12 
L A N D Cv W A T E R 
July 20, 191G 
equal without sacrificing its utility as a merchantnian, 
the peaceful ship may not onlv beat off, but actually 
sink or capture the warship. The arming of merchant- 
men became altogether useless as soon as specialisation in 
design and building for war purposes made competition 
in fighting power between a ship built for war and a 
trading ship hastily armed impossible. But nhen 
submarines were used against merchantmen, t .. old 
condition was restored. 
Rights and Duties 
Mr. Wilson's LusHania Notes atlmirably summarise 
the rights and d\itics of belligerents in regard to trade. 
Their rights arc to search all j^rivate ships at sea, to cap- 
ture them when the search, prima facie, justifies capture, 
and to bring them into port for trial. In exceptional 
cases and at the belligerent's risk, the prize may be des- 
troyed at sea. But these rights are only conceded 
because certain duties are imposed. 1 he chief of these 
is the protection of those whom the belligerent finds on 
board the private ship. The whole quarrel with the 
employment of the submarine as a commerce raider, is 
that it can only in quite exceptional circumstances be 
suited to exercise belligerent rights, and almost never 
be capable of discharging belligerent duties. Its dis- 
ability, in the matter of the belligerent's rights, rests on 
the fact that as a surface ship it has the lowest factor 
of defence of anything in the sea. '■ It has indeed no 
defensive power at all except the total destruction of any 
possible opponent. So fragile is it that a single shot by 
the lightest of guns, the mere touch of a ship's bows-- 
either may send it promptly to tiie bottom. But it can 
only visit, search and capture as a surface ship. And 
as it cannot enforce capture except by sinking, and as 
its capacity will not enable it to carry the people on board 
into safety, any more than allow it to carry adequate 
numbers for putting prize crews on board its captures, 
it follows that its fragility and its small size make it alto- 
gether unsuitable for functions hitherto associated with 
the exercise of maritime rights and duties in war. These 
functions depend on the size, speed or power of the warship 
being overwhelming. Trade war became humane and 
bloodless, because resistance was hopeless, and — so far 
as safety to life was concerned— unnecessary. 
The submarine's limitations are inherent ; and ex- 
perience has shown that if it is to effect anything 
detrimental to the enemy's trade, it can only do it by 
ignoring every precept that humanity has hitherto con- 
sidered binding. When a sea captain is challenged by a 
submarine, he knows that if he surrenders, his ship will 
be sunk, his passengers and crew sent adrift in open 
boats. Open boats are, in any case, a poor protection for 
life ; in many cases a barbarous infliction on women and 
children ; in some cases a virtual sentence to either a 
violent or a lingering death. It is inevitable that where he 
can, the merchant captain will seek safety by an attack 
upon the submarine. He will arm himself before he starts, 
not only because his guns, if they are used successfully, 
will protect him, but because the bare fact that he is 
known to be carrying them will deter submarines from ap- 
proaching in any except very favourable conditions. 
The captain of the armed merchant ship is clearly within 
all his maritime rights in being armed. If in spite of 
it, the under water boat commander goes for him, it 
can only be by a breach of every human limitation. He 
must make, that is to say, an unheralded under water 
attack. It is these quite simple and obvious circum- 
stances that have led to the American protest against the 
submarine campaign. 
Does it not follow from the same premises that we 
strain the meaning of words in saying that a submarine 
can be a legitimate trader ? and are saying what is self 
contradictory, in holding that an armed submarine can 
be a peaceful ship ? The submarine is not, never has 
been, and never will be a trading craft in time of peace. 
