Thursday's papers contain a remarkable statement made by Mr. Balfour
in a recent interview with Mr. Edward Marshall, the very able journalist who has become known throughout the United States as the king of interviewers. The subject of the interview was the freedom of the seas. Freedom, pointed out Mr. Balfour, was a word of many meanings, and we ought to consider in what sense the Germans use it when they ask for it, " not (it may be safely said) because they love freedom, but because they hate Britain " :— " There is a characteristic simplicity in the methods by which she [Germany] sets about attaining this object. She poses as a reformer of international law, though international law has never bound her for an hour. She objects to economic pressure' when it is exercised by a fleet, though she sets no limit to the brutal completeness with which economic pressure may be imposed by an army. She sighs over the suffering which war imposes upon peaceful commerce, though her own methods of dealing with peaceful commerce would have wrung the conscience of Captain Kidd. She denounces the maritime methods of the Allies, though in her efforts to defeat them she is deterred neither by the rules of war, the appeal of humanity, nor the rights of neutrals."
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