Requisi’tions [Lat. requirere, to “seek again”] and Contributions, in the international laws of war, have not always been distinguished. Calvo, after De Garden, draws this line between them : that a contribution is what the inhabitants of a country occupied by an invading army are forced to pay or give in order to secure themselves from pillage, while a requisition is the demand made by the military authorities that the inhabitants shall place things, and even persons, at their disposal. There is no absolute difference in the use of the words. A contribution is especially a payment in money, whether for the purpose of carrying on civil government in the occupied district or for general military uses; a requisition is something, as breadstuffs, wagons and horses, wood, etc., needed for the subsistence or for special uses of the invading army. We call them all requisitions, and lay no stress on any discrimination. To account for them, especially for contributions, as payments for exemptions from pillage, is absurd; for pillage is barbarous, and in modern warfare the principle is that war is not waged against a quiet private person, and that his property is in general safe. But the necessities of an army of occupation for food and clothing, as well as the immediate needs of war, and outrages done by tirailleurs and by people without any license, who yet are sympathized with by the district, have made summary and harsh impositions seem just and necessary. No absolute rule can without difficulty be laid down, and the temper of a commander, the false information he receives concerning the plots of the conquered province, will sometimes give rise to severities of a deplorable character.

The following rules will express what the regulations of war ought to be, except in circumstances of extreme necessity, or where severe punishment on towns or communes is called for by their conduct: (1) The private citizen, nowise concerned in the war, is not to be treated as an enemy, and his property is to be respected. (2) The civil government in occupied territory must go on, under control of the invading commander, at the expense of the inhabitants. For this end taxes must be raised as before. (3) Special services for the army, supplies of food, and other necessaries ought to be paid for sooner or later, and for this end receipts should be given. (4) It is an unjust rule to make war pay for war. Wrongs ought to be repaired at the making of a peace. (5) For penalties on a town or district in the way of fines, or of bodily inflictions on a principal inhabitant, or of burning, which has been threatened even in quite recent times, there is very seldom a sufficient justification. Nor do severe requisitions or wholesale punishments do any good. Napoleon in his Memoirs acknowledges that the excesses in the way of requisitions during the war with Spain contributed not a little to the French reverses in the Peninsula.

We close this article by citing some modern opinions on this important but, unhappily, somewhat indefinite subject: (1) In The Instructions for the Armies of the U. S. in the Field the rightfulness of seizing private property is limited to cases of necessity, and the spoliated owner is declared to be entitled to a receipt, that he may obtain indemnity. (Comp. vol. ii. of this Cyclop., p. 1252, col. 2.) (2) Mass´e concedes to an enemy the right of forcing merchants or others to supply his army with the necessary provisions, but on condition of purchasing them at a certain price determined in advance. (3) Heffter is more harsh. According to him (Sec. 731 of his Volkerr.) the enemy can impose and exact contributions, demand products of the soil and personal services; in case of necessity or resistance can even take them by force, leaving all adjustments to the political arrangements of the future. A definite limit to the right of taking cannot be laid down, for there is no measure of rights in war. (4) Bluntscbli (Sec. 653), after speaking of what the population of an occupied province ought to be required to do for an army of occupation, adds, “All these services furnish ground, according to circumstances, for compensation. We must distinguish between services which can be demanded simply on the score of war, and obligation of the population to pay taxes—the extent of which is either defined by legislation or by practice, and in regard to which, in these particulars, much must be left to the discretion of the commander—and services which go beyond this measure, and therefore, by natural law, are to be called for only as giving a right to compensation. But,” he adds, “this duty of compensation is hard to be reduced to rule, and harder still to be carried through in practice.” (5) Calvo (Sec. 905) admits, with most authors, that an army occupying an enemy’s territory may demand from the communes or from the inhabitants that which is necessary for its support and movements, but these requisitions ought to be limited to things absolutely indispensable. (6) Gen. Scott in Mexico refrained from requisitions, paid for provisions, and took nothing by force without indemnifying those who held the property, except on rare occasions, when it was impossible to act otherwise. (Comp. esp. Calvo, Sec. 9 03.) (7) The project of an international declaration concerning the rules and usages of war, adopted at Brussels in 1874, which differs somewhat from the project submitted by Russia the same congress, but not, as we think, for the better in respect to requisitions, contains the following provisions: Art. 40. “As private property ought to be respected, the enemy shall not demand from communities, nor from their inhabitants, articles or services except suchas relate to the necessities of war generally acknowledged, and are proportionate to the resources of the country, and which do not imply for the population the obligation to take part in the war against their country.” Art. 41. “The enemy levying contributions, whether as an equivalent to imposts or to objects to be furnished in kind, or by way of fine, shall proceed therein, as far as possible, only according to the rules of repartition and the plan of imposts in use in the occupied territory. For every contribution a receipt shall be given to the person making the payment.” Art. 42. “Requisitions shall be made only with the authorization of the commander of the locality occupied. For every requisition an indemnity shall be granted or a receipt delivered.” A part of the Russian project which was not accpeted is worthy of notice : Sec. lii. “The enemy can demand from the local population all the imposts, services, and dues, in kind or in money, to which the armies of the legal government have a right.” (Comp. the Intro. to Internat. Law, by the author of this article, Sec. 130.) — T. D. Woolsey. Johnson’s (Revised) Universal Cyclopedia: A Scientific and Popular Treasury of Useful Knowledge (N.Y.: A. J. Johnson & Co., 1891), vol. 6, pages 629-630 (WRD).

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