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SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XXXVI.

No. 3287 July 6, 1907.

FROM BEGINNING
Vol. COLIV.

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CONTENTS.

The Hague Conference: The Question of Immunity for Belligerent Merchant Shipping. By Captain A. T. Mahan NATIONAL REVIEW

To Khartoum. By Sir Henry Craik, K.C.B., M.P.

3

CORNHILL MAGAZINE 15

The Enemy's Camp. Chapter XXI. (To be continued)

Sham and Super-sham. By Z.
Concerning Garden Books,

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MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE 28 BLACK WOOD'S MAGAZINE 32

By Ethel M. M. McKenna

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VII.

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 37 MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE 44

Harmless Beverages in Relation to Health. By Dr. N. E. Yorke

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

THE DEEPER NOTE.

Birds of victorious Spring, You know nor grief nor pain; Sing, sing, sing,

Reiterate the strain;

To you life doth not bring
Or loss or gain.

Your unforeboding song,

With each returning year, Is just as sweet and strong, As silvery and clear, As when the Attic throng Stood, husht, to hear.

Yet something do you miss
Of what to us is lent;
The spiritual bliss,

The whispered message sent From unseen world to this,

For our admonishment:

The mystery half-divined
Of "Where," when we depart,
Leaving our loved behind

Alone to bear the smart,
Deep melodies of mind,
And music of the heart.

The National Review.

For it is May! and in the south
The breeze is dancing, and the air
Is wild with joy and mirth and youth,
-But I must to my office chair,
And oh! I yearn to feel the bliss
Of the dear wind's inspiring kiss!

I cannot bear this hateful spot
Where every man is smug and trim,
And Money is the god, I wot,

To whom is sung the Sunday hymn.

I must away, I cannot bide

This slow suburban suicide.

The sweet world calls, and I must fly Where all the woods are gay with flow'rs,

My silken hat I will cast by,
With all my dreary office hours.
(For oh! I hate these glaring streets
Where every soul is dead one meets.)
And I will roam, in country dress,
O'er hill and dale, through field and

wood,

And see dear Nature's loveliness,
And taste the Earth and find it good;
And find within the Sussex Weald
A peace which towns can never yield.
Douglas Goldring.

The Academy.

Alfred Austin.

A SONG FROM THE SUBURBS I tread the mean suburban streets, Past glaring villas harsh and red, Where all the people that one meets Are smug and trim and overfed; And I am sad, for well I know

On Sussex downs the brave winds blow.

I did not always walk these ways,
In haunts of gloved and hatted men,
But long ago, in childhood's days,
I trod the fresh green-roofèd glen,
And wandered o'er the broad-backed

hills,

And dreamt amongst the daffodils.

And sought the early primrose flower,
And the white violet in the dell,
And spent my days in fairy bower,
But now I spend my days in hell.
I do not love these glaring streets
Where every soul is dead one meets.

POETRY.

I am the reality of things that seem; The great transmuter, melting loss to gain,

Languor to love, and fining joy from

pain.

I am the waking, who am called the dream;

I am the sun, all light reflects my gleam;

I am the altar-fire within the fane;
I am the force of the refreshing rain;
I am the sea to which flows every
stream.

I am the utmost height there is to climb;

I am the truth, mirrored in fancy's glass;

I am stability, all else will pass;

I am eternity, encircling time;

Kill me, none may; conquer me, nothing can

I am God's soul, fused in the soul of man.

The Saturday Review.

Ella Heath.

THE HAGUE CONFERENCE.

THE QUESTION OF IMMUNITY FOR BELLIGERENT MERCHANT SHIPPING.

At the present day, when maritime commerce has taken on unprecedented proportions, and constitutes a very large factor in the power of States, there should naturally be some surprise aroused by the proposition to exempt from the operations of war a financial feature so important to the war-waging ability of a belligerent, and at the same time so easily accessible to an enemy. The paradox-for such it is-is in part the survival of an opinion generated by particular interests at a period when circumstances, though essentially the same as now, were in some details different. It is still more due to a misapplication of terms, according to the proverb, "Give a dog a bad name, and hang him." By ingeniously, though certainly honestly, qualifying maritime capture as the seizure of "private" property, a haze of misunderstanding has been thrown over the whole subject, investing it with the proverbial fallacy of a halftruth. The property undoubtedly is private in ownership; but this is only a part, and the smaller part, of the issue involved.

This misconception has doubtless been furthered by the fact that maritime capture, as practised during the last great maritime wars, and still allowed by international law, is the direct descendant of piracy. As an argument against an existing condition, this circumstance is really no more valid than the fact that men are descended from apes-if so they be; but it is, nevertheless, telling. If we could distinctly remember, either personally or historically, men in the state of apes, it could not but affect involuntarily our way of looking at men now; we might at least be more humble. Concerning seizure of property at sea,

the race has kept a continuous traditional knowledge of its early methods, with a resultant impression of its principles. The day when, as well in peace as in war, a strange sail was more likely than not to be an enemy in intention, whom you would have to fight in order to preserve your goods and your life, was perpetuated nearly to our own times. Piracy at sea is the seizure of property by persons unauthorized by a national authority, even though the owner be an enemy and the time one of war. Before national regulation was instituted, this had been a universal condition, an era of free fighting, when every merchantman was prepared to turn robber if occasion offered. The tendency remained after regulation had become a well-defined system, because evasion of the law and of its ministers was facilitated by the slowness with which intelligence of marauders could be transmitted, even throughout a limited area like the Caribbean Sea; and the imperfections of maritime police, at a period when national cruisers were preoccupied with strictly belligerent operations, gave additional impunity. Privateers also, though regulated vessels, under bonds to a national authority, were nevertheless out simply for what they could make; and the conditions which favored piracy weakened the hold of responsibility upon them. Kidd began as a suppressor of piracy the career which ended on the gallows. While the majority of captains and owners in the later days were men of integrity, no more inclined than the average business man to take a dishonest advantage, there were doubtless many entirely unscrupulous, whose only test in opportunity was the danger of detection; and the very habit of appro

priating another man's property by main force, however lawful and subject to subsequent legal procedure, doubtless fostered a disposition to irregular acquisition. Although a recognized-and, indeed, a necessary-use of national resources for a national exigency, privateering inherently and historically had a tendency towards piracy, and piracy is but another name for robbery. The brutal excesses associated with the word were only incidental accompaniments of the practice, the essence of which was the taking of property without due authorization of law.

