The laying of mines in neutral waters in contravention of the rules by which civilized warfare was to be conducted was in itself a most dastardly act. To place contact mines in the open sea and then to skulk behind them was declared by the Kaiser’s wireless press bureau to be a “Hussar-like stroke.” The Kaiser himself referred with satisfaction to the fact that his navy had sown the North Sea with death. The laying of mines is only admissible for the purpose of guarding estuaries and harbours, and by The Hague Convention it was specifically laid down that neutral waters must not be mined. In consequence of this cruel action of the enemy many crews of British and Danish trawlers, the hard toilers of the sea, were sent to their deaths, while the Wilson liner _Runo_, on a voyage to Archangel, and His Majesty’s ships _Amphion_ and _Speedy_ were sent to the bottom with great loss of life. In addition, several trawlers, while engaged in mine-sweeping operations, were also destroyed. All craft and cunning in naval warfare was, of course, admissible, including the alteration and extinguishing of lights, the removal of landmarks and buoys, and the disguising of warships as merchantmen; but to scatter death indiscriminately along a neutral waterway was a stab-in-the-back method worthy, indeed, of the pinchbeck Napoleon. =Such is the case against the German Soldier--the terrible and overwhelming record which makes the very heart sick with horror, and the blood run chill. One of our great poets called upon the human race to “move upward, working out the beast, and let the ape and tiger die.” Apes and tigers are noble creatures beside the living apostle of German “culture.” He has built himself a monument upon the heights of infamy, a monument from which, through all the ages yet to come, every honest man will turn away in loathing and disgust.= =JOHN RUSKIN’S words:=-- “=For blessing is only for the meek and merciful, and a German cannot be either; he does not understand even the meaning of the words ... but a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and morality ... but no quantity of learning ever makes a German modest....= “=Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lombardy, they bombard Venice, steal her pictures (which they can’t understand a single touch of), and entirely ruin the country, morally and physically, leaving behind them misery, vice, and intense hatred of themselves, wherever their accursed feet have trodden. They do precisely the same thing by France--crush her, rob her, leave her in misery of rage and shame, and return home, smacking their lips, and singing Te Deums.=”--_Fors Clavigera._ THE DAY By THE “BATH RAILWAY POET”