§ 7. Military Necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of the armed enemies, and of those whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction and obstruction of property, of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communion, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of all appropriation necessary for the subsistence and safety of the army, and of all deception which does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist, even in the fiercest struggle, as a basis of intercourse between honorable belligerents. Men who take up arms against one another in public war, do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another, and to God.
Military Necessity does not admit of cruelty—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge;—nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions; it does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the devastation of districts for the sake of creating depopulated districts, since it is the will of our Maker that in the normal state the land shall be tilled and peopled; and, in general, Military Necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.
§ 8. In modern wars all civil and penal law continues to take its usual course in the enemy’s places and territories under Martial Law, unless interrupted or stopped by order of the occupying military power; but all the functions of the hostile government, legislative, executive, or administrative, whether of a general, provincial, or local character, cease under Martial Law, or continue only with the assistance or special approbation of the occupier or invader.
§ 9. Martial Law extends to property and persons, whether they are subjects of the enemy, or aliens to that government.
Consuls, among American and European nations, are not diplomatic agents. Nevertheless, their offices and persons will be subjected to Martial Law in cases of urgent necessity only.
Soldiers are rarely billeted in their houses; but their property and business, if they are engaged in any, are not exempted.
Any delinquency they commit against the established military rule, may be punished as in the case of any other inhabitant, and such punishment furnishes no reasonable ground for international complaint.
The functions of ambassadors, ministers, or other diplomatic agents, accredited by neutral powers to the hostile government, cease in the invaded, occupied, or conquered places or territories.
§ 10. Martial Law affects chiefly the police and collection of public revenue and taxes, whether imposed by the expelled government or by the invader, and refers mainly to the support and efficiency of the army, its safety and the safety of its operations.
It allows of no individual violence; and since it consists in the substitution of military rule for the established law and its administration, and because it is founded on military force, it is incumbent upon all military authorities acting by Martial Law, to be strictly guided by the principles of justice, honor, and humanity—virtues adorning a soldier even more than other men, for the very reason that he possesses the power of his arms against the unarmed.