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How to Fight Savage Tribes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2017

Elbridge Colby
Elbridge Colby*
Affiliation:
United States Army
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Extract

In the April, 1926 number of this Journal, Professor Quincy Wright remarks, apropos of the Damascus bombardment:

Does international law require the application of laws of war to peopleof a different civilization? The ancient Israelites are said to have denied the usual war restrictions to certain tribes against which they were sworn enemies, the ancient Greeks considered the rules of war recognized among Hellenes inapplicable to barbarians, and medieval Christian civilization took a similar attitude toward war with the infidel. An English writer in1906 draws attention to “ the peculiarly barbarous type of warfare which civilized powers wage against tribes of inferior civilization. When I contemplate,” he adds, “ such modem heroes as Gordon, and Kitchener, and Roberts, I find them in alliance with slave dealers or Mandarins, orcutting down fruit trees, burning farms, concentrating women and children, protecting military trains with prisoners, bribing other prisoners to fight against their fellow countrymen. These are performances which seem to take us back to the bad old times. What a terrible tale will the recording angel have to note against England and Germany in South Africa, against France in Madagascar and Tonquin, against the United States in the Philippines,against Spain in Cuba, against the Dutch in the East Indies,against the Belgians in the Congo State.” Possibly the emphasis, in most accounts of the recent bombardment of Damascus, upon the fact that relatively slight damage was done to Europeans and Americans indicates the existence of this distinction in the moral sense of western communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1927 , pp. 279 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1927

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References

1. Fuller, The Reformation of War, p. 191.

2. Marks v. U. S., 28 Ct. Cl. 147

3. Manual of Military Law, 1914, p. 235, par. 7. A similar distinction is implicit in Leiber's Instructions, par. 24, G. O. 100, 1863; Moore, Digest, VII, 173, regarding “ barbarous armies.”

4 Law of Nations, I, 145, citing Lettre du 26 Fev. au Roi, 1598, Due de Guise. Mem. deBell, et Sill.

5. Ibid., I, 136.

6. Ibid., II, 137, citing Matt. Paris, II (Rolls ser.), 813.

7. Droit des Gens, Bk. III, Ch. VIII, § 147. See also Rousseau, ,Contrat Social, Bk. I, Ch.IV, and letter of Talleyrand to the Emperor of 1806, cited in Bray, Occupation Militaire, pp.177-178.Google Scholar

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22. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 373.

23. Ibid., Vol.I,pp. 356-357; Rules of Land Warfare, U. S. Army, 1914, Art. 41; Bonfils, 8th ed. (Fauchille), sec. 1083; Morgan, War Book of the German General Staff, 1915, p. 87;Bordwell, Law of War, p. 140; Garner, International Law and the WorldWar, Vol. I, p.292; Oppenheim, International Law, 3rd ed., Vol. II, p. 108; as cited by Q. Wright in this.Journal, April, 1926, Vol. XX, p. 267.Google Scholar

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