The payment of prize money, upon which of late years has fastened much of the odium cast upon maritime capture, no doubt also derives in some measure from the days of piracy. To privateering, however, it had another distinct relation. It was a necessary incident, calculated to stimulate private exertion unremunerated otherwise, to come to the help of the State and to weaken the enemy. In the beginning the pirate took the goods when and as he pleased; but the regulated privateer sent his prize into port. If an enemy, there had to be at least formal condemnation and partition; while if a neutral, arrested for transgressing international obligations, the decision of a prize court was essential to the validity of the transaction. In both cases there was not only seizure of property, but subsequent appropriation to the seizer. The process differed in nothing from any other legal condemnation, except that the goods for the most part went to the individual, not to the State -a circumstance not without analogies, such as the share of an informer: but attention has fastened somewhat exclusively upon the gain of the captor, and the violence, actual or potential, by which he obtained the property of the captured. In this has been seen the gist of the transaction; precisely

as in war itself, to which such capture is an incident, attention has fastened upon the overt use of organized force to accomplish a political end, wholly oblivious of the fact that the whole security of society-itself the end of all politics-rests upon force so efficiently organized, and SO unassailable in power, that it rarely has to appear. Such force is so quiet in operation that its very existence is overlooked. All the same, it is paid for in the shape of legal machinery, from the single policeman to the last court of appeal; just as international peace is largely secured and paid for by the military machinery from the private soldier up to the sovereign authority of the nation, in which rests the awful power to set the wheels in motion.

Prize money thus became to popular apprehension the exponent, as it were, of maritime capture in war. It summed up the ethics, and the practical aspect, of the system from which it derived-a curious inconsequence, but extremely human. Prize money was the robber's gain, maritime capture the robber's trade, the sufferer the robber's victim. The property was styled "private," and was regarded in no other aspect even by men who were, or from their occupation and knowledge should have been, perfectly conscious of the economical difference between property in rest and property circulating in commercial exchange; men who understood the financial dependence of a State upon the commerce maintained by its citizens, and who knew that there is practically no such individual thing as private losses distinguished from the loss of the community to which the individual belongs. Logically, of course, there is such a distinction; but practically it seems strange, at this late day of economic discussion to hear losses by maritime capture spoken of as individuai losses which will not substantially af

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fect the community-the State. Lord Palmerston is quoted triumphantly as saying that no powerful country was ever vanquished by losses to individuals. Yet we are continually being told that it is an economic commonplace that there is no such thing as one State deriving real advantage by entailing disadvantage upon its neighbor, the community of States being such that what one member suffers recoils more or less upon each of the others. To transfer this statement to a community of individuals is reasonable and obvious. The loss of one is the loss of all; and this, with curious inconsistency, will be admitted at a later stage of the argument, pointing out the extensive range of individuals interested in, and injured by, maritime capture the producer, the transporter, the handler, the broker, the merchant, the banker-no one of whom may be the owner of the particular property seized. Last of all it might be added, were not the argument too doubleedged, and driven too close home to serve the purpose, the national treasury suffers. As between the belligerent nations, the loss of one may be the loss of both; but it is the proportion of loss and the power to bear loss which determine the balance of war and the settlements of peace.

All this seems to me to be obvious, and I trust I may be fortunate enough to make it more obvious in the course of this paper; for it certainly is not at present sufficiently so to those who write on the other side. "To the average mind," says one, "the proposition that private property on sea should be treated on the same basis as private property on land seems almost self-evident." Passing without remark for the present the circumstance that private property on land is by the momentary conqueror treated precisely as to him seems expedient for the purposes of the war, the alleged self-evidence is such

as can be reached in any case where all circumstances of difference are overlooked or ignored. No doubt the average mind is content to accept superficial resemblance, and to inquire no more; but it might be asked of a teacher to go so far beneath the surface as to recognize the fundamental difference between a pound in a stocking and a pound in circulation. This also is obvious, though not superficial; and the "private property" embarked on merchant vessels is private property -money's worth-in circulation. Transportation is accumulative circulation; and, from a clear military point of view, the object aimed at, by the method of seizing vessels and cargoes at sea, is to stop maritime transportation, the increase of the enemy's wealth by circulation. This is the essence of the matter; the fact of the property being private in ownership is a mere incident; and in making it the forefront of the argument lies the fallacy which has misled its supporters as to the principles at stake. The question of expediency is another and different consideration, which must be otherwise treated.

History furnishes us abundant illustration of the divergent status and effect of property at rest and property in circulation, in peace as well as in war. In America now, at each recurrent harvest, the question of transportation, of circulating the products of the ground, gives rise to anxious discussion, carried far into the realms of high finance as bearing upon the national prosperity. Without transportation, the farmer's crop becomes his dollar in the stocking; rather worse than better, inasmuch as for his wants coin is better than barter. Were the country at war, and the enemy hoped to increase embarrassment by denying transportation, is it to be supposed that he would not, to the extent of his power, order the railroads to stop car

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