England surrender her power to put the maximum
pressure upon her unscrupulous enemy?

This argument, however, begs the whole question, whether it is to
Britain's real advantage that the naval law go back to what it was in
the days of Pitt and Napoleon instead of being progressively
liberalised. Britain is not only the greatest naval but overwhelmingly
the greatest maritime nation in the world. She has something to gain
and everything to lose from a reaction towards the unregulated
sea-warfare of 1801 (and 1916); she has much to gain and little to lose
from the establishment of a true freedom of the sea.

So long as England persists in a reactionary naval policy she will be
menaced by every nation which feels itself menaced by her, and by every
future development of naval warfare. The harshness of the British
attitude in this matter of naval warfare leads to such brutal reprisals
as that of the German submarine campaign against merchantmen. That
campaign was not without its influence in laming the commercial
activity of Great Britain; had the war broken out ten years later, with
Germany better equipped with submarines, the result might have been far
more serious. A future submarine war carried on by France against
England might be disastrous to the island kingdom. Even the German
campaign, hampered as it was by the fewness and remoteness of the
German naval bases, might easily have had a crippling effect upon
British industrial life but for the pressure brought to bear {253} upon
Germany by the United States. In the long run England cannot have it
both ways. She must either defend her commerce from submarines alone
or else accept a revision of the naval law.

Fortunately there are men in Great Britain who accept this broader
view. "One of the promises of victory," writes the Englishman, H.
Sidebotham, "is that Great Britain will be able to review her whole
naval policy in the light of the experience gained in the war. Sir
Edward Grey has himself indicated that such a review may be appropriate
in the negotiations for peace after victory has been won."[2]

Towards such a change in attitude the public opinion of the United
States can largely contribute. While the majority of Americans side
strongly with Britain and her allies, they make little distinction in
their thought between a detested German militarism and a detested
British navalism. Our traditional attitude is one of hostility to the
pretensions of