THE RULE CF THE AIR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2035, 21 March 1907, Page 4

THE RULE CF THE AIR.

When aerial warships appear, something will be done to formulate a “rule of the road” for the air. The Institute of International Law, which met at Ghent last year, adopted the following article:—“The air is free. Tho only rights that States have in it, in peace or war time, are such as aro necessary to their preservation.” A legal authority, writing in the Daily Fixpress, thinks that this general statement must lie subject to many exceptions, arising chiefly from the instinct of self-defence, and that in process of timo tho freedom of the air will bo limited until it corresponds to - the international rules relating to maritime navigation. Just as the sea for a certain distance around a country is regarded as part of that country’s territory, the air adjoining a country will come to bo considered territorial for such a distance as to secure safety from direct attack. Hero is a difficulty. A missile may be dropped from any height at which human life can be sustained, so that the upward limit of territorial air would in theory coincide with the limit of aerial navigation. In practice, however, the distance would be determined by tho power of control which a country was capable of exorcising over its atmosphere Then there is the question of dropping bombs from tho skies. Humanity has already prohibited tho use of poisoned weapons, and explosive bullets, and this authority thinks it will hardly sanction the dropping of explosives from the clouds, oven upon the fighting forces of the enemy. “Such methods of warfare would boar little analogy to the secret assaults of torpedoes or submarines, for the assailants would be practically outside the danger zone.” This seems a curious argument. Suppose the Droadnouglit met an old German battlosliip which she could knock to pieces without going within range of her adversary’s guns, would she refrain from firing? Already the dropping of shells from the skies is being talked of as a thing of the near future, and successful experiments lmvo been made in this direction. At tho first Haguo Conference there was a proposal to prohibit such warfare, and the writer thinks that an international agreement will bo arrived at on tho subject. But it might be unwise to trust to sucli nil agreement standing the strain of a life and death struggle. It has been said that tho only tiling certain about international law is that there is, strictly speaking, no such thing.