§ 211. Ruses are customarily allowed in sea warfare within the same limits as in land warfare, perfidy being excluded. As regards the use of a false flag, it is by most publicists considered perfectly lawful for a man-of-war to use a neutral's or the enemy's flag (1) when chasing an enemy vessel, (2) when trying to escape, and (3) for the purpose of drawing an enemy vessel into action.[421] On the other hand, it is universally agreed that immediately before an attack a vessel must fly her national flag. Halleck (I. p. 568) relates the following instance: In 1783 the _Sybille_, a French frigate of thirty-eight guns, enticed the British man-of-war _Hussar_ by displaying the British flag and intimating herself to be a distressed prize of a British captor. The _Hussar_ approached to succour her, but the latter at once attacked the _Hussar_ without showing the French flag. She was, however, overpowered and captured, and the commander of the _Hussar_ publicly broke the sword of the commander of the _Sybille_, whom he justly accused of perfidy, although the French commander was acquitted when subsequently brought to trial by the French Government. Again, Halleck (I. p. 568) relates: In 1813 two merchants of New York carried out a plan for destroying the British man-of-war _Ramillies_ in the following way. A schooner with some casks of flour on deck was expressly laden with several casks of gunpowder having trains leading from a species of gunlock, which, by the action of clockwork, went off at a given time after it had been set. To entice the _Ramillies_ to seize her, the schooner came up, and the _Ramillies_ then sent a boat with thirteen men and a lieutenant to cut her off. Subsequently the crew of the schooner abandoned her and she blew up with the lieutenant and his men on board. [Footnote 421: The use of a false flag on the part of a belligerent man-of-war is analogous to the use of the enemy flag and the like in land warfare; see above, § 164. British practice--see Holland, _Prize Law_, § 200--permits the use of false colours. U.S. Naval War Code, article 7, forbids it altogether, whereas as late as 1898, during the war with Spain in consequence of the Cuban insurrection, two American men-of-war made use of the Spanish flag (see Perels, p. 183). And during the war between Turkey and Russia, in 1877, Russian men-of-war in the Black Sea made use of the Italian flag (see Martens, II. § 103, p. 566). The question of the permissibility of the use of a neutral or enemy flag is answered in the affirmative, among others, by Ortolan, II. p. 29; Fiore, III. No. 1340; Perels, § 35, p. 183; Pillet, p. 116; Bonfils, No. 1274; Calvo, IV. 2106; Hall, § 187. See also Pillet in _R.G._ V. (1898), pp. 444-451. But see the arguments against the use of a false flag in Pradier-Fodéré, VI. No. 2760.]