THE MORALITY OF SUBMARINE WARFARE
“War’s a brain-spattering, wind-pipe slitting art. It is not to be
‘humanised,’ but only abolished one fine day when nations have cut
their wisdom teeth.”
“Inter arma silent leges.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“The sea fights of the future, with improved ships, guns, and
range-finders, may be fought at ranges almost beyond the ken of
unaided human vision. It is to be hoped that before that time
arrives the progress of civilisation, intellect, and humanity will
have consigned all weapons of war to the museum of the antiquary,
and that other methods than war may have been discovered for
preserving the peace and virility of men and nations.”
In the early years of the nineteenth century the writer of an article in
the _Naval Chronicle_, devoted to a consideration of Fulton’s schemes,
stigmatised his torpedoes and submarine boats as “revolting to every
noble principle,” their projector as a “crafty murderous ruffian,” and
his patrons as “openly stooping from their lofty stations to superintend
the construction of such detestable machines, that promised destruction
to maritime establishments.” He went on to protest against the policy of
encouraging inventions that tended to innovate on the triumphant system
of naval warfare in which England excelled, and he concluded thus:
“Guy Fawkes is got afloat, battles in future may be fought under water;
our invincible ships of the line may give place to horrible and unknown
structures, our projects to catamarans, our pilots to divers, our hardy,
dauntless tars to _submarine assassins_; coffers, rockets, catamarans,
infernals, water-worms, and fire-devils! How honourable! how fascinating
is such an enumeration! How glorious, how fortunate for Britain are
discoveries like these! How worthy of being adopted by a people made
wanton by naval victories, by a nation whose empire are the seas!”
It is quite evident that even in this “so-called Twentieth Century”
there exist many Britons who in their heart of heart agree with this
writer, and who cherish the idea, though they may not openly express it,
that there is something mean and underhanded, something dishonourable
and “un-English” in all methods of under-water warfare. The Englishman
prides himself on being a lover of fair play, and so long as the odds
are more or less equal, he is ready to enjoy any contest or sport. The
average Englishman is neither a hot-headed Jingoist, nor a
peace-at-any-price humanitarian; he regards wars as unfortunate
necessities of modern civilisation, and he likes to see them waged
fairly and squarely, each side observing the rules of the game. As
regards warfare on land, it must be confessed that he has had to correct
some of his ideas since the Boer war. He would have preferred the enemy
to come out into the open and fight like men. Instead of this, they took
every precaution to avoid being seen, and our army found that it had to
face an invisible foe. From the Boers we have learnt the lesson of the
value of cover and entrenchments, and now officers and men, however much
they may dislike it, are forced to seek and utilise cover whenever
possible, making it their aim to hit their opponents and to avoid being
hit themselves.
“Let us admit it fairly as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good.”
In naval warfare we have had no opportunity of learning our lesson in
the light of actual experience, for we have had no big battle on the
seas since Trafalgar, and our naval supremacy has not been seriously
threatened since 1805; it is thus possible for men to hold different
opinions as to the value of submarine fighting, and we consequently find
that there are numerous people who, whilst they would not go so far as
to declare mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats unlawful, yet consider
them as methods better fitted to the requirements of other nations than
to those of the Mistress of the Seas.
Modern submarine warfare was introduced by two Americans, David Bushnell
and Robert Fulton, and forced itself into prominence during the American
War of Independence. The spar-torpedo originated in America; the
Whitehead torpedo was first adopted by the Austrian Government, and
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Austria all began to build torpedo
boats before Great Britain condescended to add them to her Navy.
As to submarine vessels Greece and Turkey purchased Nordenfelt boats in
1887. France built her first boat in 1888, and the United States
purchased her first submarine, the _Holland_, in 1900. Great Britain,
then, has followed instead of leading other nations in the matter of
mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats, and has only been induced to
adopt such methods of warfare because other nations forced her to do so.
Before the advent of the torpedo boat, Great Britain was secure in her
position of Mistress of the Seas, so long as she possessed more
line-of-battle ships than any other nation. The arrival of the
torpedo-boat, the destroyer, and the submarine, all armed with the
Whitehead torpedo, has given weaker nations the chance of attacking our
ironclads with new weapons, and there are even those who affirm that the
battleship is doomed, and must give way to a different type of craft.
The whole trend of modern invention has been to the advantage of weaker
nations. Earl St. Vincent described under-water methods as “a mode of
war which they, who commanded the seas, did not want, and which, if
successful, would deprive them of it.” It is quite true that Great
Britain would sooner trust to her guns and her line-of-battle ships than
to her torpedoes and torpedo craft in actions on the high seas, but
owing to other nations—admittedly weaker—having adopted the torpedo, she
has no choice but to adopt it also in order to maintain her naval
supremacy. So long as she provides herself not only with methods of
submarine attack, but also with means of warding off the under-water
attacks of the enemy, other nations are not likely to wrest the command
of the seas from her.
It is idle to lament the advancement of Science. Man is an inventive
animal, and is ever trying to inaugurate new devices and improve on old
ones. For hundreds of years the sailing ship held the field, and guns
and cannon underwent but little change. During the “Wonderful Century,”
however, changes began in earnest. The wooden sailing ship disappeared,
and the steam-driven ironclad took its place, whilst rifled ordnance,
high explosive shells, and powerful propellants were introduced.
