THE ETHICS OF REPRISALS.

THE discussion—now, we hope, happily ended—whether the life of Captain Blaikie (the gallant merchant captain who tried to defend his ship by ramming a German submarine) could be saved by means of threatening reprisals, was carried so far into the recesses of morals that we should like to say something further on the whole question of reprisal& We yield to none in our concern for the life of any merchant captain. If such a man in the hands of the Germans is in danger of his life, and is not in a position to enjoy the technical excuse on which the Germans have chosen to acquit Captain Blaikie, unquestionably we ought to do everything that honour permits by way of reprisals in order to save him. We owe him every effort that the Government can possibly make to secure his life. The nation would never be tolerant towards any inactivity on the part of the Government in such a matter, and we do not for a moment expect that at any stage the Government would be guilty of inactivity. But there are several conceivable ways in which the Government might threaten Germany. They might pledge themselves to punish the German officials or states- men, however high their position (not stopping short of capital punishment), who were proved responsible for taking the life of a merchant captain. They might make such a Lex Talionis an invariable rule. We can conceive a situation arising in which it might be necessary, again, to meet the lawless and savage inhumanity of submarine warfare by saying that in future we would not take prisoners from the Germans—that there would be no quarter given to those who allowed none. But all such proposals as these differ in an essential principle from the proposal which one heard on every side a few days ago, that the British Government should announce that if Captain Blaikie were executed a German officer of the highest rank, naval or military, imprisoned here would be taken out and shot. In our judgment, this proposal was an outrageous one, which not only would not have accomplished its purpose, but would have put us wrong with the entire world.

The whole sense of custom, law, and tradition in the treatment of prisoners is that when the surrender of a prisoner has been accepted the captors have ipso facto made themselves responsible for his safety. They have become the trustees of his life. The trust they have undertaken is a sacred one, only the more obligatory on their honour because they need not have undertaken it at all. We are not sentimentalists, but we hope we appreciate what is due to Englishmen and the civilization for which they are avowedly fighting. The idea of " no quarter " does not fill us with the horror that affects some people. We can easily imagine the ex- actions of military necessity becoming so stringent on the field that the combatant giving quarter to an enemy who gave none would be making a present of victory to his adversary. In any case the acceptance of surrender is always in the nature of an act of mercy. It is a nice point whether a man who has fired with a machine gun till the very moment when the attackers aro on the top of him has the smallest right to expect that by throwing up his hands he can save his life. The bayonets are too near him to be withheld. It might reasonably be argued, too, that habitually to accept surrenders in such circumstances would deprive the bayonet of its moral value ; that the effect would be to prolong the war ; and that in the result humanity would not be served. In practice, as we all know, the fighting becomes so desperate in some quarters of the field that quarter is neither given nor asked. This has happened in all wars and with all armies. But when once a man's proffered surrender has been accepted, when his life has been spared, when the act of mercy has been accomplished—then the case is wholly different. The captor has entered into a contract of honour.

What was proposed during the Blailde discussion was that that contract should be broken. It was proposed that one of the bene- ficiaries of such a contract—a man who must formally be regarded as innocent inasmuch as he was accepted as a suitable object of an act of mercy—should be shot for the fault of some one whom he may never have seen and of whom he may never have heard. This was the atrocious proposal against which we protest.

If we ever acted on such a proposal—the circumstances may very easily recur—nothing would be easier than for Germany to make it seem to neutrals that Britain was guiltier than herself. The Germans (falsely of course) would say: " We should never have dreamed of shooting an innocent man without a triaL We tried the Englishman by regular process of law and we found him guilty. It was a case of We have a law, and by our law he ought

to die.' But the British Government have murdered a man against whom, as they openly admit, no charge whatever has been brought."

We ao not see anywhere a prospect of advantage to ourselves if we should act in the manner proposed. It cannot be supposed that the German Government value the lives of their imprisoned officers so greatly that they would hesitate to sacrifice a few in order to put us in the wrong. They would jump at the opportunity. We fear that matters would then go much further and worse for us. If a woman, as we said last week, happened to be killed when the Allied airmen were bombing a German military post, the Germans might execute an Englishwoman in Germany in return. We think them perfectly capable of that, and they would of course plead the British precedent of taking an innocent life. How should we respond then ? Should we shoot a German woman interned here ? No—we could not do it. We fear that the corn. petition in reprisals of dishonour would end with no result what- ever except that a deep stain would remain, and that a certain amount of innocent blood would have been shed during the transaction.

