Now in 1898 the official returns' show that there were belonging to the United Kingdom and her Colonies merchant vessels of an aggregate tonnage of 10,503,307 tons (net tonnage), manned by 242,553 men, in addition to which there were over 104,000 fishermen, the hardiest of seafarers, besides the 200,000 seamen estimated to be employed in the merchant and fishing vessels of British possessions, and the 100,000 men of the navy, which would give a grand total of over 600,000 men. All other nations together, in 1895-the last year for which complete figures are furnished-owned vessels of an aggregate tonnage of 12,973,302 tons. I have been unable to obtain the number of the crews of the Foreign vessels; but, assuming them to be manned in the same proportion per ton as ours, we find that Great Britain possesses about one-half of the whole merchant tonnage, and at least the same proportion, or one-half, of the whole mercantile seafaring population of the world. Relatively weak in numbers though we be on land, we are as strong at sea as all the rest of the world put together.

It is true that on the land we are the weakest of all great Powers; it is equally true that at sea we are the strongest; and it follows that we must mainly if not alone rely for our defence upon the power of waging war effectually at sea.

Equally does it follow that we must rely upon this mainly if not alone for our tranquillity, which

1 Tables showing the progress of British Merchant Shipping, issued by the Board of Trade, 18th June, 1897, p. 19. It is to be remarked that the gross tonnage of British vessels would be nearer 14,000,000 than 10,000,000 tons, and that the tonnage of other countries is often more nearly like our "gross" than our "net" tonnage. See also Annual Statement of Navigation and Shipping of the United Kingdom for 1898, pp. 297, 384, and 389.

is in these days more than ever dependent upon the knowledge that we are armed and able to keep our

own.

And it follows above all, that if we content ourselves with the power of waging war at sea otherwise than effectually, our seeming defence is a real snare, and we the present sport and future victims of a fatal hallucination.

CHAPTER II.

THE LOST NOTION OF WAR.

To three generations of Britons war has been unknown-war, that is, which touched themselves and involved risk to their own homes, lives, liberties and fortunes. They have, indeed, seen wars; they have even made wars, and have paid out of their abundance the cost of wars; but never have they had any experience of such a war as put themselves and the British Islands, British laws and liberties, or even British trade in jeopardy. Since 1815 no inhabitant of these islands has felt the actual touch or stress of war, or so much as the apprehension of either. Consequently it has not seemed necessary so much as to consider the nature of war, still less to entertain the various problems to which actual war gives rise, or the necessary laws under which it must be waged, as practical matters, or any otherwise than in academical discussion. And so it would seem that the very notion of war has been lost.

This is the more remarkable because, so long as war was present with us as a matter of serious actual experience and serious actual risk, the national mind was strongly bent to consideration, discussion, and decision of all the moot points connected with it. Nowhere was more attention given than in England during the eighteenth century to the problems that arise from it; and it is hardly too much to say that,

if the great principles of the Law of Nations were laid down and established by such great Continental thinkers as Grotius and Vattel, it was mainly the English jurists, Prize Courts, and text-writers who reduced those principles to systematized practice as regards maritime warfare, for which Sir William Scott (Lord Stowell's) decisions alone provide a principled and reasoned rule of conduct in almost every conceivable case. But when the great struggle with Napoleon was over, the British people seem to have flung away all thoughts of war, and to have gradually been brought to the comfortable persuasion that there had at last opened for the world an era of universal peace, universal commerce, and universal great exhibitions. The frame of mind no longer existed which produced such masterpieces as the Duke of Newcastle's letter (inspired by Lord Mansfield, Sir George Lee, Dr. Paul, and Sir Dudley Ryder) in reply to the Prussian Memorial of 1752; Lord Liverpool's Discourse of 1759; and Ward's Treatise of 1801. British lawyers ceased to concern themselves with that Law of Nations which is to this day part of the Common Law of Great Britain, or limited their efforts to mere compilation and accounts of conventions; and if they have produced some respectable publications on this momentous subject, they have given to the world no great, nor even any remarkable work. Not one of them has even been found to this day to attempt to meet that crying need of the British Navy, which experience daily emphasizes—a Manual of the Law of Nations for the especial use of British seamen. Such a manual has, indeed, been compiled for French seamen in Ortolan's excellent work, Règles et Diplomatie de la Mer, originally published in 1844, and whereof there issued a

second edition in 1864; but no such service as this has ever been rendered by the British lawyer to the British seaman, who needs it far more than his French compeer, nor has Ortolan even been translated; and the British naval captain, often alone and far away from all counsel, is left, when confronted by a difficult case, to steer his way through the intricacies of the law without any other aid than he can derive from a few ill-chosen works on the Law of Nations in general, which he cannot find his way about, and which, if he could, often fail to meet the seaman's case in a way which a seaman can comprehend.

If, on the one hand, the study of the Law of Nations has in recent years suffered from the neglect of the capable, it has, on the other hand, suffered still more from the meddling of the incompetent and unauthorized, who from time to time get together, call themselves a Conference or an Institute, and promulgate "views" which are solemnly reproduced by the newspapers as though they meant something or had effected something. Thus, deserted by the competent, bemused and bemuddled by the incompetent, and left at last without light or guidance, the student of the Law of Nations has too often been reduced to despair, and has even been occasionally tempted to declare, as the sapient Swiss banker and "Alabama" arbitrator declared at the Geneva tribunal, "there is no such thing as international law."

This, indeed, would seem now to be the prevailing view among people in general, whether on the Continent or in these Islands; but in these Islands most especially. The current impression is that Law between Nations lasts till war breaks out, and that it then stops; that most especially in maritime