_A Reuter dispatch, dated Amsterdam, June 26, 1915, reports that the
"Koelnische Zeitung," in a semi-official defence of the German
employment of gases, says:_
"The basic idea of the Hague agreements was to prevent unnecessary
cruelty and unnecessary killing when milder methods of putting the
enemy out of action suffice and are possible. From this standpoint the
letting loose of smoke-clouds which, in a gentle wind, move quite
slowly towards the enemy is not only permissible by international law,
but is an extraordinarily mild method of war. It has always been
permissible to compel the enemy to evacuate positions by artificially
caused flooding.
"Those who were not indignant, or even surprised, when our enemies in
Flanders summoned water as a weapon against us, have no cause to be
indignant when we make air our ally and employ it to carry stupefying
(_betaeubende_) gases against the enemy. What the Hague Convention
desired to prevent was the destruction without chance of escape of
human lives _en masse_, which would have been the case if shells with
poisonous gas were rained down on a defenceless enemy who did not see
them coming and was exposed to them irremediably. The changing forms
of warfare make new methods of war continually necessary."