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36 Can. L. Times 754 (1916)
War Crimes and War Criminals

handle is hein.journals/canlawtt36 and id is 764 raw text is: THE CANADIAN LAW TIMES. WAR CRIMES AND WAR CRIMINALS. J. War crimes have been defined as such hostile or other acts of soldiers or other individuals as may be punished by the enemy on capture of the offenders, and they have been classified as follows:-Firsit, Violations of recognized rules of war, committed by members of the armed forces; secondly, all hostilities in arms committed by individuals who are not mem- bers of the enemy armed forces; thirdly, espionage and war treason, and lastly all marauding acts.' It is with the first class that I am here concerned and more particularly with the jnethods for the pre- vention of such offences and where these fail with the punishment of the offenders. In all the wars of the past it would probably be safe to say that atrocious crimes against the person and property of one belligerent have been committed by individual members of the armed f6rces of the other belligerent. But the organization of crimes com- mitted on a vast scale by the armed forces of one belli- gerent under the express orders of the high military command as part of a deliberate policy to break the enemy has happily been rare in history. It has been left to Prussianism to relapse into that bar- barism in the conduct of war which we had thought had been left behind with the Thirty Years War of the 17th. Century, although perhaps certain conduct of the Germans in the Franco-German War of 1870, might have prepared us for this reversion to type. Even in ancient Greece where internecine strife between numerous small and independent states pre- vailed, attempts were made to humanize warfare and to mitigate those terrible atrocities and blood-thirsti- ness which distinguished the nations of antiquity. 'Oppenheim, International Law, Vol. II. 309-10. [VOL. 36

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