Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 25 [PAGE 21]

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has been used to conjure with, and to attack British policy. But the seas have been open and free, the British navy to the contrary, to the ships of every nation for more than a hundred years. Indeed, they have been open because of the British navy. I have been often puzzled to understand just what the Germans meant by the freedom of the seas. Lately, however, Here run in one of our newspapers: "In March, 1917, Count Reventlow m harmonic Hall. On the authority of the Naval and Military Record of England this bloodthirsty person thus put himself on record: 'What does Germany understand by the freedom of the seas? Of course we do not mean by it the free use of the seas, which is the common privilege of all nations in time of peace, or the right to the open highways of international trade. That sort of freedom of the seas we had before the war. What we understand today by this doctrine/ he continued, 'is that Germany should possess such maritime territories and such naval bases that at the outbreak of war we should be able with our navy reasonably ready, to guarantee ourselves the command of the seas. W e want such a jumping-off place for our navy as would give us a fair chance of dominating the seas 99 ree on the Germans 1 the mightiness of the Empire. They have found it, h L their writings and s] rotten and ready to fall apart—because that was what they wanted. s amusing to me when I v with which the Germans th Their in and their writings They had lisabout the some taken at one hundred per cent value, the diatribes of a few discontented foreigners. The answer to the criticism that the British Empire should be broken up because it was a tyranny has been found in the elorious response of the Empire in this war. L'l