personage he is not all-powerful, and there are signs of disaffection in his following. Supposing that Roumania were to urge her demand for the redemption of her kinsmen in Transylvania, and Austria were confronted, not only by Italy on the south, but by Greece, Roumania, and Bulgaria in the south-east, she would find it very hard to preserve her entity as an Empire, and discordant factions might make the problems of government none too easy. These, however, as we before remarked, are purely speculative considerations, which ought not to weigh with the judgment of cautious men who base themselves on recognisable data. It not only looks at present as if the war would be very protracted, but as if its main theatre of decision must be found on the western flank. We have got to conquer in the West if anywhere, and a conquest there will be decisive. The enormous wastage of men and material in this tremendous campaign is an appalling feature which carries with it its own consequences. Germany has put all her strength into the field; France has devoted to the war the whole of her manhood. Russia's levies are necessarily slow, and it will be some time before the pressure which she can exercise on the eastern frontier becomes really formidable for Berlin. Great Britain, on the other hand, has not yet tapped the full reservoir of her strength, and it is more than probable that she may ultimately be called upon to give that final exhibition of her tenacity and her resources which will crown our standards with victory. The Allies are winning, but very slowly. If their conquest is to be assured, Great Britain's task is to mobilise every soldier and every workman, in order to prove that whoever may fail, she at least does not intend to desist until the final triumph is won.

OUTIS.

OUTLAWRY AT SEA: AN INDICTMENT OF THE GERMAN NAVY.

THE youngest navy in Europe, whose supreme officer until recently was an honorary Admiral of the Fleet in the British service, and professed his respect for British naval traditions, has reverted to the most ancient, repellent, and irreparable crimes of war, for life can never be given back. We are confronted with an an atavistic throwback to the methods of barbarism of the fifteenth century, practised with the most complicated and delicate instruments of war of the twentieth century. The new type of warfare is pursued by a Power which boasts of its "Kultur," has brought to its assistance every refinement of mechanics and chemistry, and-crowning evidence of moral degradation-claims in the eyes of the world that its very acts of "frightfulness" are fruits of virtue-signs of courage, virility, and fitness to win, and proof, above all, of its right to rule the rest of the world. "We are," it is, in effect, declared, "the only nation with the stomach to commit such acts, and, therefore, we are superior to other nations and entitled to govern them."

The contagion of crime is like that of a plague; a crime applauded by a whole nation, as the acts of the German Navy have been applauded, is peculiarly dangerous to virtue. Burke once remarked that "war suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated." Hitherto, even in war time, belligerent nations have preserved certain decencies. The Japanese were so determined to observe the conventions that an international lawyer accompanied the main fleet at sea; the Navy of Germany, the parvenu among European nations, has ignored international law and abandoned all restraints on its conduct at sea. As a New York newspaper recently remarked, the fingers of many of its officers and men are dripping with the blood of the innocent. If its policy of brigandage and murder should succeed, even in a minor degree, what then? The peril to the souls of the nations of the world must increase in exact proportion as the Germans by their wrongful acts at sea attain their ends-psychological, economic, or military.

The moral sense of the world shows a distinct tendency to become benumbed and dull owing to the repeated shocks, on a continually rising scale, received since Germany inaugurated her reign of terror at sea by laying mines in the pathway of peaceful commerce, contrary to her pledged word. Excess has encouraged

excess, and one by one all the generally accepted customs of warfare between civilised nations have been dethroned, and Germany has claimed the right to ignore not merely the conventions of the Hague, which attempted to codify the rules and regulations which were regarded as axioms less than a year ago, but the ordinary sentiments of our common humanity. The present purpose is to deal with acts contrary to international law and the dictates of our common decency which have been committed by the enemy at sea. The record of the German Army is familiar, but less attention has been given to the series of outrages committed by the Germans at sea.

Napoleon once declared that war is "the trade of barbarians"; but sailors, even more than soldiers perhaps, have always admitted that there are certain acts which are inexcusable, even in the height of war, when the passions of combatants are excited and their moral judgment tends to lose its balance. "Your nation, Sir, and mine," Nelson wrote to a French naval officer, "are made to show examples of generosity as well as of valour to all the peoples of the world." Nelson, who declared for "not victory, but annihilation," was "the man to love," and he won, by his humanity and kindness of heart, the admiration of those whom he fought with all his brilliant powers. He never committed an act which even his brave antagonist at Trafalgar, the unfortunate Villeneuve, could denounce as unfair; and when Gravina, the Spanish admiral, was passing from this world, he exclaimed, "I am a dying man, but I hope and trust that I am going to join the greatest hero the world almost ever produced." Will any sailor in the world ever express such a wish with reference to Grand Admiral von Tirpitz? When the bitterness of the conflict which so long divided France and England is recalled, we and our Ally of to-day may be proud of the mutual feelings of regard and respect which existed in the hearts of the commanders of the opposing fleets, who remained faithful to a code of conduct which, in point of fact, has never been ignored in modern times, until the past few months, by the commissioned officers serving under any naval ensign. For the first time since Europeans ceased to be little better than savages, the officers of a great fleet have emulated the worst acts ever attributed to Barbary pirates or the brave, but unprincipled, outlaws, which it was the pride of the British Navy to banish from the sea.

In modern times, at least, the standards of honour and chivalry in the navies of the world have been kept high because sailors themselves realised the terrible results of license-worse on sea than on land. There has always been a strong objection on the part of seamen to the use of any instruments giving those attacked

no sporting chance of safety. We do not hear of Boscawen, Rodney, Howe, Anson, Jervis, Collingwood, or Nelson serving in fire ships. These vessels were employed in the British Navy, but officers of the highest standing did not apparently care to be closely associated with them. Admiral Gambier regarded fireships as "a horrible and anti-Christian mode of warfare." Lord Cochrane, a man of dare-devil courage, declared that if fire ships attacked the British squadron under his orders, they would be "boarded by the numerous rowboats on guard, the crews murdered, and the fire ships turned in a harmless direction." What were fire ships in comparison with the modern mine and submarine! When submarines were coming on the horizon as practicable ships of war, it was urged in some quarters that the practice of no quarter advocated in the case of the crews of fire ships should be extended to the officers and men of submarines.

In a work written by James Kelly, and published in 1818, the author comments with great severity on "some infamous and insidious attempts to destroy British men-of-war upon the coasts of America by torpedoes and other explosive machinery." He referred to the attacks on H.M.S. Ramillies by one of Fulton's boats, attacks which failed, but which caused Sir Thomas Hardy to notify the American Government that he had ordered on board from fifty to one hundred American prisoners of war, "who, in the event of the effort to destroy the ship by torpedoes or other infernal inventions being successful, would share the fate of himself and his crew." So frightened were the relations and friends of prisoners of war by these threats that public meetings were held, and petitions were presented to the American executive against the further employment of torpedoes in the ordinary course of warfare.1 Down to comparatively recent times naval opinion throughout the world was, indeed, much exercised on the question of the use of the torpedo, and many British officers not merely regarded it as un-English, but hoped that it would never reach a stage of development seriously to influence naval tactics.

Contrast this attitude of mind with that of the Germans. They began the war by laying mines, or torpedoes, as they would have been described fifty years ago, in the pathway of peaceful commerce, contrary to their pledged word at the Hague, and they have since pursued, exclusively with the aid of torpedo and mine, a course of outrage and brigandage, their shameless acts culminating on May 7th in the massacre of twelve hundred undefended and innocent men, women, and children who were travelling from the United States to this country on board the (1) Submarine Warfare, by Herbert Fyfe. (London: Grant Richards, 1902.)

great Cunarder Lusitania. The excuse has been made that the Lusitania was armed, and that she was being employed as a transport. Both statements, as American official witnesses have attested, are false; the ship was pursuing her ordinary peace routine. The destruction of this vessel stands out from the background of naval history as the most callous and consummate criminal act ever committed at sea.

The enormity of a crime can sometimes be most effectually visualised by the method of contrast. Germany has claimed that the sinking of the Lusitania constitutes "a great triumph for German sea power."1 The claim challenges comparison. With what historical victory can this success of the German Fleet be compared? The last triumph of the British Navy carries us back for more than a century. The British Fleet was about to go into action when Nelson, all his preparations completed, left the quarter deck and retired to his cabin. There he was found shortly afterwards by Lieutenant Pasco. The cabin was bare, in readiness for the coming action. Nelson was on his knees writing in the private diary in which he was in the habit of noting passing naval events and placing on record his thoughts in reference to himself and his country's welfare. When Lieutenant Pasco entered the cabin, Nelson had just reduced to writing his great prayer before going into action:

"May the great God whom I worship grant to my country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British Fleet. For myself individually I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen, amen, amen."

These words embodied the culture of the British Navy on the eve of one of the greatest and most sanguinary battles in history. The prayer was penned by the great man of action, who had exhibited his humanity in a conspicuous manner on many occasions, and notably at the battle of the Nile. The story of that encounter is familiar. In an early stage Nelson was wounded, mortally as he believed. Blinded though he was, the Admiral, on learning of the fate which had overtaken practically the whole French Fleet and of the approaching destruction of the Orient, demanded that he should be led on deck. His first order on resuming active command was that the only one of his (1) A committee has been formed for collecting money as a national gift to the guilty officers and men of the submarine.