ABSTRACT
The question of justice and rights during a war presents greatest difficulty, in as much as it is difficult without contradicting oneself even to form any concept of such a right and to think of there being any law in a condition that is itself lawless. No war between independent states can be a punitive one, for punishment takes place only where there is a relationship of superior to a subject, and no such relationship exists between states. To a state against which a war is being fought, defensive measures of every kind except those that would make a subject of that state unfit to be a citizen are allowed. The rational idea of a peaceful, even if not friendly, universal community of all nations on earth that can come into mutual active relations with one another is not a philanthropic principle, but a juridical one.
