But when an army is
directed or permitted to kill noncombatants on a large scale the
ferocity of the worst natures springs into fuller life, and both lust
and the thirst of blood become more widespread and more formidable. Had
less license been allowed to the soldiers and had they not been set to
work to slaughter civilians there would have been fewer of those painful
cases in which a depraved and morbid cruelty appears.
Two classes of murders in particular require special mention because one
of them is almost new and the other altogether unprecedented. The former
is the seizure of peaceful citizens as so-called hostages, to be kept as
a pledge for the conduct of the civil population or as a means to
secure some military advantage or to compel the payment of a
contribution, the hostages being shot if the condition imposed by the
arbitrary will of the invader is not fulfilled. Such hostage-taking,
with the penalty of death attached, has now and then happened, the most
notable case being the shooting of the Archbishop of Paris and some of
his clergy by the Communards of Paris in 1871, but it is opposed both to
the rules of war and to every principle of justice and humanity.
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