The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1899. THE WAR: HOW THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 23, Issue 47, 23 November 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1899. THE WAR : HOW THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH.

—^ — AKEN at its besc, war is a repulsive game. *~J ' H When begun under such circumstances of •ty) ' I •&* mutua l aggravation as exist between the Boer jjffl^MSj^f and the Briton, it might naturally be expected xV JIIkC fco PP r °d uce i fcs few quota of situations that, o^a&J^ even or war "^ me » would be sufficiently lurid. w* v k — ma ki°g due allowance for the hearsay * and direct exaggerations of war correspondents — the Transvaal campaign has been, thus far, marked by a

happy absence of the ferocity which usually characterises racial conflicts. In no respect is the decency of modern usage more evident than in the treatment of prisoners of war ; and testimony is unanimous in declaring that not alone the war-trained Briton, but even the rude Boer farmlabourer and farmer have treated with singular humanity the combatants whom the fortunes of war have thrown into their respective hands. All this represents a pleasant feature of an unhappy and preveutible campaign which goes to show how far we are getting rid of some of the worst features not merely of pagan, but e\enof so-called Christian, warfare. Even among the relatively h'ghly civilised Greeks and Eomans of the pagan days the slaughter or enslaving of prisoners of war, of every age and of both sexes, was regarded and acted upon as an unquestionable right. Grotius gives us a fearful catalogue of cities that were destroyed and their inhabitants ruthlessly mass:cred in those ancient days by the legions of pagan Greece and Rome. The Catholic Church was the first to introduce the principles of humanity into the armed conflicts of the nations. She could not, perhaps, greatly reduce the number of wars. But she at least notably diminished their atrocity. She abolished the gladiatorial shows, at which thousands of captives were ' butchered to make a Roman holiday.' She established the principle of international law that no Christian prisoner of war should be reduced to slavery. St. Ambrose of Milan, Acacius of Amida, Deogratias of Carthage, St. Cvesarius of Aries, and other bishops, with the Church's sanction, sold the sacred vessels and ecclesiastical furniture to secure the ransom of prisoners of war. And who can tell the number of captives that were redeemed from the Mohammedans by St. Louis of France and by the Orders of the Trinitarians and of Our Lady of Mercy ?

The Spanish theologians Francisco de Victoria, Suarez, and Ayala laid the foundations of international law on which Grotius based his great treatise, The Lair of War and Peare, that saw the light in 1624. The present century has witnessed the rapid growth and codification of international law, especially as applied to war. To the broad principles of Catholic theology on the subject it has added nothing ; but it has, in the matter of practical detail, done much towards softening the rigours of modern wars. Privateering has been condemned and almost, if not completely, abolished ; civilian subjects of either of the hostile Powers residing within the bounds of the other are no longer subject to iinprisonineut and confiscation of their property — although these penalties were threatened by Turkey against its Greek residents in their recent war. The use of poisoned weapons and explosive bullets, and proclamations of ' no quarter,' were prohibited as far back as the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1818. An enemy who has ceased fighting and laid down his arms must receive quarter nowadays whether he asks for it or not. A grand forward step for the cause of humanity in warfare was made in 18<U when the Geneva Convention of European States decided that military hospitals, ambulances, and all persons employed in connection with them, should be treated as neutrals. And, best of all, the events of the present campaign in South Africa go to show that international legislation is not a dead letter, but a living force to restrain enraged combatants from the grosser forms of violence that, until even comparatively recent times, added many a bitter drop to the full cup of the horrors of modern warfare.

People were rightly horrified at the wholesale slaughter of unresisting combatants and of non-combaiants by both parties during theTaeping rebellion in China. At Nankin, for instance, the Taepings are said to have left only a hundred persons alive out of a population of 20,000 which occupied the Tartar quarter of the city. Yet Captain Blakiston tells us that the cruelties of the Taepings were ' hardly a counterpart of the Tsing (Imperial) atrocities.' And he tells how, in the same crowded centre of population, the Imperialists, in turn, ' enjoyed a three days' slaughter, and left neither man, woman, nor child in that unfortunate city.' The recent Chino-Japanese conflict was stained by a three days' massacre by tbe victors — whose swift adoption of Western usages evidently does not stand the rude test of war. However, we are little entitled to throw stones at the Shinto warriors of Japan. The arms of professedly Chris-

tian States have been all too frequently staineJ by similar atrocities. Irishmen wi 1 long remembt-r Cromwell's brutal massacre of the garrison "and inhabitants — women included — of . rogheda and Wexford. And did not General Moxk — afterwards Lord Aluemarle — put to death the whole garrison of the town of Dundee ? If we need more modern instances we need but to turn to the story of the Greek Wars of Independence, as told, for instance, by George Finlay. In April, 1821, a scattered Mussulman population resident in Greece are said to have been put to death to the number of 20,000. At the sack of Tripolitza some 8000 persons of every age and of both sexes were cruelly put to death. To this day British peoples cannot recall without deep shame the fearful scenes of rapine and slaughter that accompanied tr.e sacking of Badajos and San Sebastian during the Peninsular Campaign. There are many still living who can recall the conduct of the Servians at Belgrade in 1862. The Franco-German war opened with a relatively high spirit of chivalry on both sides. But did it not soon lead to the not infrequent shooting or hanging of prisoners by the irregular Franc-lfreurs and of unoffending peasants by the Germans, and culminate in the fearful blood-orgie of the enraged animals in military uniform who shot and burned non-combatants of both sexes in the streets and houses of Bazeilles ?

Thus far the incidents of the present campaign give the hope that civilised peoples have not merely closed but walled-up the door upon these and snch-like savage incidents that have thus far spotted as with a leprosy practically every campaign of what is termed ' civilised ' warfare. Much has been done by international codes in the direction of humanising the armed conflicts of peoples. But much yet remains to be done — for instance, to compel more civilised warfare against barbarian peoples ; to prevent the bombardment of seaports for requisitions ; and to prevent the wanton burning of villages, such as the German troops were guilty of in their campaign in France in 1870, and the British and American blue-jackets last year in Samoa. But for the cry of 'jingo' capitalists who seek a market for their wares and investments for their hoarded gold and the howl of a newspaper Press that turns every blood-drop into coin, a healthy public sentiment would speedily grow up against war. The steady advance of the Association of International Arbitration gives grounds for the hope that the general system it advocates — which, by the way, waa long before embodied by a Catholic ptiest — may become one of the planks of international law in the century which is soon to dawn upon us.