sinking a capture that the task will entail a day or two's work even to a belligerent entirely without regard to International Law. In the Russo-Japanese War it seems to have taken the Russians, with the minimum of regard for public opinion, something like six hours to dispose of a ship after they had overhauled her.
There is, too, the question of the merchant ship that refuses to stop when overhauled. What is to be done? Suppose British merchantmen made a rule of still going on. The enemy, after the necessary number of 'blank shots across the bow' demanded by public opinion, is entitled to put a shot into the machinery or otherwise wing the escaping vessel. He does it and someone gets killed or injured. Public opinion will have headlines about the 'Brave Britisher' and describe the death of the man who got killed as a 'Regrettable necessity.' But it will probably compel the man responsible for firing the fatal shot to go out of his way to express much sorrow and grief for having done what he was perfectly justified in doing, and generally he will have a species of stigma on him for doing it.
There the incident, if a solitary one, will end. But supposing the refusing-to-stop tactics are continued, and more people continue to get hurt. Public opinion will get very excited. The Russians—the least sensitive nation to public opinion—were most heavily censured for firing into the Japanese transport which gave them
