LAND AND WATER 
merchantmen does not create a new political situation. 
Nor is it a naval novelty. 
The Theory of Armed Merchantmen. 
There seems to be much confused thinking on the 
subject of arming merchantmen. In the earliest times 
there was no distinction between lighting ships and 
trading ships, simply because sea lighting was not carried 
on by any special ship weapon, but by warriors on 
board ; and all trading ships had to defend themselves 
in almost all seas and against all comers. Indeed Mr. 
Hannay tells us in his excellent Shoi-t History of the Royal 
Navy that, until the days of the Tudors, there was little 
distinction between the calling of the pirate and the 
calling of the trader. Right into the i8th century 
merchant ships plying in distant seas had still to arm 
themselves. The great East Indiamen continued the 
practice almost to modem times. And all these ships 
were armed, not as is erroneously supposed solely against 
pirates. The sea trader has, by the common consent of 
ci\'ilised mankind, always been free to protect himself — 
if lie could — against the warships of his country's avowed 
enemies, and to be so armed as to protect himself, neither 
constituted him a man of war, as some American writers 
have ignorantly suggested, nor yet a pirate, as the 
<iermans have quite dishonestly proclaimed. The reason 
that merchantmen have ceased to arm themselves is 
twofold. It is partly because, as State navies have 
become more highly organised and more numerous, the 
necessity for self-protection grew less, but much more 
because as the lighting ship became specialised, self- 
protection became hopeless. This was indeed a necessary 
consequejnce of guns becoming the principal armament 
of warships, for it is clear that no ship could carry a 
formidable battery together with a crew to man the guns, 
and still retain the hold space necessary for a profitable 
trade. So long, then, as the only enemy to be encountered 
at sea was a gun-armed enemy the handicap on trading 
ships was prohibitive, and when to the possibility of a 
heavier battery a more protective method of construction 
\yas added, the disparity in lighting value between the 
lightest of warships and a merchantman carrying the 
heaviest possible armament became so great that any 
useful arming of traders was out of the question 
But with the appearance on the sea, and its employ- 
nient for the attack on trade, of a warship that was quite 
defenceless against even the lightest of guns, the situation 
of the 15th and i6th centuries revived. It so happens 
that this particular form of defenceless warship is also 
incapable, as Mr. Wilson pointed out in one of the 
Lnsitauia notes, of visiting a ship in due and proper order 
at sea, of making her a prize, or of sinking her without 
leaving the non-combatants on board of her to the me'rcy 
of the sea in open boats — adiotis or omissions incon- 
sistent with civilised practice. Consequently, the Presi- 
dent continued, it was manifest that this class of vessel 
cannot be used against trade, without "inevitable viola- 
tions of many sacred principles of justice and humanity." 
If then it is said that in arminjg merchantmen we are 
reverting to the practices of baabarism, the answer is 
simple. We have done so because the practices of 
barbarism have been revived against our merchantmen. 
It has been the object of Count Bernstorff's amaz- 
ingly successful press campaign at Washington to cloud 
this issue by saying that British mercliantmen are armed 
by the Admiralty, and their guns manned by naval 
ratings, and that the object of this is to use trading 
vessels offensively against submarines. Every armed 
merchantman thus necessarily becomes an auxiliary 
cniiser. Our own government has not so far replied on 
the alleged facts. But on the theory of the thing the reply 
is obvious. No one has ever questioned the right of 
trading ships to arm themselves defensively. It is a 
right admitted generally by the American government, 
and specifically, as we have seen, in the second Lusitania 
note. Nor need it be disputed that if used offensively, 
armed merchantmen are virtually cruisers. The thing 
turns on this. Are they so used ? It cannot be pre- 
sumed. We have had a year's experience of submarine 
war, and there is something more to appeal to than 
theory. 
