_Belligerent Reprisals_
REPRISALS
Sir,--The controversy as to the legitimacy of the recent attack on
Freiburg tends to stray into irrelevancies. If the attack was made upon
barracks or troop trains no one would surely criticise what is of
everyday occurrence, although not unlikely to cause incidentally death
or injury to innocent persons. There seems, however, to be no reason for
supposing that such military objects were in view, or that our
aeroplanes were instructed to confine their activity, as far as
possible, to the attainment of such objects. We must assume, for any
useful discussion of the question raised, that the operation was
deliberately intended to result in injury to the property and persons of
civilian inhabitants, not, of course, by way of vengeance, but by way of
reprisal--_i.e._ with the practical object of inducing the enemy to
abstain in the future from his habitually practised illegal barbarities.
Such reprisals, as is to-day so well explained by your correspondent
"Jurist," are no violations of international law. Objections might, of
course, be made to them as unlikely to produce their hoped-for effect,
or as repugnant to our feelings of humanity or honour. They are not
illegal.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND.
Oxford, May 4 (1917).
REPRISALS
Sir,--If my friend Sir Edward Clarke will glance again at my letter of
Monday, he will, I think, cease to be surprised that it contains no
answer to his censure from an ethical standpoint of our treatment of
Freiburg. My object was merely to indicate the desirability of keeping
the question whether acts of the kind are in violation of international
law (which I answered in the negative) distinct from questions, which I
catalogued, as to their practical inutility, with which some of your
correspondents have occupied themselves, or their repugnancy to feelings
of honour and humanity with which Sir Edward has dealt exclusively. Any
discussion of political expediency or of high morals would have been
beside my purpose.
It is curious that Sir Herbert Stephen should to-day speak of my letter
of the 7th as a defence of the aerial bombardment of Freiburg. It
neither attacked nor defended the bombardment, but, solely in the
interests of clear thinking, indicated the desirability of keeping
distinct the three points of view from which the topic may be regarded,
viz.: (1) of international law; (2) of practical utility; (3) of
morality and honour.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. E. HOLLAND.
Oxford, May 9 (1917).
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