the Swiss Federal Government for the revision of the Geneva Convention, expresses the wish that steps may be shortly taken for the assembly of a Special Conference having for its object the revision of that Convention.

"This wish was voted unanimously.

Rights and duties of neutrals.-"2. The Conference expresses the wish that the questions of the rights and duties of neutrals may be inserted in the programme of a Conference in the near future.

Changes in rifles and naval guns.-"3. The Conference expresses the wish that the questions with regard to rifles and naval guns, as considered by it, may be studied by the governments with the object of coming to an agreement respecting the employment of new types and calibres.

Limitation of war budgets and of land and naval forces. -"4. The Conference expresses the wish that the govern.ments, taking into consideration the proposals made at the Conference, may examine the possibility of an agreement as to the limitation of armed forces by land and sea, and of war budgets.

Inviolability of private property at sea.-"5. The Conference expresses the wish that the proposal, which contemplates the declaration of the inviolability of private property in Naval Warfare, may be referred to a subsequent Conference for consideration.

Bombardment of towns by naval forces.-"6. The Conference expresses the wish that the proposal to settle the question of the bombardment of ports, towns, and villages by a naval force may be referred to a subsequent Conference for consideration.

"The last five wishes were voted unanimously, saving some abstentions.””

Appreciation of the work of the Conference. The final session of the Conference was held on July 29, 1899, more than two months after it first assembled. Aside from the increased prominence the Conference gave to the principle. of arbitration, it will always deserve a high place in the history of the laws of war for its adaptation of the principles of the Geneva Convention to naval warfare, and for the adoption and improvement of the rules concerning the laws and customs of war laid down at Brussels in 1874.

16 Ibid., pp. 377-379.

CHAPTER XIIL

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Less than the three months after the First Peace Conference adjourned, Great Britain was engaged in a struggle with the South African Republics, which for desperateness rivaled that which the ancestors of the Boers had maintained against Philip II. Into the causes of wars it it not the purpose of this work to go.

The use of expanding bullets.-Among the early charges made was that of the use of expanding bullets. England had not signed the Declaration prohibiting them, and, as we have seen, claimed that those she had used were not unnecessarily cruel. Nevertheless, she did not use them during the war and her reason for not doing so is given in the following extract from the report of the Commission appointed to investigate the conduct of the war:

"Moreover the reserve of 151,000,000 rounds included about 66,000,000 rounds which, as events went, were not available at all for the purposes of this war. This was the ammunition known as Mark IV. It had been found from the experiences of the Chitral campaign that the Mark II ammunition then in use was not deadly enough to stop a rush of religious fanatics, and steps were taken which with their consequences in the summer of 1899, are best described in the words of Sir Henry Brackenbury:

"In India they produce the Dum-dum ammunition, in which the head of the bullet is not covered by the nickel envelope. In this country we produced a bullet in which there is a small cylindrical hole in the lead at the top and this is left as an opening, and is not covered over with the nickel. This bullet was an expanding bullet. We had every intention of using this bullet and making it, in fact, the bullet for the British Army all over the world, and, I think about 66,000,000 of it, up to the 31st March, 1899, had been delivered, and formed part of our stock of 172,000,000. It was known as Mark IV. We had an exceptionally hot summer

in 1899, and it was found that, especially in the hands of Volunteers, where the rifles had not been kept particularly clean, there were several instances in which this bullet stripped, to use the technical term, that is to say, the lead of the bullet squirted out through this opening in the top of the nickel envelope, and left the envelope behind in the rifle. Then, if there was a second load, you were apt to get an accident, a blow back in the breach. This happened at Bisley, and it happened in several other places with Volunteers. There could be very little doubt of what was the cause of it; it was due to exceptional heat, and it required a rifle which was not clean. We carried out a great number of experiments to try to reproduce this, and we always found it most difficult to reproduce, and the only conditions under which we could reproduce it were the conditions of great heat and a dirty rifle. Those two conditions of great heat and a dirty rifle were exactly the conditions which were likely to occur in war, and, therefore, it seemed to me, and I so advised the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of State, that none of this ammunition should be considered serviceable for war, and consequently, 66,000,000, or thereabouts, of our reserve was noneffective for purposes of war. It was about the same time also in that summer that The Hague Convention sat, and passed a resolution against all expanding bullets, but our Government was not a party to that Convention, and they declined to be bound by it, but, nevertheless, it is impossible to avoid a feeling that it had certain moral effect, and that it was not considered desirable to use an expanding bullet in time of war. The reason why we did not use the expanding bullet in South Africa was not The Hague Convention, however, but because the Mark IV ammunition, our expanding ammunition, had proved unfit to be used in war. Consequently about two-fifths of our reserve of ammunition could not be used. We were driven to great straits at one time, because we had actually got reduced in this country to two or three boxes of Mark II ammunition; so that if we had had to go to war with a European Power we should have had to fight them with expanding bullets.' "The War Office sent out 4,000,000 rounds of Mark IV ammunition to South Africa in the early summer of 1899, but on the 15th July telegraphed out orders that it was

