"By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the U.S., and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the U.S.," President Eisenhower last week enunciated the U.S.'s first formal code of conduct for prisoners of war. The code resulted from the bitter experience of the Korean war, in which 38% of 7,190 U.S. prisoners of war died of disease, malnutrition or maltreatment,* and in which at least 192 P.W.s were found chargeable with collaborating with the enemy. It was a stern document, founded upon "the qualities which we associate with men of integrity and character," for it summoned U.S. fighting men to defy enemy interrogators, and to deny the enemy the advantages of luring Americans from their allegiance.
"A line of resistance must be drawn somewhere, and initially as far forward as possible," the Defense Department's Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War reported to the President. "The name, rank and service number provisions of the Geneva conventions is accepted as this line of resistance. However, in the face of experience, it is recognized that the P.W. may be subjected to an extreme of coercion beyond his ability to resist. If in his battle with the interrogator he is driven from his first line of resistance, he must be trained for resistance in successive positions. And, to stand on the final line to the end—no disclosure of vital military information, and above all no disloyalty in word or deed to his country, his service or his comrades." President Eisenhower appended his own soldierly footnote: "Every member of the armed forces of the U.S. is expected to measure up . . ."
Codes of Chivalry. The new U.S. code of conduct for prisoners of war (see box) is the kernel of a finding by the Advisory Committee on what happened to U.S. soldiers captured in Korea. For several weeks the committee consulted former P.W.s and their records, sifted through military histories and reports of the P.W.s in Korea seeking answers to the problems from service chiefs, educators, clergymen, doctors and psychiatrists, officials of labor and veterans' organizations. To set the precedents for the new code, the committee researched back to primitive man, who automatically slaughtered all of his prisoners, and it quoted from I Samuel: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts . . . Go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not." The committee reported the exhortations of Germanicus as his legions poured into the Rhineland: "Slay, and slay on! Do not take prisoners!"
As Christianity brought the Western world concepts of mercy and chivalry, the treatment of prisoners improved. During the Revolution, the Continental army decreed death for American P.W.s who took up arms for the British after their capture; duress or coercion were not accepted as an excuse unless the P.W. could show he had been threatened with death. During the Civil War, 3,170 Union P.W.s who joined their Confederate captors were liable for prosecution and some were put to death; the U.S. also ruled at this time that it was the duty of P.W.s to escape.