Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/111

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ARMAMENT: TREATY RESTRICTIONS.
§ 45

the projectiles prohibited by the Declaration of St. Petersburg in 1868." In the Hague Conference of 1899. Article 23 (e), it is prohibited "To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury." Also Article 60, Declaration ii.:—"The contracting parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets that expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions." In view of the fact that the Brussels Conference of 1874 was sterile, and that the Hague Declaration ii., Article 60, was not subscribed to by the British representative, the Declaration of St. Petersburg with its 14 oz, minimum for explosive projectiles is the only definite statement by which we are bound. However, the restriction as to the employment of dum-dum or expanding bullets appears to have received our tacit acquiescence, at least in so far as concerns warfare with other civilised States. There is also the rather indefinite statement of the Hague Conference of 1899, to which we have subscribed, to the effect that we shall not employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury. The subject of these restrictions will be taken up again in a later chapter; it is here sufficient to point to their existence, and to the fact that they considerably hamper and restrict the development of aircraft and counter-aircraft armament. There seems to be no proper reason why we should be compelled to use some hundreds of unsuitable projectiles, specially designed to afford the least possible injury to the struts, spars, etc., through which they pass, when a comparatively few expanding or explosive bullets would do vastly more injury, and result in a machine being incapacitated both in less time and at less expense. It cannot be supposed that if one of the nations at present at war were to inaugurate the practice of utilising,

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