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 BULL
STREET
– The art of the Con
The Geneva Convention 1864
Henry Dunant was born in Geneva, Switzerland in May of 1828. He came from an upper
class background and his father was the supervisor of prisons for the country.
Henry, after graduating from college went into banking and joined the house
of Lullin et Sauter. An extremely well read young man and strongly influenced
by the good work of Florence Nightingale, on battlefield treatment of wounded,
Harriet Beecher Stowe relative to slavery and Elizabeth Fry relative to women’s
rights in criminal proceedings. Moreover, he had become strongly religious,
he was an avowed pacifist and was present when Victor Hugo at the Paris Peace
Congress stated, “A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets
opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when there ill
be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.
A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal
suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will
be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the diet to Germany and the Legislative
Assembly to France.” This made a lasting impression on the young man and shaped
his future.
He was a witness to the Battle of Solferino in Italy where over 41,000 men died in the
battle and later another 40,000 died of their wounds, disease and fever. Dunant
started to organize the local peasants in order to care to the wounded, He had
the churches open their doors to act as hospitals and he assembled the local
doctors to treat the solely wounded. This battle and its resulting carnage left
such a mark on Dunant that he approached Napoleon II and had him issued the
following edict: “Doctors and surgeons attached to the Austrian armies and captured
while attending to the wounded shall be unconditionally released; those who
have been attending to men wounded at the Battle of Solferino and lying in the
Hospital at Catiglione shall, at their request, be permitted to return to Austria.”
This only caused Dunant to step up his pace relative finding
a way to improve the overall treatment of those wounded in battle. He wrote
a book on the subject entitled “A Memory of Solferino” which dealt with creating
safeguards for all official and unofficial people helping the wounded on both
sides of any battle.
“When
the sun came up the 25th it disclosed the most dreadful sights imaginable.
Bodies of men and horses covered the battlefield; corpses were strewn over roads,
ditches, ravines, thickets and fields; the approaches to Solferino were literally
thick with dead. The fields were devastated, wheat and corn lying flat on the
ground, fences were broker, orchards ruined; here and there were pools of blood.
The poor wounded men were ghostly pale and exhausted. Some, who had been the
most badly hurt, had a stupefied look. Others were anxious and excited by nervous
strain and shaken by spasmodic trembling. Some, who had gaping wounds already
beginning to show infection, were almost crazed with suffering. They begged
to be put out of their misery; with faces distorted in the grip of the death
struggle.
Though
the army, in its retreat, picked up all the wounded men it could carry in military
wagons and requisitioned carts, how many unfortunate men were left behind, lying
helpless on the naked ground in their own blood? How many silent tears were
shed that miserable night when all false pride, all human decency even, was
forgotten? In some quarters there was not water, and the thirst was so terrible
that officers and men alike fell to drinking from muddy pools whose water was
fouled and filled with curdled blood. The men’s wounds were covered with flies.
The tunic, shirt flesh and blood formed an indescribably mass, alive with vermin.
A number of men shuddered to think they were being devoured by these vermin,
which they thought were emerging from their bodies, but which in reality were
the result of the fly-infested atmosphere.”
He was smart enough to realize that he was not going to be
able to prevent war; however, he wanted to ameliorate its catastrophic effect
as much as possible. The book called for a coups of volunteers to be created
that would become available during times of war and other cataclysmic events.
As a direct result of the books and his continued pontification relative to
the subject, he was invited to attend a meeting of the Geneva Society for Public
Welfare where he presented his concept. It was determined that the International
Committee for Relief to the Wounded, a forerunner of the International Committee
of the Red Cross was established and Dunant was its original board of directors.
The Board convened a conference of 13 nations to be held
in Geneva with the subject of the meeting to be, “making war more humane.” A
number of matters were agreed upon at that meeting, among them were the return
of prisoners to their country, the neutral status of those that aid the wounded,
and the adoption of the insignia, a white flag with a red cross to identify
non-belligerents that were providing aid and comfort to the wounded on both
sides of the lines. At that convention, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Spain and Switzerland all signed onto the project
in 1864. In succeeding years Britain, Prussia, Greece, Turkey, Austria, Portugal,
Russia, Persia, Serbia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, United States, Bulgaria, Japan,
Luxemburg, Venezuela, South Africa, Uruguay, Guatemala, Mexico, China, Germany,
Brazil, Cuba, Panama and Paraguay in 1097.
However, as usual in these stories, while the key players are
instrumental in helping the rest of humanity, they sometimes accomplish it at
their own detriment. The bank in which Dunant was a director of in Geneva collapsed
as a result of double dealing by the Board itself. Dunant was financially ruined
as a result of this action and was forced to resign as the secretary of the
international Committee of the Red Cross. He spent the rest of his life in poverty
but was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1901. he died in Heiden Switzerland
on October, 30, 1910.
The Geneva Convention was really in no way comparable to any
of its legal predecessors. The signatories to the agreement, while probably
well meaning at the time, were not going to let the convention’s niceties stand
in the way of war’s exigencies. We would note that Japan, a country that until
1945 thought that rules were for the other guy, was one of the signatories.
It wasn’t too much later that they broke every codicil of the convention in
their war with Russia, their occupation of Korea and their treatment of every
single prisoner that they captured during World War II. Public relations aside,
neither the Russians, the German’s and believe it or not, the American’s did
not treat their prisoners or their opponents wounded in the fashion called for
under the convention. War is Hell and rules are made to be broker. Such was
the Geneva Convention, a tribute to one man’s perseverance, but in practice,
not quite worth the paper it is written on. I would refer you to the following
articles of the convention should you think this statement rash:
“Persons
taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces
who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds,
detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,
without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex,
birth wealth, or any other similar criteria.”
One would wonder how many Russians returned after World War
II from the German Prison Camps or how many German’s returned from the camps
run by the Russians. We are aware what happened with the forced marches in Japan,
and as far as Korea and Vietnam are concerned, we still wonder whether our people
are still being held against their wills. The Geneva Convention has no enforcement
capabilities other than its public relations public relations value. Any law
or rule that does not have guns backing up its regulations is highly unreliable
when the chips are down.
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