§ 129. Articles 10 to 12 of the Hague Regulations deal with release on parole in the following manner:—No belligerent is obliged to assent to a prisoner's request to be released on parole, and no prisoner may be forced to accept such release. But if the laws of his country authorise him to do so, and if he acquiesces, any prisoner may be released on parole. In such case he is in honour bound scrupulously to fulfil the engagement he has contracted, both as regards his own Government and the Government that released him. And his own Government is formally bound neither to request, nor to accept, from him any service incompatible with the parole given. Any prisoner released on parole and recaptured bearing arms against the belligerent who released him, or against such belligerent's allies, forfeits the privilege to be treated as a prisoner of war, and may be tried by court-martial. The Hague Regulations do not lay down the punishment for such breach of parole, but according to a customary rule of International Law the punishment may be capital.
Bureau of Information.
§ 130. According to articles 14 and 16 of the Hague Regulations every belligerent[263] must institute on the commencement of war a Bureau of Information relative to his prisoners of war. This Bureau is intended to answer all inquiries about prisoners. It must be furnished by all the services concerned with all the necessary information to enable it to make out and keep up to date a separate return for each prisoner, and it must, therefore, be kept informed of internments and changes as well as of admissions into hospital, of deaths, releases on parole, exchanges, and escapes. It must state in its return for each prisoner the regimental number, surname and name, age, place of origin, rank, unit, wounds, date and place of capture, of internment, of the wounds received, date of death, and any observations of a special character. This separate return must, after conclusion of peace, be sent to the Government of the other belligerent.
[263] And likewise such neutral States as receive and detain members of the armed forces of the belligerents; see article 14.
The Bureau must likewise receive and collect all objects of personal use, valuables, letters, and the like, found on battlefields[264] or left by prisoners who have been released on parole, or exchanged, or who have escaped, or died in hospital or ambulances, and must transmit these articles to those interested. The Bureau must enjoy the privilege of free postage.
Relief Societies.
§ 131. A new and valuable rule, taken from the Brussels Declaration, is that of article 15 of the Hague Regulations making it a duty of every belligerent to grant facilities to Relief Societies to serve as intermediaries for charity to prisoners of war. The condition of the admission of such societies and their agents is that the former are regularly constituted in accordance with the law of their country. Delegates of such societies may be admitted to the places of internment for the distribution of relief, as also to the halting-places of repatriated prisoners, through a personal permit of the military authorities, provided they give an engagement in writing that they will comply with all regulations by the authorities for order and police.
End of Captivity.
§ 132. Captivity can come to an end through different modes. Apart from release on parole, which has already been mentioned, captivity comes to an end—(1) through simple release without parole; (2) through successful flight; (3) through liberation by the invading enemy to whose army the respective prisoners belong; (4) through exchange for prisoners taken by the enemy; (5) through prisoners[265] being brought into neutral territory by captors who take refuge there; and, lastly (6), through the war coming to an end. Release of prisoners for ransom is no longer practised, except in the case of the crew of a captured merchantman released on a ransom bill.[266] It ought, however, to be observed that the practice of ransoming prisoners might be revived if convenient, provided the ransom is to be paid not to the individual captor but to the belligerent whose forces made the capture.