them; and if a form of government, whether national or international, has to be set up there, the effect and effectiveness of its operation in times of peace have to be considered no less than in times of war. I propose to deal with the problem first from the point of view of the politics of peace, and then from that of strategy and war. Now the whole importance of Constantinople in peace comes from the fact that it stands upon, and to some extent dominates, a great highway of commercial traffic. It has no other intrinsic economic or political importance. The area itself is small, unproductive, and unfertile. It does not itself serve as an outlet for any larger and productive hinterland, for Eastern Rumelia finds its natural outlet in Dedeagatch. The total value of the exports and imports was estimated in 1901 not to amount to more than £T11,000,000. The foreign trade of this area area is therefore rather less than that of Trinidad, so that it is no exaggeration to say that for the purposes of Weltpolitik its intrinsic economic and productive importance is negligible. A world at peace is concerned with Constantinople in one way, and one way only. The narrow waters upon which it stands connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, and form, therefore, one of the most important highways of commerce and trade upon the earth. These waters are for trade and shipping nothing but a great navigable river, and Constantinople, for all its mosques and Bimbashis and the visionary web of Machtpolitik which has been woven about it, is nothing but a port of passage upon the river's banks. Now it is almost exactly one hundred years since the world recognized, and publicly proclaimed, that it has one great international interest in such navigable rivers. At the Congress of Vienna the principle of freedom of navigation reasons upon rivers was first laid down, and since that day the right of way for shipping and commerce upon practically all all the great rivers of Europe and other continents has been placed under international guarantee, or even, as we shall see, under international administration. The which determined this principle and policy, as being in the interest not of one nation but of all nations, can hardly be better enunciated than in the words in which President Wilson restated them as a principle of future international settlement: "So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea." It has gradually become recognized and established that the interests of all peoples demand that the great highways of the sea" shall in peace be free and open to the commerce of all, and further 66 that no one nation, merely because its territory stands about one of the direct outlets to the sea, should be allowed to prevent or impede its free use by other nations. Hence freedom of navigation upon the Rhine, Danube, Scheldt, Meuse, Elbe, Oder, Pruth, Dniester, Niemen, Vistula, Guadiana, Tagus, Douro, St. Lawrence, Amazon, Rio Grande, Rio de la Plata, and Congo has since 1814 been assured either by international government or by international guarantee. And it may be remarked that President Wilson went to lay down a further principle which logically follows from this one, already firmly established in international law. "Where this (the assurance of a right of way to the sea) cannot be done by the cession of territory," he said, "it no doubt can be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrange ment no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce." How do these principles affect the posi- tion of politics? It stands upon a great "navig Twelve able river," a great outlet to the sea, the natural and only navigable passage for commerce between the rest of the world and the countries of the Danube, Russia, and a large part of Asia. thousand ships a year are said to pass through the Dardanelles, and that is the only fact about Constantinople which makes it worth the thoughts of a single European statesman in times of peace. the Turks be removed from Constantinople -and even the shade of Disraeli agrees to-day, we imagine, that it is time that he went, 'bag and baggage" nation of Europe has one and the same interest, other than the strategical, in it, namely, that navigation and commerce in 66 If - every |