rders its servants to commit deeds
forbidden by international law, a nation which commands its naval
officers to commit deliberate, wanton, dastardly murder on the high seas
(case of Belgian Prince, July 31, 1917, and others), is such a nation to
be regarded as "an established civilized state"?

Were Algiers and Tunis and Tripoli "civilized states" when they sent out
the Barbary pirates in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? We
thought not, and we sent our war-ships to whip the barbarism out of
them.

Commodore Stephen Decatur, in 1815, forced the cruel and cowardly Dey of
Algiers to sign a deed of renunciation and a promise of good conduct, on
the deck of an American frigate, under the Stars and Stripes.

A hundred years ago the glory of the American navy was made clear to the
world in the suppression of the pirates of North Africa. To-day that
glory must be maintained by firm, fearless, unrelenting war against the
pirates of North Germany.

A commission to do a certain thing which is in itself unlawful does not
change the nature of the misdeed. No nation has a right to commission
its officers to violate the law of nations.

But the Germans say their submarines are such wonderful, delicate,
scientific machines that it is impossible for them to give warning of an
attack, or to do anything to save the helpless people whose peaceful
vessel has been sunk beneath their feet. The precious, fragile submarine
cannot be expected to observe any law of humanity which would imperil
its further usefulness as an instrument of destruction.

Marvellous argument--worthy of the Potsdam mind in its highest state of
Kultur! By the same reasoning any assassin might claim the right to kill
without resistance because he proposed to commit the crime with a dagger
so delicately wrought, so frail, so slender, that the slightest struggle
on the part of his victim would break the costly, beautiful, murderous
weapon.

Again, these extraordinary Germans say that merchant-ships ought not to
carry weapons for defense; it is too dangerous for the dainty U-boat;
every merchantman thus armed must be treated as a vessel of war. But the
law of nations for more than two centuries has sanctioned the carrying
of defensive armament by merchant-ships, and precisely because they
might need it to protect themselves against pirates.

Shall the United States be asked to rewrite this article of
international law, in the midst of a great war on s