The main methods are twofold. (1) We invite those merchants and corporations in neutral countries who are importing goods bona fide for their own country's consumption, and not for re-export to our enemies, to sign an agreement to that effect. In most countries there is a large union or trust which has collectively made such an undertaking, and which endeavours to prevent breaches of the agreement by its members. (2) We try to ascertain the bona fide imports of each country by taking the average imports of some ten previous years, and allowing some extra amount—varying in different cases—to replace such imports from enemy countries as may have disappeared. If these averages are greatly exceeded—and they sometimes have multiplied themselves by ten or twelve—we become suspicious, make further searches, and generally find some enterprising smugglers who have broken their undertaking to us and are consequently added to a black list. They are people who prefer to supply the enemy; and we do not willingly, in war time, allow people to supply the enemy, any more than the enemy, when he can help it, allows them to supply us.
These two methods applied in conjunction are the best instruments that we have discovered for carrying out without undue friction our necessary, although somewhat oppressive, task. The war does impose on neutrals a considerable amount of hardship; there is no use denying it. And the enormous opportunities for money-making which it also affords to a good number of traders in each country is only a poor excuse for the general inconvenience. Still, I doubt if much improvement is reasonably possible upon these measures which "Great Britain in concert with all her Allies" has taken to prevent trading with the enemy through our lines, so long as neutral states meet us in a neutral and conciliatory spirit. When they do not, of course there is trouble. The absolute refusal of the Swedish Government to sanction any agreement for the purpose of determining what imports were going to the enemy and what not, has led to much friction and mutual reprisals. And similarly in Greece, the perpetual series of frauds and secret hostilities which have followed the King's unconstitutional dismissal of Venizelos, his trick upon us at Salonica, and his breach of treaty with our ally Serbia, has produced a policy of pressure on the part of the Allies, which can be justified only as preferable to actual war. For there is no doubt that from the original breach of treaty onward the Greek Government has provided us with abundant casus belli. But these painful controversies are not the result of our trade policy: they are incidents of natural friction with Germanizing courts or governments. But Mr. Bullard is for some strange reason speechless with horror over the first of our instruments. It seems to him a "humiliating surrender of sovereignty" that the Dutch Government should sanction the existence of the Overseas Trust, which undertakes, so far as overseas imports are concerned, to trade only with one side in the war. It is a purely business arrangement, by which certain firms who want for themselves goods passing through the hands of one belligerent, undertake, if they receive the goods, not to hand them on to the other.
VI.
I pass to a real difficulty, where I do not feel at all sure that our policy was wise, though on the whole the balance of well-informed opinion seems to approve of it. I mean the so-called total "blockade" of Germany, including the shutting out of foodstuffs. The history of this policy is as follows.
On February 4, 1915, the Germans announced that all the seas round Great Britain were a "war-area" in which they would sink without warning all ships whatsoever. (Neutrals might be spared on occasion, but could not complain if they were sunk.) This was a proposed blockade by submarine, which has hitherto proved to be impracticable. If Germany had commanded the seas she would, of course, have proclaimed a real blockade and prevented any ship from reaching Great Britain.
Now we made no objection to the enemy's wishing to blockade us. We objected to the submarine blockade on its own special demerits, because it could not be, or at any rate was not, carried out with any respect for humanity. A regular blockade may be compared with putting a line of policemen across a street to turn back intruders. A submarine blockade was as though a man, having no police at his disposal, were to make occasional dashes into the street with a revolver and shoot passers-by. But this point need not be laboured, since American opinion was quite in agreement with ours. The point to consider is the retort that we made.
Up to February we had allowed, not only foodstuffs but important articles for munition-making, like cotton, to proceed freely to Germany. On February 4 Germany announced that no ship would be allowed to sail to or from Great Britain and that all our shipping, including even fishing boats, would be sunk at sea by submarines. We replied on March 11 that, if they chose to put the war on that footing, we took up the challenge. After a certain date we would allow no ship to carry goods to or from Germany, and, as for their murderous submarines, our fishermen should have arms and fight them. The submarine war has been at times extremely dangerous to us, and may be so again: but, as far as we can at present judge, we have won it. By unheard-of efforts of daring and invention our sea-faring men have baffled and destroyed the submarines, and we have turned the tables of the blockade completely against the enemy.
Our action, however, has been criticized on several grounds. (1) On grounds of international law. Here I must stand aside and allow the lawyers to speak. It is no part of my case to argue that in all the innumerable controversies produced by the war England has always been technically in the right. But it seems pretty clear that in this matter a condition has arisen which has no precedent in previous wars and is not covered by any of the existing rules. If our action is to be described as a "blockade," there has certainly never been any blockade like it before, either in vastness of scale or, I think, in efficiency, or in the leniency with which it is exercised. Neither has any government of a belligerent nation before commandeered all foodstuffs for its own use, as Germany has, and thus brought them under the category of contraband. Nor again, so far as I know, has there been a parallel to the curious position in the Baltic, where our command of the sea suddenly ceases, not from any lack of strength or vigilance on our part, but because the neutral powers who own the narrow entrances to the Baltic have closed them to our warships. We seem here again to be creating a precedent, but not, I think, a precedent that is repugnant to the "essence of international law properly applicable to questions at issue under present-day conditions." Mr. Asquith seems to have accepted some such view when he explained that our policy was to exclude supplies from Germany, and at the same time refused to use the term "blockade" in order "not to be entangled in legal subtleties." The gravest objection to the whole policy is, no doubt, the hardship which it inflicts on neutrals. All blockading, all stopping of contraband, all interference with shipping, inflicts hardship on neutrals; and the immense scale of the Allied operations in this world-war makes the total hardship inflicted very large.
I sometimes doubt whether the Allies would have taken this drastic step had they not felt that, on the main issue of the war, neutral feeling was so overwhelmingly on our side that it would probably accept a good deal of inconvenience in order to have the war finished more rapidly and successfully. And I do think that the general attitude of most neutral nations, and most especially of America, has shown a high standard of generosity and of what I may call world-patriotism.
(2) Secondly, on ground of humanity. We are said to be "starving the women and children of Germany." The answer is, first, that such a blockade is a normal measure of war in all sieges and was practised, e.g. by the Germans in the siege of Paris. It has always been understood that the siege process would be applied to Great Britain by any enemy who should command the sea. It was attempted by Napoleon, and it has been applied already by Germany, though with complete lack of success. We are doing to Germany what they are trying to do to us. Secondly, while we are a nation vitally dependent on sea-borne imports for our food, Germany is almost completely self-supporting. She can live for an indefinite time on her own produce; and the most that our "blockade" can do is to make life less comfortable, and the supplying of the army vastly more difficult. No human being in Germany need starve because of our "blockade."