The fish torpedo made its appearance, and the swift torpedo vessel
followed in its wake, and we are now threatened with submarine boats,
turbine-driven men-of-war, and aerial machines for the launching of
aerial torpedoes both on armies and on fleets.
What the future has in store none can foresee, and until the next great
naval battle between first-class Powers comes to pass the value of
modern engines of warfare will remain doubtful. All that is certain at
present is that Great Britain cannot afford to dispense with mines,
torpedoes, and submarine boats.
We may seem to have wandered a long way from the “morality of submarine
warfare,” but our purpose has been to show that when certain people
argue—as they do seriously in this year of grace—that torpedo warfare
should be declared contrary to the laws and customs of war, they are, to
a certain extent, influenced by the fact that the torpedo is a weapon
which Great Britain could very well do without, provided it was tabooed
by other nations.
No one, not even a member of the Peace Society, would urge the
suppression of the Lee-Enfield, or the quick-firer, because Great
Britain relies on these for the maintenance of her place in the front
rank of the nations of the world, and the argument as to the
“illegitimacy” of the torpedo depends largely on the fact that other
nations gain and Great Britain loses by its adoption.
There have been persons who have argued in favour of giving no quarter
to crews of torpedo boats and submarines that might fall into our hands,
and have suggested that we could explain such action to the other
Powers, to whose advantage it is to use such weapons, by saying that
though we had been driven to employ such methods, we were forced to
treat the practice with severity. Such a course of action would cut both
ways, and we suspect our own torpedoists would be very much averse to
it.
Strange engines of warfare and new modes of fighting are received by the
bulk of a nation, whose instincts are conservative and whose minds are
incapable of imagining a state of things other than that which prevails
at the moment, in much the same way as are new inventions. They are
first of all scouted as impossible; then, if possible, of no utility;
and finally, when they have been universally adopted, they are declared
to be no novelties at all. Just as many old ladies have been heard to
declare that they will never travel by the Two-penny Tube, so nations
have been known to disclaim all intention of using particular weapons.
Yet after a time we find the old ladies in the Tube and the nations
employing the weapons. Familiarity breeds contempt.
The earliest man—_Homo sapiens_—fought with his fists, his legs, and his
teeth. Gradually he made for himself weapons, deriving his first
instruction in their manufacture by observing the ways in which the
animal creation fought one another. His earliest weapons were made of
wood, bone, and stone, and in due course there was evolved the spear,
the waddy, the boomerang, the hatchet, the tomahawk, the bow and arrow,
the pike, the lance, the axe, the sword, and other implements.
It is exceedingly probable that the adoption of a new engine of warfare
by a tribe would be condemned by another tribe—to whom it had not
occurred to use it—as illegitimate, but it is equally probable that
while sturdily protesting against the use of one weapon the tribe would
be slily endeavouring to procure one more deadly still.
The first great revolution in the art of war was the introduction of
gunpowder, both as a propelling agent and also as a charge for shells
and bombs. Although the explosive nature of saltpetre when mixed with
carbon and charcoal was doubtless known to the Chinese some centuries
before the Christian era, our first knowledge of the use of gunpowder as
a military agent dates from the seventh century, when it was used by the
Byzantine emperors under the name of “Greek fire” in the defence of
Constantinople against the Saracens.
“Greek fire,” the invention of which is commonly attributed to
Callinichus in 668 A.D., consisted probably of pounded resin or bitumen,
sulphur, naphtha, and nitre. There were three ways of employing it: it
was poured out burning from ladles on besiegers, it was projected out of
tubes to a distance, and it was shot from _balistæ_ burning on tow, tied
to arrows. Its effect was probably rather moral than material.
Geoffrey de Vinesauf, in an account of a naval battle in the time of
Richard I., writes thus of Greek fire: “The fire, with a deadly stench
and livid flames, consumes flint and iron; and unquenchable by water,
can only be extinguished by sand or vinegar. What more direful than a
naval conflict! What more fatal, when so various a fate envolves the
combatants, for they are either burnt and writhe in the flames,
shipwrecked and swallowed up by the waves, or wounded and perish by
arms.”
Despite the lamentations of the humanitarians of the time, Greek fire
and serpents (missiles resembling rockets charged with and impelled by
the slow explosion of a certain mixture) continued to be used in the
navy until the reign of Richard III.
Another favourite method of early naval warfare was the “fire-ship.”
Falkiner, an old writer, tells us that fire-ships were used by the
Rhodians in 190 B.C. They were certainly used by the Greeks; they were
employed by ourselves against the Armada, and they first appeared in our
Navy List in the year 1675; they were used in the Dutch and French wars
at the close of that century, but probably fell into disuse in the
eighteenth. It is quite clear that with the French, as well as with
ourselves, the crews of fire-ships did not expect quarter. Admiral
Gambier deprecated fire-ships as being a “horrible and anti-Christian
mode of warfare,” while Lord Cochrane said that if any attempts were
made upon the British squadron by fire-ships they would be “boarded by
the numerous row-boats on guard, the crews murdered, and the fire-ships
turned in a harmless direction.”
Lord Dunsany appeared to think that this apparently cruel rule of no
quarter to the crews of fire-ships worked well for humanity in practice,
and he seemed to be in favour of its being extended to the crews of
torpedo-boats and submarines. His Lordship pointed out, in a lecture at
the Royal United Service Institution, that the crews of fire-ships would
not stick to their ships to the moment of explosion, but had after
firing the fuse to make their escape in boats, which boats, as they
passed through the enemy’s lines, would naturally become targets, and if
meanwhile some ship clasped in the deadly embrace of the fire-ship had
exploded, it was all the more likely that the fugitives would be the
objects of unsparing vengeance.
