WHO ARE THE HUNS?

England, Naval Laws and Ourselves. 277
legal claims of this acknowledged code of ordinary law at sea ?
England, of course, could not more clearly show that "world
peace" meant nothing to her, than through this rejection of the
regulations of the London Declaration. 1
The House of Lords on the 12th of December, 1911, rejected
the Naval Prize Bill, although the opening proviso expressly
states: "The signatory powers are unanimous in the conviction
that these rules (of the London Declaration) are essentially
in accordance with universally recognized principles of international
law."
England cunningly follows two quite contrary systems
in her abuses of the laws and usages of naval warfare. These
often enable her to give an appearance of a certain justification
to her trespasses in the face of the reproaches levelled at her.
We have lived to see how a people who have so deep a regard
for respectability and reliability in their private and commercial
life in times of peace, are nevertheless capable in their
politics or in the continuance of their politics by means of war,
of carrying out the most brutal and inhumane ideas—ideas
which in their revolting meanness and spitefulness are simply
incomprehensible to the rest of us Europeans. They do not
hesitate to instigate assassinations and foul betrayals, as in
the case of Sir Roger Casement whose man-servant was approached
by M. de C. Findlay, the British Minister to Norway,
whit a bribe to slay his employer! These are low crimes against
the fundamental laws of humanity and of nations. And with
all this, the Englishman is extraordinarily formal in all affairs
of business.
This formalism has begotten and perpetuated various
1
In a sermon delivered on the 2nd of June, 1851, F. W. Robertson,
thus characterizes his nation:
"... .With other nations the traffic of commerce is to be deemed irregular,
in fact diseased—thus it is with us English. This striving after wealth
is the source of our greatness and our degradation, our fame and our shame;
it is the cause of our trade, our sea-power, our enormous wealth, our inventions,
but at the same time also the source of our quarrels and our party strife,
of the dreadful poverty and the more than pagan brutalization and degeneration
of great strata of our population.... Therefore the roots of all our endeavors
are greed and covetousness—not the wish to enjoy more, but to have more."
{retranslation)