Part 8

While England was combating Spain's claims in western waters, a new maritime power, the Netherlands, was breaking down the monopoly of Portugal in the east. The ships of the Dutch East India Company won their way against the Portuguese and made prize of their vessels. It was apparently to set at rest the consciences of members of the company who hesitated to pocket profits that had not been won in peaceful trade, that the Dutchman Grotius wrote his treatise on the law of prize, one chapter of which, under the title _Mare Liberum_, was published as an independent work. The book claimed the seas as a free highway for the ships of all nations, and freedom of trade for all nations on every sea. That age was not ready to accept either claim in its entirety. Two Englishmen, Welwod and Selden, wrote books to vindicate England's traditional sovereignty over the British seas, the limits of which no one was quite certain about. Even the British admirals who were supposed to defend British authority there, could never get the Crown lawyers to pronounce exactly on the point, some holding that British seas extended to the English settlements in America, others being satisfied with a line drawn from Norway to Cape Finisterre. Charles I set out, with his ship money fleets, to supplement the discourses of his subjects by "the louder language of a powerful navy." But it was left for his great successor, Cromwell, to use this latter language effectively, and to wring from the Dutch the concession that their ships should strike flag and topsail in the narrow seas. They always insisted, however, that this was done in courtesy, not as a recognition of British sovereignty over any part of the high seas. International incidents arising from the refusal of French captains to salute occurred until England relinquished her claim during the Napoleonic wars.

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As to freedom of trade, the English Navigation Laws stood as a witness that Spain's policy of monopolizing colonial trade was considered worthy of emulation. Such monopolies were carefully guarded, as in Elizabeth's day, and as in her day efforts were made to break them down. To Cromwell's request that Englishmen be allowed liberty of conscience and of trade in the West Indies, the Spanish ambassador replied that it was to ask his master's two eyes. Thereupon Cromwell stopped asking, but despatched a fleet to the West Indies to seize a post which might become a centre of British trade.

This action of Cromwell links his day to ours. That the keynote of modern diplomacy and its accompaniment of wars is to be found in rivalry for the possession of land and markets in the extra-European world, has been fully pointed out by historians. It is a fact which cannot be emphasized too strongly. Its significance increases with the study of the whole modern period.[1] One has only to dip into the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth and late seventeenth centuries, or to read a few pages of parliamentary debates, to realize the importance of trade in the eyes of all men. It becomes apparent that the aim of each progressive nation was to increase its overseas commerce at the expense of other nations, and that every new enterprise of foreigners loomed as a menace to national prosperity. Sea-borne trade was the nursery of seamen, and commerce must be restricted to nationals by navigation acts, while commercial ventures of rival states were not alone a menace because they meant diverting profits to the benefit of a rival, but dangerous as the possible foundation for hostile naval power. Since commerce was carried on most successfully by trading companies, it was good policy to give them governmental countenance, and although occasional voices were raised in criticism of their monopolies and the high prices for which they were felt to be responsible, their shares were popular forms of investment, and many of their shareholders sat in the seats of the mighty. The English and Dutch East India Companies were among the first to carry on overseas commerce on a large scale, and much international history is written between the lines of their annals.

[1] And its illusions were set forth in "The Expansionist Fallacy," No. 5 of this REVIEW.--ED.

"And you, Belgians, courage, courage! Continue to defend intrepidly your rights and your freedom, and with them the freedom of the human race!" It was not in August of 1914 that these words were spoken. They occur in a pamphlet published in 1727, and the struggle in which they urge the Belgians to persist was a struggle for the freedom of the seas. The ruler of the Belgians in those days was popularly called the German emperor, and though not a Hohenzollern, he was a Hapsburg. The Emperor Charles VI was pursuing a project which bade fair to give the Hapsburg lands something they have not attained to this day: importance as a maritime power. He had issued a charter to a group of Belgian merchants who were already carrying on a lucrative trade with the far east from the port of Ostend. The Dutch and English East India companies, seeing their monopolies endangered, complained to their respective governments, which immediately set in motion machinery for the suppression of the Ostend Company. Diplomatic agents busied themselves at Charles' court, and a flood of pamphlets, in those days of limited newspaper publicity, did what they could in the manufacturing of public opinion. The Belgian pamphlets maintained the principle that "the right to trade in any part of the globe is inherent in all sovereign peoples." The Dutch pamphlets opposed the company on the ground of alleged infringement of treaty rights and agreements. The English pamphlets, wisely refraining from much comment on documents based on papal grants whose authority England had never recognized, argued that English pocketbooks would suffer if the Ostend Company continued to do business. Pitt many years later stated in Parliament that the English government had no right to demand the suppression of the company. But, as the British ambassador said to the Emperor, in language strikingly reminiscent of that of the Spanish ambassador of Cromwell's day, "In attacking our commerce, you fly in the eyes of the English nation." In the complicated diplomacy of five years, the question of the Ostend Company held its own, but in 1731 Charles VI abandoned it, as he had abandoned many other things of value, to obtain one more ratification of the Pragmatic Sanction.

