* * * * * I have come to the threshold of a subject of gravest importance, the new policy of the British Government adopted in answer to the ‘war-zone’ declaration of Germany, and I stop. To devote to it merely the end of an already long article would not be treating it with the consideration which it deserves, and which the question demands. Moreover, it would not be expedient for an ex-official Englishman to discuss the subject controversially at present. It is sufficient that the measure has been adopted after full and mature consideration by the Government, that the question is political as well as legal, and for us it must be taken to be within the legitimate powers of a belligerent. Presently, to judge from what has already happened, there certainly will be any amount of nonsense talked and written about it; already the term ‘paper-blockade’ has come in handily for the making of a paragraph, and some bold spirit has hit upon a brand-new term, ‘long-distance blockade.’ Also there has been some not very wise talk about ‘Two wrongs not making a right.’ I would suggest to those who feel irresistibly impelled to discuss the question that they should omit the word ‘blockade,’ for, as we have seen, it is a pernicketty term, and all sorts of legal niceties spring up in its train. I have endeavoured to show that ‘blockade’ is the extreme manifestation of the force known as sea-power against the enemy, that sea-power lies at the root of the authority which has been given to the series of principles governing belligerent interference with neutral trade, and that these principles are not a mere adventitious set of rules drawn up at odd times as wars at sea occasioned them. The principles and the rules have resulted from the play of natural forces, exerted by the belligerents on the one side, by the neutral merchant on the other. The rules are not even a compromise. The clash of forces has thrown off alternating sparks, rules recognising now the right of the one, now the right of the other. But in the supreme display of sea-power known as ‘blockade’ we find that the right of the belligerent does, as is inevitable, take the upper hand, and the right of the neutral disappears. And there are two French maxims worthy of note just now: ‘_Qui veut les fins veut les moyens_,’ and ‘_Qui peut plus peut moins_.’ * * * * * P.S.--I must briefly refer to two questions which appear at first sight to conflict with the principles advanced in this article--Foreign Enlistment, and the King’s Proclamations of Neutrality.