a
blockade. Now the modern conditions of blockade are such that the
warships conducting it may be stationed hundreds of miles from the
blockaded port or ports, and their outlying cruisers, remaining in touch
with each other and with the main body, may be much further afield.
Within the area of the organized patrol thus established, every vessel
seeking to enter a blockaded port or to issue from it will still be
liable to capture. In these conditions the proposal to exempt the
remainder of the enemy's private property afloat from capture would be a
mockery. There would not be enough of such property afloat to pay for
the cost of capture.

It is an axiom of naval warfare that an assured command of the sea is at
once the best defence for commerce afloat and an indispensable
condition for any such attack on it as is likely to have any appreciable
effect in subduing the enemy's will. War is an affair not of pin-pricks
but of smashing blows. "The harassment and distress," says Admiral
Mahan, "caused to a country by serious interference with its commerce
will be conceded by all. It is doubtless a most important secondary
operation of naval war, and is not likely to be abandoned until war
itself shall cease; but regarded as a primary and fundamental measure
sufficient in itself to crush an enemy, it is probably a delusion, and a
most dangerous delusion, when presented in the fascinating garb of
cheapness to the representatives of a people." Here again we may discern
some of the larger implications of that potent and far-reaching agency
of naval warfare, the command of the sea. If a belligerent not aiming at
the command of the sea, and having no sufficient naval force wherewithal
to secure it, thinks to crush his enemy by directing sporadic attacks on
his commerce, he will, if history is any guide, soon find out his
mistake. His naval forces available for this purpose, are, by the
hypothesis, inferior to those of the enemy. It is certain that they will
sooner or later be hunted down and destroyed. Moreover, the mercantile
flag of the weaker belligerent will, as I have shown, disappear from the
sea from the very outset of the conflict; and the maritime commerce of
such a belligerent must be of very insignificant volume if the loss
entailed by its suppression is not greater than that likely to be
inflicted by such a belligerent on the enemy's commerce which crosses
the seas under the _aegis_ of a flag which commands them. Admiral