rnational law ever since. These reasons were, briefly:

1. That no shell emitting such gases is as yet in practical use
or has undergone adequate experiment; consequently, a vote
taken now would be taken in ignorance of the facts as to
whether the results would be of a decisive character or whether
injury in excess of that necessary to attain the end of
warfare--the immediate disabling of the enemy--would be
inflicted.

2. That the reproach of cruelty and perfidy, addressed against
these supposed shells, was equally uttered formerly against
firearms and torpedoes, both of which are now employed without
scruple. Until we know the effects of such asphyxiating shells,
there was no saying whether they would be more or less merciful
than missiles now permitted. That it was illogical, and not
demonstrably humane, to be tender about asphyxiating men with
gas, when all are prepared to admit that it was allowable to
blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four
or five hundred into the sea, to be choked by water, with
scarcely the remotest chance of escape.

As Captain Mahan says, the same objection has been raised at the
introduction of each new weapon of war, even though it proved to be no
more cruel than the old. The modern rifle ball, swift and small and
sterilized by heat, does not make so bad a wound as the ancient sword
and spear, but we all remember how gunpowder was regarded by the dandies
of Hotspur's time:

And it was great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpeter should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier.

The real reason for the instinctive aversion manifested against any new
arm or mode of attack is that it reveals to us the intrinsic horror of
war. We naturally revolt against premeditated homicide, but we have
become so accustomed to the sword and latterly to the rifle that they do
not shock us as they ought when we think of what they are made for. The
Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of "cruel and
unusual punishments." The two adjectives were apparently used almost
synonymously, as though any "unusual" punishment were necessarily
"cruel," and so indeed it strikes us. But our ingenious lawyers were
able to persuade the courts th