NOTES ON THE LAWS OF WAR.

(From Manual for Commanders of Infantry Platoons, translated from
the French at the Army War College, 1917. War Department
Document No. 626.)

The laws of war were instituted under the generous error that certain
well-organized peoples had entirely emerged from barbarism and that
they considered themselves bound by the placing of their signatures to
international conventions, freely agreed to.

An infinite number of acts minutely and officially investigated have
established that our troops and our Nation should never count on the
observance of these laws and that the atrocities committed prove to be
not only individual violations dishonoring merely the perpetrator, but
violations premeditated and ordered in cold blood by the commanders
with the moral support of the heads of the enemy nation.

These laws are nevertheless repeated here in order that:

1. The knowledge of how the war should have been conducted may develop
in the heart of each man the sentiment of hate (applicable only to
foes such as we actually have), that in no case should a chief of
platoon tolerate any intercourse between his men and the enemy other
than that of the rifle; this duty is explicit and not to be departed
from except in the case of the wounded and prisoners incapable of
doing harm.