第34章 THE MITIGATION OF WAR.(3)

'Warproperly so calledis an armed contest between independent nations,and can only be made by the sovereign power of the StateIn this countrya formal announcement of war is made by a proclamation issued by her Majestyand posted in the City of LondonThe first consequence of this existenceof a state of war between two nations isthat every subject of the one nationbecomes in the eye of the law an enemy to every subject of the other nation;for as every subject is politically a party to the act of his own Government,a war between the Governments of two nations is a war between all the individualsof each nationThis principle carried to its extreme limits would authorisethe detentionas prisoners of warof subjects of one of the hostile partiestravelling or resident in the country of the other at the time of the outbreakof warand the confiscation of their goodsThe exercisehoweverof sucha right is contrary to the practice of modern warfareand the conduct ofNapoleon cannot be justifiedwho on the outbreak of the war with Englandin 180seized all the English travelling in France between eighteen andsixty years of ageand detained 10,00of them in prisonwhere they remainedtill the peace of 1814The usage with respect to goods is to allow the ownersto dispose of themor leave them to be claimed by the owners on the restorationof peaceThe expulsion of subjects of the enemy from the territory of theopposing state is justifiableand may be exercised or not according to circumstances.

During the Crimean war Russians were allowed to reside quietly both in Englandand FranceIn the Franco-German war of 187hostile strangers revere requiredto quit the soil of France within a few days after they had received noticeto quitOn the other handwar is not a relation of man to manbut of stateto stateand in itself implies no private hostility between the individualsby whom it is carried onThey are enemies only in their character of soldiers,and not as menThe object of warpolitically speakingis the redress byforce of a national injuryThe object of war in a military point of viewis to procure the complete submission of the enemy at the earliest possibleperiod with the least possible expenditure of men and money.'Wars,saysLord Bacon'are no massacres and confusionsbut they are the highest trialof rightwhen princes and statesthat acknowledge no superior on earth,shall put themselves upon the justice of God for the deciding of their controversiesby such success as it shall please Him to give to either side.'

Going back upon this list of general principlesI must call your attentionto the contrast between the statement that the first consequence of the existenceof a state of war between two nations is that every subject of the one becomesin the eye of the law an enemy to every subject of the other nationandthe proposition that war is not a relation of man to manbut of state tostateand of itself implies no private hostility between the individualsby whom it is carried onthat they are enemies only in their character ofsoldiersand not as menSeveral critics in European countries have remarkedon thisthat the two propositions do not fall in with one anotherthatthe first of them would authorise the killing of women and childrenwhereasthe second reduces war to a contest between professional soldiersI thinkthere is some justice in this criticismthat the two propositions belongto different periods of historyThe first represents what might have beenthe theory of law if an attempt had been made to express it at the periodof Greek classical antiquitywhile the second proposition represents a newtheory to which the world has generally advancedMany passages which meetus in Thucydides show that in point of fact in the view of the Greeks warmust have been thought (if anybody theorised about itto be waged betweenthe whole of the subjects of one state and the whole of the subjects of another.

There is a passage that recurs frequentlythat they killed the menandthe women and children they reduced to slaveryThe women and children werein fact consideredas well as the mento be in a state of enmity to theother belligerent stateI remark herewhat many have remarked as well,that one consequence of the decay and abolition of slavery was an increaseof bloodshedWomen and children and occasionally grown men had a value oftheir own which supplied a motive for keeping them aliveand at a laterdate bloodshed wasto a certain extentdiminished by the practice of ransoming;and there were no bloodier wars than those which occurred when the practiceof ransoming had just died out.

The next portion of the Manual has for a title'The means by which warshould be carried on-that is to saythe means by which war is as a factcarried on among civilised and relatively humane enemiesThe writer says:

'The poisoning of water or food is a mode of warfare absolutely forbidden;but the turning off the supply by stopping convoys of food to the enemy isone of the usual methods of reducing them to submissionThe use of poisonedweapons and of weapons calculated to produce unnecessary pain or misery isprohibitedon the ground thatas the object of war is confined to disablingthe enemythe infliction of any injury beyond that which is required toproduce disability is needless cruelty.'