and punished by a term of imprisonment. It is difficult to understand the process of reasoning by which responsibility for an act of this kind could be imputed to the whole population. The fine was, therefore, nothing more than a contribution in disguise and involved no question of community responsibility. The legality of the fine of 5,000,000 francs laid on Brussels in consequence of the popular demonstration on the national holiday and the subsequent fine of 2,000,000 francs on account of an anti-Flemish demonstration has been denied by the Belgian writers on the ground that a military occupant has no lawful right to repress by huge fines the manifestation by the inhabitants of their patriotic sentiments. It can hardly be contended, however, that if acts of this kind amount in fact to open manifestations of hostility toward the occupying power, or if they are accompanied by public disorders, they may not be repressed or punished by means of fines.

The 500,000-franc fine levied on Brussels in consequence of the crime of murder by an unknown person in the suburb of Schaerbeek this on the assumption that the weapon used had been procured in Brussels, where the possession of firearms by the inhabitants had been forbidden by the military authorities certainly involved a wide extension of the theory of collective responsibility. The local civil authorities had issued a proclamation directing the people to bring in their fire-arms and deposit them at the city hall and warning them of the severe penalties to which they were liable in case of noncompliance with the orders of the military authorities. If the civil authorities did all in their power to insure compliance with the German military regulations and also exerted themselves to discover the offender, as they claim to have done, it may be seriously doubted whether under any reasonable or just interpretation of the rule as to collective responsibility either guilt or responsibility could be imputed to the whole population.

The imposition by the German officers in numerous instances of fines for the acts of unknown individuals for cutting telegraph and telephone wires, for firing upon German troops, for committing injury to bridges and lines of communications, for defacing public notices, tearing down the German flag, strewing glass on the highways, and other similar acts would seem to

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be defensible only on the assumption that the mass of the population were accomplices, or at least approved the acts, and that the civil authorities could have prevented them had they desired to do so, an assumption which in the majority of cases was probably unwarranted.

Both the Belgian and French authorities charge the Germans with imposing community fines in various instances for acts which were committed, not by the civil population, but by persons belonging to the regular armed forces, and which were, therefore, legitimate acts of war for which the community was not liable to punishment. There can be little doubt that the German franc-tireur doctrine was over-exploited and often invoked as a justification for severities against the civil population for acts which were committed by persons belonging to the regularly organized armed forces.

§ 412. Concluding Observations. On the whole, the evidence regarding German practice in respect to the imposition of pecuniary penalties on the civil population of occupied districts during the recent war justifies the conclusion that their policy was based on a theory of collective responsibility which is neither in accord with the well-established principles of modern criminal law nor with the interpretation of article 50 of the Hague convention which has been given it by the great majority of recent writers on international law, including even many of those of German nationality. Unfortunately, the theory of collective responsibility, even when applied in its mildest form, necessarily involves the punishment of innocent persons, and for this reason it ought never be resorted to when other more just measures would accomplish the same end, and in no case unless an active or passive responsibility can really be imputed to the mass of the population, or where the civil authorities have failed to exercise reasonable diligence to prevent infractions or to discover and punish the actual offender in case they have been unable to prevent the offences. Some writers hold that collective punishments ought never be resorted to except as a measure of reprisal, while others, like Bonfils and G. F. de Martens, condemn the whole theory and express the hope that it will ultimately disappear entirely from warfare.1

1 Bonfils, Droit Int. Pub., sec. 1224, and G. F. de Martens, Traité de Droit Int., Vol. III, p. 265. Cf. also Rouard de Card, p. 178.

VOL. II-II

As the Germans had already learned in 1870-1871, however, it is a measure which is both easy of enforcement and generally effective in deterring the civil population from committing infractions against the authority of the occupying forces, and these circumstances have accentuated the temptation to abuse the right and to extend it to cases to which it cannot be applied, except upon an interpretation which can hardly be reconciled with reason or the generally recognized principles of criminal justice. It was just because of its effectiveness that Leuder, Loening, and other German writers sought to justify the wide extension of the theory and its use on a large scale in the war of 1870-1871. There is no difficulty in justifying such a policy if one only accepts the German doctrine that the test of the legitimacy of an instrument or a measure is its effectiveness, i.e., that its employment contributes to the attainment of the object of the war.1

1 Cf., for example, the introduction to the Kriegsbrauch in Landkriege; Leuder in Holtzendorff, Vol. IV, sec. 96; von Hartmann, Militärische Nothwendigkeit und Humanität in the Deutsche Rundschau, Vol. XIII, pp. 119 ff., and Vol. XIV, pp. 117 ff., and von Clausewitz on War (Eng. trans. by Graham, ch. II). Cf. also the views of Field-marshal Prince Schwarzenberg quoted in the Continental Times of September 17, 1915. There is little German literature dealing with the levying of collective penalties during the recent war which is yet available in America. Meurer's monograph entitled Die Völkerrechtliche Stellung der vom Feind Besetzten Gebiete (1915) contains a brief general defence of the German policy, and Albert Zorn in his Kriegsrecht zu Land (1915) apparently finds nothing for which the Germans may justly be reproached.

