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§ 105 § 105. Aircraft landing in Neutral Territory. Other questions of an international character relating to aircraft do not appear to present any serious difficulty. Evidently a belligerent aircraft descending into neutral territory will be interned, just as would a cavalryman or an armoured motor-car. To treat an aeroplane or airship according to the rule established in the case of a warship would clearly be to admit its right to have been in the territorial air of the neutral Power concerned, which, we may assume, will be considered quite inadmissible. Already, in the course of the present war, we have seen the hospitality of neutrals greatly abused. It certainly is not just or expedient that the cruisers of a nation which has ceased to possess any coaling stations, or bases, of its own should be allowed to roam indefinitely at large, interfering with the commerce of an enemy, when such action would have been impossible without neutral assistance. The proof of the inexpediency of the existing rule in such a case is to be found in the fact that the difficulty could be soon ended by a few declarations of war against some of the minor neutral Powers, with the bombardment of the ports by which the enemy is served. The very fact that this becomes the logical reply, which, but for humanitarian considerations, would without doubt be pursued, demonstrates an inherent deficiency in the present international code, and one which perhaps may, in due course, be remedied. Any rule by which aircraft would be enabled to utilise neutral territory or neutral resources for repair, refit, or replenishment would almost certainly be the cause of great friction, and might result in a position so impossible as to drag the neutral Power into the conflict, the precise eventuality that it should be an object of international convention to avoid. 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.

In other respects there would seem to be no reason {{c|152}