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that the greater portion of any punishment for guilt should justly fall. Without the wealth of the Citizen to supply that money which has been called the sinews of war, not a Soldier could take the field nor a Sailor leave port; nay, neither of them could so much as have come into existence as either Soldier or Sailor. six successive coalitions against France formed during the twenty years from 1793 to 1813 were mainly supported by subventions from the wealth of England; it was these subsidies alone that enabled Russia, Austria, and Prussia to put troops into the field; and although not an English soldier was present at most of those battles, it was England who was always the principal and most terrible enemy by whom Napoleon found himself encountered, at Austerlitz, at Eylau, at Friedland, at Wagram, and at Leipzig. None better than he knew, nor oftener said, that the true source of the resistance he encountered in Europe was the wealth of England; neither was any one of his purposes more frankly avowed than the purpose of destroying that wealth by striking at that trade which he well knew to be its origin, and of thereby stopping the apparently inexhaustible flow of guineas springing up into armed Russians, Austrians, and Prussians. Nor can it be denied that he saw clearly and judged aright, or that it was less the fighting Soldiers or Sailors than the tax-paying Citizens of England who for so many years kept alive the resistance to his ambitious projects. Here, then, it is the Citizen upon whom, not principally, but exclusively, the guilt, if any, lay, upon him that the responsibility fell.

War, indeed, at its best is so horrible, so lamentable, so loathsome, that every merciful and generous mind must eagerly welcome anything that is calculated to mitigate its severities and to alleviate its

horrors. Whether, however, such a device as the Geneva Convention, which purports to relieve an army of the care of its own wounded, and thus to set it by so much the more free to continue its wounding and slaughtering work; or such a device as the St. Petersburg Convention, which prohibits the use of an explosive bullet weighing less than nine-tenths of a pound (400 grammes), but allows its use if of any greater weight-whether these are real alleviations of war, or are not rather astute contrivances for other ends, has been doubted and may be doubtful. On the other hand, the military usages, which allow some methods of injury in war and forbid others, and which, so far as they forbid, are held to be merciful alleviations of warfare-these have always been shifting and variable, differing with the different spirit of different ages, tending always to condemn the new device of mechanical ingenuity and so to deprive of its advantage the nation most excelling in that ingenuity. Thus in the twelfth century the new crossbow was condemned by the Church as an arm odious to God, while in the fifteenth century the musket was equally condemned for an unlawful weapon, so that even Bayard, the "chevalier sans peur et sans "reproche," ordered all musketeers who fell into his hands to be slain without mercy. In their modern form, these usages forbid the use of poison or of poisoned weapons, the mutilation of the dead, the maiming or killing of unarmed prisoners, and the slaughter of the wounded on the field of battle; but it must always be remembered that they forbid these acts only when they are unnecessary, and when they are consequently merely wanton barbarities; that the acts themselves are not prohibited when they are absolutely requisite for self-preservation; and that

the only judge whether they are requisite or not is the soldier who commits them. Thus the slaughter of the wounded-the most cruel of all-is permitted when the security of the victor is held by that victor to require it, and it was indeed carried out with probably greater completeness, and to a greater extent than was ever before known in modern times, no longer ago than at the battle of Omdurman in September, 1898. It appears, indeed, to be held that in war all acts are lawful, though all are not expedient; that the expediency of them depends mainly on the probability of retaliation in kind; and that of this expediency there can be no other judge than the perpetrator of the act himself. These attempts, therefore, to alleviate the horrors of war by military usage are as casual, ineffectual, and uncertain as they are incomplete and unsatisfying.

It would rather seem that any attempts to seek a mitigation of the horrors of war should be made in quite other directions than in those hitherto so lamely followed. Rather should ingenuity in the invention of new and more awful methods of destruction be encouraged than discouraged, rather should the use of all weapons be allowed without stint, and new and more deadly weapons added thereto. If, as may possibly be, we at last arrive at a point when a Chemist, innocent of gold lace and cock's feathers, but armed with formulæ, shall be capable of destroying armies off the face of the earth by simply mixing powders against them, that Chemist should rather be encouraged than discouraged; for war and the soldier's trade could hardly survive him, and the horrors of both would be mitigated to some purpose.

And meantime it would also seem that within the notions now current and the rules now agreed to, the

most powerful methods of alleviating the horrors of war will be such methods as will render the war most effective and therefore most short; such as will most effectually direct it, not so much at the Soldier and Sailor, who are but instruments, as at the Citizen, who is their creator, supporter, paymaster, inciter, and rewarder-not, indeed, at the Citizen's life, but at what touches him more nearly, his pocket; that war, in fine, should be directed at the material resources of the so-called non-combatant, that his prosperity should be impaired, his power of paying taxes diminished, and his patience and endurance so exhausted that he will be driven to hate the war and to sigh for peace. If this can be effected with the Citizen, the Soldier and the Sailor cannot and will not long survive as combatants in the war. If there are means whereby the Citizen-who is the real villain of the piece-can be reached in his pocket, without the Soldier or Sailor-who are the victims of the piece-being necessarily touched at all, then these means are, of all others, those that should be, those that must be preferentially adopted by just, merciful, and business-like warriors who would seek to attain the real supporters of the war, to injure them in the most effectual and least cruel manner, and thus to obtain that submission of their enemy whichwhich alone, and not slaughter, nor even "glory "— is the final end to be sought.

That such means exist, that they have been practised by Great Britain with success in the past and may again be so practised with equal success in the future, it is the purpose of this work to demonstrate, summarily, indeed, but, it is believed, successfully.

CHAPTER IV.

WARFARE IN PRACTICE.

WARFARE in its practice consists in doing as much material injury to the enemy as is necessary to reduce him to submission. It is effectual in proportion to the injury done to him. If no injury be done by it, it is absolutely ineffectual.

On land the injury is effected by invading the enemy's country, by capturing towns and cities, and occupying provinces, by seizing and destroying property whether public or private, by preventing even neutrals from carrying on trade in things not even contraband of war, by cutting off or appropriating the taxes, by thus depriving the Government of the enemy of the resources, whether of men, of matériel, or of money, on which it must rely for resistance, and by thus bringing it to that point of exhaustion when it will have no resource but submission. The destruction of men in battle is but a means to this end; for the object of war is not to depopulate a nation, but to reduce its Government to submission, and no victories in the field, no feats of arms, are of any avail whatever except in so far as they tend to bring about this result.

On the high seas there is no enemy's country to invade, there are no towns to capture, no provinces to occupy, and no possibility therefore of injuring the enemy by any of these methods. But there are Supplies to stop; there is property to capture,

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