LANDING IN NEUTRAL TERRITORY.
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to treat the flying-machine or dirigible differently from arms or armament of other kinds, or belligerent airmen differently from other combatants. It is at least clear that any modifications in the accepted code which may eventually be found necessary may well be left to come as the natural outgrowth from experience in warfare. With regard to the manufacture and supply of aircraft by neutrals to belligerents, or the granting of facilities of transport, the same considerations will govern the decision of the neutral Power as are at present involved where arms and munitions of other kinds are concerned. The Power affected requires to consider in what way its own interests and those of neutrality are best served.
- It would often appear from the framing of clauses and debates in connection with the various international conferences that the above (in the author's opinion the most important object of achievement of international conventions) is almost lost sight of in a quagmire of dangerous and namby-pamby sentimentality. In many cases the desire seems to be vaguely to do something that will be thought humane; no clear idea seems to exist as to right and proper grounds on which regulations of restrictions should be based. Thus, for example, in the Brussels Conference of 1874, Article 13 e, and in the Hague Conference of 1899, Article 23 e (already cited, Chapter VII.), the same restriction appears for the prohibition of bullets of the dum-dum or expanding type; in the first (the abortive Conference of 1874) the prohibition is worded:—"The use of arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause unnecessary suffering; the wording adopted at the later conference is "…of a nature to cause superfluous injury." At the 1874 Conference the assembly was, it appears, imbued with feelings of horror for pain and suffering, but in 1899 this seems to have become changed for a dread of disablement and death—a totally different matter. The suggested prohibition of bombs or missiles from aircraft is an illustration of the same infirmity of purpose that appears to reign supreme at peace conferences and the like; again we see the dictates of fear mistaken for those of benevolence. There is, and was, no evidence that bombs from aeroplanes or balloons are any more barbarous or inhumanly destructive than the shells from artillery or howitzer batteries, yet clauses were debated and framed, and (with a time-limit restriction) were actually signed by certain of the representatives of the Powers. The fear of the unknown is without doubt more widespread and potent than its victims realise. A cavalryman is killed in peace time by a fall from his horse, it scarcely excites comment; an army airman falls and is killed and a thrill of horror goes through the country—it is a new kind of death.
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