contraband on board, the Russian undoubtedly believed that she had, also there is no doubt whatever that any amount of contraband was sent to Japan as Dutch cheeses, agricultural instruments, etc., etc. It was important to Russia to stop these things, but to have gone on doing so practically meant war with Great Britain.
Now the Russian war on commerce was a very mild and half-hearted affair; the sum of it all being more indignation amongst neutral ship owners, loss and inconvenience to neutrals, than worry or loss to Japan. Yet it aroused a great deal of neutral indignation. A war against British commerce to accomplish anything, would have to be on an infinitely larger scale, and the interests of neutrals involved would be infinitely larger than in the few cases Russia managed to make for herself.
Taking these two new conditions together there is no denying that commerce war is not what it was, and the nation that undertakes it on the grand scale will be embarking on an enterprise the limits and dangers of which it can never measure. All this augurs half-hearted operations, which would be comparatively innocuous even if not interfered with by the British Fleet. Probably, therefore, against any one nation British commerce is in far less danger to-day than it was in the old wars with France.
It is not, however, possible to act on that assumption: because the attitude of the neutral powers might