Eight years later it was England that was carrying on a struggle for the principle of freedom of the seas. Modern research has established beyond any reasonable doubt that the immortal Jenkins did actually have an ear sliced off by a Spaniard who was searching his ship for smuggled goods, and that the tale was not a fabrication of the Opposition that desired to force Walpole to plunge England into war. The Opposition certainly recognized the recruiting value of the incident. "The tale of Jenkins' ear will raise us troops enough!" exclaimed one member on the floor of the House of Commons. Whether or not Jenkins commended his soul to God and his cause to his country, his country embraced his cause as that of the freedom of British commerce from search by Spaniards in time of peace. The British vessels searched were usually smugglers, but the British public was not interested in the right of Spain to safeguard her monopoly of trade with her colonies; they objected to search and to the contention that British ships must not be found in American waters outside the straight path between England and her colonies, and they besieged the doors of Parliament with the slogan: "A free sea or war!" And so was fought the war of Jenkins' Ear, which might have been avoided had it not been for the powerful influence, both with the people and with Parliament, of the South Sea Company; and which did nothing toward settling the point in controversy.

Thus far the principle of freedom of the seas had been invoked in connection with efforts to preserve for the benefit of a whole nation or of favored groups of nationals, all access to the trade and resources of certain regions. During the wars for colonies and commerce which arose from these efforts, the principle was brought forward against interruption of commerce in time of war. In the days when privateering was a recognized adjunct of maritime, warfare, commerce-destroying was reduced to a science that only the last three years have rivalled. The seizure as contraband of anything which might help the enemy to prolong the struggle, and the confiscation of cargoes of neutral ships, on the ground that part of the cargo belonged to the enemy, caused endless international complications. Treaties of peace began to contain provisions designed to render less burdensome these rights claimed by belligerents. The first step toward anything like international agreement was taken in the treaties of Utrecht in 1713. By these treaties contraband was limited to articles directly useful in war, exclusive of foodstuffs; enemy goods on neutral ships were protected on the principle later reduced to a formula, as "free ships, free goods"; and the method of visit and search was regulated. These arrangements did not outlast the peace, but many later treaties renewed, and some developed more fully, these restrictions, which were naturally more popular with neutral powers and with powers possessing small navies, than with the power which possessed the command of the sea. As that enviable position was held practically without interruption by Great Britain, and as in time of war she used unsparingly the advantages her position gave her, she gained in the eyes of opponent and neutral the reputation of being the enemy of freedom of the seas.

At the beginning of the Seven Years' War France, realizing that she would not be able to control the trade with her colonies, threw it open to neutrals. Great Britain thereupon laid down her famous "Rule of 1756" that commerce illegal in time of peace was not legal in time of war, and attacked neutral ships found trading with French colonies. The answer of Denmark and Sweden to this policy was the formation of the first league of neutrals to protect neutral commerce. The French, hoping that the contrast of their policy with that of Great Britain would help their cause with neutral powers, were careful not to authorize interference with neutral trade. It is interesting to find the doctrine of which we have heard so much of late, of the menace of British "navalism," formulated in the eighteenth century by the minister of a state which, like England's opponent in the twentieth, was stronger on land than on the sea. It was a French diplomat who expressed the hope that some day a union of nations would be able to cope with England and "establish firmly after the peace, or even during the war, a balance of commerce: for without it no other people will ever enjoy any but a precarious navigation, which will last only as long as it is to the interest of the English government not to destroy it." This statement owes its significance to the fact that it voiced the attitude of a government which, under stress of circumstances, indeed, and not because it saw a light, was departing from the prevailing practice of mercantilism, the reservation for nationals of the benefits of colonial trade.

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A British statesman has recently made the assertion that the United States owes its existence to the struggle for the freedom of the seas. He was referring to the Elizabethan struggle against Spain's policy of exclusion, but is not the statement true also in another sense? In so far as the restrictions laid upon the development of the colonies by the trade and navigation laws contributed in bringing about the American Revolution, that movement was a protest against the mercantile system, under which no freedom of the seas was possible.

