SECTION 3
In a Special Danger Zone?
Sir,—It may perhaps be desirable, for the benefit of the general reader, to distinguish clearly between the two topics dealt with in the recent announcement of German naval policy.
1. We find in it what may, at first sight, suggest the establishment of a gigantic "paper blockade," such as was proclaimed in the Berlin Decree of 1806, stating that "Les îles Britanniques sont déclarées en état de blocus." But in the new decree the term "blockade" does not occur, nor is there any indication of an intention to comply with the prescriptions of the Declaration of Paris of 1856 as to the mode in which such an operation must be conducted. What we really find in the announcement is the specification of certain large spaces of water, including the whole of the British Channel, within which German ships will endeavour to perpetrate the atrocities about to be mentioned.
2. These promised, and already perpetrated, atrocities [060]consist in the destruction of merchant shipping without any of those decent preliminary steps, for the protection of human life and neutral property, which are insisted on by long established rules of international law. Under these rules, the exercise of violence against a merchant vessel is permissible, in the first instance, only in case of her attempting by resistance or flight to frustrate the right of visit which belongs to every belligerent cruiser. Should she obey the cruiser's summons to stop, and allow its officers to come on board, they will satisfy themselves, by examination of her papers, and, if necessary, by further search, of the nationality of ship and cargo, of the destination of each, and of the character of the latter. They will then decide whether or no they should make prize of the ship, and in some cases may feel justified in sending a prize to the bottom, instead of taking her into port. Before doing so it is their bounden duty to preserve the ship papers, and, what is far more important, to provide for the safety of all on board.
This procedure seems to have been followed, more or less, by the submarines which sank the Durward in the North Sea, and several small vessels near the Mersey, but is obviously possible to such craft only under very exceptional circumstances. It was scandalously not followed in the cases of the Tokomaru, the Ikaria, and the hospital ship (!) Asturias, against which a submarine fired torpedoes, off Havre, without warning or inquiry, and, of course, regardless of the fate of those on board. The threat that similar methods of attack will be systematically employed, on a large scale, on and after the 18th inst., naturally excites as much indignation among neutrals as among the Allies of the Entente.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND
Oxford, February 12 (1915).