that America would not fulfil the trust imposed in her by this sort of surrender?

But there is no question that England would yield. We have economic pressure which she cannot resist, and all the world knows it. Such a note from Germany would finally result in a recovery of international law for the neutral world.-April 22, 1916.

ON

OUR TWO POSITIONS ARMED MERCHANT SHIPS No one, ought to remain unclear as to the nature of the memorandum on armed merchantmen made public by the State department yesterday. It is stated that this memorandum represents the official position of our government in the question of armed freighters and submarines. The memorandum, by granting to freighters the widest possible latitude in using their guns against submarines, practically makes it impossible for the submarines to rise, approach and exercise that process of visit and search which we are trying to force them to substitute for unwarned destruction.

Our quarrel with Germany can be definitely settled only by the abolition of under-water attacks on trading vessels. There are two clear paths that lead to a settlement of this quarrel. If we follow one path, we shall force England to give up her illegal starvation war against Germany. If that occurs, the submarine war on England's food carriers, designed by the Germans as a retaliation, falls of its own weight. The Evening World of April 14th suggests a way by which Germany could make it easier for us to bring

about this joint return of both Germany and England to the limits of law. The Evening World suggests that Germany suspend the operation of her submarines against British food carriers, relying on the honor and neutrality of America to exercise on England's lawlessness the same pressure exercised on Germany's. If Germany's forthcoming note takes this course, we shall be friends with her again, and she will attain the end sought by her whole submarine war, namely, the abolition of the British "blockade."

However, Mr. Lansing may not take any measures against England at all, and yet insist that Germany cease all unwarned attacks on British freighters, using the submarines only to exercise the right of visit and search, together with any rights that may grow out of the results of that search. The best we can hope is that Germany will accede to these restrictions on condition that we get England to agree to disarm her food-carrying vessels. So long as England refuses to do this-so long as all her freighters, or any of them, carry guns that can pierce the frail hull of an approaching submarinejust so long we cannot tell submarines that they must restrict themselves to visit and search. If we do tell them this, in effect we tell them that they cannot exercise the rights of a warship against a trader without committing suicide. In plain words, they cannot enjoy the rights of warships.

For us to insist that England, as the price of immunity from submarines, shall disarm her freighters, will simply be an application of old principles of international law to the new conditions of naval warfare. Formerly, when all warships

were above the water, a merchant vessel was allowed to carry small guns and yet be classed as a trader, not to be summarily sunk. The small guns were to give the trader protection not against the warship but against Barbary and Chinese pirates. If the merchantman carried guns large enough to injure an approaching warship, the merchantman would not be approached at all, but sunk from a distance, as a naval vessel. The principle was: Immunity for a trader ceased when her armament was such as to endanger an approaching warship.

Apply the principle to the case in hand. The submarine is a warship. Any armament is sufficient to sink her as she comes to the surface and approaches. Therefore, any armament on a trader forefeits the trader's immunity. Barbary and Chinese pirates are no more; any guns are for the purpose of sinking submarines. All this was in the mind of Mr. Lansing when early this year he wrote to the entente powers, asking them to disarm their merchant vessels:

My government is impressed with the reasonableness of the argument that a merchant vessel carrying armament of any sort, in view of the character of the submarine warfare and the defensive weakness of the undersea craft, should be held to be an auxiliary cruiser, and so treated by a neutral as well as by a belligerent government.

The offensive nature of the British guns on their traders is proven by documents captured by Germany from the steamer Woodfield, submitted to us, and not denied but confirmed by the British admiralty. The guns are served by naval gunners placed aboard the trader, with admiralty orders to fire on an approaching submarine.

Great Britain, answering Mr. Lansing's note, refused to disarm her merchant steamers. We then proceeded to insist that Germany give up her submarine warfare, and we let drop our contention to England that armed traders, being "auxiliary cruisers," were not immune from sudden destruction. Not only does this new memorandum of ours drop our contention, but it turns directly about and says that merchant vessels have a perfect right to arm against submarines and that, in spite of traders carrying armament-which we once said made them "auxiliary cruisers"— the submarines must not touch them without visit and search.

According to the interpretation current in Washington, there are two main points in the State department's memorandum. It says that a submarine must assume that an armed British merchant vessel is armed for defense only, until the guns are actually used against the submarine. It says that the mere presence, on board British traders, of admiralty attack orders, like those found on board the Woodfield, is not sufficient to prove that the trader's armament is for offense. The attack orders must carry penalty for the merchant captain whose ship disobeys them, in order to prove the guns to be of offensive

nature.

If we thus reverse our previous position and stand on the present memorandum, we deny to the submarine a warship's right of control over merchant vessels. We deny to the submarine the right which the floating war vessels exercise: The right to sink at sight a trader so armed as to endanger the approach of the war vessel. In case Ger

many does not simply accede to our demands, we hereby make it infinitely more difficult to enforce those demands. She considers that we are insisting on immunity for British food vessels without at the same time requiring that these vessels, to have immunity, shall conform to the ancient principle of reducing their armament below the point of danger for an approaching warship.

Our first position on the question of the relative rights of submarine and armed merchant ships is more logical than our second one, more in accord with the established principles of international law and more likely to avoid a conflict between America and Germany.

Above all else, we cannot afford to deny to the submarine all rights of the older types of warships. The submarine is an American invention. Both for offense and defense against a power which holds the seas, the submarine is an unequaled weapon. And to-day we do not want to throw away any freedom of action for our own submarines in a future war in which we may not hold the seas.

It is fortunate that in this question of the naval rights of submarines we have two positions, and that in case of need we can revert to the logical, the first one.-April 29, 1916.

