COPING WITH THE CONDITIONS

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 129, 31 May 1917, Page 7

COPING WITH THE CONDITIONS

WASHINGTON, 26th April. Measures to cope with the combined destruction of hospital ships by German submarines will be among the first questions taken up by the British and French Commissioners (states a. message from Washington, dated 26th April, to New York Evening Post).

The only means qpen to France and Great Britain is to decjea'se the, number of hospital ships, and thus minimise the ■risk. "In order to do that, it will be Uecessary to establish greater facilities 'for caring ■ for greater. quantities of Allied wounded jn Frau.ce instead i of transporting them across the Channel. Great numbers of American surgeons and nurses will have to be added to the hospital units now in France, as well as larger quantities of hospital material. I Plans for accomplishing this will be taken up at once. Vigorous protest has- been made to the German Government by the International Committee of the Red Cross against its order of January, 1917, '.directing that all hospital ships marked with the Red Cross insignia be considered as warships and attacked and sunk in a zone' prescribed by the order, including the English Channel and the North Sea.

The protest was received at the State Department , to-day from Minister Stovall at Berne, and cites several instances where a hospital ship had been deotroyed "without an examination either of its character or of its destination." The German order alleges that Great Britain uses hospital ships to transport troops and munitions. "In torpedoing hospital ships," says the protest, "combatants are not attacked, but defenceless persons, wounded, who had been mutilated and paralysed by shell fire, women who have been devoting themselves to works of mercy and charity, men -whose only weapons are such as do not take the enemy's life, but help to preserve it and to alleviate his sufferings in some measure.

"The belligerents, if they have just, reason to believe that a hospital hsip is being partly used for military purposes, have by virtue of The Hague Convention' the right of investigation and inspection; they can oblige it to take a fixed direction and can place a commissioner on board; they can even detain a ship if the seriousness of the circumstances . demands it. In no case have thay the right to sink hospital ships and to put in jeopardy the hospital personnel and the wounded transported on Buch ships.

"Even if the correctness of the facts on which Germany bases the justification of its order is admitted, the International Committee is of the opinion that nothing excuses the torpedoing of a hospital ,ship. , ■ '