Section 15 Belligerent 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).
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).