The United States early ranged herself, also, on the side of the nations that championed freedom of the seas for commerce in time of war. Her treaty with France regulated the right of search, limited contraband to munitions of war, and proclaimed the principle, "free ships, free goods." The treaty which Franklin later negotiated with Prussia established American advocacy of the immunity of private property from capture at sea. In the meantime, Great Britain's refusal to limit herself in any interference with commerce which might hinder her victory over her revolted colonies and France, gave umbrage to the Scandinavian powers and to Russia, and in 1780 Catherine II proclaimed the Armed Neutrality of the North. To the principle of "free flag, free goods," and the limitation of contraband to actual munitions of war, the Armed Neutrality joined the principle that a blockade to be binding must be effectively maintained. Although Catherine jested with the British ambassador about her armed neutrality, calling it an armed nullity, she told him that Russian trade and Russian ships were her children, and that she was determined to protect them. France had favored the formation of the Armed Neutrality, and Louis XVI improved the occasion by explaining that his only motive in participating in the war was his attachment to the principle of the freedom of the seas.

It is difficult for us today to preserve the proper attitude of respect for the word of a king in this connection, but it is not so difficult for us to understand what was the real attitude of France. England had won from France the greater part of her colonies, and with them a lucrative commerce, and her remaining commerce was being crippled by the war policy of the mistress of the seas. Behind the England which refused to limit her power as a belligerent by accepting a revision of maritime law, stood the England which was the successful commercial rival of France.

The French Republic inherited this much of the view point of Louis XVI. The remedy for the situation France saw in an imitation of England's policy. It enacted a navigation law copied after those of Great Britain, and while declaring that its war against England was a war to free the seas, it proclaimed that as a war measure it was abandoning the principle, "free ships, free goods." Napoleon took up the convenient formula, writing to the Royal Society on paper decorated by a vignette representing Liberty sailing in a shell, and bearing the motto, _Liberté de Mer_. Years later he read the same meaning into the formula; outlining to Narbonne his idea that England should be attacked through the Orient; he said that the same blow which destroyed her mercantile greatness in India, would win independence for the west, and the freedom of the sea. England's attitude toward sea law gave him a convenient weapon, and he induced his admirer the Czar to form a new Armed Neutrality, announcing that France would not make peace until neutral flags were properly respected, "and until England shall have acknowledged that the sea belongs to all nations." Whether the device of a league of neutrals could really be an effective force in protecting commerce in wartime was not proved in 1800, for after the assassination of the Czar Paul the coalition went to a pieces. As in the present war, both belligerents used their naval forces to cut off supplies from the territories controlled by the enemy, and to ruin her commerce. Napoleon in his attempt to close the markets of Europe to Great Britain maintained that he was defending the freedom of the seas against Great Britain's refusal "to recognize international law as observed by other nations," while England defended her "paper blockades" and policy toward neutrals, as necessary, since she must preserve her command of the seas as an "essential to the protection of independent states, and for the prosperity and good of the human race."

The damage done to American commerce in the pursuit of these high-sounding aims precipitated the war of 1812, which was indubitably a war for the freedom of the seas for neutral commerce in time of war, and which would probably have been fought with France instead of with Great Britain had it not been for the question of impressment, and the popular prejudices which had survived the American Revolution. Our championship of rules limiting belligerent rights against sea borne commerce, and our activities in the suppression of the Barbary pirates, have led us into a rather complacent attitude with regard to our position as to freedom of the seas. It is salutary therefore for us to remember the Bering Sea controversy. When, in 1821, Russia claimed sovereignty over Bering Sea, both the United States and Great Britain protested, and Russia withdrew her claim. But when in 1886 our activities in connection with pelagic sealing caused friction with Great Britain, our defense was based in part upon a claim to have inherited from Russia rights which in 1821 we had refused to admit that she possessed. And when the case was heard before an international court, one of our advocates even justified visit and search in time of peace, regardless of our traditional position on that subject. However, after a certain amount of journalistic jubilation when the award went against us, our cousins overseas charitably allowed the memory of our peccadillo to accumulate dust. That the question of the right of a nation to protect fisheries in adjacent waters is not a closed one, was shown by Russia's claim in the White Sea put forward in 1911. That question, as well as the whole matter of the three-mile limit, is bound to demand further consideration in the near future.

