Action Defended

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 63, 16 March 1936, Page 12

Action Defended

LUSITANIA SINKING. BRITISH ADMIRAL’S VIEWS. . LONDON, Feb. 15. The Earl of Cork and Orrery said this week that ho could scarcely subscribe to the general view that the Germans were wrong in sinking the Lusitania. Such a vessel might conceivably be used for the transport of 10,000 troops, ho said, adding: “If women and children chooso to cruise about in war areas they must expect what they get. ’ ’ The admiral was speaking after a loeturo by Major-General Sir Henry Thuiilier, Colonel Commandant, Royal Engineers, at the Royal United Service Institution.. Describing many accepted views on inhumane methods of war as “false, foolish sentimentalism,” the lecturer said that: “To mow down millions of conscripted young men with machine guns was no more humane than to drop bombs on their fathers and grandfathers, whose greed brought about the war. Civilians who made munitions and provided the troops with food could not expect to bo immune. It was no more inhumane to be killed by a submarine torpedo than by a shell from a battleship. Gas was tho most humane of weapons.” The speaker added that it was no worse for a submarine to sink a ship and leave the crew to its fate than to bombard a town with artillery regardless of women and children, or to cut off food supplies by a blockade—in the case of Austria and Germany IS months after the Armistice. Referring to poison gas, he said that it was not gas, but shell and rifio fire that filled the hospitals with the maimed and paralysed. All war, he submitted, was "indescribably inhumane,” and the only solution was to abolish war by means of the League.