Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/412

408 the Brussels Declaration. We may rest assured the civilized world has seen the last of that atrocity.

We look back from the pinnacle of our high civilization with surprise and horror to find that even in Wellington's time, scarcely one hundred years ago, such savagery was the rule; but so shall our descendants after a like interval look back from a still higher pinnacle upon our slaying of man in war as equally atrocious, equally unnecessary and equally indefensible.

Let me summarize what has been gained so far in mitigating the atrocities of war in our march onward to the reign of peace. Noncombatants are now spared, women and children are no longer massacred, quarter is given, and prisoners are well cared for. Towns are not given over to pillage, private property on land is exempt, or if taken is paid or receipted for. Poisoned wells, assassination of rulers and commanders by private bargain, and deceptive agreements, are infamies of the past. On the sea, privateering has been abolished, neutral rights greatly extended and property protected, and the right of search narrowly restricted. So much is to be credited to the pacific power of international law. There is great cause for congratulation. If man has not been striking at the heart of the monster war, he has at least been busily engaged drawing some of its poisonous fangs.

Thus even throughout the savage reign of man-slaying we see the blessed law of evolution unceasingly at work performing its divine mission, making that which is better than what has been and ever leading us on towards perfection.

We have only touched the fringe of the crime so far, however, the essence of which is the slaughter of human beings, the failure to hold human life sacred, as the early christians did.

One deplorable exception exists to the march of improvement. A new stain has recently crept into the rules of war as foul as any that war has been forced by public sentiment to discard. It is the growth of recent years. Gentilis, Grotius and all the great publicists before Bynkershoek, dominated by the spirit of Eoman law, by chivalry and long established practise, insist upon the necessity of a formal declaration of war, 'that he be not taken unawares under friendly guise.' Not until the beginning of the last century did the opposite view begin to find favor. To-day it is held that a formal declaration is not indispensable and that war may begin without it. Here is the only step backward to be met with in the steady progress of reforming the rules of war. It is no longer held to be contrary to these for a power to surprise and destroy while yet in friendly conference with its adversary, endeavoring to effect a peaceful settlement. It belongs to the infernal armory of assassins hired to kill or poison opposing generals, of forged