“Probably then the vague but fatal epithet ‘un-English’ came to attach
to men who used a deadly weapon, but withdrew themselves (sometimes too
quickly) from the fray. I cannot produce evidence of the facts, but I
believe that officers serving in fire-ships did not stand high with
their brother officers. It is some confirmation of this creed that we do
not find the Boscawens, Rodneys, Howes, Jervises, Nelsons serving in
fire-ships.”
The first use of gunpowder as a propelling agent was in Spain in the
twelfth century, at which period both the Moors and the Christians used
artillery. It was first employed in warfare in England in 1327 by Edward
III. in his war against the Scotch, the cannon from which the shot was
fired being termed “Crakys of war.”
There is abundant evidence that the use of artillery in battle was at
first thought to be improper. When cannon was employed at Chiaggia in
the fourteenth century all Italy made complaint against this manifest
contravention of fair warfare; the ruling classes, seeing their armour,
lances, and knightly prowess rendered useless, vigorously opposed the
newly-invented arms, declaring that they were calculated to extinguish
personal bravery. Perhaps this sentiment may have had some weight with
our navy, for it was not until towards the close of the sixteenth
century that artillery finally assumed the position of the dominant arm
in the service and that musketry fire altogether displaced the arrow and
the bolt.
Shells appear to have been first used by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1480,
and they were in general use about the middle of the seventeenth
century.
There is no doubt whatever that shells and bombs were considered highly
immoral by the side which did _not_ employ them. To those accustomed
only to fire solid shot there must have been something very terrifying
in the hurling of shells fitted with explosives which when they burst
slew those round about and set fire to dwellings and ships.
When the _Bomb Ketch_, a ship firing bombs and shells, was introduced
into our navy in the seventeenth century, the French were particularly
angered by the “inhumanity” of the English in firing “inflammable fire
balls and shells.” Again in the eighteenth century we find the Marechal
de Conflans issuing an order against the use of hollow shot or
incendiary shell because they “were not generally used by polite
nations, and the French ought to fight according to the laws of honour.”
At the battle of the Nile in 1798 the French flagship _L’Orient_ took
fire and blew up, and when the French sailors reproached the English for
using incendiary missiles the latter repudiated the charge, and
mentioned that they had found such unlawful weapons in one of the prizes
they had taken; thus the hollowness of the French regard for humane
warfare was neatly demonstrated.
Whilst Great Britain did not scruple to fire lyddite shells at the
Boers, their wives, and their children at Paardeberg, she prided herself
on her abstention from the use of explosive or expanding bullets, and
much abuse was heaped on the Boers for their employment of such. It may,
however, be doubted whether a bullet which kills you right off at once,
or at any rate which disables you permanently for a long time, is not
preferable to one which is of so mild a nature that you can be shot over
and over again, alternating your appearances on the battlefield with
visits to the hospital.
A lecture on “Explosive Bullets and their Application to Military
Purposes” was delivered before the Royal United Service Institution in
1868 by Major G. V. Fosbery, the first officer to use these projectiles
in the field, systematically and to any large extent, against some of
the mountain tribes of the North-West frontier of India. The lecturer
tells us that the natives considered them unfair on two grounds—firstly,
because they exploded in an objectionable way; secondly, because there
was nothing they could collect of them afterwards, as in the case of
ordinary bullets. But more civilised people complained of the use of
“rifle shell” on the ground of their Satanic nature, and to these Major
Fosbery replies as follows:
“The arguments which condemn a warlike instrument simply on the grounds
of its destructiveness to life, provided that it neither adds keen agony
to wounds nor new terrors to death itself, are, if logically pursued,
simply retrogressive, and even if not recommending by implication a
return to the bow and arrow, at all events point to the old times of
protracted wars and deaths from fatigue and disease far exceeding in
number those caused by the weapons of an enemy. We can therefore afford
to set these on one side, or rather we are bound to neglect them
altogether and seriously consider any invention which under the
conditions above laid down promises us a more certainly destructive fire
than that attainable _cæteris paribus_ by the arms at present included
in our war material.”
In spite of opinions such as these the humanitarians have won the day,
and explosive bullets are now tabooed by Great Britain. The great Duke
of Wellington used to say that he should not like to see the bullet
reduced in size, because it broke the bone, and the object of war was
either to kill your man or else put him in hospital and keep him there.
With the Mauser and the Lee-Enfield neither of these results is
attained.
The prototypes of the modern submarine torpedo, although they were
employed on the surface of the water and not below, were the “machine,”
the “infernal,” the “catamaran,” the “powder-vessel,” &c.
“Machines” may be best described as fire-ships specially arranged so as
to explode very destructively when alongside one of the enemy’s vessels.
They are first found in the British Navy in the seventeenth century, but
were soon discontinued, not we are afraid on humanitarian grounds, but
because Bushnell and Fulton pointed the way to the more convenient
explosive device known as the “torpedo.”
