Treatment of the Dead.
§ 124. According to a customary rule of the Law of Nations belligerents have the right to demand from one another that dead soldiers shall not be disgracefully treated, especially not mutilated, and shall be, so far as possible, collected and buried[252] or cremated on the battlefield by the victor. The Geneva Convention does not stipulate any rule concerning the collection and burial or cremation of the dead, but article 3 enacts that after each engagement the commander in possession of the field must take measures to ensure protection of the dead against pillage and maltreatment, and that a careful examination of the bodies, in order to see that life is really extinct, must be made before the dead are buried or cremated. Each belligerent must send as soon as possible to the authorities of the country or army to which they belong the military identification marks or tokens found on the dead (article 4). Pieces of equipment found upon the dead of the enemy are public enemy property and may, therefore, be appropriated as booty[253] by the victor. On the other hand, letters, money, jewellery, and such other articles of value found upon the dead on the battlefield, or on those who die in the medical units or fixed establishments, as are apparently private property, are not booty, but must, according to article 4 of the Geneva Convention and article 14 of the Hague rules concerning warfare on land, be collected and handed over to the Bureau of Information[254] concerning the prisoners of war, which has to transmit them to the persons interested through the channel of the authorities of their own country.
[252] See Grotius, II. c. 19, §§ 1 and 3. Regarding a valuable suggestion of Ullmann's concerning sanitary measures for the purpose of avoiding epidemics, see above, [vol. I. p. 621, note 1].
Application of the Geneva Convention, and Prevention of Abuses.
§ 124a. The provisions of the Geneva Convention are only binding in the case of war between two or more of the contracting parties, they cease to be binding from the moment when one of the belligerent Powers is not a party (article 24). The commanders-in-chief of the belligerent armies must, in accordance with the instructions of their Governments and in conformity with the general principles of the Geneva Convention, arrange the details for carrying out the articles of the Geneva Convention, as well as for cases not provided for in these articles (article 25). The contracting parties must take the necessary measures to instruct their troops, especially the personnel protected by the Geneva Convention, in the provisions of the Convention, and to bring these provisions to the notice of the civil population (article 26). In countries whose legislation is not at the time of the signing of the Convention adequate for the purpose, the contracting parties must adopt such measures as may be necessary to prevent, at all times, the employment of the emblem or the name of "Red Cross" or "Geneva Cross" by private individuals or by Societies other than those which are entitled to do so according to the Geneva Convention, and in particular for commercial purposes as a trade mark or trading mark (article 27). The contracting Governments must likewise adopt measures necessary for the repression in time of war of individual acts of pillage and maltreatment of the wounded and sick, as well as for the punishment of the improper use of the Red Cross flag and armlet (brassard) by officers and soldiers or private individuals not protected by the Geneva Convention. They must, at the latest within five years from the ratification of the Geneva Convention, communicate to one another through the Swiss Federal Council, the provisions concerning these measures of repression (article 28).[255]
[255] By reason of the uncertainties of parliamentary proceedings, Great Britain, in signing and ratifying the Geneva Convention, entered a reservation against articles 23, 27, and 28, but by the Geneva Convention Act, 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. V. ch. 20), Great Britain is now able to carry out the stipulations of these three articles.
General provisions of the Geneva Convention.