most powerful methods of alleviating the horrors of war will be such methods as will render the war most effective and therefore most short; such as will most effectually direct it, not so much at the Soldier and Sailor, who are but instruments, as at the Citizen, who is their creator, supporter, paymaster, inciter, and rewarder-not, indeed, at the Citizen's life, but at what touches him more nearly, his pocket; that war, in fine, should be directed at the material resources of the so-called non-combatant, that his

prosperity should be impaired, his power of paying taxes diminished, and his patience and endurance so exhausted that he will be driven to hate the war and to sigh for peace. If this can be effected with the Citizen, the Soldier and the Sailor cannot and will not long survive as combatants in the war. If there are means whereby the Citizen-who is the real villain of the piece-can be reached in his pocket, without the Soldier or Sailor-who are the victims of the piece-being necessarily touched at all, then these means are, of all others, those that should be, those that must be preferentially adopted by just, merciful, and business-like warriors who would seek to attain the real supporters of the war, to injure them in the most effectual and least cruel manner, and thus to obtain that submission of their enemy which— which alone, and not slaughter, nor even "glory "— is the final end to be sought.

That such means exist, that they have been practised by Great Britain with success in the past and may again be so practised with equal success in the future, it is the purpose of this work to demonstrate, summarily, indeed, but, it is believed, successfully.

CHAPTER IV.

WARFARE IN PRACTICE.

WARFARE in its practice consists in doing as much material injury to the enemy as is necessary to reduce him to submission. It is effectual in proportion to the injury done to him. If no injury be done by it, it is absolutely ineffectual.

On land the injury is effected by invading the enemy's country, by capturing towns and cities, and occupying provinces, by seizing and destroying property whether public or private, by preventing even neutrals from carrying on trade in things not even contraband of war, by cutting off or appropriating the taxes, by thus depriving the Government of the enemy of the resources, whether of men, of matériel, or of money, on which it must rely for resistance, and by thus bringing it to that point of exhaustion when it will have no resource but submission. The destruction of men in battle is but a means to this end; for the object of war is not to depopulate a nation, but to reduce its Government to submission, and no victories in the field, no feats of arms, are of any avail whatever except in so far as they tend to bring about this result.

On the high seas there is no enemy's country to invade, there are no towns to capture, no provinces to occupy, and no possibility therefore of injuring the enemy by any of these methods. But there are Supplies to stop; there is property to capture,

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property of the most valuable kind and in the most convenient form, and the capture of which is certain therefore to inflict a very serious material injury upon the enemy, and thus to diminish his resources for carrying on the war. Just as victories in the field are barren or even injurious to the victor if they produce no effect on the enemy's material resources, so also are naval victories barren or even injurious if they leave these unaffected. And as the material resources of the enemy on the high seas consist solely in the property that is found in course of transport thereon for his supply and succour, if this property be left to go free, no material injury whatever can there be inflicted upon him. The bombardment or capture of seaside fortresses and towns, or the disembarkation of troops, on an enemy's coast, is of course another matter; but this is not properly maritime warfare at all, but land warfare, proceeding by the same methods and having the same material results as the ordinary operations of that warfare.

A system of warfare on land, if any such could be conceived, which should affect the armies alone of the enemy, and which should at the same time leave his territory and property unaffected, would be absolutely ineffectual; and this is the case with any kind of maritime warfare that does not propose and include the capture of property at sea. Without this, the blockade of a port amounts to no more than the massing of troops on a frontier, a naval victory to nothing more than a barren boast, the supremacy of the seas to nothing more than a phrase, a vain exhibition of force incapable of being used to the injury of the enemy. But if property be captured then is the enemy invaded in reality, then the subject suffers, the taxes fail, the material resources are diminished,

the injury, in short, is inflicted, and the war is effectual.

That a nation at war has the right to seize its enemy's property, arising from and founded upon the state of war, has never been questioned. Yet there are those who would have this right altogether abandoned at sea, who claim that war shall exist between two nations on land but not for their merchants at sea; that requisitions of property, nay that the capture of whole towns and cities and the destruction of whole armies shall be lawful on one element, and that, nevertheless, every bale of goods shall be sacred on the other; who hold that private property is more sacred than private life, and that the money a subject pays in taxation is in some sense less his private property than the goods he sends to sea on an adventure.

Those who advocate this view argue that peaceable traders should not be prevented from carrying on their trade at any time; as though the trader over seas were in some way less a native of his own country and less bound to render it assistance and to bear its burdens in its extremity than the rest of his fellow-countrymen. They are not ashamed to claim that taxes shall be levied on the nation at large, that many thousands of its inhabitants shall be sent forth to give their lives in battle, and that the merchant alone shall nevertheless be neutralized and enabled to make even larger profits than in the time of peace he does, by the very event of the war. The merchant, however, is entitled to and can claim no better or other treatment than the rest of his countrymen. When his Government declares war he is at war together with all his fellows of the nation; and whatever be the individual sacrifices necessary for the

national success in the war, he is bound to make them as much as anybody else. And if it be true, that war can only be effectual at sea when it is directed to the seizure and confiscation of property, what shall we say of those who, professing to speak for "civilization," claim that their country should give up the power of capture from the enemy in order that they themselves may be protected from capture by the enemy?

If the merchant is to claim exemption from the war for his goods on the seas, every taxpayer may equally claim it for the money in his pocket; nay, the very soldier may claim it for his life. For the answer to each one of any such claimants is the same-that they belong to and owe aid to their country; that they must in its extremity make such sacrifices, each in his degree, as are necessary; and that the incidence of the war must be borne, whether it falls on the private goods of the merchant, on the private money of the taxpayer, or on the private life of the soldier. Each of them belongs to and forms part of the nation, and none of them can refuse to the nation the especial sacrifice which the necessities of the war may call for. If one must give his goods, the other his money, and the third his life, it is but in order that the goods, the money, and the lives of the rest of their fellow-citizens may be secured to them. Such sacrifices in such a cause no good citizen can refuse without abjuring his citizenship, and those who set up a claim to be personally at peace while they are nationally at war, do in effect claim to go out from their country and not to be of it.

If those who make this monstrous claim would or could abolish war altogether, it would be well; but until that is done, those who claim that a special