Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [168]
An ominous issue developed on the rights of defense of an unarmed population against armed invasion. Ardagh proposed an amendment changing the “liberty” of a population to oppose the invader to its “duty” to do so, adding, “by all legitimate means of the most energetic and patriotic resistance”—which won him the enthusiastic response of the small powers. Colonel Schwartzkopf “opposed it tooth and nail,” supported for once by the Russians. “If anything was required to show the need for some article of the kind,” Ardagh reported, it was the “bitter resistance” of the Germans and Russians which accomplished the amendment’s defeat. This committee then turned its attention more successfully to such questions as the treatment of spies and prisoners of war; the prohibition of poison; treachery and ruses; the bombardment of undefended towns; and rules governing flags of truce, surrender, armistice and occupation of hostile territory.
In the committee on limiting new weapons the negative trend had become somewhat embarrassing. Everyone was therefore delighted to fall upon the question of dumdum, or expanding, bullets, which offered an opportunity both to outlaw something and to vent the general anti-British feeling of the time. Developed by the British to stop the rush of fanatical tribesmen, the bullets were vigorously defended by Sir John Ardagh against the heated attack of all except the American military delegate, Captain Crozier, whose country was about to make use of them in the Philippines. In warfare against savages, Ardagh explained to an absorbed audience, “men penetrated through and through several times by our latest pattern of small calibre projectiles, which make a small clean hole,” were nevertheless able to rush on and come to close quarters. Some means had to be found to stop them. “The civilized soldier when shot recognizes that he is wounded and knows that the sooner he is attended to the sooner he will recover. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off the field to his ambulance, where he is dressed or bandaged by his doctor or his Red Cross Society according to the prescribed rules of the game as laid down in the Geneva Convention.
“Your fanatical barbarian, similarly wounded, continues to rush on, spear or sword in hand; and before you have had time to represent to him that his conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the proper course for the wounded man to follow—he may have cut off your head.” Behind the flippant words Ardagh was making the point that war was a bitter business and, more politely than Fisher, was ridiculing the notion that it could be civilized. Unimpressed, the delegates voted 22–2, against the unyielding opposition of Britain supported by the United States, to prohibit the use of the dumdum bullet.
Unanimity, elusive so far, was at last achieved on one topic: the launching of projectiles or explosives from balloons. Here was something, almost untried, that almost everyone was willing to ban, especially the Russians, for whom the prospect of adding a new dimension to warfare was altogether too much. As Colonel Jilinsky almost plaintively put it, “In the opinion of the Russian Government the various means of injuring the enemy now in use are sufficient.” As regards air warfare, most of the delegates were willing to agree and a permanent prohibition was voted. The committee congratulated itself. Then suddenly at the next meeting Captain Crozier, having had serious second thoughts after consultation with Captain Mahan, raised an objection. They were proposing to ban forever, he said, a weapon of which they had no experience. New developments and inventions might soon make airships dirigible, enabling them to be steered by motor power over the area of battle and to take part at a critical moment with possibly decisive effect, thus in the long run sparing