THE GREEN BAG
IOO
within the limits of Europe might have to be fought out upon the banks of the Ganges and the St. Lawrence. Before the American Revolution ended, the Congress of the United States, which under the Articles of Confederation possessed jurisdiction over all international questions, professed, in the ordinance of December 14, 1781, obedience to the law of nations "according to the general usages of Europe." When the torch thus lighted in the West was passed on to those who kindled the fires of the French Revolution, the Concert of Europe reassembled in order to apply to the internal affairs of France the same principles of in tervention which it had so recently applied with deadly effect in the case of Poland. Interference was justified by the declaration that monarchical institutions everywhere were endangered by revolutionary principles that threatened to extend from France to all other countries. To prevent that result the Concert undertook to intervene upon a vast scale, and in the end the intervention was successful. Napoleon was crushed and the throne of France restored to the House of Bourbon. But before the end came the ancient diplomatic fabric of Europe was shattered. Old landmarks were swept away; many of the smaller states were annihilated and some new ones created. The mighty task of reconstruction thus made necessary was committed to the famous congress that assembled at Vienna in November, 1815, the most important diplomatic body that had met since the Peace of Westphalia, a body that relaid the foundations of public law and restored to Europe a period of repose not seriously disturbed for forty years. THE ERA OP HUMANITY.
Before that period of repose ended the morning light of a new era broke upon the world, an era whose Christian spirit of hu manity boldly proclaimed its purposes to be, first, the prevention, when possible, of all wars through the good offices of inter national arbitration; second, the greatest
possible mitigation of the horrors of war, after the means of conciliation have proven ineffectual. A notable and practicable be ginning was made when the plenipotentia ries who concluded the Peace of Paris of 1856 were given to understand that the time had come when the increasing outcry for the introduction of greater humanity into the rules and practices of war could be disregarded no longer. In obedience to that demand the question of the maritime rights of belligerents and neutrals was formally presented to the Congress, and the result was the Declaration of Paris, a protocol signed April 1 6 by all the parties represented, and subsequently adopted as a part of the public law of the world by all powers except the United States, Spain, and Mexico. The first great step thus taken was soon followed by the epoch-making act of Presi dent Lincoln, who, in 1863, requested Prof. Francis Lieber of Columbia University, N.Y., a famous publicist, to undertake the no less novel than human task of codifying the laws of war. The fruit of that effort was promulgated by the War Department in General Order No. 100 for the government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, a code which has profoundly influ enced all subsequent manuals issued for the guidance of their armies by the European states, a code which certainly suggested to the eminent Swiss jurist Bluntschili his codi fication of the laws of war. But while it is a pleasure to every true American to con cede all honor to the immortal Lincoln for this initial attempt to mitigate, in theory at least, the horrors of war, we must not forget the glory due to a great Virginian for the issuance of a famous military order which notably diminished the horrors of war in actual practice. I refer to General Order No. 73, issued by General Robert E. Lee from the Headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia, at Chambersburg, Pa., June 27, 1863, in which he exhorted his troops to " have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties
