a blockade, for, under this drastic method of making
warfare, everything is contraband. Contraband is a term applied to
cargoes, such as rifles, machine guns, and the like, which are needed in
the prosecution of war.

That a belligerent nation has the right to intercept such munitions on
the way to its enemy has been admitted for centuries. Differences of
opinion have raged only as to the extent to which this right could be
carried--the particular articles, that is, that constituted contraband,
and the methods adopted in exercising it. But the important point to be
kept in mind is that where there is a blockade, there is no contraband
list--for everything automatically becomes contraband. The seizure of
contraband on the high seas is a war measure which is availed of only in
cases in which the blockade has not been established.

Great Britain, when she declared war on Germany, did not follow
President Lincoln's example and lay the whole of the German coast under
interdict. Perhaps one reason for this inaction was a desire not unduly
to offend neutrals, especially the United States; but the more impelling
motive was geographical. The fact is that a blockade of the German
seacoast would accomplish little in the way of keeping materials out of
Germany. A glance at the map of northwestern Europe will make this fact
clear. In the first place the seacoast of Germany is a small affair. In
the North Sea the German coast is a little indentation, not more than
two hundred miles long, wedged in between the longer coastlines of
Holland and Denmark; in the Baltic it is somewhat more extensive, but
the entrances to this sea are so circuitous and treacherous that the
suggestion of a blockade here is not a practicable one. The greatest
ports of Germany are located on this little North Sea coastline or on
its rivers--Hamburg and Bremen. It might therefore be assumed that any
nation which successfully blockaded these North Sea ports would have
strangled the commerce of Germany. That is far from being the case. The
point is that the political boundaries of Germany are simply fictions,
when economic considerations are involved. Holland, on the west, and
Denmark, on the north, are as much a part of the German transportation
system as though these two countries were parts of the German Empire.
Their territories and the territories of Germany are contiguous; the
railroad and the canal systems of Germany, Holland, and Denmark are
practically