OUTLAWING THE SUBMARINE.

Evening Star, Issue 19785, 8 February 1928, Page 6

OUTLAWING THE SUBMARINE.

Thu statement of Mr Kellogg, .Secretary of Stale for America, that the United States Government is willing to sign a treaty with ail the Powers outlawing the submarine as a weapon of war, lias not impressed the world as an example of America’s generosity. It might have made more impression if Mr Coolidge’s naval conference had been less a failure, and if America was not now most interested in the details of a “big navy” programme. As it is, French opinion has not hesitated to describe it as a “poor election dodge.” The United States might be glad to get rid of submarines—it has had a bad experience of them lately—but the agreement of all the other Powers is expressly stated as the condition of such a sacrifice, and it is quite certain that all the other Powers will not agree. Britain would rejoice to see them outlawed, but that is not an evidence of Britain’s magnanimity and enlightenment, because, with her unique dependence on the sea routes for her food supplies, they are a greater menace to her than to any other Power. The submarine campaign directed by Von Tirpitz almost made her lose the last war, and if it had been conducted from an earlier period with its final ruthlessness it might have been successful in that object. A few submarines got as far as the United States, and because they came to trade, oa however small a scale, they were welcomed by the Americans as the Trojans welcomed the wooden horse. But America would not agree to the prohibition of this weapon when Great Britain proposed it at the Washington Conference. Still Jess would France, who wants a navy for her defence and finds submarines cheaper to build than Dreadnoughts, agree to it. Tho question might have been raised again at President Coolidge’s conference, but evidently it was regarded there as quite an impracticable subject, and the discussions were virtually confined to the limitation of cruisers.

There has been an outcry in America recently against submarines because of the disasters that have attended them in times of peace. One of them was rammed and sunk recently in an accident off the American coast, and its crew of forty killed, like rats in a trap, only some of them much more slowly, while a great salvage fleet, helpless to rescue them, listened to their last signals of despair. Before that an American submarine was wrecked by an explosion in the battery compartment, killing three men and injuring nine; another went ashore in manoeuvres, and was salvaged, after a fashion, unfit for further service; another on her trial run went to the bottom in shallow water, her crew of forty-eight men being happily saved. Other nations have had like experiences, though they have not been so frequent. Americans have been asking, since their last disaster, if it is fair to ask men to take such risks in peace time in order that they may be able to operate submarines in time of war. But their risks would be many times greater in time of war. If nations are to continue to fight each other, it is useless to attempt to proscribe special weapons because they are “barbarous,” the plea, made by Mr Kellogg for proscribing these underwater craft. War is barbarous, and with tho increase of man’s power over science can only become increasingly barbarous and appalling, in all its phases. Men can be killed as horribly on a battleship as in a submarine, with the probability that more of them will bo killed. • But tho submarine attacks, or has beeii used to attack, peaceful merchantmen. It is war on non-com-batants for which it stands. So the argument has been urged, but it goes nowhere. There are no non-combatants jin our modern war. The only way to avoid its horrors and its barbarousness, of which the accidents of peace training are the smallest part, is by the

multiplication of agreements among nations by which war itself will bo outlawed, and that seems only possible of being 'done, in the present state of man’s progress, with the aid of new threats of war.