded by but a few years the Treaty of Paris 
 in 1856, and gave an impulse which doubtless 
 facilitated the renouncement in that treaty by 
 Great Britain of the right to capture enemy's 
 property under a neutral flag. The concession 
 was in the air, as we say ; which proves only that 
 it was contagious, not that it was wise. Like 
 many hasty steps, however, once taken it probably 
 is irreversible. 
 
 The effect of this concession has been to legalize, 
 among the several great states signatory to the 
 treaty, the carriage of belligerent property by 
 neutral ships, in which previously it had been 
 liable to seizure. In its later operation, the con- 
 demnation of the enemy's property had not in- 
 
188 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 volved the neutral carrier further than by the 
 delays necessary to take her into port, adjudicate 
 the question of ownership, and remove the prop- 
 erty, if found to be belligerent. Such detention, 
 however, was a strong deterrent, and acted as an 
 impediment to the circulation of belligerent wealth 
 by neutral means. It tended to embarrass and 
 impoverish the belligerent; hence the removal of 
 it is a modification of much importance. Neutral 
 shipping thus is now free to take a part in hostili- 
 ties, which formerly it could only do at the risk 
 of loss, more or less serious. To carry belligerent 
 property, which under its own flag would be open 
 to seizure, is to aid the belligerent ; is to take part 
 in the war. 
 
 In considering such an amelioration, if it be so 
 regarded, it is possible to exaggerate its degree. 
 If a nation cherishes its carrying-trade, does a 
 large part of its transportation in its own vessels, 
 and is unable in war to protect them, the benefit 
 of the innovation will be but partial. Its own 
 shipping, driven from the sea, is an important 
 element in the total navigation of the world, and 
 the means to replace it will not be at once at hand. 
 Neutrals have their own commerce to maintain, 
 as well as that of the weaker belligerent. They 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 189 
 
 would not undertake the whole of the latter, if they 
 could; and, if they would, they will not at once 
 have the means. Steamships driven off the sea, 
 and for the moment lost to navigation, cannot be 
 replaced as rapidly as the old sailing-vessels. 
 Moreover, neutral merchants have to weigh the 
 chances of hostilities being short, and that the 
 banished shipping of the belligerent may return in 
 its might to the seas with the dawn of peace, mak- 
 ing their own a drug on the market. In short, 
 while the belligerent profits from a change which 
 gives him free use of neutral ships, whereas he 
 formerly had only a limited use, a considerable 
 embarrassment remains. The effect is identical 
 in principle and operation with that before indi- 
 cated, as resulting from blockading a few chiei 
 harbors. A certain large fraction of transporta- 
 tion is paralyzed, and the work done by it is 
 thrown upon ports and roads which have not the 
 necessary facilities. It is as though a main trunk 
 line of railroad were seized and held. The general 
 system is deranged, prices rise, embarrassment 
 results, and is propagated throughout the business 
 community. This affects the nation by the suffer- 
 ing of thousands of individuals, and by the conse- 
 quent reduction of revenue. 
 
190 Some Neglected Aspects 0} War 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that even under mod- 
 ern conditions maritime capture — of "private" 
 property — is a means of importance to the ends 
 of war; that it acts directly upon the individual 
 citizens and upon the financial power of the bel- 
 ligerent, the effect being intensified by indirect 
 influence upon the fears of the sensitive business 
 world. These political and financial consequences 
 bring the practice into exact line with military 
 principle ; for, being directed against the resources 
 of the enemy, by interrupting his communications 
 with the outer world, it becomes strictly analogous 
 to operations against the communications of an 
 army with its base — one of the chief objects of 
 strategy. Upon the maintenance of commun- 
 ications the life of an army depends, upon the 
 maintenance of commerce the vitality of a state. 
 Money, credit, is the life of war. Lessen it, and 
 vigor flags ; destroy it, and resistance dies. Accept- 
 ing these conclusions, each state has to weigh the 
 probable bearing upon its own fortunes of the 
 continuance or discontinuance of the practice. 
 From the military point of view the question is not 
 merely, nor chiefly, " What shall our people escape 
 by the abandonment of this time-sanctioned 
 method?" but, "What power to overcome the 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 191 
 
 enemy shall we thereby surrender? " j It is a 
 question of balance, between offence ana defence. 
 As Jefferson said, when threatened with a failure 
 of negotiations, " We shall have to begin the 
 irrational process of trying which can do the 
 other most harm." As a summary of war, the 
 sentence is a caricature; but it incidentally 
 embodies Farragut's aphorism, " The best de- 
 fence is a rapid fire from our own guns." For the 
 success of war, offence is better than defence ; and 
 in contemplating this or any other military meas- 
 ure, let there be dismissed at once, as preposterous, 
 the hope that war can be carried on without some 
 one or something being hurt; that the accounts 
 should show credit only and no debit. 
 
 For the community of states a broader view 
 should be taken, from the standpoint that what- 
 ever tends to make war more effective tends to 
 shorten it and to prevent it. Neutrals have 
 always been inconvenienced by war, but in the 
 intricate network of modern commerce the injury 
 is more widespread. It is more than ever desirable 
 to prevent an outbreak ; and should one occur it 
 would be sound policy for neutrals coldly to refuse 
 to aid either party. 
 
 In past days, while reading pretty extensively 
 
192 Some Neglected Aspects of War 
 
 the arguments pro and con as to the rights and 
 duties of neutrals in war, it has been impressed 
 upon me that the much-abused Rule of 1756 
 stood for a principle which was not only strictly 
 just, but wisely expedient. The gist of the Rule 
 was that the intervention of a neutral for the com- 
 mercial benefit of a belligerent was as inconsistent 
 with neutrality as it would be to help him with 
 arms or men. The neutral was not to suffer; 
 what he did habitually in peace was open to him 
 in war — except the carriage of contraband and of 
 cargoes hostile in ownership ; but what was closed 
 to him in peace it was contrary to neutrality to 
 undertake in war for the belligerent's easement. 
 If the states represented at The Hague would 
 adopt a code of neutrality forbidding any enlarge- 
 ment of a neutral tonnage, in the carriage for a 
 belligerent, over that practised in peace; if they 
 should agree concerning blockade-running -that 
 not only are ship and cargo open to condemnation, 
 but the crew to imprisonment, as engaged in 
 belligerent service; if they would forbid the ex- 
 tension of loans by neutral capitalists to govern- 
 ments actually at war; if, even, they would re- 
 establish the rule that an enemy's property in a 
 neutral ship is lawful prize ; they would do a much 
 
Belligerent Merchant Shipping 193 
 
 better stroke for the world's peace than by granting 
 immunity to the commerce of a, belligerent, which 
 is the proposition before us. So far from an 
 amelioration, this is an incentive to war by remov- 
 ing one of its evils, and that an evil which strikes 
 the whole belligerent community, not merely the 
 navies and armies in the field. Removal, there- 
 fore, is contrary to sound policy, and to an acknowl- 
 edged experience that the more deadly and exten- 
 sive in operation the instruments of war the less 
 frequent and the shorter the appeal to arms. 
 The capture of an enemy's property at sea, when 
 in process of commercial exchange, is a weapon of 
 offensive war. The effects are unusually searching 
 and extensive, because distributed over the whole 
 belligerent community; yet they are also among 
 the most humane, because they act by loss of 
 property while entailing little bloodshed. 
 
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