Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

from the Catholic point of view it might be held that they denied the Christ. During the Hundred Years War there were a number of examples of the slaying of prisoners on a large scale. Henry V at the battle of Agincourt, hearing a false rumor that the enemy had ridden around his line and was attacking the baggage-train, ordered all the prisoners who had been taken in the earlier part of the battle to be cut down lest they should help their friends; and this was done, so that hundreds of French nobles thus lost their lives after they had surrendered.

A similar event occurred some years earlier in the battle of Aljubarota in Portugal. The Portuguese army was drawn up behind fortifications of logs through which their opponents could pass only by a narrow entrance. The first attack of their enemies, a mixed force of French and Castilians, was made by a considerable vanguard who were all slain or taken prisoners. After a short interval the second division was reported advancing to the attack. "On hearing this," says Froissart, "they held a short council of war and came to a pitiless resolution; for it was commanded, under pain of death, that whoever had taken a prisoner should instantly kill him, and neither noble nor rich nor simple should be exempted. Those barons, knights and squires who had been captured were in a melancholy situation, for entreaties would have been of no avail. They were scattered about disarmed in different parts, considering themselves in safety, for their lives at least; but it was not so, which was a great pity. Each man killed his prisoner and those who refused had him slain before their eyes: for the Portuguese and English who had given this advice said: 'It was better to kill than to be killed, and if we do not put them to death they will liberate themselves while we are fighting and then slay us, for no one ought to put confidence in his prisoner."" Then, after naming the principal nobles who thus lost their lives, the chronicler adds: "This was a very unfortunate event to the Portuguese as well as to the prisoners; for they put to death, this Saturday, as many good prisoners as would have been worth to them, taking one with another, four hundred thousand francs." This pensive note of melancholy with which Froissart closes

his account of the incident illustrates the attitude of his day toward prisoners of war. He is grieved at the failure of a promising business speculation. He is not shocked at the murder of the prisoners. It seems to have been the custom throughout the Middle Ages to kill all captives from whom no advantage could be gained, but to hold as prisoners those who might be expected to furnish a ransom, and to treat them, besides, with utmost courtesy and consideration. When we compare this with the German treatment of prisoners in the recent war; when we consider the cruelty of the jailors, the brutality of the punishments inflicted, the meagre fare, the neglect of the sick, the forced work in the mines, the deaths and the numberless cases of insanity among the prisoners-I am uncertain which practice is the more humane.

It has sometimes been held that in spite of what we playfully term the progress of civilization, war tends with the passage of the years to become more cruel rather than less so. And it is indeed a melancholy reflection that there is scarcely a practice of medieval warfare that has not found its parallel in the recent war, save only the ransoming of prisoners-in itself a kindly custom; while in one respect, the carrying off into slavery of the peaceful inhabitants of a conquered land, there is, so far as I recall, no example in all the bloody annals of the Middle Ages. For that we must go back to the pre-Christian centuries.

EFFECT OF THE WAR UPON THE INSTITUTION

OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.

BY EDWARD SHERWOOD MEAD.

Professor of Finance.

Institutions may be defined as habits of thought, formed as a result of a body of experience touching upon some phase of life or conduct to which a people has been subjected for a sufficient time to make the resulting mental attitude a matter of common sense. Approval of established institutions is expected as a condition of membership in society. Any one who refuses to give at least his nominal and formal approval and adherence to them will be rated as either radical, revolutionary, or in extreme cases of variation, of unsound mind. Opposition to established habits of thought, on matters with which the welfare of the community is believed to be bound up, will result, especially if the opposition is so effective as to threaten to modify or overturn the institution attacked, in inflicting upon the offender the displeasure of the dominant class in the community, who justly consider themselves the guardians of its institutions. This displeasure in extreme cases may result in some form of martyrdom, religious, political, or social.

Our own history is full of instances of this kind. In fact, our history started with the overthrow of a venerable institution about which the habits of thought of thousands of years had clustered, the hereditary monarchy, the attack upon which was looked upon by the loyalists as not one whit better than sacrilege. And had it not been for the stupidity of the British war office, combined with the timely aid of France, our revolutionary ancestors would have suffered severely at the hands of the adherents of the established order. The remark of Franklin, which referred to the alternative between hanging together or hanging separately, had little humor in it at the time it was uttered.

As this illustration shows, however, institutions being the results of the prolonged interaction between man and his environment which we call human experience, are subject to change as the environment changes. Human nature, so the psychologists tell us, changes so slowly, that the passing of a thousand years leaves it, in its essential elements, substantially untouched. The primary human instincts govern man's actions today as they have done for countless ages. Human environment, on the other hand, the sum of the material circumstances among which human life is passed, changes rapidly, and as it changes, although more slowly, owing to the difficulty in modifying opinions once they are fixed, those habits of thought, upon matters of vital moment, which we call institutions, change also.

To refer again to our revolutionary illustration, the Englishman, transplanted to the new world, three thousand miles removed from the seat of royalty, after the lapse of two centuries, was able to divest himself of his attachment to the English crown which he could not perceive was of any use to him in the circumstances in which his life must be lived. No doubt, but for certain overt acts, the union between the colonies and the mother country would have persisted, but for all effective pur poses of regulating the life of the colonists it had been dissolved long before 1776. Only among the wealthy, the cultivated, the aristocracy of the time, those persons whose circumstances largely protected them from the discipline of new world experience, did the sentiment of loyalty linger as a controlling influence; and they were too few in number to affect the result.

This illustration shows us the provisional nature of human institutions. Indeed this part of history is strewn with the wrecks of institutions once flourishing and dominant, which men have thrown over sometime, often a long time after their usefulness disappeared. The "divine right of kings," its last surviving exponent, unless we except the Mikado, now an exile in Holland; human slavery, only a little while ago strong enough to dominate the United States; polygamy, which still lingers in half civilized countries; the pater familias, with his

« AnteriorContinuar »