The world has grown hardened to the habit of lumping the crimes and atrocities of organized conflicts together under a short and easy word. "War" is made to cover and gloss over millions of the bloody and malicious crimes of millions of men who ought to be punished according to their deserts. I am thinking of the Kaiser, Stenger, Tirpitz and Hindenberg, and the Young Turks en masse.
The Hague conventions did their utmost to reform the world's war practices, establish an international code of war ethics, and thereby reduce the horrors of armed conflict. But with what results?
Closely following those well-meant and humane efforts, two nations, Germany and Turkey, have given the world a continuous performance of wholesale murder, rape, burnings, drownings and starvation such as the world never before saw, even in the bloodiest days of barbarism. The Turkish crimes in Armenia must be computed in millions, and the wanton murder of a million Armenians is directly chargeable to the rulers of Germany, who deliberately permitted it to be done.
And even now, many good people who refuse to concern themselves with the woes of men and women who are far away, will decry all attempts to punish the Germans and Turks for their crimes. They will talk about "magnanimity in peace terms," and a quick return to ante-bellum friendships. Think of a treaty of friendship with ravishers, and with the murderers of women and children and prisoners!
All sensible men know that the proper punishment of criminals is necessary for the protection of society from wolves and dragons, and for the general welfare of mankind. Unpunished crime always encourages and produces more crime. The world must not mistake softness of head for soundness of heart.
It is indeed high time that criminal nations should be punished for their crimes. Are any nations before the bar of the Court of Nations charged with deliberate and premeditated crimes against helpless humanity?
Yes; two. Germany and Turkey are so accused; and no power on earth can stop the trial! Austria comes next.
Let us call first the case of Germany.
In opening the worst of these two cases, we distinctly leave out of our specifications all those acts which may be put down as chargeable to the ordinary and inevitable horrors of war. At the same time we must remember that even the most brutal prize ring has its rules and its ethics, which are rigidly enforced. Even a fighter whose face is being beaten to a pulp may not bite, kick, gouge, or strike below the belt; no, not even when defeat and ruin stare him in the face. The fighting must be "fair," or the decision is at once given to the recipient of the "foul" act.
Until Germany invaded Belgium, and Turkey went to work to exterminate the Armenians, the world supposed that the Christian nations had reformed, that all civilized nations recognized the latest international code of ethics in war, and would live up to it. It was then against the rules of civilized warfare to shoot, stab, burn or beat to death the civilian populations of captured territory, to starve prisoners, to kill prisoners and wounded men, to use expanding bullets, to rape women, to force women to become soldier's prostitutes, to poison wells, to use poison in any form, to destroy maliciously works of art, science and literature; to sink merchant ships at sea without assuring the safety of passengers and crew, and to bombard cities from the air for the slaughter of their helpless civilian inhabitants.