MILITARY SPIES INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2210, 29 August 1910, Page 7

MILITARY SPIES INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Spies are hanged or shot if they are detected, not becuuse espionage is a crime in itself, but to make the spy's business more difficult and deter people from taking it up. The essence of espionage is disguise. An officer, if he is'ln uniform, may venture as far as he likes to go to reconnoitre an enemy. He is not a spy unless he disguises himself. The Japanese in the last war showed themselves past-masters in espionage, but they used methods that Western nations would consider unjustifiable. They employed natives of Korea and Manchuria to act as spies in the Russian lines, and, if report speaks truly, these agents ran a double risk. If the Russians detected them they were hanged ; if they came back without satisfactory information, they might be shot by their employers "to encourage the others." Our Eastern allies still keep to a very grim kind of custom of war. Rumour says that at the naval battle of Tsushima hopelessly wounded men were quickly dropped overboard to clear the decks and save unnecessary trouble. Connected to the custom as to spies are the written or unwritten laws that forbid the people of the country from taking any active part in its defence unless they have at least some plain badge to show they are combatants. The whole legislation as to patriotic action of civilians is a little confused. The German military law orders that in case of invasion the levy "en masse,' or Landsturm, is to be called out, and the armed inhabitants who thus come into action need have no uniforms ; yet the Prussians used to shoot captured "franc tireurs" in France on the ground that they were irregular combatants, without recognised form or commissioned officers. It is generally recognised that the people of a town may fight in its defence without uniforms, for in a siege all the people within the fortifications are presumably enemies of the besieger.—"Chambers's Journal."