German Pleas in Defence, and their Validity
It is hardly necessary to say that the principle of holding towns to ransom is not admitted by any one to-day. Bluntschli, the German jurist, writes on this head a phrase which sounds ironical: “War has become civilised…… No one has any longer the right to pillage, and still less the right to destroy, without military necessity; therefore there can no longer be any question of buying off this pretended right.” On the other hand, the policy of terrorisation is not admitted. It is, however, very remarkable that the Kölnische Zeitung apparently caves in to it by commenting on the gravity of the situation in which the Belgians were, owing to (1) the fact “that their houses had been occupied by the enemy,” and (2) the exhaustion of “the whole resources of the town.”
Article 50 of the Hague Regulations stipulates, in fact, that no collective punishment, pecuniary or otherwise, can be enacted against the civil population by reason of individual acts for which they could not collectively be held responsible.
German generals or publicists, therefore, have no authority to set up a system of collective indemnity, monetary or other, in punishment of individual acts, and still less to impose these indemnities under threat of pillaging and burning towns.
As for the claim to recover the costs and expenses of war by a tax levied on the inhabitants of the invaded territory, the Kölnische Zeitung is shamelessly lying when it says that such a claim is “recognised by international law.” Not a single authority in this sense can be quoted; on the contrary, there are express statements of the very opposite. The well-known Argentine writer, Calvo, declares that such a theory involves an abuse of force, and is “in flagrant contradiction to the principle which enacts that war is waged against a state, and not against individuals taken separately.” It was in conformity with this principle that the Germans themselves, in 1870, refused to admit that the amount of the monetary contributions previously levied in France (thirty-nine million francs) could be deducted from the five milliards imposed on France by the Treaty of Frankfurt, a confirmation as clear as it is unexpected of the principle which they are violating to-day.