21 NOVEMBER 1925, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY

THE ABOLITION OF SUBMARINES

tragic fate of the M 1 ' has revived the original British proposal that submarines should be abolished. This is the only consolation in the heartbreak- ing story. We know our countrymen well enough to say with confidence that though the loss of the M 1 ' has been the occasion for renewing the demand for abolition neither the officers and men of the Royal Navy nor the public at large would dream of supporting the demand in any shrinking spirit of individual self-pity nor with the mere intention of ending the dangers of a particularly dangerous branch of what must always be a dangerous Service. Although, of course, we are all deeply concerned about these extreme risks of the Submarine Service even in peace time, our hopes and our judgments reach much further. The great objective is to prohibit the use of craft which in war would inevitably lead (as it did in the Great War) to some of the grossest forms of barbarity. As we shall try to show, submarines are not of much help unless they are used barbarously.

The Chairman of Lloyd's sent to the Times of last Saturday a moving appeal for abolition and he was un- reservedly supported in the Times of Monday by Lord Lee of Fareham, who was one of the British delegates at the Washington Conference. As Lord Lee says, at the Washington Conference the British delegation asked for the " total and final abolition " of submarines and expressed the willingness of Great Britain, as the possessor of the greatest number of submarines, to scrap the whole of this great fleet and disband the personnel, provided, of course, that other Powers would follow suit. When this proposal was rejected the British delegation drew up a minute recording its conviction that the retention of submarines was inconsistent with " the laws of war and the dictates of humanity," and expressed the desire that united action should, after all, be taken by the Powers to suppress submarine warfare.

No one could support the British policy more whole- heartedly than we do, but in " a world of men " we must recognize facts as they are and in order to overcome all the difficulties, as we believe could ultimately be done, we must first face them. To begin with, we must under- stand that submarines have come to be regarded as the best defence of a weak Power. France holds to this view very strongly because having abandoned her former ambition of capital power at sea she is apparently deter- mined not to be without the means of resisting any aggression from a powerful naval nation. This is, of course, only one instance of many. France and those who think with her would at once say that the demand for abolition came extremely badly from Great Britain who has the greatest surface Fleet in the world. How can that argument be fairly and honestly met ? It seems to us that we should have no chance of making any impression upon the weaker naval Powers unless we were prepared to give them something in return—to make a considerable further reduction in the strength of our surface ships. The spirit which brooded over Locarno must be invoked and reinvoked before it suffers from usage and familiarity. The sensible and logical corollary of Locarno is a further general reduction in naval armaments. That, we know, is a very serious proposal, but we cannot see that anything less can be expected to succeed in view of the well-known feelings of the weaker naval Powers.

The German submarines were guilty of particularly horrible acts in the War because if they were to be used at all on the high seas they could not be used consistently with the laws of war—now unfortunately nearly all swept away. The laws of war used to provide that if a merchant ship was captured on the high seas the safety of the ship's company must be secured. If the law had been obeyed Germany could not have used her sub- marines far from a port, but she was much more willing to, break the law than to risk losing the War. Having freely broken it she did come very near to winning the War. To put it quite plainly Germany revived piracy in its most hideous shape and it seems to us that since every war begins where the last left off piracy, in other words general murder on the high seas, would be rampant in another war.

It will be said that it is useless to trust to promises, since promises, as the War showed,, will not be kept, and that abolition, even if it were agreed upon, would be only nominal. It is a fair answer, however, that though it would be impossible to trust to promises about such things as lethal gasses which can be rapidly improvised, a pledge about submarines would be in quite a, different category. Submarines are not things which can be built quickly or in complete secrecy. Nor are they like aeroplanes which exist for commercial use in any case and can be instantly adapted to fighting purposes. They are things apart. An agreement about them would be simpler and easier than about any other instrument of war.

We appeal earnestly not only to our own Government but to all Governments to see what can be done. With no war in view so far as we can see ahead there is time to turn round and think out the future. Now is the oppor- tunity for all nations who are not ashamed to profess their concern for humanity and civilization. Probably no nation if definitely challenged would profess its intention of conducting piracy in its worst form. If that admission were made—and could it really be withheld ?—we should be in a fair way to a fruitful discussion. We should encourage President Coolidge to call another Washington Conference, at which the British proposal for abolition should be revived. Other nations, no doubt, will repeat their opinions (we had almost written, their taunts) that we stand to gain most, both navally and commercially, by abolition ; and we must try fairly to meet those views.