Civilians

“ Why, dear me, sir, don't you know those are harmless civilians, who neither wish to shoot any one or to be shot at themselves?{328} They are civil engineers and civilians belonging to your recently formed Army Works Corps. ”

“ Every one felt it incumbent upon him to show some slight civility to his neighbour. Soldiers saluted civilians; civilians embraced soldiers. Young military gentlemen kissed young ladies of the dressmaking persuasion. ”

“ This is the point that one would like extremely to have authoritatively cleared up, seeing that the number of civilians, capable at a pinch of defending their own homes, possibly even their own fields and parishes, seem likely as the years go on to increase. ”

“ There are no civilians visible now, no prisoners and no labour-battalions but only soldiers and not so many soldiers either as you encountered just behind you in the intermediate zone because as a general thing, the nearer you come to the actual theatre of hostilities, the fewer soldiers in mass are you apt to see. ”

“ Included among these civilians were those who, at the beginning of the war, were civil service employees or holders of subordinate positions in the government, and who remained at their posts to protect the people and extend to them all possible aid and comfort. They should, as a general principle, be recalled as soon as their services should be needed; only for strong reasons should they be deprived of their privilege to serve. ”

“ This scene comes back to me with a fresh bitterness when I see the able-bodied young civilians in this country—they must number several millions—who should be ashamed to be seen alive until the perpetration of deeds such as these have been brought to account. ”

“ The civilians, too, are away. We talk to those who have stayed, and daily make progress in the dialect of the place. We know that ce ch'tiot ila means "this little boy," as we have already discovered that parents and grandparents call themselves tayons and ratayons. Brave civilians! No one ever mentions them. Now, this isn't right. Not only have they seen the young ones leave for the front, not only do they live through the horrors of war, but many of them have relations in neighbouring villages occupied by the enemy. Scarcely any are left except women and old men. ”

“ The use of a considerable number of these methods — carefully chosen, applied persistently and on a large scale, wielded in the context of a wise strategy and appropriate tactics, by trained civilians—is likely to cause any illegitimate regime severe problems. ”

“ It was considered an achievement of the civilized spirit that an army occupying enemy territory would respect the rights of the non-combatant inhabitants, set guards over private property, protect women and children from injury, and permit civilians to go about their business as long as they did not intermeddle with military matters. In three and a half horrible years we have drifted a long way from these protestations. Those of us who4 once studied the elements of international law may well study them again when the war is over, if, indeed, international law is still thought worth studying. ”

“ The principle has been more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property, and honor as much as the exigencies of war will admit.
"23. Private citizens are no longer murdered, enslaved, or carried off to distant parts, and the inoffensive individual is as little disturbed in his private relations as the commander of the hostile troops can afford to grant in the overruling demands of a vigorous war. ”

“ Though the disease is often confined exclusively to soldiers in the midst of a civil population, examples are not wanting of an exclusive selection of civilians or of an indiscriminate attack in every direction. ”

“ War, which had welded the men of the country into an engine of destruction, had sent its women forth on countless works of mercy and reconstruction, and this work I had come to France to witness. As I went about on this strange and heartbreaking sight-seeing, as I visited barracks in which not wounded soldiers, but wounded families, lived and ate, saw workshops, hospitals, there came to me a vision of what a total disorganization war meant to the civil population. ”

“ The whole country was filled with rumors, messengers, parties of soldiers going to and fro, and troops of horsemen, with robberies, plunderings, murders, and other deeds of violence without number, and all the other elements of confusion and misery which arouse the whole population of a country to terror and distress, and mar the very face of nature in time of civil war. What dreadful struggles man will make to gain the pleasure of ruling his fellow man! ”

“ When your army entered the country of the Six Nations, we called you The Town Destroyer; and to this day, when that name is heard, our women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling close to the necks of their mothers. Our counselors and warriors are men, and can not be afraid; but their hearts are grieved with the fears of our women and children, and desire that it may be buried so deep that it may be heard no more. ”

“ A town taken by storm shall not be given up to the victorious troops for plunder.
Art. 23. Prisoners of war ... should be treated with humanity.... All their personal effects except their arms are to be considered their own property.
Arts. 36, 37. The population of an occupied territory cannot be compelled to take part in military operations against their own country, nor to swear allegiance to the enemy’s power.
Art. 38. The honour and rights of the family, the life and property of individuals, as well as their religious convictions and the exercise of their religion, should be respected. ”

“ Each country in the civilized West fortified its frontiers, trained officers in special schools, mobilized young men and women for military service, stockpiled weapons, multiplied fire-power, making western civilization an armed camp, with guns pointing in every direction.
Regimentation of city life, of industry and commerce, of war, of education and public health followed one after another as the individual human became more and more a cog in a vast social mechanism. ”

“ I have seen an army march into an hostile country, and in the midst of farms flowing with milk and honey, and teeming with corn and every luxury—and there, in a few hours, all was desolation, one stone not being left on another, and the people made slaves to the invaders. How thankful we ought to be that we are not suffering at the hand of an invading army. ”

“ The government keeps a guard of soldiers at the town, and when we landed we found ourselves surrounded by the military, while the natives stood back of the dead-line and gazed at us hungrily. There we began to get close glimpses of the domestic life of the plain people. ”

“ And as one's admiration and sympathy were stirred for one's own fellow-countrymen, who so unflinchingly performed their duties, could one withhold it from that other army five miles away across the plain—citizen soldiers fighting for their country and their homes? For the soldier politics do not exist; he fights and dies for an idea. ”