In the year 1650 Prince Rupert made an attempt to blow up the English
Vice-admiral in the _Leopard_ by a species of “infernal.” He sent a
couple of negroes and one of his seamen in Portuguese dress alongside
the _Leopard_ in a shore boat. They carried with them what purported to
be a barrel of oil, but the barrel really held an infernal machine to be
fired by a pistol attachment, the trigger of which could be pulled by a
string passing through the bung. The story goes that one of the crew of
the boat, finding the lower deck ports closed, “uttered an exclamation”
in English. This betrayed them, but Blake refused to take vengeance on
them, though the trick was one he would himself have scorned to play on
his adversary.
During the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812
H.M.S. _Ramilies_ of seventy-four tons, was so unfortunate as to be the
object of attack both by a diving vessel carrying torpedoes and by a
powder-ship. The _Ramilies_ was lying off New London at anchor and
maintaining the blockade. As she was known to be short of provisions the
Americans fitted out a schooner and filled the hold with powder,
covering it over in the hatchways with barrels of flour. By means of an
ingenious piece of clockwork attached to a gunlock and a train leading
to the powder its explosion was ensured at the intended time. The
_Ramilies_ suspecting nothing, but thanking Heaven for the gift,
captured the vessel and the crew escaped to land. By some extraordinary
chance (or was it destiny?) the schooner was ordered to anchor near
another prize some distance from the _Ramilies_, so that when the
clockwork reached the fatal hour, 2.30, the charge exploded and blew up,
not the _Ramilies_ with her captain, Sir Thomas Hardy, and crew of six
hundred men, but only the prize crew who were in the schooner.
The naval historian James could not trust himself to comment upon “this
most atrocious proceeding,” whilst a naval officer wrote: “A quantity of
arsenic in the flour would have been so perfectly compatible with the
rest of the contrivance that we wonder it was not resorted to. Should
actions like this receive the sanction of Governments, the science of
war and the laws of nations will degenerate into the barbarity of the
Algerians, and pillage will take the place of kindness and humanity to
our enemies.”
During the American Civil War a species of weapon known as a “coal
torpedo” was employed. This consisted of a hollow lump of iron, fitted
with a charge of dynamite. It was rubbed over with coal tar and dust,
and exactly resembled a large lump of coal. Lord Dunsany thought that
this certainly seemed to be on the verge of lawful, if not beyond it.
At the close of the eighteenth century David Bushnell inaugurated the
era of submarine warfare by devising cases fitted with explosives,
arranged to go off at a set time by clockwork. To enable these cases to
be affixed to the sides of vessels, Bushnell invented the first boat
capable of diving beneath the waves of which we have any definite
details. His attempts to blow up the _Eagle_ in 1776 by a case fastened
on her bottom, and the _Cerberus_ in 1777 by means of a towing torpedo,
failed, owing more to the lack of skill on the part of the operator,
Sergt. Ezra Lee, than to any defect in the apparatus employed. Nor was
Bushnell successful in his effort to destroy vessels in the Delaware by
the aid of a number of kegs filled with powder and set adrift.
The introduction of gunpowder, of Greek fire, of fire-ships, of
artillery, of shells, of bombs, of machines, of infernals, of
catamarans, of powder vessels having, as has been shown, been at one
time or another denounced as immoral by certain “humanitarians,” it was
but natural that a secret contrivance for bringing about a terrific
explosion _beneath_ an unsuspecting ship’s crew should have been
believed to be an invention of the Evil One, and history affords proof
that the novel modes of fighting introduced by Bushnell and Fulton were
regarded with great disfavour by naval men, who considered the
innovators as men “who would discredit the glorious traditions of our
navy, and substitute a set of catamarans for the noble frigates that had
carried our flag to victory and were the pride of the nation”; by
humanitarians, who regarded the torpedoes as a “dishonest and cowardly
system of warfare”; and by the public generally, who denounced the
nations who attempted to compass the destruction of British ships of the
line by dastardly tricks which England would never stoop to employ.
In a work written by James Kelly, and published in 1818, the author
comments with great severity on “some infamous and insidious attempts to
destroy British men-of-war upon the coasts of America by torpedoes and
other explosive machinery.” This refers to the attacks on H.M.S.
_Ramilies_ by one of Fulton’s boats, attacks which failed, but which
caused Sir Thomas Hardy to notify the American Government that he had
ordered on board from fifty to one hundred American prisoners of war,
“who, in the event of the effort to destroy the ship by torpedoes or
other infernal inventions being successful, would share the fate of
himself and his crew.” So frightened were the relations and friends of
prisoners of war by these threats that public meetings were held, and
petitions were presented to the American executive against the further
employment of torpedoes in the ordinary course of warfare.
Those who endeavoured to perfect a system of submarine mining for the
defence of harbours and coasts were abused in the same way that Bushnell
and Fulton had been. Samuel Colt, the inventor of the pistol which bore
his name, and one of the first to experiment with mines fired from shore
by means of an electric current, was roundly denounced by John Quincy
Adams, who dubbed him “that Guy Fawkes afloat.”
At the time of the Crimean War the popular term “infernal machine” was
applied to the submarine mines laid down by the Russians to defend the
approaches to Cronstadt. In the seventies Lieut.-Col. Martin endeavoured
to establish, on the grounds of humanity, an international anti-torpedo
association, while even to-day there are people found to protest against
the employment of certain forms of torpedoes, as witness the following
letter recently published in the _Engineer_. The author, Mr. Reginald
Bolton, declared that while no one could object to the defensive lay
torpedo or the spar torpedo, the same could not be said of the
“Whitehead,” “Brennan,” or “Edison.”
