May 22, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER. 
ships to protect them when lying at anchor or 
going dead slow. But nets were not a complete 
defence, even in these conditions, and were quite 
useless with the ship going faster than three or 
four knots. Moreover, the nets, the booms, and the 
apparatus for raising and lowering the nets were 
a great weight. There were, in addition, many 
other reasons for finding them a serious nuisance 
in a ship. Ten years ago the opinion had 
gained that they might be discarded. The White- 
head torpedo had done practically nothing in the 
Spani.sh- American War, nor in the war between 
China and Japan, and by 1905 naval opinion was 
practically agreed on giving up nets altogether. 
The sensational opening of the Russo-Japanese 
War caused a complete revulsion — once more nets 
were treated as absolutely necessary for the equip- 
ment of a ship. 
But in 1908 and 1909 the high-speed, long- 
range torpedo came into use. This put a com- 
pletely new aspect on things. At short range a 
torpedo going fifty knots can cut its way through 
any net, so that against the latest weapon, fired 
at short range, the net was no protection at all, 
even in the limited conditions in which it had 
hieen such with the older and slower weapon. But 
this is by no means the only reason why nets fell 
into disrepute. With a long-range weapon, it 
6eem.ed clear that the torpedo was destined to play 
a great part in fleet actions, and in fleet actions' 
with ships under way nets of course could not be 
used. The necessity of protecting fleets at anchor 
was forgotten in the larger question. The old nets 
might be useless against the new torpedo; but no 
new method of defence was worked out. 
Had it ever been contemplated to employ the 
pre-Dreadnought battle fleet as it is now being 
employed in the Straits, we may be sure that every 
net would have been replaced. That they were 
not replaced is perhaps a measure of the extreme 
haste v/ith which these ships had to be sent upon 
their new duties. The lesson of the omission must 
have come home with great force after the events 
of March 18, and no doubt nets and booms have 
long since been sent to make good the deficiencies 
that may have existed. In the case of 
Goliath it is not at all certain that nets could 
have defended her. In the Dardanelles current 
it would have been almost impossible to have kept 
them in place even with the ship stationary over 
the ground. 
It is not to be supposed that re-netting the 
ship is the only precaution that ought or has been 
taken to protect the fleet from drifting mines or 
from torpedoes, either from the shore stations 
and destroyers or submarines. Provision must 
certainly have been made for more activo 
measures. 
THE LIMITATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. 
By COLONEL F. N. MAUDE, G.B. 
FOR the past forty years at least all soldiers who 
have made a serious study of their profession have 
been warning the members of the various Peace 
Societies of the dangers and difficulties they were 
creating for this country by endeavouring to 
codify certain customs which had grown up during centuries 
of warfare and to confer upon this codex the status of " Inter- 
national Law." 
The position in which we were placed by the various 
Hague Conventions, at v.'hich these new laws were accepted, 
was a most difficult one, because from the nature of our 
duties as an ancient Colonial Empire we had to be prepared 
to fight all varieties of races, often under conditions of such 
extreme danger and responsibility for other lives and greater 
interests that it was futile to prescribe or limit in any way 
any use which the men on the spot might make of the re- 
sources at their command. 
For example, if a British steamer carrying many white 
women and children (a mission expedition, let us say) were 
beset by Chinese pirates, would the missionary in charge ob- 
ject to the captain's turning tho steam hose on to their 
assailants and beating them off with superheated steam, when 
the ship might be unprovided with any other adequate means 
of dealing with the situation ? Such steam produces results 
many times worse than asphyxiation, and death from its in- 
juries is quite as painful as that of chlorine vapour; but, 
judging from the outrages committed by German officers on 
English schoolgirls and Belgian nuns, the fate of white 
women falling into Chinese hands could be no worse, for 
nothing this side of heU could be more terrible than the Ger- 
man atrocities, no crime more deserving of such drastic 
punishment. 
Again, an officer holding an outpost of vital importance 
against the rush of hordes of " Fuzzies " could not be blamed 
for using fire-smoke, dum-dum bullets, or any other means at 
his command in order to prolong resistance and gain time for 
{the troops he is covering to concentrate; and, by the way. 
blaming the officers would not prevent their men selling theul 
lives as dearly as it was possible for them to do. 
The framers of this code, of course, recognised then 
cases of supreme necessity by limiting its application to 
" civilised " nations only,- and in so doing provided cpportuni< 
ties for the revolting outrages we are now witnessing; for, 
though every thoughtful soldier realised that when fighting 
with their backs to the wall all races instinctively shed theiv 
civilisation, the nation as a whole declined to believe in ths 
realities of warfare, and, in spite of the experiences of tha 
Napoleonic wars, failed to perceive the loopholes which The 
Hague attempt at legislation provided for the advantage «rf 
an unscrupulous enemy. 
The result has been a series of very unpleasant surprises 
for the navies and troops equipped only for the prosecution 
of civilised warfare, of which the recent use of poisonous, not| 
merely asphyxiating, fumes is far the worst and most cruel. 
The use of all kinds of gaseous fumes and of othar 
poisons has been studied for years and years, and almost all 
have their antidotes and can be guarded against, provided 
the possibility of encountering them is admitted. Speaking 
generally, however, military commonsense, quite apart from 
human consideration, has rejected such things as far less 
effective than the means which can be provided of equal local 
efficiency and more general application. 
But since all parties in the present war had signed s 
declaration binding them to refrain from the employment of 
the before-mentioned and similar means, such as squirting 
burning petrol, ifec, the Germans promptly took advantage 
of the opportunity afforded them by their knowledge of our 
reputation for adhering to our given word, and, with the 
absolute unscrupulousness and lack of truth on which they 
pride themselves, proceeded to score here and there tem* 
porary successes. 
Had they believed that we were prepared with the same 
appliances the chances are millions to one that they would 
not have employed any such expedients, for when the advan-* 
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