According to article 4 all military and other hospital ships must afford relief and assistance to the wounded, sick, and shipwrecked of either belligerent. The respective Governments are prohibited from using these ships for any military purpose. The commanders of these vessels must not in any way hamper the movements of the combatants, and during and after an engagement they act at their own risk and peril. Both belligerents have a right to control and visit all military and other hospital ships, to refuse their assistance, to order them off, to make them take a certain course, to put a commissioner on board, and, lastly, to detain them temporarily, if important circumstances require this. In case a hospital ship receives orders from a belligerent, these orders must, as far as possible, be inscribed in the ship papers.
The protection to which hospital ships are entitled ceases if they are made use of to commit acts harmful to the enemy[415] (article 8). But the fact of the staff being armed for the purpose of maintaining order and defending the wounded and sick, and the fact of the presence of wireless telegraphic apparatus on board, are not sufficient reasons for withdrawing protection.
[Footnote 415: An interesting case of this kind occurred during the Russo-Japanese war. The _Aryol_ (also called the _Orel_), a hospital ship of the Russian Red Cross Society, was captured, and afterwards condemned by the Prize Court on the following grounds:--(_a_) For having communicated the orders of the commander-in-chief of the Russian squadron with which she was sailing to other Russian vessels; (_b_) for carrying, by order of the commander-in-chief of the squadron, in order to take them to Vladivostock, the master and some members of the crew of the British steamship _Oldhamia_, which had been captured by the Russians; (_c_) for having been instructed to purchase in Cape Town, or its neighbourhood, 11,000 ft. of conducting wire of good insulation; (_d_) for having navigated at the head of the squadron in the position usually occupied by reconnoitring vessels.--See Takahashi, pp. 620-625, and Higgins, _op. cit._ p. 74, and in _The Law Quarterly Review_, XXVI. (1910), p. 408.]