Part 46 (1/2)

78. Prisoners liberated on parole and retaken in arms against the government to which they are pledged, can be deprived of the rights of prisoners of war, unless they have been included among prisoners exchanged unconditionally under a cartel of exchange negotiated subsequently to their liberation.

IV. +Persons Interned in Neutral Territory+

It is universally admitted that a neutral State cannot lend a.s.sistance to belligerents, and especially cannot allow them to make use of its territory without compromising its neutrality. Humanity, on the other hand, demands that a neutral State shall not be obliged to repel persons who beg refuge from death or captivity. The following rules are intended to reconcile these conflicting requirements:

79. The neutral State within the territory of which bodies of troops or individuals belonging to the armed force of the belligerents take refuge, must intern them at a place as distant as possible from the theater of war. It must do the same with persons using its territory as a means of carrying on military operations.

80. Interned persons may be kept in camps, or may be shut up in fortresses or other places of safety. The neutral State decides whether officers may be left free on parole on an engagement being entered into by them not to leave the neutral territory without authorization.

81. In default of special convention regulating the maintenance of interned persons, the neutral State supplies them with rations and clothes, and bestows care upon them in other ways to such extent as is required by humanity.

It also takes care of the _materiel_ of war which the interned persons may have had with them on entering the neutral territory.

On the conclusion of peace, or sooner if possible, the expenses occasioned by the internment are repaid to the neutral State by the belligerent State to which the interned persons belong.

82. The provisions of the Convention of Geneva of the 22d August, 1864 (see above, Articles 10 to 18, 35 to 40, and 74) are applicable to the hospital staff, as well as to the sick and wounded who have taken refuge in, or been carried into, neutral territory.

Especially,

83. Sick and wounded who are not prisoners may be moved across neutral territory, provided that the persons accompanying them belong solely to the hospital staff, and that any _materiel_ carried with them is such only as is required for the use of sick and wounded. The neutral State, across the territory of which sick and wounded are moved, is bound to take whatever measures of control are required to secure the strict observance of the above conditions.

PART III. PENAL SANCTION

When infractions of the foregoing rules take place, the guilty persons should be punished, after trial, by the belligerent within whose power they are.

84. Persons violating the laws of war are punishable in such way as the penal law of the country may prescribe.

But this mode of repressing acts contrary to the laws of war being only applicable when the guilty person can be reached, the injured party has no resource other than the use of reprisals when the guilty person cannot be reached, if the acts committed are sufficiently serious to render it urgently necessary to impress respect for the law upon the enemy. Reprisals, the occasional necessity of which is to be deplored, are an exceptional practice, at variance with the general principles that the innocent must not suffer for the guilty, and that every belligerent ought to conform to the laws of war, even without reciprocity on the part of the enemy. The right to use reprisals is tempered by the following restrictions:--

85. Reprisals are forbidden whenever the wrong which has afforded ground of complaint has been repaired.

86. In the grave cases in which reprisals become an imperative necessity, their nature and scope must never exceed the measure of the infraction of the laws of war committed by the enemy.

They can only be made with the authorization of the commander in chief.

They must, in all cases, be consistent with the rules of humanity and morality.

APPENDIX III

CONFERENCE AT BRUSSELS, 1874, ON THE RULES OF MILITARY WARFARE[498]

SECTION I

+Of the Rights of Belligerents One toward the Other+