The doctrine of the freedom of the sea which Germany has suddenly begun to preach at the top of its voice is yet another proof of either the entire absence of any sense of humour in the German mind, or of a morbid condition of the German conscience. For Great Britain, the geographical distribution of her Empire makes an overwhelming superiority in naval power a condition of its existence; but the seas of the planet, under her supremacy, have been free to every flag—except the black flag of the pirate. She has never abused her sea-power. It is Germany that has made the sea terrible by sowing it with drifting mines and making it a field for the performances of its submarines. Great Britain has supreme power on the sea, Germany has—or _had_—supreme military power on land; and what Germany means by ‘the freedom of the sea’ is that Great Britain’s advantage should be cancelled out of existence, while her own advantage should remain undiminished. It is worth quoting the words in which, in his clear-cut, sword-edged prose, Mr. A. J. Balfour analyses and describes this new German doctrine. ‘The most simple-minded,’ he says, ‘must feel suspicious when they find that _these missionaries of maritime freedom are the very same persons who preach and who practise upon the land the extremest doctrines of military absolutism_. ‘She poses as a reformer of international law, though international law has never bound her for an hour. She objects to “economic pressure” when it is exercised by a fleet, though she sets no limit to the brutal completeness with which economic pressure may be imposed by an army. She sighs over the suffering which war imposes upon peaceful commerce, though her own methods of dealing with peaceful commerce would have wrung the conscience of Captain Kidd. She denounces the maritime methods of the Allies, though in her efforts to defeat them she is deterred neither by the rules of war, the appeal of humanity, nor the rights of neutrals.’ Now, when a Power like Germany, with such a record on the sea, attires itself in the garb of a missionary, and begins to preach the gospel of ‘the freedom of the sea,’ the phenomenon appeals to the literary imagination by its exquisite absurdity; to the alienist it suggests the urgent need of medical treatment. That the Power which has scorched with fire and splashed red with blood the little State it had sworn to protect, which sank the _Lusitania_ and shot Nurse Cavell, should complain to high heaven that Great Britain had broken the regulations of the Hague Convention, is an audacity which paralyses the sane intelligence. It is as though Jack the Ripper published a tract against vivisection, or Deeming wrote a pious homily on ‘How to Make Home Happy.’