more avoided. Such an act as the devastation of the
Palatinate under Louis XIV. would now in a European war be universally
condemned, though the wholesale destruction of villages in our own
Indian frontier wars and the methods employed on both sides in the civil
war in Cuba appear to have borne much resemblance to it. In the
treatment of merchants the rule of reciprocity which was laid down in
Magna Charta is largely observed, and the Conference of Brussels in 1874
pronounced it to be contrary to the laws of war to bombard an
unfortified town. The great Civil War in America probably contributed
not a little to raise the standard of humanity in war; for while few
long wars have been fought with such determination or at the cost of so
many lives, very few have been conducted with such a scrupulous
abstinence from acts of wanton barbarity.

Many restrictive rules also have been accepted tending in a small degree
to mitigate the actual operations of war, and they have had some real
influence in this direction, though it is not possible to justify the
military code on any clear principle either of ethics or logic.
Assassination and the encouragement of assassination; the use of poison
or poisoned weapons; the violation of parole; the deceptive use of a
flag of truce or of the red cross; the slaughter of the wounded; the
infringement of terms of surrender or of other distinct agreements, are
absolutely forbidden, and in 1868 the Representatives of the European
Powers assembled at St. Petersburg agreed to abolish the use in war of
explosive bullets below the weight of 14 ounces, and to forbid the
propagation in an enemy's country of contagious disease as an instrument
of war. It laid down the general principle that the object of war is
confined to disabling the enemy, and that weapons calculated to inflict
unnecessary suffering, beyond what is required for attaining that
object, should be prohibited. At the same time explosive shells,
concealed mines, torpedoes and ambuscades lie fully within the permitted
agencies of war. Starvation may be employed, and the cutting off of the
supply of water, or the destruction of that supply by mixing with it
something not absolutely poisonous which renders it undrinkable. It is
allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to
come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by
spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies
and desert