Baraboo weekly news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1912-197?, 1919-02-27

make the ferocities of a Morgan or Cap
tain Kidd shrink into insignifcance.
Mare clausun" CLOSED sea- and mare
libcru1a'' free sea) are terms which were
used several centuries ago in a contro-
Versy that arose out of the claim, made
by various states that they had the
right 10 exclusive dominion over extens-
i've areas of the high sea. Grotius wrote
work in 1909 entitled Free Sea- and
to Brynkershock we are indebted for a
book DE dominic maris' Concerning
the control Of the sea-, published in 17C2,
in which he laid down the principle, that
a maritime state should have dominion
over the sea only as far as a cannon
shot could protect it. That was three
miles. The formula was accepted, and
upon it has been established that three
mile strip along the coastline known as
Territorial Water, of which We heard
so much during the recent war.
Now. when Germany realized that the
right Of blockade. universally recognized,
was destined to bring her to her knees
by depriving her of materials for her
armies, she sought to confuse the issue
by disinterring the long buried question
Of mare liberum," or free sac. and
hosting it as a protest against the Brit
ish blockade. But in this subterfuge she
fooled no one, and least of all the United
States For as soon as We entered the
war, we screwed down the clamps of the
blockade tighter than before, even to
the extent of holding in the Hudson a
whole feet of Dutch ships, laden with
food, professedly for Holland and pre-
sumably for Germany. and finally COM
Wandering them as an offset to the dep
radationS of the freedom of the-S eas-lov-
ing German.
1t is well understood by the Allies, and
by nobody better than by President Will
son, that Germany reintroduced the
phrase for the sole purpose of getting
the thought into the public mind that
especially of that of Great Britain, was
q peril to the modern freedom of the
seas. They wanted to instil the idea
that Great Britain had created her vast
navy, rot for the legitimate purpose of
acting as a bond to tie together the ele-
ments of her widely-scattered empire.
but as a means Of illegitimate control Of
the sea routes for her own Individual
profit, and as a hindranoe to the COM
mercial expansion of other nations.
The Attorney General of the United
States has recently warned US that there
is an active and widespread revival of
German propaganda. The warning is
timely: for the enemy is working, over
time in the effort to create jealousy, RI
valry and nistrust among the nations
who are shortly to sit in Judgment upon
him. And in ne direction is he more
active than in his efforts to create suspi-
cion of the lately demonstrated strength
of the British navy. 'Beware"' whis-
perS the Hun, You see what she did to
Germany; it will be your turn next"
Now what the British feet did to Ger
man naval piracy and terrorism, was
what it has done to every form of ter
rorism on the high seas for century
past-she crushed it out.
And when the Hun, the master mis-
chief-maker of all the ages, points to
the surrender of his whole fleet in the
North Sea and cries "Beware!" none
knows better than himself that this
amazing spectacle was browning dem
"nstration of the fact that today, as
yesterday. the British fleet is the guar
sirous attack upon it's freedom as
that which the feet helped SO nobly to
repel.
And if, in it's Hercuiean task of holding
TIE enemy in his own ports until the
say Of surrender, Great Britain has had
TO double the strength of a fleet, which
was already a heavy drain upon her re-
sources; and if in the effort to preserve
the freedom of the seas and act as COM
mon carrier for the Allied cause, she
has lost one-half of her vast merchant
marine she will bear both the burden
and the loss without a whimper. content
with the knowledge that when Freedom
called. the ships that fly the White Eli
sign were there to pay the price stag
se.ing though it proved to be.
The supremacy of her feet is the 'Mou-
roe Doctrine Of the British Empire; in
deed the maintenance of this supremacy
is ever more vital to her security than
is the maintenance of the Monroe Doc
trine to the security of the United States.
\ violation Of the Monroe Doctrine
would not necessarily imperil our exist
ence as a nation; whereas it is we'll UNI
derstood that a defeat of the British
fleet would sound the death-knell of the
whole British Empire.
Unlike the United States which is en-
tirely self-supporting and geographically
unit the British Empire consists of an
island, no larger than some of our small
Ter states which is the seat Of the Inn
pcrial Government and the heart of the
system. with numerous outlying colo
ries and domnions scattered throughout
the world. If the mother country be
considered az the heart of the system,
the trade routes of the world are it's ar
terieS.
Only so long as there arteries are UNI
obstructcd can the. empire function. If
Great Britain were blockaded and the
trade routes of the world were controlled
by an enemy. the mother country would
be starved into submission in few
months time, and the whole empire
would fall like a house of cards Hence
she has laid it down that her feet must
always be of sufficient strength to pre-
serve intact the great trade routes OF the
high seas. To insure this, she has made
it her policy to maintain navy equal
in strength to that of any. two other
navies combined.
t. To