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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
Balloons have been employed for more than a century for purposes of observation, signalling, transmission of dispatches and as a means of escape from besieged places. During the siege of Venice in 1849, two hundred small balloons charged with explosives were directed against the city, though without success. As is well known, they played an important part in the siege of Paris in 1870, and were employed by the Japanese in the battle of Liao-Yang in 1904. Aeroplanes, as contradistinguished from balloons, were employed in the recent Turco-Italian and Balkan Wars, though mainly for purposes of observation and signalling, transportation of dispatches and the location of mines. In the present war they are being used for the first time on an extensive scale for the purpose of dropping bombs on towns and cities of the enemy, and with so much effectiveness that Tennyson’s vision seems almost on the point of realization when he
Heard the heavens fill with shouting and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.
66 Bonfils, Droit International Public, p. 858.
67 Smith and Sibley, International Law as Interpreted in the Russo-Japanese War, p. 97.
68 On the law of aerial warfare see Spaight, Air Craft in War; Banet-Rivet, L’Aeronaulique; Higgins, The Peace Conferences at The Hague, pp. 488–491; Bonfils, pp. 859–863; Merignhac, Lois et Coutumes de la Guerre sur Terre, pp. 193–209; Hershey, Essentials, pp. 390, 396, 448–451; Westlake, War, p. 274; Hearne, Aerial Warfare; Holland, Laws of War on Land, pp. 41, 81, 123; Scott, The Hague Peace Conferences, Vol. I, pp. 654–694; Philit, La guerre aerienne; International Law Situations, 1905, pp. 135–138; ibid., 1912, pp. 56–92; Davis, “The Launching of Projectiles from Balloons,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. II, p. 528; Annuaire of the Institute of International Law, Vol. 19, pp. 55–67, Vol. 21, pp. 76 et seq.; Baldwin, , “Law of the Air Ship,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 4, pp. 95–108 Google Scholar; Kuhn, “Beginnings of Aerial Law,” ibid., pp. 109–133; Lee, , “Sovereignty of the Air,” ibid., July, 1913, pp. 470–496 Google Scholar.
69 Scott, Texts, p. 19.
70 But the contrary view is expressed in International Law Situations, Naval War College, 1912, p. 59.
71 See on this point Spaight, War Rights on Land, p. 102; Higgins, The Hague Peace Conferences, pp. 488, 491, 521; Bonfils, Droit International Public, p. 860; Lémonon, La Séconde Conférence, p. 383; International Law Situations, 1912, p. 58.
72 See La Seconde Conférence International de la Paix, Actes el Documents, t. III, p. 16; Lémonon, p. 386; Holland, in the London Times, April 27, 1914, and May 5, 1914.
73 Higgins, The Hague Peace Conferences, p. 270.
74 Higgins, op. cit., p. 272.
75 Compare Holland, Laws and Customs of War, p. 30; also his Letters on War and Neutrality, pp. 103–104; Bonfils, sec. 1082. On the injustice of this rule and its want of logic, see Spaight, p. 158; Fillet, p. 104; Bonfils, sec. 1081; and Hall, p. 396.
76 For example, when they refused to treat Charleville as an “open” town because the French had constructed trenches and erected barricades around it, although it was not fortified. They have been severely criticised by Merignhac (Les Lois de la Guerre Cont. etc. p. 25) for having bombarded Dijon, Bazeilles and other “open” towns, but it does not appear that these towns were also “undefended,” which is an essential condition to immunity from bombardment.
77 Cf. Spaight, War Rights in Land Warfare, p. 158.
78 Spaight, Air Craft in War, p. 12.
79 April 25, 1914, p. 10. See also his Letters on War and Neutrality, pp. 101, 115.
80 London Times, April 25, 1914, p. 10.
81 International Law,—War, p. 315.
82 Droit International, sec. 1082. Compare also Merignhac, Lois el Coutumes, p. 177, who follows Bonfils in regarding resistance by the inhabitants as the test of the liability of a town to bombardment. He justifies the bombardment of Chateaudun by the Germans in 1870 because, although an open city, it was energetically defended by Franc-Tireurs and the national guard, but he condemns the bombardment of Alexandria by the English in 1882 as an act of useless cruelty because the town was both open and undefended, p. 178. For the same reason Despagnet (sec. 532) condemns the bombardment of Piscagua, Peru, in 1878.
83 British Manual, sec. 119, and the German Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege, p. 22.
84 Air Craft in War, p. 18.
85 The Belgians complained that Antwerp was bombarded by German Zeppelins without previous notice. It is true that the Naval Convention (Art. 3) requires notice before beginning a bombardment, but this requirement was never intended to apply to aerial bombardment, nor was the requirement of Article 26 of the convention in respect to land warfare, which requires the commanding officer of an attacking party to do all in his power to warn the authorities before beginning a bombardment.
86 Air Craft in War, p. 20.
87 The report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry (“The Case of Belgium,” p. 23) denies that Antwerp, Louvain and Namur were “invested” or “besieged” at the time the German bombs were dropped upon them, but it does not appear that they were also “undefended.” On the contrary, they were undoubtedly defended in the technical sense in which the word is used in military law.
88 In “The Case of Belgium” (p. 23), it is stated that the village of Heyst-op-den-Berg and the city of Malines were bombarded by the Germans “both of which were undefended and in which there was not a single Belgian soldier.”