THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

Taihape Daily Times, 18 March 1919, Page 6

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

ARE GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES RIVALS ?

An aspect of this great question is supplied by the New York "Outlook.'

1 The British Government, it says, has, during the war, gradually done away with all the previously accepted limitations upon the ability of sea power to destroy commerce between neutral nations and its enemy. Blockade and capture at sea as has been recently practised by the British navy is equivatlcnt to the nower of life and death over rival commercial nations. If the British Comonwealth as the 1 embodiment of sea power can succeed in writing into international law the right of destroying the comerce of its enemies and neutrals which it exercised in 1916, no hostile European State can afford, hereafter, to dispute the will of the British nation at the cost of war. The only chance of contest still retained by an enemy sea power would turn on the possession of improved types of "submarines and aeroplanes in sufficient numbers to attack British means of comunication under the water and in the air, and an effort will certainly be made by Great Britain at the Peace Conference and after to outlaw such guerilla warfare. But the Mistress of the Seas, while she has become relatively secure against the challenge on the part of her European neighbours of her greatly increased power, is exposed to a graver possible danger from another quarter. The present victory of sea power differed from previous viC-' tories in that, in this instance, Great Britain had to call a non-European, nation of enormous, but undeveloped maritime possibilities to her assistance. As a consequence of her participation in the war, the United Slates has built up a great army, a considerable navy, a colossal machine for the production of military supplies, and an enormous mercantile marine . Its military, naval, industrial and commercial machinery is still inferior to that of Great Britain, but the American people possess sufficient, resources to make it superioir. Potentially it is the most dangerous competitor with which British sea power has ever been confronted.