NO MORE PRETENCE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15130, 26 January 1917, Page 5

NO MORE PRETENCE.

CIVILISED WARFARE AT AN END FOR GERMANY. LONDON, November %1. By sinking the Braemar Castle the Germans hava definitely and deliberately proclaimed to the world their abandonment of any pretence at civilisation in the conduct of war, writes a naval expert. They might have pleaded that the murderers who sank the Britannic did' so under a misapprehension or in disobedience to orders, but the quickly following crime of the Braemar Castle establishes it as the inauguration of a new and unparalleled regime, less of frightfulness than of awfulness. There is nothing more sacred or i(y violable in international law than the Red Cross of the Geneva Ccjpvcntion. Ships employed genuinely and exclusively for the conveyance of wounded and of medical stores are, under international agreements several times re-enacted, immune from all the risks, as they are debarred from the uses, of belligerency. They carry distinguishing signs which, whether by day or night, are unmistakeabie. During the day they are recognised not only by the Red Cross flag at the masthead, but by the cor.spicuousness of their general appearance British hospital ships are painted white, with a broad band of bright green ninning from stem to stern on either side, while on the hull itself is painted, sometimes once, but often more a great Geneva Cross. At night a hospital ship travels ar blaze of colour a huge red cross "being outlined on either side in a vast number of electric lights. Th6re is, in short, ho possible chance of a hospital ship being mistaken for anything else, and no such vessel can -he attacked under any sort of misapprehension.i Such an outrage can only be committed deliberately) and with the prior determination of killing surgeons, nurses, and wounded soldiers or seamen. W. E. Hall, in his ‘lnternational Law,” deals briefly with the position created by the violation of the Red Cross..He says: “Until lelligerents-see proof that intentional violation of the Convention will be punished by their enemy, everjf violation will be regarded as the evid&fce of a laxity of conduct on his part which will lead to corresponding lasitjr in them.”