It may be worth while to say here that we ought to reflect whether, as a matter of fact, it would pay us to throw away the reputation which we have earned (and which even German lies have not taken away from us) of treating our prisoners justly and considerately. Surely the growing inclination of the German troops to surrender is to a considerable extent to be explained by the knowledge that by giving themselves up they will be exchanging a life of indescribable danger and hardship for comfort and absolute safety.

It has been said that Macaulay in his essay on Barere has justi- fied the kind of reprisal that was proposed to save Captain Blaikie. The assertion must have been the result of a careless reading of the essay. Macaulay relates how Partre proposed a decree that no quarter should be given to any English or Hanoverian soldier. Macaulay thus summarizes Barbre's argument :-

" War to the death against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk, quarter had been refused to them when they asked it on their knees, if our troops had exterminated them all, instead of suffering them to infest our fortresses by their presence, the English Government would not has e renewed its attack on our frontiers this year. It is only the dead man who never comes back. What is this moral pestilence which has introduced into our armies false ideas of humanity ? That the English were to be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic notion of the Brissotines ; it was the patriotic practice of Dumourier. But humanity consists in exterminating our enemies. No mercy to the execrable Englishman. Such are the sentiments of the truo Frenchman ; for he knows that he belongs to a nation revolutionary as Nature, powerful as freedom, ardent as the saltpetre which she has just torn from the entrails of the earth. Soldiers of liberty, when victory places Englishmen at your mercy, strike None of them must return to the servile soil of Great Britain ; none must pollute the free soil of France."

In a footnote Macaulay denies the statement made by one of Barbre's biographers that Lord Fitzwilliam moved a resolution similar to Barbre's in the House of Lords. The French Con- vention, however, accepted Barbre's motion. Macaulay con- tinues :—

" Intelligence arrived from the seat of war of a sharp contest between some French and English troops, in which the Republicans had the advantage, and in which no prisoners had been made. Such things happen occasionally in all wars. Bartre, however, attributed the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertained the Convention with another Carmagnole."

Presently Macaulay summarizes a fresh speech by Barere as follows :-

"' All the troops,' he said, of the coalesced tyrants in garrison at Conde, Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, ought to be put to the sword unless they surrender at discretion in twenty-four hours. The English, of course, will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the English we have no treaty but death.' "

Finally, Macaulay adds his comment on the fact that the French troops absolutely refused to act upon Earbre's savage decree, and that the Convention was afraid to compel them :— " If Barere had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to estimate the extent of the calamity which he would have brought on the human race. No Government, however averse to cruelty, could, in justice to its own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely justifiable, but a sacred duty. It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French sailor whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread the introduction of such a system. On the contrary, the operation of Barbre's new law of war would have been more unfavourable to his countrymen than to ours ; for we believe that, from the beginning to the end of the war, there never was a time at which the number of French prisoners in England was not greater than the number of English prisoners in France ; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars while England retains her maritime superiority. Had the murderous decree of the Convention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that, for every Englishman slain by the French, at least three Frenchmen would have been put to the sword by the English. It is, therefore, not as Englishmen, but as members of the great society of mankind, that we speak with indignation and horror of the change which Barere attempted to introduce. The men

slaughter would have been the smallest part of the evil. The butchering of a single unarme d man in cold blood, under an Act of the legislature, would have produced more evil than the carnage of ten such fields as Albuera. Public law would have been subverted from the foundations ; national enmities would have been inflamed to a degree of rage which happily it is not easy for us to conceive ; cordial peace would have been impossible. The moral character of the European nations would have been rapidly and deeply corrupted ; for in all countries those men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of the public weal enjoy high consideration, and are considered as the best arbitrators on points of honour and manly bearing. With the standard of morality established in the military profession the general standard of morality musb to a great extent sink or rise."

How any one can cite Macaulay as a supporter in principle of the particular sort of reprisal proposed hero passes our understanding. Macaulay says that if no quarter were given " retaliation " would be a " sacred duty." We heartily agree. We have already said so. But that is not what was proposed in Captain Blaikie's case. What was proposed was the execution of an innocent person whose capitulation had been accepted and whose life had been received in trust. Macaulay nowhere says that such an act would be a duty, sacred or otherwise. He does not discuss it. He does not even mention it. So far as ho carries the discussion he is concerned only with refusing quarter on the field of battle, and with what horror he regarded Barere's treatment of that question the words we have quoted tell for themselves.

We do not suggest for a moment that we should stand naked and helpless before our enemies. We have indicated the direction justifiable reprisals might take. Let us announce our intention when the occasion arises, and when we have announced it let us go forward without faltering. But let us not go back upon the practice of regarding the safety of prisoners as a sacred trust, for that practice is inspired by expediency and shrewdness as much as by a nobly humane tradition.