the mistress of the sea. "How many more instances do we
need," writes Prof. J. W. Burgess, "to demonstrate to us that the
system of Colonial Empire with the dominance of the seas, and the
unlimited territorial expansion which it claims, is not compatible with
the freedom and prosperity of the world? Can any American with half an
eye fail to see that our greatest interest in the outcome of this war
is that the seas shall become free and neutral, and that, shall they
need policing, this shall become international; that the open door for
trade and commerce shall take the place of colonial restrictions or
preferences, or influences and shall, in times of peace, be the
universal principle; that private property upon the high seas shall be
inviolable; that trade between neutrals in time of war shall be
entirely {254} unrestricted, and that contraband of war shall have an
international definition?"[3]

Even if England did not recognise her true national interest in a
revision of the sea-law, we could not co-operate with her in any broad
attempt to establish the conditions of peace in Europe without such a
surrender on her part of rights which have become indefensible. It is
not, of course, to be anticipated that a complete freedom of the sea
will be immediately established, but unless the nations, not
controlling the ocean, are given reasonable assurances of safety for
their commerce and colonial development, each new war will merely lay
the seeds of new wars.

To establish the freedom of the sea, five things are desirable:

(1) The abolition of the right of capture.

(2) The abolition of the commercial blockade. This would permit the
blockading of a naval port or base, the exclusion or destruction of
naval vessels, the searching of merchant vessels for absolute and
conditional contraband, and the blockade of a city or port where the
naval blockade was merely the completion of a land blockade, but it
would give to all ordinary merchant vessels, either enemy or neutral,
the same access to enemy ports that they enjoy in peace, without any
further delay than is necessary for the prevention of non-neutral acts
by merchantmen.

(3) The establishment of international prize courts and the submission
of controversies to such courts.

(4) The internationalization of such straits as the Dardanelles, the
Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar,
as far as that can be achieved by international agre