The Freedom of the Seas; or, The Right which Belongs to the Dutch to Take Part in the East Indian Trade

THIS book has been written for a particular purpose. There are some revolutions that reveal at once to every eye their effects on the changes and chances of this mortal life. There are others that, silently and all unseen, change the foundations of life without challenging it to its face. We have, since the war, been living through two revolutions - possibly more - but two at least of the first importance. The one is a revolution in social policy. Started by the seismic catastrophe of the war and from the region where the eruption most completely broke up the strata of society - Russia - this eruption set up a tidal wave of revolution south, west, and east, that threatened to submerge and subvert our political and social structures. At its approach most of us banded together to build dykes to shut it out and to save our property - some few of us set to work building dams to shut it in and use its power. But all of us have been so preoccupied with this tidal wave of revolution from the East that we have overlooked a rising tide of revolution that has been flooding in on us steadily and ever more strongly from the West.. The revolution in sea power, of which the sanction is the American Navy, is really far more of a menace to the existing order in our points of view and policies than is the revolution in social policy. But it is even less a menace to our peace and prosperity and even more a means to recover our position and progress provided we realize how to accommodate our old ideals to it and how to adapt it to our real interests. Yet we can do nothing until we recognize the new factors it has introduced into our old problems and the new forms in which it has recast them. The purpose of this book is to present a picture of these new forms and factors so that this unseen revolution may be realized. Anyone can present a terrifying picture of a " tidal wave ,revolution, and any danger there may have been in England and America from any spectacular eruption of Russian revolution is long past. But it is a far more difficult matter to present a picture of the progress of a revolution by gradual and, for the most part, unper-ceived, stages ; and to provide plans as to using it for the development of peace. One of the authors remembers as a boy a day's back-breaking building of dykes on the bank of a flooding river to save a farm. Returning with the farmer and his hands in the evening they found the flood had risen through the gravel and had drowned most of the stock. A study of the subsoil and levels would have saved the farmer his labour and his live stock. But all he had seen was the obvious menace from the main stream that mattered little. So readers will have in the following pages to face some study of the subsoil of the subject, and some records of the levels of forgotten floods.. In presenting their picture of this unseen revolution in sea power the authors wish to acknowledge how much it owes any impression it may make to certain of the illustrations for which they are indebted to General Groves, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., Secretary-General of the Air League of the British Empire, who first brought them to public notice in England. It seems to them that a glance at these latest types of floating fortress will convince the reader that the battleship has reached that extreme of complexity and that extravagance of cost that is the last phase of an engine of war. And that another glance at the destruction, in a few minutes, of these mechanical monsters that cost millions upon millions of pounds and that carry thousands of the most skilled maritime workers, will convince the reader as to the revolution in sea war that has accompanied the re-alignment of sea power brought about by man's conquest of the air. This book has been written for no party purpose. The authors are pacifists ; but no more so than most of their countrymen and many professional sailors and soldiers.