WAR-TIME CHIVALRY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 255, 27 September 1932, Page 8

WAR-TIME CHIVALRY.

BRITISH LINERS SPARED. The story of how British liners were spared by German cruisers in the early days of the war was told recently at the Conference of the Intel national Law Association at Oxford. Problems of neutrality at sea in time of war were under consideration. The conference had before it a proposed new code of laws on the rights and duties of belligerents toward neutral property. One of the suggested laws reads: , , „ , , “A merchant vessel shall not be destroyed or rendered incapable of navigation except in the case of persistent refusal to stop oh being duly summoned, or of active resistance to visit and search. In either case the passengers, crew and ship’s papers must first be placed in safety. “For this; purpose the vessel’s boats are not regarded as a place of safety unless the safety of the passengers and crew is assured in the existing sea and -weather conditions, by the proximity of land, or the presence of another vessel which is in a position to take them on board.” dir Graham Bower, the veteran naval authority, remarked that no merchant vessel, with its limited accommodation, could provide for the safety of the passengers, numbering from 3000 to 5000, who crowded an Atlantic liner. It was recalled by Sir Graham how in August, 1914, just after the outbreak of the Great War, the German cruiser Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse met a Union-Castle liner homeward bound from South Africa. The captain of the cruiser stopped the steamer and found that there were passengers on board, including women and children, for whom lie could not provide accommodation in his ship. He said to the captain of the liner: “I apologise for giving the, ladies- an unnecessary fright. YU I require is that you will destroy vour wireless. Then you may go free.” The wireless apparatus was destroyed and the liner was allowed to proceed on her way. „ ~ , a . “On the same day, continued Sir Graham “the German cruiser sighted a Royal Mail steamer bound from Buenos Aires to Southampton, and exactly the same thing happened. In the same month the German warship Dresden met three ships in similar circumstances, and the same thing again ° C “lif Oxford,” added Sir Graham, “the names of German students who fell in the war are placed on the roll of honour. If you have a roll of honour for the heroes of international law, I hope you will inscribe on it the names of those two German capta-ins. It was an example of chivalry on their Pa “Nobody seems to know- these facts, though really they come from the official history of the war. I have found that if you want to keep a secret you should put it into a Government publication or an official history of the war. You may then be quite, sure that nobody will read it.”