England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what is more, she holds it.  Her title is no better and no worse than that of the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in the days of their power.  Like them, she has succeeded in making good her claim.  For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of frontier land and a shadowy balance of power.  These centuries were England’s opportunity, and she has made the most of it.  That she should mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the apple of her eye is natural.  Whether it is for the benefit of mankind that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on land, does not enter into the present discussion.  What is more to the purpose is that in reality England’s sea power stood in no danger at all.  To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have been able to threaten England’s maritime superiority for generations to come.  If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so by England’s own doing.

But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust and envy of England.  German colonies and every trading German vessel seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes.  The wish to sweep those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed in England.  Norman Angell’s theories about the great illusion of the profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small impression on his countrymen.

Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were the forces at work in the European powder magazine.  The Servian spark ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later.  What alone could have stopped it would have been England’s stepping out of the conspiracy.  That she did not do so, in fact became its really directing power, will forever remain a blot on her history.

About Japan’s motives and methods I do not think it necessary to write.  American public opinion will hardly need any enlightenment on this subject.  America forced Japan out of the isolation in which she had lived during centuries.  I hope the day may not come when she will wish that she had not done so.

The issues of the war stand in relation to its causes and the same attempts have been made to distort and falsify them in the eyes of the American public.  I have seen it stated in a New York paper that this war is a fight between civilization and barbarism, and I have seen a member of the present English Cabinet quoted as having said that the issue was one between militarism and freedom, civilization and freedom standing, of course, in both cases on the side of our enemies.