THE tragic loss of the M.1 has caused the Chairman of Lloyd’s to write to the Times pleading for an international agreement for the abolition of craft that are no more and no less than instruments of death, sometimes for an enemy, sometimes for their own crews. Lord Lee of Fareham, who attended the Washington Conference four years ago as First Lord of the Admiralty, made a specific proposal for the abolition of submarines, despite the fact that Great Britain was then “the possessor of the largest and probably the most efficient equipment of submarines in the world”. She was willing to scrap that fleet, but the other nations were unwilling, and it is quite clear from the Press comments this week in Paris and New York that they are still unwilling. We fear that the only practical way to abolish the submarine is to abolish war. It is by no means the most awful engine of destruction, devised in these times of peace for the future killing of men, women and children. Aeroplanes are being constructed to carry heavy guns; chemists are busy inventing new poison-gases. It will only be by a miracle that anyone will survive, combatant or non-combatant, if the new war begins. This is a fact of which Christian men and women need to be frequently reminded.
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