The West Coast Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7th, 1915. GERMANY’S SUBMARINE WAR.

West Coast Times, 7 September 1915, Page 2

The West Coast Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7th, 1915. GERMANY’S SUBMARINE WAR.

Germany has given a "scrap of paper” to Amerioa, which' states that for the future, “liners will not be sunk by our submarines without warning and without providing for the safety of noucoinbathnts, provided that the liners do not attempt to escape or offer resistance.” lu nu earlier Note to the United States, Germany emphasised the fact that submarines cannot, with safety to themselves, give warning to vessels they attack, and in its Note of May 13th the American Government stressed the “pr.itical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity which all modern opinion regards as imperative.” What both countries, while disagreeing in regard to the alternative, declared so recently to bo impossible, Germany has now pledged herself to do, and no doubt President Wilson will accept the pledge. The as-1 snrauce given to his country is just ns j valuable as any other “scrap of paper” i from Berlin. The impracticability of conducting submarine warfare against commerce without inhumanity;, and outrage is the same now 'as it has always been. 11l (be cimnn.stiiiices the verdict of some American journals that President Wilson has achieved a “great diplomatic victory” seems considerably exaggerated, ft remains to be seen yet whether the “victory” will have any effects outside diplomacy, so far 'as Germany’s conduct of the submarine war is concerned. Ami yet this “sera]) of paper” has no small importance. It means that Germany has “climbed down,” so far at least as official declarations arc concerned, before all the world. It means that there will he no more risk of war between the United States and ! .Timmy until another Lusitania e' Arabic is torpedoed, jln a protracted war the United States might become a fairly formidable antagonist, and Germany does not want more enemies at this time, when, with hopes of peace not yet abandoned, she is desirous of impressing possible mediators with her sudden virtues; when, also, the decision of the Balkan States is in the balance. It suits her for the present to inollily America if sli.- cm, and it suits President Wilson, whose treatment of the whole series of German crimes has become perilously near to a demonstration of the doctrine that no outrages committed by one nation can warrant interference by another that might be costly to itself, to be mollified. As they' are set forth in a message from Washington, the concessions made by Germany do not amount to the abandonment of the .submarine dampaign. It is only passenger ships, apparently, to whom decencies of war are promised which there is reason to believe cannot safely be shown by submarines. But the idea seems to he held in some quarters that the whole practice of using submarines to war on peaceful vessels. announced so ostentatiously six months ago, will ho dropped. If it is abandoned the reason will not be that President Wilson’s appeals to “fairness justice, reason, and humanity” have made Germany ashamed off the vile methods used in it, but simply that experience has shown it “does not pay.” liie “blockade” has neither frightened nor done anything towardis starving Englishmen, and it has been very eostly to the submarines. We are not sure that its abandonment might not he rnthei a misfortune than a blessing to the British Empire.., A dozen submarines off Gallipoli, if so many could hi got there, might do far worse damage, one would think, than they' are ever likely to effect in the seas Hint wash the British Isles. But presumably tile activity of lhe.se craft is subject to great disadvantages in the Levant. or Germany would have sent more of them to the Dardanelles before.