April 17, 1915. 
Land and .water. 
•mall cruisers and destroyers for modern naval nejds, and 
it kept back her submarine development — that is to say, she 
did not hasten to adopt the sea-going submarine, and our 
E class had been in existence some two years before Germany 
followed with boats of about the same size (i.e., somewhere 
around 800 tons). There was, therefore, never any serious 
reason to suppose that the six boats of the 1914 pro- 
gramme, U30 onward, would differ materially from other 
jjredecessors. 
As for the fifty or sixty boats laid down on the outbreak 
of war, it is as certain as anything can be that they will 
be exactly rej^licas of U36, for the simple reason that no 
nation, let alone so methodical a nation as Germany, would 
in war time embark on anything in the nature of wholesale 
construction of craft in any way experimental. The risk of 
failure is obviously all too great to be undertaken. A naval 
war is clearly not the time for experiments on a grand scale. 
We may lake it, therefore, that Germany is conducting 
the blockade with boats of the type that she has produced in 
the immediate past, and put all stories of super-submarines 
out of court. 
Now, the German boats are quite good boats — inferior 
to ours of equal date, because our Navy has been consistently 
progressive, while the Germans have been content to proceed 
on more conservative linc-i. As boats, however, these Ger- 
mans are very good, well designed, and of considerablo 
radius. That— coupled with some system of supply — has 
rendered them capable of reaching places and remaining off 
places which before the war would have been considered 
unattainable and impossible. In fine, the Germans have 
demonstrated to their own satisfaction their ability to 
blockade, in so far as appearing to keep just within the letter 
of the law can be pleaded. 
In strict International Law the blockade is, of course, 
not effective, because the area claimed to be blockaded is 
altogether out of proportion to the means available. That 
no blockade can be expected to stop all vessels from breaking 
in or out has always been accepted; but it has always been 
Btrictly laid down that for a blockade to be deemed effective 
prevention of ingress to or egress from the blockaded ports 
must in the vast majority of cases be effectual. That is a 
condition of affairs which most certainly has not obtained. 
So far as can be gathered, the practice of German sub- 
marines is to .show themselves off a port with set purpose — - 
this has the effect of temporarily stopping all ingoings and 
outgoings. The submarines then apparently secretly move off 
elsewhere, leaving it to our patrols to hunt vainly for them. 
This is not the invariable rule, but it seems to be a fairly 
common event, and to it even may partly be due the circum- 
Ktance that our losses only average about one merchant ship 
a day. 
Now, if a hostile submarine deliberately shows herself, 
she must be doing so with some definite object in view. The 
object would appear to be a vague attempt to comply (or, at 
any rate, appear to comply) with the letter of International 
Law. Under this a blockade is not raised if the blockaders 
withdraw for a time on account of i^tress of weather. It is 
raised if the blockaders are driven off by the other side or if 
they I'oluntarily withdraw. 
The voluntary withdrawal of surface ships can be 
observed and proved; the voluntary withdrawal of sub- 
marines cannot be observed, and is hard to prove; while 
" stress of weather " is just sufficiently vague to be capable, 
in the hands of a clever lawyer, of being translated into all 
kinds of things on the lines of " circumstances alter cases," 
plus the argument that when the laws of blockade conditions 
under which they act are not allowed for. 
At any rate, the point is that there do exist obscure issues 
which could be argued about; and it is of very great import- 
ance to note that the Germans are evidently making an effort 
to secure some kind of legal case for themselves. If that 
means anything at all, it can only mean that they realise 
the prospect of having to explain their actions to the world 
at some future date, and this again implies that the possibility 
of ulimate defeat enters into their present calculations. A 
victorious Germany would have no qualms about Inter- 
national Law. So much for one phase of the question. 
We now come to the other side of the matter — the 
sinking of merchant ships without warning, leaving the crews 
to drown. 
Our view of this procedure is clear enough, we regard 
it as piracy, and wanton, murderous piracy at that. But it 
will enable us to form a clearer conception of the exact 
eituation if we endeavour to visualise the matter for a 
moment from the German point of view, always bearing in 
mind that if — as seems established — a shadow of justification 
for the blockade itself is being sought, si.Tiilar " justification " 
is unlikely to be ignored over the greater issues involved in 
the methods of destruction which are employed. 
