affect the issue. Thus the abundance of news which we have at our disposal at the present day may easily serve only to obscure and distract. The consequences of the blockade to which the Central Powers were subjected made themselves felt at once. Although we have succeeded by our own might in developing and carrying on our economic life during the War, none the less the advantages of our economic position in the world have made themselves felt all the time. They alone explain the fact that new opportunities of resistance constantly revealed themselves to our opponents, because the sea was open to them, and that victories which formerly would have been absolutely decisive, and the conquest of whole kingdoms, still brought us no nearer to peace. Thus was Russia able to recover from the severe defeats of the summer of 1915 and to attack once more in the following year with newly-equipped armies. Though the American Admiral Mahan, in his famous book, _The Influence of Sea-Power on History_, summed up the result of the Seven Years' War as follows: On the sea, immense success and material gain for England, on land, enormous sacrifice of men, with the sole result that the _status quo_ was maintained; though he asserts, moreover, that the British fleet contributed most towards the overthrow of Napoleon by cutting him off from the most important of all sources for replenishing supplies, namely, the sea, the question of sea-power was not really of decisive importance in those times. Pitt, in his speech in Parliament against the Peace of Paris of 1763, already emphasised the fact that North America had been conquered for England in Germany. Napoleon was defeated on land. The Continental States of that time, pre-eminently France, were still agrarian States, and far better able than now to suffice for their own needs for a long time. In our days of world-policy and world-economics, the views of the famous naval writer are far more in accordance with actuality. The fact that we have resorted to submarine warfare as a means of self-defence is in itself a proof of it. The unsparing application of this new weapon will hasten materially the end of this mighty economic conflict, by means of the economic difficulties which it will create for our opponents and for neutrals. The World War affords incontrovertible proof that Germany must for all time to come maintain her claim to sea-power. We need not at present discuss by what means this aim is to be achieved.