As to the “inhumanity” of the submarine vessel, Mr. Nordenfelt, it may be noted, would not admit that there was anything especially cruel or horrible in the idea of a diving torpedo boat. War altogether was cruel and horrible, and caused an enormous amount of pain and suffering, but any invention which tended to shorten a war or to protect common or private property during war would really diminish this suffering on the whole. Humanitarians had urged that there was something especially cruel in the secrecy of the submarine boat, but the whole tendency of war had, he pointed out, moved in this direction ever since the days of old, when Hector and Achilles advanced in front of their respective followers and spent half an hour in abusing their adversary’s parents and ancestors before they commenced to fight. [Illustration: EMERGING TO TAKE BEARINGS. ] The whole object of modern warfare is to keep the enemy ignorant of your whereabouts and your actions, and to mislead him whenever possible, and for this reason smokeless powder, torpedoes, disappearing guns, &c., have come into use, false attacks are considered admissible, and every advantage is taken of cover and entrenchments. The only “cover” possible in naval warfare is beneath the waves, and it is difficult to see any greater inhumanity in submarine than in military mining, which certainly dates from very early times. If it is lawful to sap and mine before a fortified town, and to blow up an army as it marches unsuspectingly over “mined” ground, it is surely permissible to send ships sky-high by mines and to sink them by torpedoes. Mr. A. F. Yarrow has remarked that it seemed strange that an artilleryman behind ten or twenty feet of earthwork, hurling explosive shells at an almost unseen foe, should be held as fighting fairly, while in the case of the torpedoist, who has the pluck to accompany his missile to within a short distance of his enemy, it should be considered an unfair mode of attack. Yet so it is, and we find in a recent number of the _Engineer_[1] that submarine warfare is placed on a par with guerilla warfare and train-wrecking. “The torpedoing of a single German ironclad by a submarine would almost certainly be followed by a refusal to recognise submarines as belligerents.” Footnote 1: _Engineer_, October 1, 1901. The question of the laws and usages of civilised warfare has been the subject of many books and articles, and conferences have been called to endeavour to arrive at some understanding on the subject. An International Conference on the “Usages of War,” held at Brussels in 1874 at the instance of Alexander II., considered among other things, “the means of injuring an enemy,” and suggested the prohibition of the use of poison and poisoned weapons, murder by treachery, and murder of a disarmed enemy, projectiles causing unnecessary suffering, and prohibited by the declaration of St. Petersburg in 1818; “_ruses de guerre_” were, however, declared permissible.