The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1917. WAR ON HOSPITAL SHIPS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16233, 31 March 1917, Page 8

The Timaru Herald. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1917. WAR ON HOSPITAL SHIPS.

The 1 pretence, of -. thcj .. German Government,, to justify the. sinking- o£ the hospital-ship Astuxias, that British : ; hospital- ships- are used habitually to -transport troops and 'munitions, will not deceive a single person in the world . It was Ursed beforej, along with other lies, quickly exposed, when ithe-'*-, German ' Government announced its intention to .sink ithese vessels in the "danger zone," in other words to sink them anywhere, - because . the > " danger zoneincludes " all . waters in ■which hospital ships must plyBerlin, claimed then, as it does now, to have absolute proofs that the ships had been improperly nsed, and its announcement of nefarious intentions added that these proofs had been transmitted, through diplomatic channels, to the British and -French Governments. The answer of. the British Government was an emphatic denial that the immunity which is due to hospital, shins, had ever been abused bv it, and a statement- that it had' never received the communication vouched for by the German Government. The natural conclusion is that no representations on- the point were ever made by Germany. It had no cause for suspecting British hospital.ships .of .being inaproperly employed, and if it had susuected. them, as the statement of the British Foreign Office - pointed oiit; a very simple test was within its power. Under the Convention which protects them, or did so. until Germany began to treat all conventions and agreements as ' scraps of paper," the right is given .to belligerents to search such vessels, and that right the Germans never'sought to exercise. They did hot claim to search a sinErle hospital ship, bficaiT-- if they had done so, it would not have been o.pen to them to allege that troops and stores were .carried, which they had chosen to make their pretext for. new enormities. They could not hope for the discovery which was made .•when a German hospital shin the Ophelia, was searched in the first weeks of the war, taken before a British Prize Court, and condemned.

But the onslaughts upon hospital ships did not begin with the German announcement that such would be their policv, whieL was made a few weeks ago. A French, vessel of this kind was attacked ; ,by them very early in the war, and as long- ago as February 1915 the Asturias, which has now been sunk, and miffht have been sunk, for all the Germans knew, 1 with hundreds of maimed men on board, had a torpedo fired at her in broad daylight, and • Avas only saved by prompt handling from being struck. On another occasion the Russian hospital ship Portugal was sunk, in the mos.t deliberate manner, in the Black Sea while she was taking wounded men off from the shore, and there is not much doubt that the Britannic and the Braemar Castle, lost in the Aegean, were destroyed by the same rneans> A proportion of the German outrages against laws human and divine—the seizure of the young girls in Roseil to be "companions" of German officers, the abuses wrought on prisoners, and others—appear to have no motive except the gratification of normal German bestiality and depravity. But in the torpedoing of hospital ships an object can be seen. "When they are sunk, oilier skips must be .converted to tnke ur> their work, and so British ships available for commerce are reduced as surely as if the tor-

pedoes were launched against mer-* pliant vessels, with as much law-, iessness, but a shade* less of bar-< barity. . In pursuance of notice "iven beforehand, the British Government has announced that reprisals will be taken for the outrage on the Asturias, but it is difficult to imagine how they can be enforced. The crimes which have dyed the German- seutcheon: with a stain that will not Be effaced- for a hundred years fo' come do, however, s'uTvnly the reason why .the Allies can no more allow an inconclusive peace to be made with Germany than a homicidal criminal could be allowed to go free in Picadilly or Pall Mall. - -■.-:!.