Excepted
perils, i.e,
perils ex-
cluded
from the
scope of
ordinary
Fire Insur-
ance Poli-
nieq
58 FIRE INSURANCE DURING THE WAR
of a fire are by no means fixed ; experience has shown over and
over again that the most careful estimates may be upset by the
intervention of some such special factor as a high wind. Still,
even in the most adverse circumstances there is a limit to the
area of devastation caused by a fire originating from natural
and fortuitous causes.
There are, moreover, circumstances in which a fire may
pass all the bounds upon which underwriting calculations are
based ; for instance, two buildings or groups of buildings may
be separated one from the other by a wide space which no
single fire would ordinarily cross, but if the elemental forces
are assisted by human malice the sanest calculations are apt
to be upset. Thus, once rioters or rebels set a series of fires
it is impossible to say where the destruction will be checked or
to what area it will be confined, and the possibilities arising
out of warlike operations are even more disturbing.
In these circumstances the form of Fire policy in general
ase at the outbreak of war contained a condition which had the
effect of excluding from the scope of the insurance loss arising
from riot, civil commotion, military or usurped power or
foreign enemy. It was generally assumed that the term
‘Military or Usurped Power’ included such events as war,
civil war, rebellion and insurrection but nevertheless these
were sometimes specifically mentioned—presumably with the
idea of leaving no loophole for claims in respect of such happen-
ings. This condition had, with slight variations, been in use
for many years, and the insured public generally acquiesced
in the restriction either because they did not know that it was
in their policies or because they thought the contingencies so
remote that exclusion of liability for loss thereby was not a
great matter. If there had been a widespread demand for
insurance protection against fire arising from these causes it
is probable that insurers would have been willing to provide
it either in the form of separate contracts or by an extension
of the scope of existing policies, and a few insurers had in fact
tried the experiment of granting policies from which these
exceptions were absent. but it is significant that after the out-