In a similar way privateering always had a debilitating effect upon our own regular force.  It greatly increased the difficulty of manning the navy, and the occasional large profits had a demoralising influence on detached cruiser commanders.  It tended to keep alive the mediaeval corsair spirit at the expense of the modern military spirit which made for direct operations against the enemy’s armed forces.  It was inevitable that as the new movement of opinion gathered force it should carry with it a conviction that for operating against sea-borne trade sporadic attack could never be so efficient as an organised system of operations to secure a real strategical control of the enemy’s maritime communications.  A riper and sounder view of war revealed that what may be called tactical commercial blockade—­that is, the blockade of ports—­could be extended to and supplemented by a strategical blockade of the great trade routes.  In moral principle there is no difference between the two.  Admit the principle of tactical or close blockade, and as between belligerents you cannot condemn the principle of strategical or distant blockade.  Except in their effect upon neutrals, there is no juridical difference between the two.

Why indeed should this humane yet drastic process of war be rejected at sea if the same thing is permitted on land?  If on land you allow contributions and requisitions, if you permit the occupation of towns, ports, and inland communications, without which no conquest is complete and no effective war possible, why should you refuse similar procedure at sea where it causes far less individual suffering?  If you refuse the right of controlling communications at sea, you must also refuse the right on land.  If you admit the right of contributions on land, you must admit the right of capture at sea.  Otherwise you will permit to military Powers the extreme rights of war and leave to the maritime Powers no effective rights at all.  Their ultimate argument would be gone.

In so far as the idea of abolishing private capture at sea is humanitarian, and in so far as it rests on a belief that it would strengthen our position as a commercial maritime State, let it be honourably dealt with.  But so far as its advocates have as yet expressed themselves, the proposal appears to be based on two fallacies.  One is, that you can avoid attack by depriving yourself of the power of offence and resting on defence alone, and the other, the idea that war consists entirely of battles between armies or fleets.  It ignores the fundamental fact that battles are only the means of enabling you to do that which really brings wars to an end-that is, to exert pressure on the citizens and their collective life.  “After shattering the hostile main army,” says Von der Goltz, “we still have the forcing of a peace as a separate and, in certain circumstances, a more difficult task ... to make the enemy’s country feel the burdens of war with such weight that the desire for peace will prevail.  This is the point in which Napoleon failed....  It may be necessary to seize the harbours, commercial centres, important lines of traffic, fortifications and arsenals, in other words, all important property necessary to the existence of the people and army.”