The Dominion FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 1916. PIRATES AND REPRISALS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2663, 7 January 1916, Page 4

The Dominion FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 1916. PIRATES AND REPRISALS

The Baralong incident raises some important problems for the consideration of students of the laws of war. The advent of the submarine has not only very materially altered the conditions of naval warfare, but has introduced a new element into the ethics of sea fighting. AVe do not know at present cxactly what the captain and crew of the Baralong did to the. crew of the German submarine. We are certainly not going to acccpt the German version as the true story of the occurrence. The real facts will no doubt be made public in due course. Until then it would be quite futile to discuss iu detail the points raised in the GumiiU) Memorandum. The British Navy has a KDlaudid rcjju*

tation for fair fighting, and charges of inhumanity come with a very bad grace from a nation which glories in its "frightfulness," and which received the news of the Lusi- : tania outrage with ostentatious jubilation. Sir Edward Grey points out that about the time of the Baralong affair three coldblooded and cowardly outrages were, committed by the $ German Navy. The Arabic was torpedoed, il noncombatants losing their lives; a German destroyer fired on a' stranded British submarine, and also on the crew when they attempted to swiiA ashore; a German submarine fired shrapnel at the steamer Buel, one man being killed and eight wounded. Is it right that the men who so wantonly violate the rules of civilised warfare should bo treated as honourable foes? Should not those who act as pirates and murderers be treated as pirates and murderers, and not as ordinary prisoners of war! In referring to the Zeppelin raids, the London Tablet ,_ the- well-known Roman Catholic journal, makes some very, sensible remarks on the question of reprisals. It contends, and with good reason, that "if the Government is satisfied that the only way, or the most effective way, to protect our civilian- population from mutilation and death is to retaliate in kind, such measures of defence seem amply justified. If it is a case of choosing between the apparent cruelty of killing German civilians in self-defence, and the certain barbarity of refusing to do anything, or less than our utmost, to protect from deliberate and unprovoked murder the children about our knees, we decidedly prefer the former alternative." The argument in favour of reprisals against the crew of submarines for submarine outrages is much stronger than that in favour of reprisals for Zeppelin attacks, because in the former case civilians need not be punished—the penalty wouid be paid by combatants. Pirates would suffer for the crimes of pirates. Germany's wail oyer the Baralong affair may be taken as an indication that she has been hard hit by the submarine hunt which has been conducted with so much skill and vigour by the British Navy. An America a writer of high standing, A. C. Laut, in an exceedingly interesting article in the American Review of Reviews, states that it is well known in navy circles that between nets and submarine chasers the British Fleet has "got" over 84 per cent, of all Germany's submarines. He is of opinion that this. is the real explanation of Germany's sudden compliance with the demand of the United States for certain modifications of the sea war. _ He goes on to say that when the British first began to capture the submarines, quarter was given to the captured crews, but, as submarine war of the German type was held to be piracy, these men were not treated as ordinary prisoners of war. They wore closely confined. - "Then two things happened. Tho i Lusitania was sunk. A submarine, when captured, broke the rules of war. • It had been hauled to the surface. The crew were ordered to surrender. Their answer—whether in obedience to orders from Germany or not is not known—wa-s to hurl a bomb which sent the submarine crew to suicidal destruction and endangered the victorious ship." Since then, according to this writer, the British Navy has taken no chances with enemy submarines, but has sent them to the bottom. The' Rev. Lord William Gascoyne-Cecil recently made a statement regarding reprisals, which ha,s a direct bearing on the campaign against German submarines. He writes: If reprisals tend to destroy ft certain kind of warfare which brings undue suffering, they are right; if tliey tend to perpetuate it, they are wrong. Reprisals carried out after duo warning, and witli success, and never continued, in after duo punishment lias been inflicted, would probably make Germany give up building Zeppelins, and t'hen they would lie discredited as a weapon, to the benefit, not of ourselves and our Allies, but of aTT Tuture combatants. But' if they are regarded as a success by our adversaries, we must expec them to become one of the features of all future wars. Reprisals which punish the innocent as well as the guilty are hard to condone even though they may ultimately benefit humanity, but in the case of submarine crews which wantonly murder innocent non-comba-tants, including women and children, the position is very different. If the crews of enemy submarines engaged in the murderous work of sinking passenger ships without warning know that in the event of capture they will be shown no mercy there is hope that it will have a deterrent effect and induce the German Admiralty to confine the activities of their under-water craft tcfllegitimate functions. So far, however, _ there appears to have,been a strong disinclination on the part of the British Government to embark on systematic reprisals even against _ the perpetrators of the_ dreadful crimes by German submarines.