"In the present case," the Note continues, "the facts' which have been recorded make it clear that this was not an accident resulting from any normal hostile operation, and it should have been. obvious to the aircraft that they were dealing with non-combatants."
It is also stated that the plea, should it be advanced, that the flags carried on the cars were too small to be visible, was irrelevant, There would have been no justification for the attack even had the cars carried no flags, The foreign, even the diplomatic, status of the occupants, was also irrelevant, The real issue was that they were non-combatants.
The aircraft, no doubt, the Note declares, did not intend to attack His Majesty's Ambassador as—_ such, "though apparently: they did intend to attack non-combatants, That sufficed in itself to constitute an illegality.
"The fact that, in the present case, no actual state of war has been declared, or is expressly recognized by either party to exist, emphasizes the inexcusable nature of what occurred."
"It is pertinent to observe," the Note adds "that, in this particular case, the Ambassador was travelling in a locality where there were no Chinese troops, nor any actual hostilities in progress. No Chinese troops, in fact, were encountered by the Ambassador's party until about an hour's drive from the scene of the attack.
"His Majesty's Government feel that they must take this opportunity to emphasize the wider significance of this event, It is an outstanding example of the results to be expected from indiscriminate attack from the air.
"Such events are inseparable from the practice, as illegal as it is inhuman, of failing to draw that clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants in the conduct of hostilities which international law, no Jess than the conscience of mankind, has always enjoined."—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.