Moral responsibility is all very well, but what about military orders Is it not the soldier’s duty to give instant obedience to orders given by his military superiors And apart from duty, will not the soldier suffer severe punishment, even death, if he refuses to do what he is ordered to If, then, a soldier is told by his superior to burn this house or to shoot that prisoner, how can he be held criminally accountable on the ground that the burning or shooting was a violation of the laws of war These are some of the questions that are raised by the concept commonly called "superior orders", and its use as a defense in war crimes trials. It is an issue that must be as old as the laws of war themselves, and it emerged in legal guise over three centuries ago when, after the Stuart restoration in 1660, the commander of the guards at the trial and execution of Charles I was put on trial for treason and murder. The officer defended himself on the ground "that all I did was as a soldier, by the command of my superior officer whom I must obey or die," but the court gave him short shrift, saying that "When the command is traitorous, then the obedience to that command is also traitorous." Though not precisely articulated, the rule that is necessarily implied by this decision is that it is the soldier’s duty to obey lawful orders, but that he may disobey--and indeed must, under some circum-stances-unlawful orders. Such has been the law of the United States since the birth of the nation. In 1804, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that superior orders would justify a subordinate’s conduct only "if not to perform a prohibited act," and there are many other early decisions to the same effect. A strikingly illustrative case occurred in the wake of that conflict which most Englishmen have never heard (although their troops burned the White House) and which we call the War of 1812. Our country was baldly split by that war too and, at a time when the United States Navy was not especially popular in New England, the ship-in-the-line Independence was lying in Boston Harbor. A passer-by directed abusive language at a marine standing guard on the ship, and the marine, Bevans by name, ran his bayonet through the man. Charged with murder, Bevans produced evidence that the marines on the Independence had been ordered to bayonet anyone showing them disrespect. The case was tried before Justice Joseph Story, next to Marshall, the leading judicial figure of those years, who charged that any such order as Bevans had invoked "would be illegal and void," and, if given and put into practice, both the superior and the subordinate would be guilty of murder. In consequence, Bevans was convicted. The order allegedly given to Bevans was pretty drastic, and Boston Harbor was not a battlefield; perhaps it was not too much to expect the marine to realize that literal compliance might lead to bad trouble. But it is only too easy to conceive of circumstances where the matter might not be at all clear. Does the subordinate obey at peril that the order may later be ruled illegal, or is protected unless he has a good reason to doubt its validity What was the rule implied by the trail of the commander of the guards
A soldier must obey lawful orders, be he right or wrong.
B. Even if an order is unlawful, the soldier must still obey it.
C. A soldier may or must disobey unlawful orders or he must die.
D. It is the soldier’s duty to obey superior orders whatever they are.
Somehow California is always at the cutting edge, be it in the flower-power days of the 1960s or the dotcom boom of the 1990s. As Kevin Starr points out in his History of the State, California has long been "one of the prisms through which the American people, for better and for worse, could glimpse their future". Mr. Starr is too good a historian to offer any pat explanation; instead, he concentrates on the extraordinary array of people and events that have led from the mythical land of Queen Calafia, through the rule of Spain and Mexico, and on to the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger, an iron-pumping film star with an Austrian accent. Moreover, he does so with such elegance and humor that his book is a joy to read. What emerges is not all Californian sunshine and light. Think back to the savage violence that accompanied the 1849 Gold Rush; or to the exclusion orders against the Chinese; or to the riots that regularly marked industrial and social relations in San Francisco. California was very much the Wild West, having to wait until 1850 before it could force its way to statehood. So what tamed it Mr. Starr’s answer is a combination of great men, great ideas and great projects. He emphasizes the development of California’s infrastructure, the development of agriculture; the spread of the railroads and freeways; and, perhaps the most important factor for today’s hi-tech California, the creation of a superb set of public universities. All this, he writes, "began with water, the sine qua non of any civilization." He goes on cheerfully to note the "monumental damage to the environment" caused by irrigation projects that were "plagued by claims of deception, double-dealing and conflict of interest". One virtue of this book is its structure. Mr. Start is never trapped by his chronological framework. In-stead, when the subject demands it, he manages deftly to flit back and forth among the decades. Less satisfying is his account of California’s cultural progress in the 19th and 20th centuries: does he really need to invoke so many long-forgotten writers to accompany such names as Jack London, Frank Norris, Mark Twain or Raymond Chandler But that is a minor criticism for a book that will become a California classic. The regret is that Mr. Starr, doubtless pressed for space, leaves so little room--just a brief final chapter--for the implications of the past for California’s future. He poses the question that most Americans prefer to gloss over: is California governable "For all its impressive growth, there remains a volatility in the politics and governance of California, which became perfectly clear to the rest of the nation in the fall of 2003 when the voters of California recalled one governor and elected another." Indeed so, and Mr. Start wisely avoids making any premature judgment on their choice. Ills such as soaring house prices, grid locked freeways and "embattled" public schools, combined with the budgetary problems that stem from the tax revolt of 1978 would test to the limit any governor, even the Terminator. As Mr. Starr notes, no one should cite California as an unambiguous triumph: "There has al-ways been something slightly bipolar about California. It was either utopia or dystopia, a dream or a night-mare, a hope or a broken promise--and too infrequently anything in between.\ Which one of the following is NOT the characteristic of the book
A. The distributional imbalance of each of the part.
B. The chaotic arrangement and design of the structure.
C. The improper selection of some materials.
D. The cautious view and attitude of the writer.