Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/54

 granting life to those who gave up resistance and surrendered. But would this article have stood in case the war went on? Germany held several millions of French, British, Belgian, Italian and Russian prisoners. At an ever-increasing pace, she was being starved out. Suppose she had elected to defend herself literally to the last life, as besieged cities have often done? With an underfed army, with civilians dropping dead of starvation in the streets—what of the prisoners? She could not send them back to multiply the number of her enemies. She could not dump them into the adjacent neutral nations to devour their scanty supplies of food. Rather than face this, Switzerland or Holland would have entered the war against Germany. What might have become of the prisoners?

Only one article of the code stood firm. With occasional violations, the “right of the wounded” was respected. Speaking generally, both sides spared the hospitals.

And with the break-down of “the code,” another sinister factor, unknown to the barbarians, had entered warfare—that exact scientific method of research which has wrought all our miracles of industry was at the service of the warriors. The current of scientific work and thought, flowing hitherto toward improvement of mankind, was now dammed; it was flowing backward, toward the destruction of mankind.