“Surely,” he urges, “our forefathers’ code of morality in warfare
should not be in advance of our own. All civilised nations have
debarred the brutal explosive bullet, and why not the equally mean
submarine torpedo? If such a remedy as Commodore Hardy’s were to be
applied by any nation, could its opponent complain, and is there
anything in the practice of morality to prevent, say, a thousand
prisoners’ lives being presented as a bar to the use of an implement
which was acknowledged to be a disgrace to its employers not less
than eighty years ago?”
The methods of warfare which have most aroused the ire of humanitarians
and “blatant platform orators, with their vulgar party cries of eternal
peace,” are those which depend for their success on secrecy or deceit.
Powder vessels, coal torpedoes, _et hoc genus omne_, are condemned
because they pretend to be what in reality they are not, and torpedoes
and submarine boats because they advance in secrecy without giving the
enemy any chance of firing at them or of protecting themselves against
their insidious attacks beneath the water-line.
The arguments of the humanitarians, who are doubtless well meaning
enough, are inconsistent, because, while they raise no protest against
certain modes of conducting war, they unreservedly condemn other
methods—mainly, it must be observed, because of their novelty. Such a
class of person resembles the Quaker who found himself on a vessel
engaged in a conflict with another vessel. He resolutely refused to
assist in fighting the guns, but at last, when the enemy attempted to
board, he collared the leader and pitched him into the sea, saying as he
did so, “Friend, thou hast no business here.”
Major Fosbery, in a lecture on explosive bullets, asked whether any of
the deaths due to fighting were, strictly speaking, humane, and if they
were not, what was this humanity of which so much was made? “Have we not
heard that in the dark ages humanity beat out men’s brains with a mace,
whilst cruelty used the lance, the sword, and the arrow, and that
bishops of the period rode into action with the mace so as to kill
without shedding blood? A very nice distinction indeed, as you will
admit. In later times, were not Congreve and Shrapnel denounced as
monsters for the initiation of inventions in whose perfection we rejoice
to-day?”
Inconsistency indeed is the particular failing of Peace propagandists.
They not only condemn the use of certain weapons while raising no
protest against others equally as destructive of life, but they also
pretend to be horrified at deeds committed by the enemy which they
themselves would not scruple to do should opportunity offer.
Particularly is this the case in savage warfare. Captain Herbert has
mentioned a striking instance during the Zulu War. One day the boys were
calling in the streets, “Shocking _murder_ of a whole British regiment”
(it was at Isandlewana), and a few weeks afterwards the same boys were
shouting, “Great _slaughter_ of the Zulus.” This is akin to the practice
of those orators who refer to the “expansion” of England, but to the
“encroachment” of Russia.
As to the “inhumanity” of the submarine vessel, Mr. Nordenfelt, it may
be noted, would not admit that there was anything especially cruel or
horrible in the idea of a diving torpedo boat. War altogether was cruel
and horrible, and caused an enormous amount of pain and suffering, but
any invention which tended to shorten a war or to protect common or
private property during war would really diminish this suffering on the
whole. Humanitarians had urged that there was something especially cruel
in the secrecy of the submarine boat, but the whole tendency of war had,
he pointed out, moved in this direction ever since the days of old, when
Hector and Achilles advanced in front of their respective followers and
spent half an hour in abusing their adversary’s parents and ancestors
before they commenced to fight.
[Illustration:
EMERGING TO TAKE BEARINGS.
]
The whole object of modern warfare is to keep the enemy ignorant of your
whereabouts and your actions, and to mislead him whenever possible, and
for this reason smokeless powder, torpedoes, disappearing guns, &c.,
have come into use, false attacks are considered admissible, and every
advantage is taken of cover and entrenchments. The only “cover” possible
in naval warfare is beneath the waves, and it is difficult to see any
greater inhumanity in submarine than in military mining, which certainly
dates from very early times. If it is lawful to sap and mine before a
fortified town, and to blow up an army as it marches unsuspectingly over
“mined” ground, it is surely permissible to send ships sky-high by mines
and to sink them by torpedoes.
Mr. A. F. Yarrow has remarked that it seemed strange that an
artilleryman behind ten or twenty feet of earthwork, hurling explosive
shells at an almost unseen foe, should be held as fighting fairly, while
in the case of the torpedoist, who has the pluck to accompany his
missile to within a short distance of his enemy, it should be considered
an unfair mode of attack.
Yet so it is, and we find in a recent number of the _Engineer_[1] that
submarine warfare is placed on a par with guerilla warfare and
train-wrecking. “The torpedoing of a single German ironclad by a
submarine would almost certainly be followed by a refusal to recognise
submarines as belligerents.”
Footnote 1:
_Engineer_, October 1, 1901.
The question of the laws and usages of civilised warfare has been the
subject of many books and articles, and conferences have been called to
endeavour to arrive at some understanding on the subject. An
International Conference on the “Usages of War,” held at Brussels in
1874 at the instance of Alexander II., considered among other things,
“the means of injuring an enemy,” and suggested the prohibition of the
use of poison and poisoned weapons, murder by treachery, and murder of a
disarmed enemy, projectiles causing unnecessary suffering, and
prohibited by the declaration of St. Petersburg in 1818; “_ruses de
guerre_” were, however, declared permissible.
