would " tax all the energies of the Transport Department of the Admiralty."
But if there is no escape from the law that in reckoning sea transport one must calculate on a net basis, the only way in which Germany can provide herself with the tonnage she will require, is to seize all foreign vessels lying in her ports—all of them, of course, in the same state of unreadiness as her own.
I doubt whether this expedient would suffice, and I am certain that she would hesitate to commit such a breach of international law at the risk of embroiling herself with all the maritime nations of the world; but as, for argument's sake, I have not refused to attribute to her other impossible and discreditable acts, I am ready to allow that she will confiscate the foreign shipping in her harbours, and that it will be sufficient for her needs; nay, I will go further, and as I have assumed that she will be able to conceal the transformation of her own
