Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-14

! ligerency clean from the international
| slate, substitute law for war.
Any student of land warfare knows
how much freedom armies willingly give
to Objectionable neutral traders-ex-
actly none. And, truth to say, that is
the only true logic of war. There is
no halfway house between war and
peace. The two spheres are absolutely
and eternally separate and distinct. The
Germans were right about that. Read
their war philosophy. 1t strikes one as
too terrible, too inhuman, too appalling
ly pitilesS to be entertained by savages
let alone civilized men. But war Is like
that. The theory and the practice OF
the Germans were inexorably uncom-
passionate and frightful solely because
they were logically, truly, purely mar
tial
War" wrote Karl Won Clausewitz
Prussian general in the last century
is an act of violence intended to COM
such dangerous things as war the err
rors which proceed from spirit of
benevolence are the worst He who
uses force unsparingly must obtain a
superiority If his adversary uses less
vigor in its application To introduce
into the philosophy of war itself a
principle Of moderation would be an
absurdity." 80
War Must Be Ruthless.
Gen. Hartmann, another exponent of
German war theory, wrote that it must
be completely ruthless" And he went
on: "Injure your enemy all you can
In morale, in mind, in body, in what he
possesses. Military necessity can make
no distinction between public and pri-
vate property. 1t is entitled to take
what 1T needs, wherever and however it
can"
mo distinction between public and
private property" An army "is entitled
TO take what it needs"-where and
now? wherever and however it can. -
That was the German doctrine in
the books and in the field. And Ger
many highly militaRized Germany
was one of the powers which called
most Justify for freedom of the seas .
No freedom, so far as the German
armies could prevent it, was to exist
on the land; the Germans, in the main
were land power. But on the sea-
that was horse of another color. The
Germans were not dominant there, SC
they naturally wanted freedom of the
seas" They wanted, In other words. tc
have unrestricted use of their own
weapons, while legally trammeling to
the fullest possible extent the weapons
OF the sea powers.
Who can quarrel with that argument
further than to suggest that 1t Is
slightly unsportsmanlike?
Rights Would Be Worthless. ,
But let us concede, for the sake OF
discussion, that America might be neu-
trail in the next war-a war in VIC.
lation of the covenant of the League
Of Nations and of the Briand-Kelloge
pact: If not also of the Locarno treaties
land we may have more Locarnos
soon) therefore. insistent upor
its neutral rights. What good woulc
these rights be? Not much, I am afraid
| We should be almost the only neutra
in the world and we could supply the
navally encompassed belligerent. If al
all. only through his own ports. AL
other frontiers would be closed against
the aggressor. AS for the defending ma.
tons themselves, we may be sure thai
they would take from us not an ounce
of goods obtainable elsewhere.
Patiently, the question of neutra
rights at sea requires examination, ir
the language of the Macdonald Hoover
statement, from new angle"
| (Copyright, 1880, by the Chicago Daily News
| I'm the next article, the twelfth anc
| last in series on sea power, Mr.. Bel
tells Of Americas need for an adequate
striking power at sea-