[Illustration: “We have better luck with passenger boats than with war
ships, for they cannot shoot.”]
The “Katwyk”
In this one picture is the whole story of German submarine war, which
heeds the presence of neither women nor children, but strikes swiftly,
secretly, and without giving its victim the opportunity of defence. Not
that in war it is demanded that the opponent should be given chance
of a fight on equal terms; for in sea war the whole object of a naval
commander is to concentrate an overwhelming superiority of fire on his
enemy, and to destroy.
It remained for Germany, however, to apply this doctrine of destruction
to mercantile craft and to neutral shipping, and to conduct war on
the principle that war justifies _any_ means, any barbarity, even the
indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants. This assassin striking from
behind has called the British blockade barbarous; but that blockade at
least gives the nation against whom it is exercised a choice between
evils, so much so in fact that all nations recognise it, and for ages
have recognised it, as part of the procedure of war--no accusation of
barbarity was made against Germany in 1871 for the starvation of the
civilian population of Paris. But this sea-murder is a different thing,
a thing that does not advance the end of the war, and a sign of a claim
on the part of its authors that civilisation cannot allow. It is as if
they questioned: “Since we have a certain power of destruction, shall
we not use it as pleases us?”
And the answer? There were, after the sinking of the _Lusitania_, rows
of bodies of women and children laid out for identification; there were
many other instances, almost equally tragic, and the answers that they
afford are eloquent enough. May they be well remembered in the day of
settlement.