SHOOT YOUR PRISONERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13948, 3 January 1906, Page 11

SHOOT YOUR PRISONERS.

11 1 “ ■- 1 ** (Bv TRIGGER, in the “ Canterbury , * Times.”) One would hardly imagine that an advanced civilised Power would nowadays display any barbaric tendencies in regard to prisoners of war; but such is the case, if the manual issued by the German General Staff has . been correctly translated by Colonel Picquart, of the French Army. The Colonel has made a special study of the manual, which is entitled “ Kriegsbranch© in Landyriege,” and his deductions appear in the “ Gazette d© Lausanne,” in an article headed “ Les Rigueurs de la Guerre.” Colonel Picquart’s object is to show that the writers of the great German General Staff have been inspired by reactionary ideas incompatible with the methods of warfare now accepted by civilised nations. In effect, the manual says, it is legitimate —not merely in case of attempts of prisoners to escape and other like occasions—to shoot them by way of reprisal _ or retaliation, for practices of like kind or other excesses in which the enemy may indulge. Again, the manual approves the shooting of prisoners in pressing circumstances, when it may be impossible to feed or keep them without compromising one’s own - security. The general staff does not think that this condition is likely to arise often, but the French critic rightly denounces the principle, and points out that it places in the hands of an unscrupulous or weak chief a dangerous and brutal weapon. The manual further lays it down that a person who is not a belligerent may be forced to give information, as to the troops of his own country and their movements, and their military secrete. The general staff writers, it appears, fail to indicate the particular methods of compulsion to be employed. One will agree with Colonel Picquart that it is deplorable that such reactionary ideas, contrary to the modern spirit of warfare between civilised nations, should be officially promulgated by the great General Staff for the instruction of officers of the German army. It will be the wish of every Britisher that no such barbaric tendency should ever pervade the manual of his country’s military power. Such an order as that, emanating from the German General Staff is hardly in keeping with the professedly high humanitarian views which Germane claim for their great Fatherland.