private persons is held to be incapable of appropriation by an occupying belligerent; but the pressing and immediate needs of warfare may justify the destruction of buildings or their seizure for use as a fortified post. Troops may be quartered in private houses, though the inhabitants may not be forcibly ejected from their homes to make more room for the soldiers. But if non-combatants fire upon the invading forces from their dwellings, or use them for the purpose of committing other acts of unauthorized hostility, the laws of war give to the belligerent who suffers the right to inflict punishment by the destruction of the property in question, as well as by severities against the persons of the offenders. In warfare between civilized states it is found that, as a rule, nothing worse than temporary and severe inconvenience is experienced by those of the inhabitants of occupied districts who remain in their homes. They are able to take some care of their property, and can generally prevent wanton damage and destruction by promptly reporting any excesses to the officers in command. But those who abandon their dwellings and take to flight at the approach of the enemy are likely to find on their return little but the mere shell remaining. The houses will have been filled with soldiers from basement to garret, and their furniture and fittings will probably have been first subjected to the roughest treatment and then burnt for firewood. Unless there is any reason to anticipate personal violence, the best policy for the inhabitants in case of invasion is to stay at home and keep watch over their property. It can hardly escape diminution by means of requisitions and other exactions, but there can be no reason in the nature of things, and there is certainly none in the laws of war, why it should be destroyed.

The movables belonging to the non-combatant population of occupied districts may not be seized unless they are of immediate use in war. Such things as arms and ammunition are subject to confiscation even when they are the property of private individuals, but ordinary private property of a

personal nature is regarded as sacred, and a general ought to exercise the greatest care to prevent his troops from making free with it. But seizure may follow upon conviction of any offence against the code laid down by the invader; such, for instance, as giving information to the dispossessed authorities, or harboring their agents. Moreover, means of communication belonging to private individuals may be taken and used by the occupying forces. At the end of the war, however, they ought to be restored, and it is even asserted that compensation should be paid to their owners. The Brussels Conference of 1874 laid down this rule with regard to railway plant, land telegraphs, and steam and other vessels not included in cases regulated by maritime law.1

The special case of

Fines.

§ 204.

Strictly speaking, Requisitions are articles of daily consumption and use taken by an invading army from the people of the occupied territory, Contributions are sums Requisitions, Con- of money exacted over and above the taxes, and Fines are payments levied upon a district as a punishment for some offence against the invaders committed within it. But the two former terms are used interchangeably in a loose and popular sense to signify anything, whether in money or in kind, demanded by an occupying force from the inhabitants of the country it has overrun.

The invader has an undoubted right to levy requisitions at his own discretion, and in most modern wars he has done so, sometimes leniently, sometimes severely. When Bonaparte entered Italy in 1796, he marched with few or no supplies of his own, and compelled the rich districts he subdued to feed and clothe his hungry and ragged regiments.2 Throughout his career he endeavored, with marked success, to act upon the principle of making each war support itself. 1 Brussels Code, Art. 6.

2 Fyffe, Modern Europe, I., 116, 117.

Contributions as well as requisitions were levied with ruthless severity wherever the soldiers of the Republic and the Empire carried their victorious standards, till at length a French army became as terrible a scourge to the people as were the feudal exactions and seigniorial privileges swept away in consequence of its successes. France suffered through the constant drain upon its best blood to fill the gaps in Napoleon's ranks, and by the restrictions upon trade due to the Continental system, but till the last defensive struggle little of its wealth was directly taken for the expenses of constant warfare. The usual plan is to regard requisitions as a supplementary resource, and not as the main support of the invaders. In modern wars civilized armies have carried with them vast trains of provisions and other supplies, but even when thus provided, their exactions have sometimes been enormous. Baker, in his edition of Halleck,1 gives a list of the daily supplies requisitioned by the Germans when they occupied Versailles during the siege of Paris in the winter of 1870-1871. They required,

120,000 loaves,

80,000 lbs. of meat, 90,000 lbs. of oats, 27,000 lbs. of rice,

7,000 lbs. of roasted coffee, 4,000 lbs. of salt, 20,000 litres of wine, 500,000 cigars.

In other portions of the field of hostilities similar demands were made, and sometimes the French armies were obliged to levy requisitions upon their own countrymen. It is calculated that in a war which lasted only six months the occupied districts of France were mulct in goods of all kinds to the extent of about $80,000,000 or £16,000,000. Facts like these should be remembered by those who are inclined to attach much weight to the assertion that warfare on land is less destructive and more merciful than warfare at sea.

1 International Law, II., 111, note.

Recent military codes contain a number of rules drawn up with the object of making the process of levying requisitions as orderly and as little burdensome as possible.1 The best practice is for the commanders of detached corps to requisition objects of immediate use, such as food and fodder, while the commander of the whole army requisitions articles that take some time to supply, such as clothing and boots. The demand is made in writing, and receipts are given for the articles supplied, in order to afford proof to other commanders of the amount already exacted from the place, and to be evidence of its losses in case the government should recoup the suffering districts out of the general taxation of the country. The collection is generally made through the local authorities, and only when they have fled, or when there is not time to set them in motion, are soldiers detailed to bring in what is required. Requisitions should be proportioned to the needs of the troops and the resources of the occupied territory. In the rough and ready processes of actual warfare these rules are frequently broken. Yet they must not be regarded as mere counsels of perfection, fit only for some Utopian world in which war remains as a strange survival from a half-forgotten epoch of force and ignorance. They can be kept if commanders are determined men, and soldiers are trained in habits of obedience and self-restraint. Nearly five hundred years ago Henry V. of England prevented pillage, violence to unarmed peasants and insults to women, because he did not scruple to hang the Bardolphs of his army when they indulged their predatory instincts in churches and elsewhere.2 What could be done with the rough archers and men-at-arms of medieval England can be done with the civilized soldiers of the nineteenth century; and surely it is not too much to ask that, if war must still exist as the last resort of nations, it shall be purged of all unnecessary cruelties, and be in fact what it is in name,

1 e.g. Brussels Code, Arts. 40, 42; Acollas, Droit de la Guerre, pp. 84-86. 2 Bernard, Growth of the Laws of War, pp. 98, 99.

a solemn trial of strength between the public armed forces of the combatants.

Contributions, as distinct from requisitions, ought, so said the Brussels Conference, to be imposed "only on the order and on the responsibility of the general-in-chief, or of the superior civil authority established by the enemy in the occupied territory."1 In levying them the assessment in use for the purposes of ordinary taxation should be followed as far as possible, and in all cases receipts should be given. On principle there is little to be said for these exactions of money, though they were resorted to by Napoleon to an extent which seriously impoverished whole provinces, and have not been altogether unknown since his time. We cannot venture to say with Professor Acollas that they are illegal, because history testifies that they have not been banished from modern usage, and Military Codes drawn up by men who know from experience how hostilities are conducted recognize them as incidents of belligerent occupation. But the only case in which they are consistent with sound principle is when they are taken as an equivalent for payments which should have been made in kind. They may then be regarded as based upon the doctrine that in case of necessity a commander may feed his troops from the resources of occupied districts. In other cases they have no more respectable origin than the old practice of enrichment by plunder. Pillage is still pillage, even though it be reduced to system and carried on by rule and measure.

Little need be said on the subject of fines. They are levied upon a locality when an offence against the invaders has been committed within it and the guilty individuals cannot be discovered. The commander of an occupying force is bound to provide for the security of his communications and the safety of his soldiers. He cannot be expected to take no notice of the slaughter of his sentinels or the cutting off 1 Brussels Code, Art. 41.

2 Droit de la Guerre, pp. 85, 86, and note.