Africa. But the "discrimination" (if it is to be so described) is not the result of a deliberate policy, but of a geographical accident. It is not due to any desire to favour Scandinavian exporters as compared with American exporters; and in practice it will have no such effect. They are not, nor to any important extent can they be, competing rivals in the German markets.
If any man be in doubt whether this point be technical or substantial, let him weigh the following considerations. The rule against discrimination was devised (as we have seen) in the interests of neutrals. But which is best for neutrals—that three should be a blockade conducted in the ordinary way, or that there should be a blockade of the new pattern described in the Order in Council? The latter may indeed ignore the Baltic, and treat Scandinavia as if, like Holland, it were divided from Germany only by a land frontier. But while the discrimination so produced can inflict no substantial injury on any neutral, the blockade to which it is due, unlike its more orthodox predecessors, forbids the capture either of neutral shipping or
