Perhaps one reason for this inaction was a desire not unduly to offend neutrals, especially the United States; but the more impelling motive was geographical.

The fact is that a blockade of the German seacoast would accomplish little in the way of keeping materials out of Germany.

A glance at the map of northwestern Europe will make this fact clear.

In the first place the seacoast of Germany is a small affair.

In the North Sea the German coast is a little indentation, not more than two hundred miles long, wedged in between the longer coastlines of Holland and Denmark; in the Baltic it is somewhat more extensive, but the entrances to this sea are so circuitous and treacherous that the suggestion of a blockade here is not a practicable one.