0. P. AUSTIN, Statistician, National City Bank of New Y ork.
WAR, European—Congressional Medal of Honor Awards.— The Congressional Medal of Honor was the most highly prized as it was the most difficult to obtain of all military decorations. See MEDAL OF HONOR, Warm STATES MILITARY. There were only 78 awards of this medal and of the 78 men on the honor roll 24 lost their lives, most of them in the action for which they were cited. Below is the honor roll of those who merited the highest symbol of appreciation in the gift of the United States. The names are in order of the WAR, Instrumentalities and Methods of. The Hague Conventicm respecting the laws and customs of war on land (Article 23) declares that the means which a belligerent may adopt for the purpose of overcoming his enemy.are. not unlimited, and among the instrumentalities and methods which it expressly forbids are the use of poison and poisoned weapons; arms, projectiles and materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering; the use of, projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases; the use of expanding or explosive bullets; the employ ment of uncivilized races as troops; the com pelling of the inhabitants of occupied territory to take part in the military operations against their own country, or to furnish the enemy with information regarding the location or strength of their own forces; the killing of prisoners of war; the assassination of persons belonging to the enemy forces or his civil offi cials; the resort to treachery or perfidy; the bombardment of undefended towns, villages or habitations; the resort to devastation except in case of military necessity; the destruction of property except when imperatively demanded by the necessities of the war, etc. These pro hibitiona are. all expressly incorporated in the war manuals of the .thaited States, Great Britain arid France. In additian to these in strumentalities and methods forbidden by The Hague Convention there are others still which are prohibited by the established customs and usages of civilized warfare. The Declaratiop of Saint Petersburg of 1868 affirnzed the prin ciple that was is •a contest between only. the armed forces. of states mid not a contest be tween. their peoples •as suc.h,, and. that censer (family the aonly legitimate object which states should endeavor to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the. enetnYt that for this purpose it is sufficient to disable the greatest number of men. and that the em ployment of arms which needlessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men or render their death inevitable is not permissible?) :There is a diffeneace of opinicat among. the authorities as to whether the principle laid down in the DeclaraT tiou of Saint Petersburg that war is, merely a conte.st between the armed forces does uot go too far and the late war seems to have dem-r oastrated that :belligerents will not act upon it, But. there,. is little pr no difference of ppiniou among writers outside Germany that there are linuts beyond .which considerations of humanity must take precedence ov the necessities of war. As Spaight, a high glish authority, has aptly remarked, °the civilized world has signed and sealed, its.approval of two great principles — the first, that the sole end nf war is the overcoming of the military forces of the enemy; second, that as regards the means which may he adopted to secure this end certain restrictive laws apply? .
. German. militarists and teut writers, how ever, have long maintained a different view as to the nature and objects of war aud of the instrumentalities and methods. that may be em ployed in prosecuting it. The German manual ((Kriegsbrauch im 1..andkriege)) asserts that 'a war conducted with energy cautiqt, be di rected merely against the armed forces of the enemy state and the positions they occupy,. but it will and tnust in like manner seek to destroy the total moral and nulterial resources of the latter?) The rights of individuals, it adds, and their property can only be taken into considera tion in so far as the nature and objects of war permit. This means or seems to mean that it is permissible to direct the war not only against the armed forces of the enemy but against his education, art, science, finance, rail roads, industry, everything in fact that goes to make up his Kuhur. This view was as: serted by von Moltke in a letter to Professor Bluntschli in l&SO where, criticizing Blunt schli's proposed code in general and the Decla ration of Saint Petersburg in particular, he said: 41 cannot agree with the Declaration of Saint Petersburg that the wealcening of the armed forces of the enemy is the only legitimate object which states should e.ndeavor to accom plish during war; no, all auxiliary resources pf the hostile government must be destroyed: its finances, railroads, necessaries of life and even its prestige)) This view of the nature and objects of war wa.s that affirmed by Ger
many!s first and greatest military writer, von Clausewitz, who advocated terrorism and vio lence, as .4 means of overcoming the enemy, who declared that an invader has the right to live on the country, that war must support war and that the resource of. requisition and con tribution "has no limits except those of ex haustion, impoverishment and devastation." Views less extreme, although sufficiently so to be condemned by practically all writers out side Germany, have more recently been asserted by Generals von Hartmann, von der Goltz, von Hindenburg, von Bissing, Bernhardi and other German militarists. General von Hindenburg in an interview published in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse in November 1914, said: "One can not make war in a sentimental fashion. The more pitiless the conduct of the war the more humane it is in reality, for it will run its course all the sooner. The war which of all wars is and must be the most humane is that which leads to peace with as little delay as possible." Speak ing on 29 Aug. 1915, at Miinster, of the extreme measures which the Germans had felt obliged to take against the civil population of Belgium, General von Bissing said: "The innocent must suffer with the guilty. In the repression of infamy, human lives cannot be spared and if isolated houses, flourishing villages and even entire towns are annihilated, that is regretable but it must not excite ill-timed sentimentality. All this must not in our eyes weigh as much as the life of a single une of our brave soldiers. The rigorous accomplishment of duty is the emanation of a high Kultur, and in that, the population of the enemy country can learn a lesson from our army." Regarding the limitations imposed upon the conduct of belligerents by the laws of human ity-, German military writers have long held to the view that war is by its very nature incon sistent with humanity and cannot be prose cuted humanely if success is to be achieved. The German manual of vvar, prepared by the General Staff, shows a disposition to belittle the efforts which have had as their purpose the humanizing of vvar and more than once it re fers to those who have taken the leadership in such movements as misguided sentimentalists and theorists whose humanitarianism has "fre quently degenerated into sentimentality and flabby emotion" (Sentintentalitiit und Gefithls schwartnerei) which are in "fundamental con tradiction with the nature of war and its ob ject." Often the only true humanity, it as serts, "lies in a ruthless application of them" and soldiers would do well to guard against ex aggerated humanitarian notions regarding the object and purpose of war. Thi,, note of arning bad already been sounded years before by von Moltke in the letter to Bluntschli, referred to above, where the great marshal said "the great kindness. in war.is. to bring it to a speedy con clusion?' German text writers and inilitarists frankly admit. that there are limits in respect td the methods and instrumentalities which may be empkved by a belligerent but the theory of military necessity which, they uphold un fortunately reduces the limitations tp a nullity in many cases. The Hague Conventions infer-, enUally, and nearly all texi writers expressly, recognize that there are circumstances under which .a belligerent maY disregard the limita tions set by the established rules of inter national law but they .are all, at least outside Germany, in substantial, ag.reement that the plea of necessity is no excuse for overriding the limitations of the law unless its observance would actually imperil the existence of the bel ligerent. In short, it must be a case of self preservation and the injury or danger must be such as will not admit of the delay which the normal course of action would involve. Mere considerations of convenience or stra tegical interest such as led Germany to send her army through Belgium are not sufficient to justify a belligerent in overriding the law. The German manual, as well as many German text writers,. draws a distinction between what they call Krsegsraison and Kriegsmanier. The for mer, which may be translated as °the reason of war,° allows a belligerent to employ any means or methods which are necessary to the attain ment of the object of the war even though they are forbidden by the custoftis and usages of war (Kriegsmanier). In short, the limita tions set to belligerent conduct by the laws of war may be disregarded whenever their ob servance would hinder or defeat the attainment of the object of the war. Such a distinction is condemned by The Hague Conventions, by the war manuals of the United States, Great Britain and France and by practically all writers outside of Germany.