“ Bands of warriors, who had none to care for, the habitual sons of the field; armed women; chained captives; men covered with the stately dresses of our higher ranks; biers heaped with corpses; wagons piled with armor, tents, the wounded and the dead; every diversity of human circumstance, person, and equipment that belongs to a state in which the elements of society are let loose—in that march successively moved before the eye. ”

“ For long and weary months, without pay or even the privilege of being recognized as soldiers, you labored on, only to be disbanded and sent to your homes without even a hope of reward, and when our country, necessitated by the deadly struggle with armed traitors, finally granted you the opportunity again to come forth in defense of the nation’s life, the alacrity with which you responded to the call gave abundant evidence of your readiness to strike a manly blow for the liberty of your race. ”

“ The citizens fled to places of security, and no civil government prevailed in the city. The rebel forces were superior in number, and drove the forces of the government from their position, compelled their surrender, and entered and occupied the city. ”

“ If we arrive at a little village, how are the people to say to us, 'We will not allow you to pull up a rail!'? And yet, if they do not prevent us, they are to be punished with fire and sword. And these people call themselves a civilized nation!
"One of the evil consequences of this proclamation is that we shall never dare trust to the inhabitants to make inquiries for us. ”

“ Every able-bodied man who did not take refuge in flight was forced into the ranks, either to defend his country, or to attack that of his neighbours, or the neighbours of the power to which his own State was tributary. ”

“ The civilian is engaged in building up and sustaining society in doing good, through his active employment, to his fellow-men. But military and naval officers do not produce anything; they only protect and defend.”
“But if they did not protect and defend, captain, evil men would destroy society. It would be of no use for the civilian to endeavour to build up, if there were none to fight against the enemies of the state.”
“Very true, my lad. ”

“ And it shall be the bounden and solemn duty of every Caucasian, of every camp, encampment, and the supreme camp, to pursue and injure every one while he remains on the list of public enemies, and each and every one forever, in all their walks of life, save religion, morality, and person. ”

“ A country that should be a land of peace and plenty has for generations been an armed camp of contending factions, in which the worst elements have come to the front and in which justice and innocence and respectability have been trampled under foot. ”

“ All soldiers, of whatever species of arms; all men who belong to the rising en masse of the hostile country; all those who are attached to the army for its efficiency and promote directly the object of the war, except religious persons, officers of medical staff, hospital nurses and servants, all disabled men or officers on the field, or elsewhere, if captured, all enemies who have thrown away their arms and asked for quarters, are prisoners of war, and as such exposed to the inconveniences as well as entitled to the privileges of a prisoner of war. ”

“ What could it matter in the spirit of humanity, so long as they were Union soldiers—had been fighting for its preservation, and were ill and suffering in her cause? I often thought the country ought not to be saved, just to punish such miserable specimens of humanity. ”

“ Role of the civilian population and of aid societies 1. The civilian population shall respect the wounded, sick and shipwrecked, even if they belong to the adverse Party, and shall commit no act of violence against them. ”

“ Behind the front, the civilian populations have, on many occasions, praised the affability of our friends, their courtesy and their liberality. War has its exigencies; but it must be recognised that they have shown the best of goodwill to mitigate them. ”

“ In the meanwhile I had been getting better acquainted with the country, and found that the people lived in a constant state of civil war. Every day men came to me to have their wounds dressed, and I heard of many being killed. As I have already said, the country was very mountainous, and each hill had its own chief, who lived in a state of continual warfare with his neighbours. ”

“ The Revolution had destroyed all discipline, and all respect for the Civil Authorities; and the soldier, accustomed to the license of a camp, was ready to follow any leader that could promise him plunder, in lieu of his arrears of pay. ”

“ Courage is awakened; love of liberty and order inspired; benevolence increased; and loyalty exalted by this war. What men bleed for they value. I have been delighted with the eagerness with which many soldiers whom I have visited, listened to Christian address, and received the word of God. It is a matter of gratulation that but few arrests are made in our city in these days, not because the police are less watchful, but because the debased portion of the population are inspired with a better thought. ”

“ Then notice the discipline they have had as soldiers in the camp, on the march, on guard, in the battle, shoulder to shoulder with our men, sons, brothers, fathers, bravely fighting for the Union, that they might know what war is, and what it sometimes costs to secure liberty and save a nation from anarchy and ruin. ”

“ Here, sauntering in twos or threes, or lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, might be seen that refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civil war,—disbanded soldiers of either Rose, too inured to violence and strife for peaceful employment, and ready for any enterprise by which keen steel wins bright gold. ”

“ These comprehensive ways of waging war which hit all classes of the population permit, in my opinion, to a state which is at war, especially on account of the fact that its civilian population is brought into the strife, to use for its purposes labor from occupied countries so as to maintain its production and armament. ”

“ Unless there is an awakened sense of civic duty, as the glorified result of our experience of fire and blood, we have lost the most important lesson of this war. Hundreds of thousands of men and women arose in the spirit of consecrated service and unselfishly carried the burden of war-works at home and abroad. ”

“ Any one of the so-called great civilized nations of the world may send an overwhelming army to a distant land and murder and enslave a humane, God-fearing and noble race of people, and not one murmur of disapproval will be heard from the others. ”

“ We do not only represent our burghers on commando, the troops over which we are placed in command; we represent also the thousands who have passed away, after making the last sacrifice for their country; the prisoners scattered all the world over; the women and children dying by the thousand in the prison camps of the enemy; we represent the blood and the tears of the whole African nation. ”