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 sensual appetites and triumphs over barbarism.
Holland asserts that widely accepted principles of international law can exert significant influence over societies.
Share
More from Thomas Erskine Holland
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.
Only compare the horrors of the Thirty Years' War with the struggles of modern times.
In it the noblest virtues of mankind are developed; courage and the abnegation of self, faithfulness to duty, and the spirit of sacrifice: the soldier gives his life.
The need for pressure of any kind is, of course, regrettable, the only question being whether such limited pressure be not more humane to the nation which experiences it, and less distasteful to the nation which exercises it, than is the…
Other voices in this conversation
