Naked Soldiers and the Principle of Discrimination

Abstract

Robert Graves's First World War story in his autobiography Goodbye to All That, narrating his refusal to kill an enemy soldier bathing naked on the battlefield, has been made famous in the field of military ethics by Michael Walzer in his Just and Unjust Wars. The story raises the issue of whether soldiers should be granted immunity when behaving in an ‘un-warlike’ manner. It also relates to the growing understanding in military ethics that only soldiers who pose a direct threat should be attacked and killed. This paper concludes that the traditional legal understanding that all soldiers are liable to be attacked and to be killed is the stronger argument.

Key Words:

• Robert Graves
• Michael Walzer
• Larry May
• naked soldier
• discrimination
• distinction
• psychology
• individualism

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the help of Brian Feltham, Nigel de Lee, Chris Mann, Don E. Scheid and two anonymous Journal of Military Ethics referees. This paper was presented at Euro-ISME in Koblenz in 2014 and it benefited from discussion there. The arguments in this paper are those of the author and they are not those of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen Deakin

Dr Stephen Deakin teaches leadership at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK and also around the world. He has published widely in the area of military ethics.