[148] d’Argentré, L’histoire de Bretagne, p. 391.
[149] Mills, op. cit. p. 132.
[150] Grotius, op. cit. iii. 11. 8.
[151] Ibid. iii. 11. 14 sqq.
[152] Pufendorf, De jure naturæ et gentium, viii. 6. 8, p. 885.
[153] van Bynkershoek, Questiones juris publici, i. 1, p. 31: “Omnis enim vis in bello justa est.” Hall, Treatise on International Law, p. 395, n. 1.
The prevailing attitude towards war indicates the survival, in modern civilisation, of the old feeling that the life of a foreigner is not equally sacred with the life of a countryman. In times of peace this feeling is usually suppressed; it appears in no existing law on homicide, nor does it, generally, find expression in public opinion. It dares to disclose itself only in the form of national aggressiveness, under the flag of patriotism, or, perhaps, in the treatment of the aborigines of some distant country. The behaviour of European colonists towards coloured races only too often reminds us of the manner in which savages treat members of a foreign tribe. It was said that the frontier peasants at the Cape found nothing morally wrong in the razzias which they undertook against the Bushmans, without any provocation whatsoever, though they would consider it a heinous sin to do the same to their Christian fellow-men.[154] In Australia there are instances reported of young colonists employing the Sunday in shooting blacks for the sake of sport. “The life of a native,” says Mr. Lumholtz, “has but little value, particularly in the northern part of Australia, and once or twice colonists offered to shoot blacks for me so that I might get their skulls. On the borders of civilisation men would think as little of shooting a black man as a dog. The law imposes death by hanging as the penalty for murdering a black man, but people live so far apart in these uncivilised regions that a white man may in fact do what he pleases with the blacks…. In the courts the blacks are defenceless, for their testimony is not accepted. The jury is not likely to declare a white man guilty of murdering a black man. On the other hand if a white man happens to be killed by the blacks, a cry is heard throughout the whole colony.”[155]
[154] Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, p. 314.
[155] Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 346 sqq. See also Mathew, in Jour. & Proceed. Roy. Soc. N. S. Wales, xxiii. 390; Breton, Excursions in New South Wales, p. 200 sq.; Stokes, Discoveries in Australia, ii. 459 sqq.