OUR SUBMARINES

The present question as to the proper position for the United States to take upon the matter of armed traders and submarines is complicated by the necessity of considering what is to our own advantage. If we unduly restrict the

power of German submarines now, in the interest of British commerce, we may set precedents which will return to plague us in the future.

Such abstract questions as the relative rights of submarines and food vessels become very concrete when we consider definite cases of war in which the United States may be involved in the future. A war with Japan is by no means impossible. It is also by no means impossible that in such a war Japan will be our superior on the sea. Our only means of attacking her would be by the use of submarines. Her vulnerable spot would be her food supply, for like England she does not feed herself but is dependent upon food from overseas.

Let us assume these very possible conditions and see how our only power to reach Japan would be destroyed by the precedents which some want us to create in the present struggle between England and Germany.

It is the American-Japanese war of 1920. An American submarine sights a Japanese ship with provisions from Germany. Our submarine wants to prevent these provisions from reaching Japan; the submarine has no desire to sink the passengers and crew of the ship. It would like to halt the ship and, before sinking it, take off the crew and passengers, later towing them to safety. But Japan, acting on England's precedents in the war of 1916, has refused to disarm her food carriers. If the American submarine rises to order the Japanese vessel to stop, the latter's concealed gun will sink our frail craft. The German government, acting on a precedent set by the United States in the war of 1916, has warned us that we

cannot sink Japanese carriers of German food until after visit and search, without incurring a diplomatic break, and war with Germany. But the Japanese merchantman's guns will not allow us to visit and search. We dare not risk war with Germany. We dare not sink these Japanese ships which refuse to let us visit and search them. So our submarines are powerless.

That is, if the memorandum issued last Wednesday by the State department becomes the official stand of the administration, the administration will make for us a bed in which we may not want to lie.

The wise thing for this government to do is to abolish the use of sea power to starve a civilian population-unless a lawful and complete blockade is maintained. That is, we should abolish the present illegal starvation campaign of both England and Germany. But if we are going to allow international law to be recast, and if we are going to allow the old-fashioned warships to do as they choose to starve the civilian enemy, then let us create this freedom of action also for the democratic submarine which all nations can use. Let us not create freedom of action solely for the benefit of England, who alone is certain to control the surface of the seas in future wars.

To retain for our submarines in the future the same power that will be exercised by an opponent that will hold the seas against us, it is necessary for us to revert to our earlier stand on the question of submarines and armed traders. In our own future interest, it is necessary to see to it that if British food vessels are to be immune from unwarned submarine attacks, they must

drop their weapons of resistance to submarine visit and search.

In other words, our own future demands that we recognize the submarine as a warship.-May 2, 1916.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF

THE ISLAND EMPIRE

In Washington last week, at a meeting of the American Society of International Law, Capt. W. L. Rodgers, U. S. N., told his hearers that

German submarines have succeeded in challenging the supremacy of the British navy.

On the following day Mr. Lansing told the same society that the internal combustion engine, through making possible aircraft and the submarine, had revolutionized warfare. He compared the change to the change wrought by gunpowder. The internal combustion engine, used in aeroplane and submarine,

has made surprise almost impossible on land and has vastly increased the possibility of surprise at sea.

Mr. Lansing could have said more. He could have said that the submarine spells the downfall of the supremacy of the island empires and the rise of the supremacy of continental countries like ours, whose food supply is in itself and need not come from oversea.

Every schoolboy recalls the classic tribute of Shakespeare to the impregnability of England in Richard II.:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little

world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier landsThis blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

But to-day the sea no longer serves England as a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house. Through the industrialization of England, it has become a workshop for the world, where nearly 50,000,000 people are engaged in manufacturing goods to be exported in return for raw materials and food to feed the home population. The seas must be kept open; that is, free passage must be secured for food vessels, else the nation starves. But free and unhindered passage for food vessels is no longer secured by control of the surface of the water. Out of its depths comes a stern and unrelenting "Halt!" The other island empire, Japan, is in a similar position. Like England, Japan is dependable on food from oversea.

The submarine is a wonderful defensive weapon for continental countries, and is for them an irresistible weapon of offense against all island. powers built upon open sea routes. The short-sighted course of England in this war is forcing the starvation campaign upon the world as a recognized method of civilized warfare. At the very outbreak of the war England, by banning foodstuffs for Germany, established the principle that sea power may be used to starve an entire nation, in spite of the fact that that sea power does not assume the obligation of maintaining a lawful blockade. We have acquiesced in this principle at least tacitly, by not forbidding it. We cannot for long hold back German submarines from carrying to England

the same starvation which England designed against the German civilian population. British diplomacy has made a thorny bed for British citizens to lie in.

The

By forcing England and Germany both to renounce their starvation campaign, we can, to be sure, save England in this war. But in all future wars a power dependent on oversea food supply can never again be the autocrat of the world. reason is that such a power is indefensibly vulnerable to any counmarines. Submarines are not costly; try that can support a hundred subthey are a democratic instrument. Any smaller nation with a self-sufficient food supply or with land connections to neutral sources of food supply can answer the threat of the sea power of England or Japan with a threat ten times more terrible.

Gunpowder meant the democratizing of land warfare; the feudal knight could not resist the serf who held a gun. Submarines mean the democratizing of sea power. Invented in America and perfected in Germany, the submarine has broken the wall, filled up the defensive moat of the island empire. It has wrenched the trident from the ancient lords of the sea.-May 3, 1916.

A PRESIDENTIAL VICTORY

The President has won a great victory. Britain, at the outbreak of the war, set out to starve Germany by stopping all food going to Germany. It was a crass violation. of international law. Germany retaliated by an attempt to starve England by torpedoing freight car