< Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf
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INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

exacted of us by civilization and Christian ity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own. The command ing general therefore earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to pri vate property," and he enjoined upon all officers to " arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject." Even fences and growing crops were protected under that order which for the first time in the world's history declared "that the du ties exacted of us by civilization and Chris tianity are no less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own. " What an epitaph for a great Christian soldier! In the year that followed President Lincoln's order, whose fruit was the Lieber war code, met the famous body composed of the rep resentatives of the fourteen states who signed, on August 22, 1864, the Convention of Geneva, regulating the treatment of the sick and wounded, and neutralizing all per sons and things employed in their service, such as surgeons, chaplains, nurses, hospi tals, and ambulances, provided such persons and things are distinguished by that sacred badge which has now become the proudest device in the heraldry of humanity — the red cross of Geneva, Nothing could be more romantic than the circumstances out of which that great movement grew. It was the work of two citizens of Geneva — Dunant, a physician who published a start ling story that thrilled all Europe of what he had seen in the hospitals on the battle field of Solferino, and Moynier, his friend, who conceived the idea of "neutralizing the sick wagons." Not long ago a lover of his kind left behind him a will in which he pro vided that out of his estate 100,000 francs should be awarded annually, by a committee, to that one who had done most for the good of humanity. When this committee de termined that the name of Dunant, then nearly ninety years of age, should be in scribed among those who had loved best

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their fellow men, where do you suppose they found him? I am ashamed to tell you. In a poor-house near his native city of Geneva! In order to revise and extend the original provisions of the convention of 1864 an other was signed at Geneva in 1868, but never ratified, whose Additional Articles, in cluding the neutralization of hospital ships, relate chiefly, though not exclusively, to warfare at sea. Less than two months thereafter a Military Commission at St. Petersburg, composed of delegates from seventeen states, including representatives from Persia and Turkey, agreed as between themselves "to renounce the employment of any projectile, on land or seas of a weight below four hundred grammes (fourteen ounces), which should be explosible or loaded with fulminating or inflammable ma terials." In the declaration then made it was said that the object of the use of weap ons in war is "to disable the greatest possi ble number of men, that this object would be exceeded by the employment of arms which needlessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevit able, and that the employment of such arms would therefore be contrary to the laws of humanity." In 1874 met the Conference of Brussels, in which appeared the representa tives of all the European powers of any importance, in the hope of bringing about the adoption by all civilized states of a common code for the regulation of warfare on land. As the delegates were not pleni potentiaries, the Conference was purely con sultative; and the outcome was a series of articles embodied in a Declaration which remained as the basis for further negotia tions between the governments concerned. In 1877 met the Conference of Constanti nople which vainly endeavored to obtain from the Porte guarantees for the better government of its Christian subjects; in 1884-85, the West African Conference of Berlin, whose purpose was to regulate the affairs of that region, including the bounda ries and independence of the Congo Free

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