CHAPTER XXVII

DEPORTATION OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY

§ 413. Early German Policy; § 414. Deportations from France in 1916; § 415. Manner of Execution of the Measure; § 416. Protests against the Deportations; § 417. Treatment of the French Déportés; § 418. The German Defence; § 419. The German Defence Analyzed; § 420. Deportations from Belgium; § 421. Manner of Execution; § 422. Treatment of the Belgian Déportés: § 423. Allied Protests against the Deportation Measures; § 424. Neutral Protests; § 425. German Defence of the Policy of Deportation; § 426. Economic Argument and Question of Public Order; § 427. The German Defence Analyzed; § 428. Power of a Military Occupant over the Inhabitants of Occupied Territory; § 429. The German Policy Unprecedented in Modern Times; § 430. Conclusion.

§413. Early German Policy. A practice resorted to on a large scale during the recent war, and which aroused strong indignation throughout the world and called forth spirited protests from various neutral governments, was the policy of the German military authorities of deporting large numbers of the civilian population from certain districts occupied by their armies. From the very outset the German commanders adopted the practice of arresting and sending to Germany as a punitive measure Belgian civilians who were charged with having committed acts of hostility against their authority, those suspected of participation in the "unorganized Belgian people's war," and large numbers of hostages taken from various communities for the purpose of insuring the good behavior and obedience of the civil population. During the early months of the war large numbers of Belgians were deported for refusing to work for the Germans in railway shops, barbed-wire factories, ammunition plants, and other manufacturing establishments.1 Upon their occupation of French territory extensive deportations from those regions also took place. The French official commission

1 M. Van den Heuvel, Belgian minister of state, estimated that down to October 1, 1915, between thirteen and fourteen thousand Belgian civilians had been deported to Germany as prisoners, and that of these about three thousand had been returned. See his article De la Déportation des Belges en Allemagne, Rev. Gén. de Droit Int. Pub., Vol. 24, p. 262.

of inquiry in a report made in March, 1915, stated that ten thousand persons, including men, women, and children of all ages, had been carried off to Germany, only to be repatriated after months of captivity and harsh treatment. Further than that their compatriots had been charged with having fired upon German troops no reason was assigned for deporting them.1 Upon their occupation of Poland the same policy was carried out on an even more extensive scale, many thousands of Polish workingmen being conscripted or cajoled into entering into voluntary agreements and being carried away for compulsory labor to Germany or to other parts of the occupied territory.? The policy of deportation is also alleged to have been adopted in Roumania by the military authorities of the Central powers.3 $414. Deportations from France in 1916. At first the German policy of deportation was, as said, resorted to mainly as a punitive measure against the inhabitants for alleged acts

1 The second volume of the Reports of the French commission is devoted entirely to these early deportations. Its findings were based on the depositions of some three hundred déportés who were repatriated prior to February 28, 1915. The depositions are printed in the Report, pp. 19-72. There is in the Rev. Gén. de Droit Int. Pub. for July-October, 1915 (Docs., p. 99), a protest of the French government against the deportation to Germany of fourteen hundred French civilians from the departments of Meurthe-et-Moselle, Ardennes, and Vosges during the first months of the war. M. Delcassé stated on December 30, 1914, that some of these persons had been released and returned to France, but that the greater number still remained in captivity. Some details regarding the deportations from various French towns may be found in the Abbé Calippe's book, La Somme sous l'Occupation Allemande, pp. 199 ff., and in Saint-Aymour, Autour de Noyon, ch. XV. The last-mentioned writer gives the names of fifteen communes near Noyon with the number of persons deported from each. Not less than 30 per cent of the inhabitants, he says, were carried away by the Germans (p. 305). Eight hundred persons were deported from Noyon alone.

2 According to a press despatch of January 3, 1918, from Petrograd the number of Poles and Lithuanians who were reported to have been forcibly “transferred" to Germany was three hundred thousand. New York Times, January 4, 1918. Cf. also the charges of a Polish member of the Reichstag in the New York Times of November 7, 1916; also the issues of the Times of December 8, 1916, and June 20, 1917, and a statement issued by the United States Food Administration containing the testimony of F. C. Walcott, Official Bulletin, November 7, 1917, p. 5.

The Roumanian minister of foreign affairs in a telegram of February 7, 1917, to the Roumanian legation in Paris charged that the Germans had begun to transport for internment in Germany all Roumanian males between sixteen and sixtyseven years of age. Apparently this measure was in retaliation for the alleged action of the Roumanian government in handing over German prisoners to Russia for transportation to Siberia. The Roumanian government denied the German charge and protested against the deportation of its civil population. New York Times, February 8, 1917; also London weekly Times, April 20, 1917.