The latest telegrams report another outbreak lof terror tactics by the German air arm against fishing smacks and other peaceful vessels in the North Sea. One particularly dastardly case the aeroplane attack on a Trinity House vessel, unusually full because it was on relief work. The German plane bombed the vessel. and then, as the men raced to the life boats. swooped down and machine-gunned them until the boats were riddled, and injured lay all over the deck. The Germans have done so much of this sort of thing since the commencement of the war, dealing out death to innocent civilians, men, wómen, and children, that it has more or less come to be taken for granted that they will continue to do so. Tha however, for the most part has been done either by the submarine or the mine. That German aviators should indulge in the same sort of tactics need not be astonishing, even though it is a direct negation of the spirit of chivalry which the airmen of all nations are supposed to cherish. The men attacked were seeking the safety of their lifeboats when they were subjected to this fusillade. It nas always been the practice that crews of vessels which are being sunk should be allowed to reach safety in their lifeboats, and even U-boat command. ers have been known to adopt the practice. For German aviators to sink the ships and endeavour to wipe out the crews is a particularly heinous offence, and affords but another example of the complete abandonment of the ordinary canons of wartime decency. It is not to be believed for one moment that tactics such a-these will deter the intrepid men manning the British fishing fleet and the like from carrying out their duty in the face of such behaviour. Such attacks are, therefore, as futile as they are reprehensible, and all that men guilty of such behaviour succeed in doing is merely further to besmirch the German escutcheon which already has been more than a little soiled by imilar behaviour.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.