The general recognition of these principles, and of those also which relate to prisoners, would mark a distinct step of progress towards the goal pursued with so honourable a persistency by the Institut de Droit International.
Holland highlights the significance of recognizing principles related to prisoners of war.
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More from Thomas Erskine Holland
Only compare the horrors of the Thirty Years' War with the struggles of modern times.
This being so, it is necessary to recognise also that increased humanity in the mode of making war has in reality followed upon the gradual softening of manners.
This is what makes it possible to proclaim an international law of war, approved by the legal conscience of all civilised peoples; and when a principle is thus generally accepted, it exerts an authority over minds and manners which curbs…
To open and facilitate the settlement of trifling disputes between nations by judicial methods, war being unquestionably a method out of all proportion in such cases.
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