Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

;
THE DECLARATION OF WAR. 403
to ine closely analogous - as a sign of disoranisat
to the absence of any form of salute at a parade. I am fa
rom contending that old forms, when they have becom
bsolete, can be resuscitated: but I do contend for th
resuscitation of ancient maxims and ideas. In any age
fully imbued with the responsibility of war, in which it
was considered unseemly to declare it until after a three
days' deliberation in solemn conclave, and which even
then protracted the declaration till the seventh or the
irtieth day, would it have been possible for two gre
tions to have gone to war because there had b
" breach of etiquette," if indeed there was a breach of
tiquette, " at a German watering-place ? " 19 Allow
commenced without a formal declaration (De Jure Belli, c. ii. § i.) ; but
the Greeks do not seem to have been at all regular in the observance of
the custom (Bynkershock, Quaes. Jur. Pub., 1. i. c. ii.) During the times
of chivalry declarations of war were usually given with great formality,
the habits of knighthood being carried into the customs of general warfare,
and it being held mean to fall upon an adversary when unprepared to
defend himself (Ward, Introd. ii. 206-230). With the decline of chivalry
this custom fell into disuse. Gustavus Adolphus invaded Germany without
any declaration of war (Zouch, De Judicio inter Gentes, P. ii. § x. 1);
but this appears to have been an exception to the usages of the age, and
Clarendon speaks of declarations of war as being customary in his time,
and blames the war in which the Duke of Buckingham went to France, as
entered into ' without so much as the formality of a declaration from the
king, containing the ground and provocation and end of it, according to
custom and obligation in the like cases/ Formal denunciations of war by
heralds were discontinued about the time of Grotius ; the last instance
having been, according to Voltaire, when Louis XIII. sent a herald to
Brussels to declare war against Spain in 1635." - W. Oke Manning's Commentaries
on Law of Nations.
19 " Looking back on the history of the autumn ... we may yet be impressed
by the conviction that, had the union of the European family of
nations been strenthened as it miht have been before the war broke out,
it might never have been begun, or would have long since terminated.
The Treaty of Paris put on record a declaration in favour of arbitration,
but it proved to be worthless when sought to be applied." - Times, Feb.
15, 1871. I shall have a word to say presently on the declaration of the
Treaty of Paris.