In Viola's non-sequiturs there is a tenuous suggestion that "all the earth" is a battlefield. And this paragraph establishes the symbolic alternative: the sea, standing for the realm of ultimate (and unearthly) liberty. Compare Conrad's use of Bolivar's famous quote: "America is ungovernable. Those who worked for her independence have ploughed the sea." Ultimate liberty in this sense is nihilistic anarchy, the admittance that mankind is essentially ungovernable because of its subjectively independent nature.