In connection with the Boer War it is interesting to note that
differences arose at this Conference between the representatives of the
large States possessing great standing armies, and of the minor States
with small armies. The former thought that war should be the business of
professional trained soldiers, that they, and as a rule they alone,
should fight, that war should follow a regular course, and that the
worthlessness, from a military point of view, of the sporadic efforts of
partisan warfare should be recognised, and that when a battle was won
and the seat of Government was in the possession of an invader the
inhabitants should respect the conquerors as the _de facto_ and _de
jure_ Government. If they interrupted communications and cut off
isolated bodies of troops they were to be dealt with not as honourable
combatants, but as assassins and marauders.
The “Geneva Convention” met at Geneva on August 8, 1864, and on the 22nd
of the same month an International Code was adopted by all civilised
powers, except the United States. The code mainly concerned itself with
the succour of the wounded in time of war, and certain cruel methods of
warfare, such as the use of explosive bullets, were condemned, Great
Britain agreeing not to use such weapons in war against civilised
nations.
The Peace Conference at the Hague was opened on May 18, 1899. Of the
eight proposals submitted for discussion, the second was the prohibition
of the use of new arms and explosives, the third the restriction of the
use of existing explosives and the prohibition of projectiles and
explosives from balloons, and the fourth the prohibition of submarine
torpedo boats, and the agreement not to construct boats with rams in the
future.
The final act embodying the results of the Conference contained three
declarations. 1. Prohibition of the throwing of projectiles and
explosives from balloons or any other analogous means. This prohibition
to be in force for five years. 2. Prohibition of projectiles intended
solely to diffuse asphyxiating or deleterious gases. 3. Prohibition of
the use of bullets which expand easily in the human body.
It may be noted that Great Britain did not bind herself to accept any of
these three declarations.
“The laws of war,” wrote Montague Bernard, “are nothing at all but the
usages according to which warfare by land and sea is carried on, and the
collection of the whole body of usages represents what we call the laws
of war.... The student of history is apt to be a little puzzled by
frequent reference to ‘_laws_’ with which he is tacitly assumed to be
familiar. What are these laws? Where are they written? What authority do
they command? They are a body of _usages_, for the most part
conditional, which have arisen principally from motives of convenience
and the extension of commerce.”
It is of course recognised that the only force which supports
international law is the appeal to the conscience of the nation, for
there is no international tribunal to punish countries for deeds
committed in time of war. While it is unlikely that the rough game of
war ever will be played (it certainly never has been in the past) in
exact conformity with the rules of the jurists, there are certain
methods of waging war which England would not employ, and certain acts
which she would not commit in the event of hostilities breaking out
between herself and a civilised country.
She would not use explosive bullets. She would not fire on undefended
towns, and would endeavour to avoid the destruction of non-combatants
and their property. She would not poison wells, she would not endeavour
to accomplish the assassination of a commander-in-chief, she would not
abuse a flag of truce, she would not murder prisoners who behaved
themselves, and put to death those who surrendered.
On the other hand, she would consider herself at perfect liberty to
employ submarine boats, torpedoes, and mines, both military and naval;
to discharge shells filled with high explosives, whether lyddite,
melinite, or other substance, from aerial machines; to intercept the
enemy’s messages and to mislead him by sending false ones; to commence
hostilities without issuing a declaration of war;[2] to fire on, and if
necessary sink, the merchant ships of the enemy; to starve a garrisoned
town; to erect wire entanglements and similar obstructions; to offer
wrecking lights as navigation lights; and to employ any “stratagem” or
“_ruse de guerre_” which might serve some useful end. With regard to
stratagems, it appears to be quite proper to disguise ships and men, and
to use false signals, false colours, and neutral flags, though a British
naval officer would probably not fire into his enemy before hauling down
his neutral or false colours.
Footnote 2:
The Romans considered that no war could be just unless it was preceded
by a formal declaration.
Vice-Admiral Rodney M. Lloyd pointed out in a recent letter to the
_Times_ that while in naval warfare all stratagems were admitted,
expected, and provided against, in military operations, on the contrary,
some acts of a similar kind appeared to be objected to. The Boers, for
instance, frequently disguised themselves in British khaki uniforms, and
endeavoured to delude sentries and guards.
Some writers refer to this as “the abuse of the khaki uniform” and “the
treacherous use of the khaki uniform,” but if such things are permitted
in naval operations it is difficult to see why they should be considered
immoral if practised on land.
_Apropos_ it may be mentioned that during some Russian naval manœuvres
the admiral’s ship was destroyed by the following trick. A party of
volunteers from other squadrons came alongside the cruiser _Africa_, the
flagship, in a Finnish coasting smack, and one of the volunteers,
dressed as a peasant, came on board with a telegram. Whilst the
attention of the _Africa’s_ crew was diverted the other volunteers
fastened a small buoy with the inscription, “Frigate _Prince Pojarsky_,”
under the stern of the flagship.
[Illustration:
BENEATH THE WAVES.
]
Of course there is a very thin line which separates what is considered
fair and what is considered unfair warfare among civilised communities.
Lord Dunsany said that he was not perfectly sure that there could not be
something said in favour of poisoning wells. “We have heard something
about poisoning the air. The French some time ago had what they called
_bullets asphyxiants_. These would have utterly poisoned a whole ship’s
crew. If these missiles may be used, then it comes to this: that it is
lawful to poison the air, but not lawful to poison the water.”
Lyddite shells seem rather to resemble these _bullets asphyxiants_, for
their stench is reported to be terribly stupefying to those in the
immediate neighbourhood when they burst. But whereas explosive shells
fired from guns are considered “legitimate,” shells fired from rifles
are regarded as “illegitimate.”
