Commerce Property In Naval Warfare Etc Reprinted

Author : Mancunian Mancunian
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780332273044
Total Pages : 58 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (73 download)

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Download or read book The Freedom of Commerce in War (Classic Reprint) written by Mancunian Mancunian and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Freedom of Commerce in War The navy is not an ideal protector of commerce. Not only is it enormously costly, but it has other interests to serve which may prevent it from repaying to commerce in protection from the attacks of the enemy what it takes in taxation. So much is now officially admitted. In introducing the Navy Estimates for this year (1913) Mr. Churchill said in effect that the protection of commerce, though an important, was only a secondary duty of the navy. Foreign nations, he explained, were mounting guns on their merchant ships, and it was necessary that English ships should be put in a state to resist their attacks. Accordingly, he proposed to arm them and to train guncrews; and the House of Commons, except for a few questions which were parried, has allowed this remarkable development of policy to go unchallenged and unexplained. Yet the moment it is set out in the open it is exposed to a gale of objections from almost every point of the compass. It is impracticable; for the regulations of many ports forbid vessels carrying explosives to lie alongside their wharves or to enter their docks, and foreign nations have only toadopt these regulations to force shipowners to choose between abandoning their cargoes and abandoning their guns and ammunition. Secondly, evenif it were practicable it would not be efficacious. The ships that are most in need of protection are not the fast liners but the slow tramp steamers, who in the nature of things cannot all be armed. Yet to arm the liners and not the tramps would be an unfair discrimination in favour of the wealthier shipping companies and the larger ships. Moreover, it would not protect even this limited number of ships from the attacks by naval cruisers, which are most to be dreaded, and it would increase their risk of destruction if they were attacked and resisted. But there is also a third and more important objection. Even if the arming of merchantmen were practicable and effectual it would still be a dangerous and reactionary measure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.