From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 January 1915:
THE mountain has produced a curious little naval mouse. The meeting of the German Council of War, together with the Emperor’s State visit to the fleet at Wilhelmshaven, seemed to show that some great naval development was about to take place—either the coming out of the German Grand Fleet in an attempt at invasion, or else some new scheme in which air and water should combine to serve the apostles of hate. And then we get the announcement that Germany will sink our transports if she can—a thing which she has been trying hard to do ever since the war began, and a thing to which, of course, we can take no possible exception. Hard on the heels of this sapient decree comes another, issued on Thursday, in which the Chief of the Marine Staff announces that the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are “herewith proclaimed a war region.” On and after February 18th “every enemy merchant vessel found in this war region will be destroyed without its always being possible to warn the crew or passengers of the dangers threatening.” Neutral ships are also told that they will incur danger, in the war region, but it is kindly intimated to them that “the sea passage to the north of the Shetland Islands and the eastern region of the North Sea in a zone of at least thirty miles along the Netherlands coast is not menaced by any danger.” A document explanatory of this communique will, it is further stated, be furnished to the “neutral Powers and hostile States.”
Germany thus proclaims a paper blockade of all the British coast, to be carried out, when possible, by submarines! This new act of war is really too childish for discussion. It means no fresh development whatever. The Germans, as before, will try to destroy our ships with submarines and by sowing more mines, and they will doubtless have one or two small successes. The main course of trade will not, however, be in the least interfered with. As regards our food supplies, we are a thousand times more alarmed by the Labour Members’ menacing motion for fixing a maximum price for wheat, and by the Government’s willingness to inquire whether it would not be a good thing to prevent the free access of corn to our shores. Since commercial confidence is a frail flower, we think it would probably be as well for the Government to answer the paper blockade by adopting the policy which we urged at the beginning of the war, but which has been only partially adopted—namely, the gift by the Government of a complete and free insurance against war risks for all British ships and all cargoes consigned to the British Islands. With this answer to the German submarine menace our traders could go ahead without the slightest fear of loss.
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