Respecting the question of poisoning wells, Colonel Lonsdale Hale has
remarked that so long as this was done openly, and the fact notified in
some way to those who would use them, there seemed to be nothing more to
be said against this forbidden practice than against the permitted
practice of depriving the enemy of good water supply by filling in wells
and by cutting off the good water, as the Germans did at Metz and Paris,
and reducing their enemy’s water supply to the sewage-receiving Moselle
and Seine. If it was permissible to starve one’s enemy by denying him
solid food, it seemed to him equally permissible to starve him by
denying him liquid food.
Wolff and Bynkerhoeck, two of the originators of international law,
thought the use of poison in warfare perfectly legitimate. Vattel
considered the practice interdicted by the law of nature which did not
allow of the multiplying the evils of war beyond all bounds. To get the
better of the enemy he must be struck, and if once disabled, what
necessity, he asked, was there that he should eventually die of wounds.
Opinion also differs as to the morality of attacking undefended towns
and injuring the property of non-combatants during a war.
The late Admiral Aube, when he was head of the French Admiralty, said
the proper way of bringing this country to order was to burn Brighton
and Scarborough and a few other places; and Admiral Sir J. C. Dalrymple
Hay, Bart., has remarked that he could not say he thought that he was
wrong. According to the latter, the object of each side is to do the
greatest possible destruction to the enemy, and also to make him cave
in; the whole of the country is engaged in war, they pay taxes for the
war, they encourage their soldiers and sailors to fight courageously,
they suffer for the war in various ways and they urge it on; and they
must expect to suffer accordingly.
Humanitarians affirm that in actual war soldiers and sailors of the
Dalrymple Hay school would be too human to act up to their expressed
opinions; the probability is that England would only resort to such
measures if the enemy were determined to employ them. Vice-Admiral
Bourgois, in his book “Les Torpilleurs,” made a strong protest against
the doctrines of those who advocated the bombardment of undefended towns
and the sinking without warning of defenceless merchant ships. He urged
that the nationality of the vessel should first be verified, and then
provision made for the crew and passengers.
Apart from the “Hague enthusiasts” who are for prohibiting the
employment of high explosives, aerial torpedoes, and submarine torpedo
boats, there is another class of humanitarians who urge the adoption of
all new and deadly engines of warfare, apparently with the idea that if
war is made sufficiently terrible no nation would dare fight another.
“The more terrible the anticipation of naval war,” says a writer, “as
fashion and science continue the contest, the less likely will be its
realisation.”
The late M. Bloch, as we know, considered war to be tactically,
strategically, economically, and morally impossible, but as he assured
us also in his book, “Is War Impossible?” that bayonets were quite out
of date, one may be forgiven for not paying much heed to his
lucubrations.
Admiral Porter, of the U.S. Navy, considered that if war was made so
dangerous that every combatant would to a certainty be killed, then
there would be an end of the business and the Peace Society could put up
their shutters.
The newspapers, especially the halfpenny ones, are constantly informing
us of the discovery of new engines of warfare of terrible potency. Mr.
Tesla is going to wipe out the British Fleet by simply touching a button
on his waistcoat or elsewhere. Mr. Hudson Maxim has devised a method of
throwing aerial torpedoes carrying each of them one ton of high
explosive which is so efficacious that one cruiser lying just out of
range of our guns would destroy all our battleships with the greatest
ease. Dr. Barton is building an airship which will throw explosives on
the enemy below, who will be powerless to retaliate, and so on.
The wars of the future, so the halfpenny journalists inform us, will be
either waged under the seas or above the clouds, and we seem to be
approaching the time imagined by Lord Tennyson, whose swain (in
“Locksley Hall”)—
“Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.”
If wars ever die out, it will certainly _not_ be owing to the
destructive capabilities of the weapons employed. In the eyes of old
Geoffrey de Vinesauf the naval conflicts of his time were as terrible as
he could well imagine them to be, but a hundred years hence a Conference
will doubtless be held at Tokyo to consider what restrictions should be
placed on the use of submarine boats and aerial machines in time of war.
Those who are in favour of utilising the latest resources of science for
the purpose of warfare are in reality more humane in the truest sense of
the word than those who seek to limit nations in their choice of
weapons. Vice-Admiral Sir John Fisher, who was one of those chosen to
represent Great Britain at the Hague Conference, expressed himself
strongly on the cruelty of making war on “humane” or moderate
principles, and it is an undoubted fact that in spite of the deadly
nature of modern arms, wars, on land at least, are not so destructive of
life nor do they cause so much misery and suffering as they did
formerly.
We can speak with more certainty with regard to warfare on land than we
can to warfare on sea, but though the next great naval fight between two
nations will certainly entail terrible suffering on the combatants
(especially on those whose stations are below), it may be said that on
the whole they will neither cause such wholesale misery nor be so
protracted as the naval battles of old.
“Every war,” said Captain Herbert in a recent lecture at the Royal
United Service Institution on “The Ethics of Warfare,” “marks a step. In
1885 the Servians, when they invaded Bulgaria, paid conscientiously in
good coin for every fowl or pig seized in farmhouses, for every glass of
brandy drunk in village inns; and when the tables were turned, and the
Bulgarians invaded Servia, the Bulgarian soldiers and the Servian
traders fraternised most cordially in the alehouses of Pirot. To come to
the latest European war—that between Turkey and Greece in 1897—we have
the testimony of the war correspondents that the behaviour of the
Ottoman soldiery was quite exemplary. If things continue in this wise we
shall perchance hear in the next century of every rifle discharge being
preceded by a conciliatory caution and every bursted shell being
followed by a humble apology.”