Here, when we come to examine the subject as a whole, 
I think we shall find that the German official statement waa 
careful to say vaguely tliat it might not always be possible to 
save the crews, or words to that effect — in any case, loopholes 
were left for possible future arguments on the lines of 
" thought this was one of the merchantmen which carries 
guns for defensive purposes." Further, it will be noted that 
it is only in the minority of cases that destruction without 
warning {i.e., piracy) has taken place; in many cases, taking 
circumstances into consideration, a good deal of calculated 
courtesy has been shown. 
We may, if we choose, attribute this to the circumstance 
that German naval officers able to slaughter non-combatants 
in cold blood are few and far between. An equally probable 
hypothesis is that (this fact being realised) no general order 
about sinking without warning was ever issued, though one 
or two officers may perhaps privately have been allowed to 
understand that such actions would not be disapproved of. 
This absence of orders in black and white can, of course, 
bo used to give a clear field for official disavowals of com- 
plexity at any suitable date; the offenders being made scape- 
goats as convenient, or allowed to plead as best they may, the 
" thought she had a gun trained on us " excuse. In support 
of this hypothesis is the fact that where a submarine has been 
seen after a sinking without warning incident, the circum- 
stance of her number being painted out is generally or always 
noted. This renders it impossible to bring the crime home to 
any particular boat. 
To the above must be added the further important 
question of the exact legal status of a merchant shij} which 
attempts to ram a submarine; especially when the matter \i 
further complicated by the fact of rewards having been 
offered for success in such attempts. 
International Law is quite clear on the subject of re- 
sistance. The merchant ship may (we are considering the 
legal position only, be it remembered) try to escape, but any 
act of resistance renders her a legitimate prize, even though 
she be otherwise innocent. ' 
Now, the ram, or using the ship for ramming purposes, iS 
a weapon as old as the Battle of Salamis. To attempt to ram 
a submarine is, therefore, technically, as well as actually, 
" resistance," and any such action apparently places the mer- 
chant ship in the combatant category — that is to say, legally 
entitles the submarine to destroy her without notice ! A? 
rammings, or attempts to ram, have undoubtedly taken place, 
any ordinary police-court lawyer, to say nothing of a special- 
ising international jurist, could make out a quite plausible 
case for every act of " piracy " which has taken place. The 
submarine captain has merely to swear that the quarry 
appeared to be about to attack him or was attempting to 
attack. 
So it is, therefore, that though German " piracy " may 
be utterly foreign to the spirit of the law or all ideas of inter- 
national morality, we are still faced with the fact of some 
possible technical legal justification — in German eyes perfect 
justification^f properly manipulated. 
In this connection the at first sight apparently merely 
childish and hysterical outburst in the presumably inspired 
German Press over the destruction of U29 takes on some con- 
siderable significance. Without waitiag for any information 
on the matter, the Germans roundly assert that U29 was 
treacherously sunk, decoyed to doom, slaughtered while 
saving life (this last being presumably due to the fact that 
Captain Weddingen, of U29, had earned a name for carry- 
ing out his unpleasant duties with humanity and courtesy). 
The outcry is important as further evidence of German 
desire to drag in legal issues; in this case to manufacture an 
argument of the " Even if our actions have not been quite 
legal, neither have yours " type. 
Now, from all the above tv/o central facts emerge. Of 
these the first — already alluded to — is that, for reasons of 
her ow^n, Germany has not ignored legal issues to anything 
like the extent that she is supposed to have by the Briti.sh 
public. The second point — one to which I drew attention two 
or three weeks ago — is that neither psychologically nor finan- 
cially has the blockade been a German success. None the 
less, it is being persisted in. The natural question is — Why? 
Plausible explanations are fairly plentiful. As simple 
and plausible a one as any, and the most generally 
accepted one, is that it satisfies the German public that its 
expensive Navy is " doing something " — at any rate, in one 
direction. This explanation, however, seems rather far- 
fetched. German public opinion is mainly concentrated on 
military matters, and military rather than naval men appeal 
to have the chief control of the German Fleet. It is, there- 
11* 