Of the general fact — that Germany has not once 
or ten times, but many hundreds of times, destroyed 
February 17, 1906. 
belligerent and neutral shipping, both by submarines 
and by mines and in each case without warning — there 
is no dispute whatever on either side. All that Germany 
has claimed is that she was justified in doing it. If, 
as America has always contended, to sink civihan ships 
unsearched-and unwarned is inhuman and unprecedented, 
then the criminaUty of the submarine is established and 
acknowledged beyond argument. It is now contended, 
not for the first time, but as the foundation for a new 
argument, that merchantmen are armed for offensive 
purposes. They have, one presumes, been armed for a 
considerable time. Also a considerable number of 
merchantmen must have been armed. If the purpose of 
this was offensive, one is entitled to ask, has this armament 
ever been offensively used ? Where merchantmen have 
rammed submarines they have not been slow to tell the 
story, but we have never heard of any gallant merchant 
seaman who has sunk a submarine with a well aimed shot. 
We have never heard that Germany has alleged that this 
has in fact ever taken place. If no such case has been re- 
ported or alleged, it seems a fair inference that no one 
has sought to use merchantmen offensively. Indeed, 
had so many ships, over so long a period, been so cm- 
ployed, there must surely have been one success. At 
any rate if there has been none, then the uselessness of 
so arming them, and therefore the futihty of the com- 
plaint of their being so armed, is manifest. 
But if they have not been so used, and yet tha 
Germans complain most bitterly of the fact of arming them, 
and are toiling to pervert American opinion on thissub- 
jesct, what is the obvious inference ? Why, that the 
presence of guns on board merchant .ships has put the 
fear of the Lord into the submarines, and made them 
to a great extent useless for their piratical purposes. 
Hence, doubtless, the Germanjtears. But this is exactly 
why they were armed. It has been purely defensive in its 
intention, and what is far more to the point, entirely 
successful in carrying that intention out. 
^Vhethe^ in fact it is wise and advantageous to arm 
merchantmen depends entirely upon one»thing — namely, 
the efficiency of the armament for the purfose. That 
Germany contemplates a new and wider submarine cam- 
paign, and probably with submarines capable of a higher 
surface speed, of a larger pelagic radius, and armed in all 
probability with greater calibred guns is highly probable. 
Mr. Hurd announces in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph, that 
our enemy has already produced a kind of submarine 
monitor, with a continuous armoured battery extending 
like an elongated hood for a great part of the length of 
the hull. He seems to suppose that this submarine can 
emerge this battery above the water and engage a gunned 
ship with all the advantage that results from being itself 
impenetrable to small shells. I have, for various 
reasons, a difficulty in accepting this story. But if it be 
true one of two alternative results must follow. If the bulk 
of the enemy's submarines are armoiu'ed and therefore 
impenetrable to small guns, small guns will then become 
useless. If merchantmen can be armed with larger 
calibres, and hitherto 6-inch have, at least by the 
Americans, been considered within the defensive limit, it 
will be a case of " as you were." 
In any event it is obvious that the arming of mer- 
chantmen turns upon the old considerations. There i3 
in all probability no limit, in theory, to the size and, 
therefore, to the defensive qualities of the submarine. 
There is obviously a limit to the gun carrying capacit\' of 
merchant ships. The question has arisen solely from the 
vulnerability of the under water boats of the present type. 
It is a state of affairs that might not endure even through- 
out this war. It is certainly unlikely to recur in future 
wars. It will be strange, if it turned out to be true, that 
Mr. Lansing's demarche on the arming of merchantmen 
was provoked by suggestions from the Navy Department, 
At least it will be strange if the Department's suggestion 
had any professional origin. The American Navy De- 
partment, like our own Admiralty, has suffered before 
and, I hope unlike our Admiralty, may suffer again, from 
ignorant civilian interference both in policy and adminis- 
tration. But it is quite impossible to believe that 
American naval officers, many of whom are conspicuous 
for their historical knowledge and their firm hold on naval 
doctrine, could have put forward so untenable a theory 
as is attributed to them. Arthur Pollen. 
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