to be used in practice only, and on the 17th October directed that it should all be sent home.""

It is quite certain that occasionally on both sides during the war expanding and even explosive bullets used in hunting were made use of, but this was very exceptional and happened in spite of the earnest effort of the authorities to prevent it.

Use of natives as soldiers.-It was early apprehended that the natives would be used as soldiers, and the apprehension was natural in view of the great preponderance of the . native population. There seems to be no question, however, that neither belligerent made general use of the Kaffirs as soldiers, although ample opportunity was certainly offered the British from the hostility of the natives towards the Boers. Both armies made use of them for teamsters, servants, guides and scouts, and to this it would seem no serious objection can be made. Kaffirs connected with the British forces were, however, viewed with suspicion by the Boers, and many cases of their harsh treatment by the latter reached the ears of the British authorities. Sir A. Conan Doyle says that "when it was found that they were systematically shot they were given rifles, as it was inhuman to expose them to death without any means of defense." Likewise, on the occasion of Boer raids into Zululand, it was declared by the British Government that if the Boers invaded "native districts" the natives would be encouraged to defend themselves. A more questionable proceeding was the use of armed Kaffirs late in the war for the defense of the railroad lines. If the destruction of the railway lines had always been illegal, the use of the armed natives in their defense might have been justified, but, as we shall see later, this was not the case.

Combatant character of Boers.-In The Hague Regulations. are enumerated four conditions which entitle those satisfying them to the privileges of soldiers, two of these being the carrying of some distinctive sign recognizable at a

1 Report of His Majesty's Commissioners on the War in South Africa, p. 86.

A. Conan Doyle, The War in South Africa, p. 120.

A. Conan Doyle, The War in South Africa, p. 121. 4 Parl. Debates, Fourth Series, Vol. LXXIX, pp. 58, 558. Doyle, The War, in South Africa, p. 121,

distance and carrying arms openly. It is questionable whether the Boers always complied with these two conditions,' but this fact is not in itself conclusive of wrongdoing on their part, as the four conditions enumerated in The Hague Regulations were intended to insure combatant rights to those satisfying them, not necessarily to place others not satisfying them outside the combatant class. Cases not coming within the terms of the provisions were to be left to the unwritten law of nations. Great Britain, at both Brussels and The Hague, had taken a high stand with regard to the right of the population to participate in the defense of its country, and, as might have been expected, seems to have made no objection to the Boer forces on account of their at times informal costume, although in the early stages of the war the Boers invaded British territory and so were not strictly fighting in defense of their own country. The refusal of the British authorities to acknowledge the belligerent character of the Boer forces in the later stages of the war seems to have been caused by their feeling of the uselessness of the guerilla struggle rather than by the noncompliance of the Boer forces with the conditions necessary to entitle them to combatant privileges.

Charges and countercharges.-A practice condemned by the laws of war is fighting in the uniform of the enemy, and of this individual Boers were evidently guilty. Charges of violation of the white flag and of the Geneva Convention were made on both sides, and the charge of not giving quarter was made against a small detachment of British soldiers at Elandslaagte; but most of these charges were either denied or explained. No war, however, can be entirely free from such incidents, and the authorities on both sides seem to have kept them at a minimum. With regard to the treatment of prisoners, and the sick and wounded, there appears to have been little of which to complain, except possibly the unpreparedness of the British authorities for the care of the sick and wounded at the outbreak

• Article 1.

Doyle, The War in South Africa, pp. 112-118; F. Despagnet, La Guerre Sud-Africaine, p. 107.

Doyle, p. 118.

Despagnet, La Guerre Sud-Africaine, p. 132.