It could only pay as a smuggler, in peace, just as it can 
only cruise as a pirate in war. It maybe a legitimate ruse 
of war to put on false funnels and sham sides, and pretend 
that what is really a warship is for the moment a trading 
ship. But this surely bears no sort of analogy to claim- 
ing the immunity of a trading ship for what is really a 
warship. No belligerent patrol, for instance, on en- 
countering an enemy submarine could be blamed for 
destroying it at sight. It could not be expected to warn 
the enemy's trading submarines that certain channels 
were netted or others mined. The submarine trader 
then could claim none of the privileges that belong to 
trading ships in war, except that of asylum in the ports 
of such neutrals as could be persuaded that it really was 
a peaceful craft. 
But it can hardly be disputed that his title to an 
innocent i)resumption becomes exceedingly shaky if he 
carries guns. The reason is that guns cannot defend him 
against anything. Twelve-pounders, if he carries them, 
can do no harm to a warship, and, if they were his only 
weapons, would invest him with exceedingly little 
jMHver to harm a tramp. ■ They would of course give him 
a great advantage over an unarmed ship, but that is 
begging the question. It is his structural weakness that 
is fatal, and the only way of making sure that it is not 
tested by attack, is to sink the possible assailant before 
a blow can be delivered. Such guns as the suKmarine 
can carry then are not defensive at all. 
But the submarine having the reputation that it has, 
and being associated in the minds of all sea-faring folk 
with the torpedo, make the fact of it being armed with 
gims exceedingly suspicious. For supposing a submarine, 
not otherwise armed, ranged alongside an unarmed cargo 
or passenger boat, fired a few shots and called upon it to 
surrender, is it not a thousand to one that the unarmed 
ship would surrender, believing that the submarine had 
it in its power to sink her out of hand by under water 
attack ? Is this kind of bluff a " ruse de guerre " which 
neutrals should encourage by treating a warship when it 
masquerades as a cargo boat as if it were indeed the harm- 
less Iamb of commerce, instead of what it must seem to 
be, a wolf hardly even in sheep's clothing ? 
Historic Sea Rights 
Our enemy's very mild effort to loosen the least of his 
fetters must then raise certain questions of international 
law, which are perhaps of more legal than of practical 
importance. But the Allies' efforts to rivet the fetters 
further, I must frankly admit, seem to me to raise 
questions, of which the importance transcends even their 
legal complexity. It is a very disarming argument that 
the Foreign Office has issued in defence of the final 
r.bandoniTient of the Declaration of London. We took 
it up, it says, because, anxious to regulate ovir conduct 
by the principle of the law of nations, we hoped this 
precious document would prove " a suitable digest of 
principles ahd a compendium of working rules " ! After 
two years the result is, we confess with siorrow, " not 
wholly satisfactory." " As a matter of fact," says the 
memorandum, " these rules, while not in all respects 
improving tlie safeguards aflforded to neutrals, >..id not 
provide belligerents with the most effective means of 
exercising their admitted rights." They certf.':ily did 
not. The comedy of this is, that the whole of this 
digest of principles and compendium of rules was framed 
with the sole object of limiting and curtailing these 
admitted rights. The humble folk who ha\c been 
dinning this into the ears of our rulers during the last 
eleven years, may be pardoned if they are unable to 
share the honest surprise of the Foreign Office when two 
years of war have demonstrated what two hours of patient 
study of the matter would have made convincing before 
war began. The whole thing has, of course, been a 
blunder of the most colossal and the most costly kind. 
A blunder particularly costly in view of '.' the concen- 
tration by the Germanic Powers of the whole body of 
their resources on military needs," for it is this fact, 
without any " manifold developments of naval and 
military science or the inventions of new engines of 
war," that has produced conditions altogether cUfferent 
from those prevailing in previous naval wars. It is 
this concentration of resources that made con-esponding 
concentration of effort to* restrict resources of such para- 
mount moment. Many students of naval war, and men 
whose orthodoxy in "the major doctrines is beyond 
suspicion, have held that the importance of blockade 
may be exaggerated, and pointed out that never yet in 
naval history have such blockades been of themselves 
decijsive. This is no doubt perfectly true, but then 
never before in naval history have nations mobilised 
the whole of their male population between 19 and 45 
