lockade," says our Italian, "is the fundamental basis of the
conflict for the dominion of the seas, when the contest cannot be
brought to an immediate issue;" that is, to immediate battle. Blockade,
however, is but one form of the unbloody pressure brought to bear upon
an enemy by interruption of his commerce. The stoppage of commerce, in
whole or in part, exhausts without fighting. It compels peace without
sacrificing life. It is the most scientific warfare, because the least
sanguinary, and because, like the highest strategy, it is directed
against the communications,--the resources,--not the persons, of the
enemy. It has been the glory of sea-power that its ends are attained by
draining men of their dollars instead of their blood. Eliminate the
attack upon an enemy's sea-borne commerce from the conditions of naval
war,--in which heretofore it has been always a most important
factor,--and the sacrifice of life will be proportionately increased,
for two reasons: First, the whole decision of the contest will rest
upon actual conflict; and, second, failing decisive results in battle,
the war will be prolonged, because by retaining his trade uninjured the
enemy retains all his money power to keep up his armed forces.

The establishment and maintenance of the blockade therefore was, in
the judgment of the present writer, not only the first step in order,
but also the first, by far, in importance, open to the Government of
the United States as things were; prior, that is, to the arrival of
Cervera's division at some known and accessible point. Its importance
lay in its twofold tendency; to exhaust the enemy's army in Cuba, and
to force his navy to come to the relief. No effect more decisive than
these two could be produced by us before the coming of the hostile
navy, or the readiness of our own army to take the field, permitted
the contest to be brought, using the words of our Italian commentator,
"to an immediate issue." Upon the blockade, therefore, the generally
accepted principles of warfare would demand that effort should be
concentrated, until some evident radical change in the conditions
dictated a change of object,--a new objective; upon which, when
accepted, effort should again be concentrated, with a certain amount
of "exclusiveness of purpose."

Blockade, however, implies not merely a sufficient number of cruisers
to prevent the entry or departure of merchant ships. It further
implies, because it requires, a str