Dr. J. Macdonell, in a recent lecture, has touched on this subject. “It
must be owned,” he says, “that the progress in mitigating the evils of
war have been immense—that acts of useless violence which were once
habitual are now exceptional, and are punished or condemned by military
opinion. Ask those who say, ‘Things are much as they were: the grim
realities of war no better than before,’ to note the matter-of-fact way
Comines de Hoissard relates cruelties as the necessary accompaniments of
warfare; then compare with such passages some of the many handbooks
published by European Governments for the use of their troops. It has
been truly said that the difference between the methods of the Thirty
Years’ War and of the War of the Spanish Succession is the difference
between darkness and twilight; the difference between warfare as
understood by Tilly and Pappenheim and that described in modern official
Manuals is the difference between light and darkness. Everywhere is
recognised that only effective injuries are justifiable. The modern
soldier strikes hard, he doesn’t mutilate or destroy for the love of
destruction.”
The Rev. Edmund Warre has drawn a vivid picture of the wretched plight
of the slaves labouring at the oars, who suffered intense discomfort and
were in continual danger.
“In a hot climate, with but very little ventilation, it must have been
exceedingly trying to take part in a laborious mechanical toil with
perhaps some hundred or two of human beings stark naked and packed so
closely that there was not room, as Cicero says, for even _one_ man
more. The heat, the smells, the toil must have been terrible to any one
undergoing it against his will—so terrible as to suggest that even death
itself were better than such drudgery. A dull dead feeling of despair
must have crept over man and crew in such a case, and though the lash
might keep them going under ordinary circumstances, such spirits could
not be relied upon in times of emergency, Besides the question of
discomfort, the actual danger was very great. The crews were liable at
any moment to be drowned or burnt, or, in the case of defeat, butchered
by the victors—perhaps, as at Sybota, deliberately in cold blood.
Conceive the moment of conflict and its horrors, when the sharp-pointed
beak came crashing through the timbers, smashing them right and left
along with the helpless mass of human beings, while the water followed
swift upon the blow, perhaps just giving time to the Thranites (the
rowers on the topmost of the three benches in the Trireme, who had the
most work and the longest oars) to swarm up upon the deck, while the
helpless Thalamites (the rowers on the lowest bench) were drowned at
once.”
Science, although she is continually placing man in possession of
weapons more terrible and more destructive than those of the previous
generation, really acts for the good of humanity at large, who owe a
debt of gratitude to the mechanical geniuses who have evolved modes of
warfare which enable war to be waged with as little unpleasantness as
possible to the peaceful populations that have no concern with it.
In one respect at least modern warfare is certainly more humane than
that of olden times, and this is in the treatment of the wounded and the
captured. In ancient warfare the fate of the captive was death or
slavery, and in early battles no quarter was given, except to personages
of great distinction, and the object of both sides was to slay as many
of their opponents as possible, and as surrender only made the prisoner
the perquisite of his captor, the fighting was both bloody and fierce.
Even as late as 1780 a prisoner was still viewed as the property of the
victor, and there was a regular scale or tariff of payments.
One instance culled from an account of a battle between Christians and
Turks, written by Geoffrey de Vinesauf, must suffice.
“Drawing the hostile galley with them to the shore the victors exposed
it to be destroyed by our people of both sexes who met it on land. Then
our women seized and dragged the Turks by the hair, beheading them and
treating them with every indignity and savagely stabbing them, and the
weaker their hands so much the more protracted were the pains of death
to the vanquished, for they cut off their heads not with swords but with
knives.”
Dr. Macdonell has pointed out that the only notable survival of
barbarism in respect to captives was the rule—abrogated apparently in
some countries but retained by us for reasons never satisfactorily
explained—that the crews of pirate vessels captured at sea were treated
as prisoners of war.
In the next great fight on the seas, if a submarine boat should be hit
by the quick-firing guns of a battleship she is endeavouring to destroy,
her crew, provided they are not sunk like rats in a trap, will be picked
up by the ironclad’s boats and kept as prisoners of war till hostilities
are at an end.
We are reminded of some lines in Mr. Kipling’s poem, “Kitchener’s
School”—
“They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool
They walk unarmed by twos and threes and call the living to school.”
Those who argue in favour of the suppression of under-water warfare have
pointed out that whereas the battleship can save the crew of the torpedo
vessel, the latter owing to her small size can only steam away, sending
the big ship to the bottom, and leave the unfortunate crew to drown or
save themselves as best they can, which, with shell and shot flying
about, would not be easy. A way out of the difficulty has not been found
yet.
What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is this. Since the
object of war is peace, make war as deadly as possible; since your goal
is complete conquest, use all efforts to get it over as quickly as
possible. We cannot do better than quote the following remarks made by a
speaker during the discussion on Lord Dunsany’s lecture, above referred
to.
“In conclusion I would say, save us from the cruel mercies of the weak.
War—that splendid mistress for whose favours we have all longed since we
reached man’s estate—must be given her full attributes and painted in
her most deadly colours in order that the misery, which undoubtedly she
brings to the majority of the population, may extend over as short a
period as possible. Let us make her as deadly as we can, in the name of
humanity and of every good feeling.”