Publieists have divided wars into formal and informal; perfect and imperfect; offensive and defensive; national and civil; hut these classifica tions are practically worthless. War is a fact; its existence is proved as a fact, and it is noth ing more than the eontention on land or sea of armed hodies aeting under orders frmn and commissioned by a de jury or de facto sover eign, an) both parties to the contest, whether equal or unequal in size, legally or illegally exist ing, enjoy equal rights. Examples of this are the Civil 11'ar, the South African War, and more lately the state of affairs in the Philippines after their cession to the United States.
It is likewise immaterial whether the war be gins formally with a declaration, or informally by an act of hostility. it is necessary, however, to fix the exact date of the outbreak; for the ef fect of war when once existing is wide-reaching both as regards the belligerents and neutral na tions. A nation may formally declare war, as in the ease of the ultimatum served upon the Brit ish Government by the Transvaal in 1899; the nations may drift into war, as was the ease with China and Japan in 1894; or the date of the va r may be fixed by act or proclamation subse quent to the outbreak of hostilities, as was done by the act of Congress of April 25, 1898, which declared war to have existed "since the wenty first day of April. ate Domini eighteen dred and ninety-eight„ including said day, be tween the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain." As with kinds, so with causes of war. Pub licists have amused themselves with divisions into permissible and non-permissible. just and unjust wars, and have classified the various causes as just and unjust. lint this, however in teresting in itself, is not helpful. A sovereign nation has no superior. and therefore admits of no judge as to the justice or iniquity of the war into which it plunges. When nations are inflamed by real or imaginary violations of their rights, as in the ease of the Mexican War, justice is large ly an afterthought. .Patriotism. too often jingo ism, appears to control. The most that may be said is that when a nation's demand, just or un just, is met by a denial, it is for the nation to de vide whether it will attempt to force by arms the rejected demand. The question of responsibility is moral rather than a question of international law.
War is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end, namely peace. The Instructions for the Gorernment of Jronirs of the United Slates in the Field (prepared by Dr. Lieber in 1S63 and reissued in 1898) say in articles 29 and 30: "Peace is their (nations') normal condition: war is the exception. The ultimate object of all mod ern war is a renewed state of peace. The more vigorously wars are pursued, the better it is for humanity. Sharp wars are brief. Escr since the formation and coexistence of modern nations, and ever since wars have become great national wars, war has come to be acknowledged not to be its own end, but the means to obtain great ends of State, or to consist in defense against wrong: and no conventional restriction of the modes adopted to injure the enemy is any longer admitted: but the law of war imposes many limi tations and restrictions on principles of justice, faith, and honor." The history of warfare is at best a sorry tale. In ancient 'times contending armies literally devastated with fire and sword the countries they overran, aml either killed or enslaved their cap tives. The wars of the Middle Ages continued a scourge notwithstanding the doctrines of Chris tianity. As in Henry Maine says: "The I ?eforma Hon brought with it a new fury of fighting. and
the wars of religion were among the most fero cious that mankind had waged. Armies did not then so much consist of rival potentates, as of hosts in which each individual detested every man on the other side as a misbeliever. This ferocity is generally believed to have culminated in the storming of Magdeburg," when the whole town. with the exception of the cathedral and about 140 houses, was burned to the ground. and 30.000 of its 311,000 inhabitants were butchered without rerard to sex or age. The Thirty Years' War fills its with horror, but a better day was dawning and the hour and the man were at hand. In 1625, hi the very midst of this politest, (4rotiu: (q.v.) published his immortal work, De Jure Belli et Paris, a protest at once and a guide in which he outlined the permissible and the in famous with a firm and masterly tone!). Bas ing himself on the Scriptures, the principles of morality. and a supposed law cif nature. he sub jected the history of warfare to a careful ex amination, separated humane from ferocious precedents. and digested in an incomplete but admirable way the principles to be derived from their study. The weight of his influence gave to the result something of the consistency and the authority of a code. "The effects of the De .lure h.11i rt Paris." continues Maine, "both in respect of its general influence and of the detailed propositions which it laid down, were exceed ingly prompt and have proved extremely durable. At about the middle of his reign Louis XIV. of France adopted two measures by which lie was thought to have carried the severity of war to the furthest point. He devastated the Palatinate (q.v.), expressly directing his officers to carry fire and sword into every Huller of the prov inee, and he issued rt notice to the Dutch. with whom he was at war. that, as soon as the melting of the lee opened the canals, he would grant no MOM quarter to his Duteh enemies. The devasta tion of the Palatinate has beecone it proverb of savageness with all historians, though fifty years earlier it might at most have been passed as a measure of severity, or might eVen have been defended: but the proelatnation to the Dutch called forth a burst of cNeera tip)) from all Europe. and the threat to refuse qnarter was not acted upon. The book of was making itself felt, and the successors of t:rotins assure its that it was his authority which deterred the Freneh Ding and the French generals from the threatened outrage." Ilaternalional Law, p. 23.) The book not only made its own way, but its principles were popularized by t:rotins's success ors. particularly Putendorf, Bynkershoek, and Wolf. Vattel, however tree VATTEL, EA1iIER1C DE), belongs the supreme merit of supplying a text which at the present day is appealed to by theorist as well as practitioner. Indeed, it is al most impossible to overestimate his services as a popularizer of a system of international law to which he contributed but little. The improve ment produced in the conduct of warfare in the century and a quarter from the publication of Gpains's work is seen in the statement of Vatic] that he was struck by the extreme gentleness of the wars of his clay, and of standard of gen tleness proper to war. Vattel," according to Maine, "was a severe judge." A curious and well-nigh contemporary illus tration of 'gentleness' is supplied by the state ment of the Ilritish historian (Stedman, History of the American War), cited in a very valuable and illuminating note on the conduct of the war in Fiske, A flier/run Revolution, vol. ii. (pp.