Concurrently with the efforts which have thus been made to ascertain the laws of war by general diplomatic agreement, the way for such agreement has been prepared by the labours of the Institut de Droit International, and by the issue by several governments of instructions addressed to their respective armies and navies.
The Manuel des Lois de la Guerre sur Terre, published by the Institut in 1880, is the subject of the two letters which immediately follow. Their insertion here, although the part in them of the present writer is but small, may be justified by the fact that they set out a correspondence which is at once interesting (especially from its bearing upon the war of 1914) and not readily elsewhere accessible.
The remaining letters in this chapter relate to the Naval War Code, issued by the Government of the United States in 1900, but withdrawn in 1904, though still expressing the views of that Government, for reasons specified in a note to the British chargé d'affaires at Washington and printed in Parl. Papers, Miscell. No. 5 (1909), p. 8. The United States, it will be remembered, were also the first Power to attempt a codification of the laws of war on land, in their Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States, issued in 1863, and reissued in 1898. Some information as to this and similar bodies of national instructions may be found in the present writer's Studies in International Law, 1898, p. 85. Cf. his Manual of Naval Prize Law, issued by authority of the Admiralty in 1888, his Handbook of the Laws and Customs of War on Land, issued by authority to the British Army in 1904, and his The Laws of War on Land (written and unwritten), 1908. The Institut de Droit International, which has been engaged for some years upon the Law of War at Sea, by devoting the whole of its session at Oxford, in 1913, to the discussion of the subject, produced a Manuel des Lois de la Guerre sur Mer, framed in accordance with the now-accepted view which sanctions the capture of enemy private property at sea. It is to be followed by a manual framed in accordance with the contrary view. Cf. the letters upon the Declaration of London, in [Ch. VII. Section 10], infra.
COUNT VON MOLTKE ON THE LAWS OF WARFARE
Sir,—You may perhaps think that the accompanying letter, recently addressed by Count von Moltke to Professor[024] Bluntschli, is of sufficient general interest to be inserted in The Times. It was written with reference to the Manual of the Laws of War which was adopted by the Institut de Droit International at its recent session at Oxford. The German text of the letter will appear in a few days at Berlin. My translation is made from the proof-sheets of the February number of the Revue de Droit International, which will contain also Professor Bluntschli's reply.
Your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND
Oxford, January 29 (1881).
"Berlin, Dec. 11, 1880.
"You have been so good as to forward to me the manual published by the Institut de Droit International, and you hope for my approval of it. In the first place I fully appreciate the philanthropic effort to soften the evils which result from war. Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War is an element in the order of the world ordained by God. In it the noblest virtues of mankind are developed; courage and the abnegation of self, faithfulness to duty, and the spirit of sacrifice: the soldier gives his life. Without war the world would stagnate, and lose itself in materialism.