OTHER EXCELLENT RULES
Several other excellent rules in the manual may be contrasted with German practice in the present war.
“No damage, not even the smallest, must be done unless it is done for military reasons.
“Contributions of war are sums of money which are levied by force from the people of an occupied country. They differ in character from requisitions in kind because they do not serve an immediate requirement of the army. Hence, requisitions in cash are only in the rarest cases justified by the necessities of war.
“The military government by the army of occupation carries with it only a temporary right to enjoy the property of others. It must, therefore, avoid every purposeless injury, it has no right to sell or dispose of the property.”
“Usages of War on Land” makes interesting reading throughout, though the conclusions that the impartial reader will draw from it will not be in every case those which the German military authorities would have him draw.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE SACRIFICE OF THE HORSE IN WARFARE
[DUMB ANIMALS PRESSED INTO SERVICE] — [PART PLAYED BY HORSE IN WAR] — [AMERICAN STOCK DEPLETED.]
So overwhelming has been the thought of human suffering in Europe, so anxious has the world been to relieve it, that little thought has been bestowed on the dumb sufferers. Various war photographs have shown us the novel sight of the dogs of Belgium impressed into service for dragging the smaller guns; but all contestants use horses, and when we reflect that the average life of a cavalry horse at the front is not more than a week, if that, we gain some idea of the sacrifice of animals which modern warfare demands.
One of the pleaders for the horse is John Galsworthy, the English novelist, who gives in the London Westminster Gazette this moral aspect of the use of the horse in warfare, with the attendant obligation:
“Man has only a certain capacity for feeling, and that has been strained almost to breaking-point by human needs. But now that the wants of our wounded are being seen to with hundreds of motor ambulances and hospitals fully equipped, now that the situation is more in hand, we can surely turn a little to the companions of man. They, poor things, have no option in this business; they had no responsibility, however remote and indirect, for its inception; get no benefit out of it of any kind whatever; know none of the sustaining sentiments of heroism; feel no satisfaction in duty done. They do not even—as the prayer for them untruly says—‘offer their guileless lives for the well-being of their countries.’ They know nothing of countries; they do not offer themselves. Nothing so little pitiable as that. They are pressed into this service, which cuts them down before their time.”