“My opinion is that we have gone too far in laying capital punishment aside, and that it ought to be inflicted in many cases not at present capital.  I think, for instance, that political offences should in some cases be punished with death.  People should be made to understand that to attack the existing state of society is equivalent to risking their own lives."[3]

Among ourselves the opinion of this high authority has slowly declined.  No one supposed that Doctor Lynch, for instance, would be executed as a rebel for commanding the Irish Brigade that fought for the Boers during the South African War, though he was condemned to death by the highest Court in the kingdom.  No Irish rebel has been executed for about a century, unless his offence involved some one’s death.  On the other hand, during the Boer War, the devastation of the country and the destruction of the farms were frequently defended on the ground that, after the Queen’s proclamations annexing the two Republics, all the inhabitants were rebels; and some of the extreme newspapers even urged that for that reason no Boer with arms in his hand should be given quarter.  On the strength of a passage in Scripture, Mr. Kipling, at the time, wrote a pamphlet identifying rebellion with witchcraft.  A few Cape Boers who took up arms for the assistance of their race were shot without benefit of prisoners of war.  And in India during 1907 and 1908 men of unblemished private character were spirited away to jail without charge or trial and kept there for months—­a fate that could not have befallen any but political prisoners.

Outside our own Empire, I have myself witnessed the suppression of rebellions in Crete and Macedonia by the destruction of villages, the massacre of men, women, and children, and the violation of women and girls, many of whom disappeared into Turkish harems.  And I have witnessed similar suppressions of rebellion by Russia in Moscow, in the Baltic Provinces, and the Caucasus, by the burning of villages, the slaughter of prisoners, and the violation of women.  All this has happened within the last sixteen years, the worst part within nine and a half.  Indeed, in Russia the punishments of exile, torture, and hanging have not ceased since 1905, though the death penalty has been long abolished there except for political offences.  In the summer of 1909 I was also present during the suppression of the outbreak in Barcelona, which culminated in the execution of Senor Ferrer under a military Court.

From these recent events it is evident that Sir James Stephen’s attitude towards rebellion is shared by many civilised governments.  Belligerents—­that is to say, subjects of one State engaged in war with another State—­have now nominally secured certain rights under International Law.  The first Hague Conference (1899) framed a “Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of Wars on Land” which forbade the torture or cruel treatment of prisoners,