The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1925. THEORY AND PRACTICE.

Waikato Times, Volume 99, Issue 16654, 20 November 1925, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1925. THEORY AND PRACTICE.

The loss of the British submarine MI has drawn pointed attention to these deadly craft', and an agitation has been inaugurated in favour of an international ban upon their use both in war and peace. The proposal is not a new one; it was discussed at the Washington Conference, but no arrangement could be arrived at, and it is not probable that there has been any pronounced change of attitude on the part of the opponents of abolition. They regarded the submarine as a cheap and effective means of defence, and were not disposed to relinquish it. It is more than probable, too, that if the use of submarines, were banned by an International Covenant, that Covenant would become nothing more than a mere scrap of paper when the time of trial came. It was so in the late war. All the agreements of The Hague and Geneva were then submerged, for it was found that conditions had changed, making their application practically impossible. Up till 1914 wars were conducted by professional armies, in the sense that they never engaged the whole manhood or the whole industrial strength of any nation. Wars that continued aver long periods—3o years, for instance—were obviously not wars of exhaustion, or the belligerents could not have sustained them. Botli sides put forth their best efforts under conven-

tional conditions, and when a reasonable number of men on the one side had fought' against a reasonable number on the other, and when the respective stores of courage and strategical and tactical cleverness had been sufficiently brought to the test, the nations concerned abided by the result'. The scheme was no more than a stern extension of abdiing by the results of a contest between teams of picked players In a game. In such circumstances it was possible not only to build up a code of restraint and mercy but even to regard chivalry as one of the finest ornaments of the soldier’s profession. These possibilities—we are deliberately stating the case for the moment in its extreme form—have been swept away by the discovery that wars between rich and scientific nations must' in future be wars of exhaustion In which whole nations, including the women and children, will be pitted against whole nations. The object will be. not to shoot down a comparatively small number of fighters who arc at "the front," but' to destroy as quickly as possible the centres of administration and the sources of production. “The front” will be more at Woolwich, at the dock-yards, in Downing Street, at the War Office, and at Westminster Palace, than on those historic fields of battle which have been fought over again and again by nations in the making. In wars of this kind it will be physically impossible to have regard for the civil population. Those who happen to be anywhere in the neighbourhood of whatever it is essential to destroy will be inevitably involved. Logically there is no line that can be drawn. A nation that is resisting extermination cannot say, “I will hit you in this way, and I will hit you in that way, but I ban certain other ways as uncivilised, ancl I therefore promise

not to resort' to them." Germany in the Great War disgraced herself by being the first to resort to the forbidden ways, but it is true enough that the mere logic of the case was on her side. Germany tore up regulations inspired by an era in which the discovery of the final nature of war had not yet been made. Pure logic goes even further and says, "Why should we spare prisoners? It was easy for Nelson to say, ‘When a man becomes my prisoner, I become his protector,’ for he belonged to the age when chivalry was possible. But if we spare a prisoner to-day he is skilfully patched up by the doctors and in a few weeks is.back in the field again—as good a fighting man as ever. And why should we spare even women? They either minister to the men who do the fighting or make the munitions, or they make the munitions themselves. We do not intend either to pcrisli or unnecessarily to prolong a war through indulging a ridiculous sentiment. That is ail false humanity. The strategy of war in the air requires that we should "demobilise as far as possible the aeroplanes. How can we do.

that, except by bombing his homes, to force him to keep his aeroplanes in his own country for the defence of civilians?” Logic can indeed support' itself by arguments of expediency and by the assertions of science, which arc difficult, if not to meet. Professor Haldane has expressed the opinion that poisonous and lethal gases arc really the most humane instruments of war. The suffering indicted by gases, he says, is not on the whole comparable with the suffering inflicted by shells, bullets and bayonets. There is only one real answer to all this, and that is the abolition of war. We do not regard abolition among nations which call themselves civilised and rational as an impossible fancy. It may come through the League of Nations, or by some new growth of international legislation and reason which will evolve itself out of the present League. The complete abolition of the submarine and an embargo on the use of aeroplanes for bombing purposes would be a humane provision, but it is to be feared, in the light of experience, that' such efforts to mitigate the horrors of strife would prove ineffective -when the test came. The only remedy or the horrors of war is to outlaw war itself.