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What has been the attitude of Great Britain since 1815, and how far does it foreshadow her future policy? It must not be forgotten that in the long struggle to safeguard human life as well as property upon the seas, the chief burden has been borne by her. In the old days of her proud claim to a salute in the narrow seas, she felt her responsibility to police those seas, and this sense of responsibility has widened with the extension of her commerce, so that she has put the whole world in her debt by rendering the seven seas a safe highway in time of peace. Her adoption of the principle of free trade was probably the greatest single step that has been taken in modern times toward freedom of the seas, in the sense of breaking down the barriers of trade restriction which supposed national interest had erected. On the other hand, in the race for markets and raw materials, she has not escaped the tendency toward that return to the mercantilistic policy of exclusion in favor of nationals which is so marked in the whole movement today, and which is the crux of the problem. In the aspect of the question which has to do with limitation of belligerent right, she has shown herself responsive to the tendency, so noticeable from 1815 to 1914, to regard war as something to be limited so far as possible to the armed forces of the belligerents. Her substantial concessions in 1856, many of her statesmen have never ceased to deprecate, and it was the growing feeling that she could not afford to part with any more of the advantages her command of the sea gave her, that prevented the ratification of the Declaration of London. The events of the present war make very vital the question how far rules of this sort contribute toward the solution of the problem.

The attitude of the English press toward Lord Lansdowne's suggestion that Great Britain declare her willingness to discuss the problems connected with the freedom of the seas reflects the shades of British opinion at present. Certain papers see the problem as one of war times only, and point out, what American opinion will not fail to echo, that the submarine question will have to be dealt with first and foremost. Two writers face the problem squarely as one of commercial policy in time of peace, and offer solutions according to their creeds. The _Saturday Review_ expresses the belief that "so far from examining with other Powers the question of the freedom of the seas, we must re-enact, without delay, the Navigation Laws, which we foolishly repealed in 1849." On the other hand, the _London Nation_ sees the impartial distribution of the world's raw materials as one aspect of the real freedom of the seas, and agrees with the French Socialists that the mistress of the seas that must secure this freedom for all nations willing to live by the rule of peace, must be, not Great Britain, but the future League of Nations. The harmonizing of these two view-points does not promise to be an easy task, and we may be sure that the whole question will have full and free discussion in England and throughout her empire in the months to come. American citizens do not have to consider the problem of resigning to the keeping of a League of Nations a proud and long-cherished tradition of wardenship of the seas. But we are one of the great commercial nations, and no voice will have a more respectful hearing than ours at the peace settlement. Barére, phrase-maker of the French Revolution, summed up the foreign policy of France in 1798 by saying that she had inscribed upon her flags, "Freedom of the seas, peace to the world, equal rights to all nations." We have seen how the first of these phrases has been used again and again in the past to cloak jealousies of the commercial dominance of a rival nation. We know that one thing that it means today is that never again must the history of the world be stained by the wanton destruction of the lives of peaceful travelers upon the world's highway. If it has a meaning also in relation to the world's commerce, in peace or in war, we must see that it is a different meaning from that of the past. For we, too, have inscribed _Freedom of the seas_ upon our battle flags, and it behooves us to be certain just where our army belongs in the long procession of armies with banners--just what is the direction in which our standards point.

THE CONDITIONS OF TOLERANCE

There is one virtue which we implicitly assume when we discuss philosophy, and usually invoke when we venture to discuss religion. It is the favorite "intellectual virtue" of our time: for, as the sophists disquietingly remarked in their day, and as Professor Sumner shows in _Folkways_, moral touchstones, like clothes, are subject to change of fashion; those of a former generation, taken for granted in all soberness, rise out of old books with a quaintness like that of the "y^e" and the long "s" of our forefathers. The "great, the awful, the respectable virtues," such as godliness and righteousness, as terms of approval, are seldom on our lips; the old stalwart, rigid qualities are less admired today than those which are more gracious and humane--than flexibility of mind, universal sympathy, open vision.

But these latter in their turn we have now accepted as ideals, with no warning Socrates at our elbow to demand: "Precisely what do you mean by these new standards which you take for granted?"

"Toleration is so prodigious an impiety," said a member of the Westminster Assembly, "that this religious parliament cannot but abhor the meaning of it." Yet, in that constant gradual "transvaluation of all values" which humanity performs, tolerance has become the golden word of modern thought. And, like all popular ideas, it is unthinkingly accepted and facilely claimed. Even those who admit that they have not attained full measure of it, hide themselves behind the remark: "I am tolerant of everything except intolerance," and thereby yield them altogether: for to be tolerant only of a corresponding tolerance, is like confining your courtesy to polite people. The only attitude which tests the quality of tolerance is precisely the intolerant attitude.