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From the realms of the Osterlings, or shores of the Baltic, came daily fleets laden with wheat and other grains so that even in time of famine the granaries of the republic were overflowing, and ready to dispense the material of life to the outer world. Eight hundred vessels of lesser size but compact build were perpetually fishing for herrings on the northern coasts.

It had a British crew, but it was bringing refugees from Murmansk, the Arctic port of Russia, to Reval on the Baltic. It was flying the Neutrality flag. The ship, however, was wrecked off the coast of Norway and was towed by a Danish boat into the harbour of Stavanger. None of the refugees were allowed ashore but the baby was born in the ship whilst it lay in the harbour.

During the past ten years the price of old rubber shoes has ranged between $60 and $120 per ton in carload lots, being at present about $90 per ton. Some 1,500 tons of rubber scrap are imported annually by the reclaiming companies in the United States. In the Baltic Sea there are more wrecks than in any other place in the world. The average throughout the year is one each day.

In 1801, principally in consequence of the doctrines of the British Admiralty Courts with regard to the right of search, great efforts were made by the Baltic powers to recall and enforce the doctrines of the armed neutrality of 1780.

That, however, is a small matter, from either a financial or an engineering point of view. I propose, however, to make a junction here, through Kiel between the German Ocean and the Baltic. It saves, you will observe, the whole journey round the coast of Denmark, and would facilitate our trade with Germany and Russia.

Sir John Mandeville also wrote of his travels, but most of his descriptions were taken from the work of Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who had visited the Far East. Merchants did not venture so far as did bold explorers of a scientific turn. Commerce in the Middle Ages was mainly in two districts, the borders of the North Sea and of the Baltic, and the countries upon the Mediterranean.

How did the German submarine get to the Arctic since the World State had succeeded, after half a century of effort, in damming the Baltic by closing up several passes among the Danish Islands and the main pass of the sound between Zealand and Sweden?

He shows us civilization from the wrong side, or the other side, and the Asiatic nomads appear as the scavengers of its corruptions. Genghis proclaimed himself the scourge of God, and he did in fact realize the vastest empire known to history, stretching from the Blue Sea to the Baltic, and from the vast plains of Siberia to the banks of the sacred Ganges.

Still further to the east its sea-like reaches extend to the north for ten miles, with still wider lake-like expanses, so that the eye of the voyager can scarcely reach the forest-covered banks on the opposite side; while if the River Para is properly considered one of its branches, its measurement from shore to shore, across a countless number of islands, is one hundred and eighty miles equal to the breadth of the widest part of the Baltic.

The second is that if the convention were allowed to take cognizance of that particular question, still it would not be competent to deal with the great international principle involved, which affects the right in other cases of navigation and commercial freedom, as well as that of access to the Baltic.