will hold good in practice. It is still open even to the parties to it to evade its restrictions to a greater or less extent by taking up and commissioning merchantmen as regular ships of war. But it is unlikely that such methods will extend beyond the larger privately owned vessels. Any attempt to revive in this way the old picaresque methods could only amount to a virtual repudiation of statutory international law, which would bring its own retribution. Moreover, for home waters at least, the conditions which favoured this picaresque warfare no longer exist. In the old wars the bulk of our trade came into the Thames, and thence the greater part of it was distributed in small coasting vessels. It was against this coastwise traffic that the small, short-range privateers found their opportunity and their richest harvest. But, now that so many other great centres of distribution have established themselves, and that the bulk of the distribution is done by internal lines of communication, the Channel is no longer the sole artery, and the old troublesome disturbance can be avoided without a vital dislocation of our commercial system.
The probability, then, is that in the future the whole problem will be found to be simplified, and that the work of commerce protection will lie much more within the scope of large strategical treatment than it ever did before, with the result that the change should be found to tell substantially in favour of defence and against attack.
The reduction of range of action is scarcely less important. In the old days a cruising ship could be stored for six months, and so long as she could occasionally renew her fuel and water, she was free to range the sea outside the defended areas for the whole of the period with unimpaired vitality. For such pelagic operations her movement was practically unrestricted. She could run for two or three days from a superior enemy or chase for as long without loss of energy, and she could wait indefinitely at a likely spot, or change her ground, as danger or hope of plunder dictated. So long as she had men left to man her prizes, her power of mischief was
almost unlimited. All this is now changed. The capacity of each cruise of a ship to-day is very small. She is confined to short dashes within a strategically defended area, or if she is bent on pelagic operations, is compelled to proceed so far to find undefended waters that her coal will scarcely permit of more than a few days' actual cruising. A couple of chases at high speed during that period may force her to return at once, subject only to the precarious possibility of renewing her coal from a prize. She has, further, to face the fact that manning prizes must necessarily reduce her capacity for speed, which depends so much on a fully manned engine-room. This will tend to jeopardise her chances of return through or near defended areas. The only escape from this difficulty is to sink the captured ship. But this course has objections scarcely less weighty than the other. No Power will incur the odium of sinking a prize with all hands, and their removal to the captor's ship takes time, especially in bad weather, and the presence of such prisoners in a cruiser in any number soon becomes a serious check on her fighting power. In the case of large ships, moreover, the work of destruction is no easy matter. In the most favourable circumstances it takes a considerable time, and thus not only eats into the cruiser's endurance, but decreases her chances of evasion.
From these and similar considerations it is obvious that the possibilities of operations on the great trade-routes are much less extensive than they were formerly, while to speak of cruisers "infesting" those routes is sheer hyperbole. Under modern conditions it is scarcely more feasible than it would be to keep up a permanent blockade of the British Islands. It would require a flow of ships in such numbers as no country but our own can contemplate possessing, and such as could not be maintained without having first secured a very decided preponderance at sea. The loss of radius of action therefore, though it does not increase the power of defence, sensibly lessens that of attack by pelagic operations.
For the great increase in the powers of defence we must
turn to the extraordinary development in the means of distant communication. Under former conditions it was possible for a cruising ship to remain for days upon a fertile spot and make a number of captures before her presence was known. But since most large merchantmen have been fitted with wireless installations, she cannot now attack a single one of them without fear of calling down upon her an adversary. Moreover, when she is once located, every ship within wireless reach can be warned of her presence and avoid her. She must widely and constantly shift her position, thereby still further reducing her staying power. On the whole, then, it would appear that in so far as modern developments affect the problem, they certainly render pelagic operations far more difficult and uncertain than they used to be. Upon the great routes the power of attack has been reduced and the means of evasion has increased to such an extent as to demand entire reconsideration of the defence of trade between terminal areas. The whole basis of the old system would seem to be involved. That basis was the convoy system, and it now becomes doubtful whether the additional security which convoys afforded is sufficient to outweigh their economical drawbacks and their liability to cause strategical disturbance.
Over and above the considerations already noticed, there are three others, all of which favour the security of our trade by permitting a much more extended choice of route. The first is, that steam vessels are not forced by prevailing winds to keep to particular courses. The second is, that the improvements in the art of navigation no longer render it so necessary to make well-known landfalls during transit. The third is, that the multiplication of our great ports of distribution have divided the old main flow of trade to the Channel into a number of minor streams that cover a much wider area and demand a greater distribution of force for effective attack. It will be obvious that the combined effect of these considerations is to increase still further the chances of individual
vessels evading the enemy's cruisers and to lessen the risk of dispensing with escort.
Nor are the new practical difficulties of sporadic operations on the great routes the only arguments that minimise the value of convoys. We have also to remember that while the number of vessels trading across the ocean has enormously increased since 1815, it is scarcely possible, even if the abolition of privateering prove abortive, that the number of cruisers available for pelagic attack could exceed, or even equal, the number employed in sailing days. This consideration, then, must also be thrown into the scale against convoys; for it is certain that the amount of serious operative damage which an enemy can do to our trade by pelagic operation is mainly determined by the ratio which his available cruiser strength bears to the volume of that trade. This aspect of the question is, however, part of a much wider one, which concerns the relation which the volume of our trade bears to the difficulty of its defence, and this must be considered later.