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The innocent are immune. We must never, that is, make the object of any violent attack those who bear no responsibility for doing wrong to others; and only with grave reason and in extreme circumstances should we be prepared to cause them any incidental harm as we press home a violent attack against those who are its legitimate objects. This principle of the immunity of the innocent seems almost self-evidently true. This is not to say that the principle is incapable of further development and articulation, unsusceptible of marginal qualification, or underivable from deeper principles. It does however mean that any moral theory which denies this principle altogether will be something that only a fool or a knave could accept.
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References
1 Russell, Frederick H., The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)Google Scholar discusses the origins of this tradition.
2 ‘War and Murder’ (WAM), ‘Mr Truman's Degree’ (MTD) and ‘The Justice of the Present War Examined’ (JPW). References to these papers will be by abbreviated title and a page number of the reprints in Anscombe, G. E. M., Collected Philosophical Papers, Volume III: Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981)Google Scholar.
3 These agreements have been collected by Roberts, Adam and Guelff, Richard in Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).Google Scholar I shall cite them by the date and place at which they were signed, where necessary by the number of the convention, article and paragraph referred to, and by a page number of Roberts and Guelff.
4 See Best, Geoffrey, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflicts, 2nd. Edn (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 44–5Google Scholar.
5 One instance is reported from 1940's France in Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 176Google Scholar.
6 Teichman, Jenny, ‘Pacifism’, Philosophical Investigations, Volume V 1980, pp. 72–83,Google Scholar gives sound arguments to show how war differs from policing.
7 Numerous gatherings in Cambridge and Perth have heard earlier versions of this paper. Professor Anscombe was present at one of these gatherings, and she has read a written version too. The kind and courteous comments of all concerned, and not least of Professor Anscombe herself, call for much gratitude.