TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE LOST RULES OF WAR
THE war in Morocco is by far the most considerable war there has been since the Great War. The South African War in its day was thought to be immense—such Were our measurements then !=but the war in Morocco is greater than that. Not, indeed, becauseof the number of men engaged, for these may be roughly about the same in both wars, but because the European armies in Morocco are equipped with engines of War Undreanied of twenty- five years ago. This new war is raising qUeStions about the regulations, codes and custorns—if any—under which future wars will be fought. Although the Great War sub- merged nearly all the hitherto honoured agreements of The Hague and Geneva, the problem of what is to happen in future has since then hardly arisen, because up till now the modern apparatus of war has appeared, and the absence of regulations has been noted, only in small encounters and punitive expeditions. In Morocco the French and Spanish have turned their artillery and bombing machines on unfortified villages, and because the results are hidden from us it is difficult to imagine the suffering which has been inflicted upon non-combatants, including women and children. The Riffs, it is said, have practically no Medical service. It may be argued that though these are tragic facts they cannot be helped, because the Riffs, a savage people, have never been a party to the Geneva Convention or to any of the other regulations. All the same, any decent or sensitive person must look with mis- giving and distaste—to put it on the very lowest ground —upon the spectacle of this treatment of men who believe themselves to be fighting for their freedOm and their country. We bring no particular charge of barbarity against the French or Spaniards. We believe. that what is happening, and what will happen again and again if the position is not thought out 'and redefined, is almost inevitable under our present conditions. That is why. we ask for discuSsion and if possible for fresh definitions. What the French are doing might be done—probably would be done—by any other nation. It has been re- ported, indeed, that in Iraq taxes have been Collected from recalcitrant villages with the help of bombs. We do not know whether the rep6rts were exaggerations, but if any measures were taken such as would not have been taken before the Great War, Britain, as the Mandatory Power in Iraq, bore the responsibility.
Is it possible to gather up and save from the wreckage any of the old regulations ? We are only too conscious of all the difficulties, and it may be that the logic of modern war is entirely against us. To appreciate these difficulties we have only to look at the histOry of war and its culmination. Up till 1914 wars were conducted by professional armies—whether these were conscribed, voluntary or mercenary—in the sense that they never engaged the whole manhood or -the whole industrial strength of any nation. Wars that continued over long perioda—thirty years, for instance—were obviously not wars of exhaustion, or the belligerents could not have sustained them. All one can say is that both sides put forth their best efforts under conventional conditions, and that when a reasonable number of men on the one side had fought against a reasonable number on the other, and when the- respective stores of courage and strategical and tactical cleverness had been sufficiently brought to the test, the nations concerned abided by the result. The scheme was no more than a very stern extension of abiding by the results of a contest between teams of picked players in a game. In such circumstances it was possible not only to build up a code of restraint and. mercy, but even to regard chivalry as one of the finest ornaments of the soldier's profession. These possibilities—we are deliberately stating the case for the moment in its extreme form— have been swept away by the diseovery that wars between rich and scientific nations must in future be wars of exhinstion in which whole nations, includingthe women and children, will be pitted against whole nations. The object will be, not to shoot down a comparatively small number of fighters woo' are at "the front," biit to destroy as quickly as poSsibIeilie centres of administration and the sources of production. " The front " will be more at Woolwich, at the dock-yards, in Downing Street, at ihe War Office, and at Westminster Palace, than on those historic' fields of battle which have been fought-oVer again and again by nations in the making. In wars of this kind. it will be physically impossible to have regard for the civil Population. ThOse who happen to be anywhere in the neighboUrhoOd of whatever it is essential to destroy will- be inevitably involved. Logically there—is no line that can be drawn. A nation-that is resisting extermination cannot say, " I will hit you in this way, and I will hit you in that way, but I ban certain other ways as uncivilized, and I therefore promise not to resort to them." Germany in the Great War disgraced herself by being the first to resort to the forbidden ways, but it is true enough that the mere logic of the case was on her side.
Germany tore up regulations. inspired by an era in which the discovery of the final nature of war had not yet been made. Pure logic goes even further, and says, " Why should we .spare prisoners ? It was easy for. Nelson to say, ' When a . man becomes my prisoner, become his protector,' for he belonged to the age when chivalry was possible. But if we spare a prisoner to-day he is skilfully patched up by the doctors and in a few weeks he is back in the field again—as good a fighting man as ever. And why should we spare even women ? They either minister to the men who do the fighting or who make the munitions, or they make the munitions themselves. We do not intend either to perish or unnecessarily to prolong a war through indulging a ridiculous sentiment. That is all false humanity. The strategy of war in the air requires that ,we should demobilize as far as possible the enemy's aeroplanes. How can we do that, except by bombing his homes, so as to force him to keep his aero- planes in his own country for the defence of civilians ? ".
Logic can indeed support itself by arguments of ex- pediency and by the assertions of science, which are diffi- cult, if not impossible, to meet. Professor Haldane has expressed the opinion that poisonous and lethal gases are really the most humane instruments of war. The suffering inflicted by gases, he says, is not on the whole comparable with the suffering inflicted by shells, bullets and bayonets. There is only one real answer to all this, and that is the abolition of war. We do not regard: abolition among nations which call themselves civilized and rational as an impossible fancy. We think it will come through; the League of Nations, or by some new growth- Of international legislation and reason which will evolve itself out of the present League.
But that will be a slow growth in any case. What we want to know now is whether in the intermediate stage it is not possible to save anything from the ruin of the old codes, particularly, perhaps, with reference to backward peoples, who are obviously not competent to carry- on wars of exhaustion against rich and scientific countries. We should think that some new or salvaged definitions would be feasible ;. but the first step is some public discussion of this neglected subject. -
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