tion between combatants and non-combatants and the rules deduced from it, having lost their validity, can no longer be respected.

I do not hesitate to declare this supposition, both in its assumptions of fact and of principle and in its implications, to be as illusory as it is dangerous.

I pronounce it dangerous, because the distinction between combatants and non-combatants is the foundation and the vital source of those limitations on the destruction of life and property with which our boasted civilization is synonymous. I pronounce it illusory, because it proceeds from a misconception not only of the nature and extent of previous wars but also of the grounds on which the unarmed population was classed as non-combatant and protected.

According to the ancient conception of war, all the inhabitants of the states at war, including women and children, were regarded, collectively and individually, as actual enemies, in the sense that they might all be legitimately slaughtered and their property captured and confiscated or destroyed. Thus, the Hebrews were, according to the veracious Record, commanded to slay the women and children of Heshbon, of Canaan, and of other nations whose lands they were commissioned to take, and the Psalmist could exultingly sing: "Blessed shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." The Thracians, the Macedonians, and the Romans in numerous instances put women and children to the sword without discrimination, and it is affirmed that the princes who commanded such things "were never esteemed to be of a cruel nature." "Whence it appears," remarks Grotius, how "inhumanity was turned into custom," so that it was "no wonder if old men were also killed."*

'Deuteronomy, I. 34; XX 160.

'Psalm CXXXVII 9.

'Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Bk. III, Chap. IV, Par. 9.

While citing the ancient authorities as to what was "lawful" in war, Grotius pointed out that the Latin word licere, signifying to be lawful, was capable of a double meaning; that it might be understood merely in the sense of an act that was not punishable; that an act might in this sense be lawful, and yet might be inexpedient, or inconsistent with the rules of piety or morality, so that he who refrained from doing it was to be commended.s Hence, he maintained that, even in a just war, there were acts which were unjust in themselves and were to be considered as proscribed; and, upon the authority of many passages of Scripture, and the testimony of jurists, philosophers, historians, moralists and warriors, he particularly enjoined the observance of the limitations of the right to kill, and the abstention from anything that might result in "the destruction of innocents, unless for some extraordinary reasons, and for the safety of many." Quoting, then, the censure of Livy on those whose "savage cruelty and rage reached even to harmless infants," Grotius declares that, as children are to be spared, so also are women, "unless they have committed some crime which deserves a particular punishment, or have usurped the offices of men." The same thing, he affirmed, "may be generally said of all men, whose manner of life is wholly averse to arms." Again quoting Livy to the effect that "by the laws of war, only those that are in arms, and do resist, are to be killed," he mentions, among those who are particularly spared, old men; scholars; husbandmen; merchants, comprehending under this title all sorts of mechanics and tradesmen; captives, and those who in battle demand quarter or unconditionally surrender."

In the course of years the ancient and savage conception of war, against which Grotius rang out his epochal

6

Ibid., Bk. III, Chap. IV § II, Par. 1, 2; § XV, Par. 1.

Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Bk. III, Chap. XI, on "Moderation concerning the Right of Killing Men in a Just War."

protest, was radically modified, but not because nations and their rulers then dreamed that soldiers, like chameleons, lived on light and air; that armed forces fought and continued to fight without replenishment of their ranks, equipment or supplies; and that the productive activities, financial, industrial and commercial, on land and sea, of the unarmed population, male and female, adult and minor, were not contributory and essential to the maintenance of armed conflicts. In his celebrated work on the principles of war' that great master of the history as well as of the conduct of war, Marshal Foch, profoundly says: "In spite of all, the fundamental truths which govern this art remain immutable, just as the principles of mechanics always govern architecture, whether the construction is of wood, of stone, of iron, or of cement." Among those truths the first is the effective and harmonious employment of all the national resources, in men, materials and money. It has always been so.

With the great increase in population that had taken place during the previous hundred years, the general employment on the Continent of the system of conscription, and the development of quicker transportation, it was inevitable that, if a general war broke out in Europe, a larger number of men would be promptly put into the field than ever before. The inevitable happened; and as the knowledge of previous wars was confined to very limited circles, some of which had little occasion to use it, the exciting total, causing complete oblivion of the element of proportion, naturally created the popular impression that national resources, in men and materials, were drawn upon as never before. The impression was essentially fallacious.

There never was a time when in great conflicts belligerents did not draw upon and co-ordinate their various resources, such as they were, in the carrying on of 'Foch, Des principes de la Guerre, Paris, 1918, Preface, IX.

hostile operations. In such operations it is obvious that among the most essential elements are arms, ammunition and food-arms and ammunition with which to fight and food with which to live; and it will hardly be contended that these elementary requirements are more essential today than they were a century, ten centuries or twenty centuries ago. It is true that in former times the requirements of warfare were simpler and less varied; but so, also, were the industrial arts, including agriculture, and incomparably less productive. And yet in the eighteenth century as well as in the nineteenth there were powers, and the United States was one of them, that deemed it proper by special treaty stipulation to pledge protection to tillers of the soil, to artisans and manufacturers, "and in general to all others whose occupations are for the common subsistence and benefit of mankind," and the payment of a reasonable price for anything that should be taken from them for the use of armed forces.

Equally instructive is a comparison of the extent and effect of the drafts made by the recent war with the extent and effect of the drafts made by previous wars on national man-power and resources. Taking, for the recent war, France and Germany, as two of the powers that suffered most, we find that in France about 7,500,000 men were mobilized. Those killed in action or dead of wounds numbered 1,028,000, the missing 299,000-a total of 1,327,000. Of wounded, amounting to about 3,000,000, three-fourths recovered. The total loss in man-power, killed, dead from wounds, missing, and unfit for work is estimated at 2,260,000, between twenty-six and thirty per cent of the men mobilized, or nearly six per cent of the population. In Germany 11,000,000 men were mobilized. Those killed in action or dead of wounds amounted to 1,611,104, the missing to 103,000-a total of 1,714,104. The wounded numbered 4,064,000, and, if the French proportion of recoveries be taken, the total

loss in man-power would be twenty-five per cent of the men mobilized, or between four and five per cent of the population. No account is here taken of the probably higher ratio of deaths among the non-combatant population of Germany, due to shortage and impoverishment of food during or since the war, resulting from the Allied

war measures.

Turning to ancient wars, it is estimated that, in the first Persian war, a fourth of the male citizen-population of Athens capable of bearing arms, and more than a half of that of Sparta, were actually engaged in hostilities; that, in the second Persian war, although the number of soldiers was greater, substantially the same proportions prevailed; but that, in the Peloponnesian war, in which the distinctive Athenian civilization practically succumbed, the proportions were even greater. During the wars against Hannibal, thirty per cent of the male citizen-population of Rome capable of bearing arms, or more than ten per cent of the total population, were kept under arms, while the total number lost exceeded those proportions of the population as it stood when the struggle began.

When the Thirty Years' War, which gradually embroiled the continent of Europe, opened in 1618, the population of the old German Empire was between 16 and 17 millions; in 1648, when it closed, the population was about 4,000,000. In order to approach this appalling destruction of life in Germany alone, due to war and its attendant devastation, famine and pestilence, we must take the total of all the belligerents in the recent war, while the proportion of human loss is not five per cent but seventy-five. By 1648 the population of the Palatinate had dwindled from 500,000 to 48,000, or ninety per cent. The economic destruction was correspondent. Occasionally the shock was quick. In Saxony it has been reckoned that within two years (1631-1632) 934,000