The Barbarization of the Sky

[1] The first full English translation appeared in 2016, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons of the International Court of Justice which is housed in the Peace Palace.

[2][3] Suttner wrote the essay partly to decry the failure of governments to honor their formal Declarations "on the Launching of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons"[4] made during the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences.

In these Declarations, numerous governments pledged to forego aerial warfare in large part due to the fact that steerability (dirigibility) had not yet been perfected.

The persons or objects injured by throwing explosives may be entirely disconnected from the conflict, and such that their injury or destruction would be of no practical advantage to the party making use of the machines.

Suttner's essay references a number of works available in English such as H. G. Wells' 1908 Novel The War in the Air, and the 1912 Memorial Against the Use of Armed Airships, sponsored by the London Arbitration Association and signed by numerous distinguished figures in Britain such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and Gilbert Murray.