For the better part of a decade the southern trade corridor has been, to the ordinary Almarian, a line on a chart. Grain moved along it. Citrus moved along it. The components of the motor cars assembled at the Cordoba works moved along it, and returned along it as finished vehicles for the northern markets. The corridor was quiet because someone else was watching it.

That someone else has, by the Palau's own careful admission this week, begun to watch it less. The Estrella de Vella was held for four hours on Tuesday evening in waters that had not, within the working memory of her captain, held an Almarian hull against its will. She was released with her cargo. The next vessel may be released without it. The one after that may not be released at all.

I am not a strategist. I am an editor, with a pension and a gout that is worse in spring, and I have learned over forty-odd years that kingdoms forget the costs of their quiet waters until the waters are no longer quiet. The Foreign Ministry's statement is measured, as such statements must be. The Opposition's reply is sharp, as such replies always are. Neither is adequate to the question, which is this: what does a small kingdom do, when the powers that guaranteed its commerce decide to guarantee it elsewhere?

The Chamber returns Monday to a fuel reserve it sealed in a calmer month. It returns to a different Chamber. The northern tariff, the maritime insurance, the sealed reserve, the garrison withdrawal — these are not four problems. They are one problem, presenting itself in the four rooms of the house at once.

The house is not ungovernable. It is, however, no longer governable by the habits of the last decade. Those habits assumed that someone else was in the watchtower. Someone else has, politely and with notice, climbed down.

It falls now to the Palau, to the Chamber, to the Commerce Hall, and — let us be honest about the architecture of the Kingdom — to the estate at the edge of Almaria Vella, to decide what kind of watch this country is prepared to keep on its own account. The decision will not wait for summer. The underwriters have already made theirs.