The British Government have never received any such communi- cation,
through diplomatic channels or otherwise, as the German Government describe, and of course—the British repudiation is not necessary to make us believe this—British hospital ships have never in any single ease been used in a way contrary to the Hague or Geneva Conventions. It has always been open to the Germans to search every hospital ship they suspected, and to take the obvious remedy if their suspicions were justified, but they have never done so. We must not suppose that they admit-inability to do so, as they are always teEing us that they sail the North Sea unhindered. Nevertheless, they have already sunk several hospital ships at sight—the lowest depths of depravity to which a combatant can descend. And now they tell us, as though it were a new resolve— for this is the meaning of their manifesto to ourselves—that they mean to treat hospital ships as ships of war.
