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Volume III · Page 981
| The international concern over the commission
of crimes against humanity has been greatly intensified in recent years. The
fact of such concern is not a recent phenomenon, however. England, France, and
Russia intervened to end the atrocities in the GrecoTurkish warfare in
1827.¹ President Van Buren, through his Secretary of State, intervened with the Sultan of Turkey in 1840 in behalf of the persecuted Jews of Damascus and Rhodes.² The French intervened and by force undertook to check religious atrocities in Lebanon in 1861.³ Various nations directed protests to the governments of Russia and Rumania with respect to pogroms and atrocities against Jews. Similar protests were made to the government of Turkey on behalf of the persecuted Christian minorities. In 1872 the United States, Germany, and five other powers protested to Rumania; and in 1915, the German Government joined in a remonstrance to Turkey on account of similar persecutions.4 In 1902 the American Secretary of State, John Hay, addressed to Rumania a remonstrance "in the name of humanity" against Jewish persecutions, saying, "This government cannot be a tacit party to such international wrongs." Again, in connection with the Kishenef [Kishinev] and other massacres in Russia in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt stated: |
" * * * Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable. * * * The cases in which we could interfere by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to intolerable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. * * *"5 |
| Concerning the American intervention in Cuba in 1898, President McKinley stated: |
"First. In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and |
¹ Oppenheim, "International Law", volume I, (3d ed.) (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1920), page 229.
² State Department Publication No. 9, pages 153 and 154.
³ Norman Bentwich. "The League of Nations and Racial Persecution in Germany," Problems of Peace and War, XIX, (London, 1934), page 75 and following.
4 Ibid.
5 President's Message to Congress. 1904. "The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Presidential Addresses and State Papers", (P. F. Collier & Son. New York), volume 111, pages 178 and 179.
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