Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/336

* WAK. 280 WAR. vigorously wars are pursued, the better it is for humanity. . Sharp wars are brief. Ever since the t'oruiation and coexistence of modern nations, and ever since wars have become great national wars, war has come to be acknowledged not to be its own end, but the means to obtain great ends of State, or to consist in defense against wrong; and no conventional restriction of the modes adopted to injure the enemy is any longer admitted ; but the law of war imposes many limi- tations and restrictions on principles of justice, faith, and honor." The history of warfare is at best a sorry tale. In ancient times contending armies literally devastated with fire and sword the countries they overran, and either killed or enslaved their cap- tives. The wars of the Middle Ages continued a scourge notwithstanding the doctrines of Chris- tianity. As Sir Henry Maine says : "Tlie Reforma- tion brought with it a new fury of fighting, and the wars of religion were among the most fero- cious that mankind had waged. Armies did not then so much consist of rival potentates, as of hosts in which each individual detested every man on the other side as a misbeliever. This ferocity is generally believed to have culminated in the storming of Magdeburg," when the whole town, w^ith the exception of the cathedral and about 140 houses, was burned to the ground, and 30.000 of its 36.000 inhabitants were butchered without regard to sex or age. The Thirty Years' War fills us with horror, but a better day was dawning ami the hour and the man were at hand. In 1625, in the very mid^t of this contest. Grotius (q.v. ) published his immortal work, De Jure Belli et Paris, a protest at once and a guide in which he outlined the permissible and the in- famous with a firm and nursterly touch. Bas- ing himself on the Scriptures, the principles of morality, and a supposed law of nature, he si'.'i- jected the history of warfare to a careful ex- amination, separated humane from feroei'Uis precedents, and digested in an incom|dpte but admirable way the principles to be derived from their study. The weight of his influence gave to the result something of the consistency and the authority of a code. "The effects of the De ■Jurr lirlli et Pads." continues JIaine. "both in respect of its general influence and of the detailed propositions which it laid down, were exceed- ingly prompt and have proved extremely durable. At about the middle of his reign Louis XIV. of France adopted two measures by which he was tliought to have carried the severity of war to the furthest point. He devastated the Palatinate (q.v.), expressly directing his officers to carry fire and sword into every corner of the jirov- ince, and he issued a notice to the Dutch, with whom he was at war, that, as soon as the melting of the iec opened the canals, he would grant no more quarter to his Dutch enemies. The devasta- tion of the Palatinate has become a proverb of savageness with all historians, though fifty years earlier it might at most have been passed as a measure of severity, or might even have been defeniled; but the proclamation to the Dutch called forth a burst of execration from all Kurope, and the threat to refuse quarter was not acted upon. The book of Grolius was making itself felt, and the successors of Tlrotius assure us that it was his authority whieh deterred the Frcneli King and the French generals from the threatened outrage." (Inleninlional Law, p. 23.) The book not only made its own way, but its principles were popularized by Grotius's success- ors, particularly Pufendorf, Bynkershoek, and Wolf. To Vattel, however ( s ee 'attel. Emmeric DE). belongs the supreme merit of supplying a te.xt which at the present day is appealed to by theorist as well as practitioner. Indeed, it is al- most impossible to overestimate his services as a popularizer of a system of international law to which he contributed but little. The improve- ment produced in the conduct of warfare in the century and a quarter from the publication of Grotius's work is seen in the statement of Vattel that he was struck by the extreme gentleness of the wars of his day, and of "the standard of gen- tleness proper to war. Vattel," according to INIaine, "was a severe judge." A curious and well-nigh contemporary illus- tration of 'gentleness' is supplied by the state- ment of the British historian (Stedman, History of the Ainerican War), cited in a very valuable and illuminating note on the conduct of the war in Fiske, American Revolution, vol. ii. (pp. 116-118). to the effect that "the conduct of the Americans upon this occasion (the storming of Stony Point) was highly meritorious: for they would have been fully justified in putting the garrison to the sword: not one man of which was put to death but in fair combat." Indeed, as late as 1820 the Duke of Wellington stated: "I believe it has always been imderstood that the defenders of a fortress stormed have no right to quarter." But in justice it should be said that he never made any use of this alleged right. These citations are made to show by what slow and laborious processes humanitarian theories have incorporated themselves into actual law and practice. At the present day, however, such de- tails have merely historiesB or antiquarian inter- est ; for the theory and practice of modern civi- lized nations in their dealings with one another regard useless slaughter as murder, and consider all slaugliter useless, if not indispensable to the end in view, namely, the fair, manly, and open conduct of war in the interest of its speedy ter- mination. To this end. cruel and pain-giving instruments are forbidden, for the purpose of the combatant is to wound or incapacitate rather tlian to kill if there lie a choice of means, as in l>attle there can rarely be. Poisoning of streams
 * M)d fooil-supplics; the killiiiL: of non-combatants

generally, not to speak of innocent 'women and children; the refusal to give quarter, even in the beat of battle, except as retaliation— have long been given over as barbarous and unworthy of men in any state of civilization : and while strata- gems and deceits are allowable, if not involving perfidy, it may be said that modern warfare is carried on in a constantly increasing spirit of fair play as becomes honorable and Christian people. It is no less true that the rules of international law bind civilized nations in their intercourse with uncivilized peoples, as well as with (hose which, for one reason or another, are not yet included in the family of nations. This was <'learly manifested by .Japan's treatment of China in the war of l.'^Ot. ' .As regards the jiroseeution of hostilities, war is waged on land and sea. and the difl'erencc in the elements necessarily gives rise to differences in