weighing of motives and
interests does not mean excusing the breach of law, but only trying to
understand it.

[Sidenote: The science of international law must free itself from the
tyranny of phrases.]

70. It is also indispensable that the science should free itself from
the tyranny of phrases. As things are, there is scarcely a doctrine of
the law of nations which is wholly free from the tyranny of phrases. The
so-called fundamental rights are their arena, and the doctrines of
state-sovereignty and of the equality of states are in large measure
dominated by them. Any one who is in touch with the application of
international law in diplomatic practice hears from statesmen every day
the complaint that books put forth fanciful doctrines instead of the
actual rules of law. Now it is often not difficult to push the
irrelevant to one side and to extract what is legally essential from the
waste of phrase-ridden discourse. But there are entire areas in which
the tyranny of phrases so turns the head that rules which absolutely
never were rules of law are represented as such. Two conspicuous
examples may serve to illustrate this statement.

[Sidenote: The meaning of '_Kriegsraeson geht vor Kriegsmanier_'.]

71. My first example is taken from the use made of the German maxim
'_Kriegsraeson geht vor Kriegsmanier_'. This maxim is a very old one, and
there was nothing in the law of nations which stood in the way of its
unreserved acceptance so long as there was no real _law_ of war, but the
conduct of war rested only on a fluctuating number of general _usages_.
The meaning of '_manier_' is '_usage_', and '_Kriegsraeson geht vor
Kriegsmanier_' means that the usages of war can be pushed aside when the
reason of war demands it. At the present day, however, the conduct of
war is no longer entirely under the control of _usages_, but under the
control of _enacted rules of law_ to be found in the 'Regulations
respecting the laws of land war', and the application of the old saw to
these legal rules can only lead to abuses and erroneous interpretations.
What it says is, in short, nothing else than this: If the reason of war
demands it, everything is permissible. But since the first Hague Peace
Conference that is definitely no longer the case. Article 22 of the
'Regulations respecting the laws of land war' expressly says that
belligerents have not an unlimited right of choice of means of injuring
the enemy. _Kriegsraeson_, therefore,