The second instance which may be adduced is that in which the too curious use of the photographic camera added an unseemly element to military executions in Mandalay. Being desirous of getting photographs of the prisoners' attitudes and expressions at the moment the bullets struck them, the Provost-Marshal set up a photographic camera in a convenient position when the dread words of command, "Ready! Present" were given. The discharge was then delayed for a few minutes while the camera was brought to bear on the doomed men; the focus attained, the signal was given, the bullets struck the waiting men; the negatives were secured. This procedure probably did not add perceptibly to the suffering of the men expecting momentarily the fatal bullets; but there is something unpleasant and almost sinister at the coolness and deliberation with which the action of the tragedy was suspended in order that a scientific record might be taken of the effect, physical and moral, of the shock of bullets, on the persons of defenceless and despairing men. Lord Dufferin at Calcutta and the Ministers in England shared the indignation of Mr. Bernard, when they came to know what had been done. The then Secretary of State, Lord Randolph Churchill, at once telegraphed instructions that grave and immediate action should be taken with regard to the officer concerned. His successor ordered that the Provost Marshal should be tried by Court-martial. But no one supposes that statesmen and administrators, accustomed to recognise and respect the rights of humanity, would fail to reprobate acts of the kind. The fatal thing is that such acts under certain circumstances become inevitable under a natural law, which ordains that the practice of cruelty makes even merciful men cruel, dulling the moral sense until it is impossible to draw the line with any precision between what is legitimate and what is not.
 
It is fair to say that Colonel Hooper has the reputation of being a very good officer, and that the desire to photograph the Burmese when struck by bullets is attributed, not to any inhumanity, but to what may almost be regarded as a passion for securing an indelible record of human expression at the supreme moment. It is related of him that on one occasion when a sepoy went shooting at large at his officers and comrades, he ran out with a photographic apparatus and brought it to bear upon the sepoy, who was in the act of taking aim at him. The homicidal soldier was struck at the instant by a bullet from another sepoy, and Colonel Hooper obtained his negative. At the battle of Minelah the gallant officer carried his camera under fire, so that it might be available for the record of any exceptional incident.
 
The photographing of the men shot at Mandalay under the circumstances mentioned was undoubtedly reprehensible. It created a bad impression, from which Colonel Hooper must be prepared to suffer in public opinion. But it is open to doubt whether there is not something very pharasaical in the spirit which revolts at the operation of photographing a batch of men at the moment of their execution, when their execution in batches is accepted as an ordinary incident in the subjugation of a conquered people. If all the men who were shot were dacoits, or had committed any moral offence other than that of hazarding their life in a lost cause, the shooting would be righteous as well as necessary, but, speaking generally, the executions in such cases are exemplary, and not punitive. It is the custom to close the eyes and the ears to the real nature of the "salutary severities" which are sparingly alluded to in the narratives of military operations in a vanquished country. It would be a great gain to the cause of humanity if there were more Colonel Hoopers, who would focus and fix and make widely known, every horror which it is the custom to slur over in referring to incidents of the kind. If people at large realised with anything like exactitude, the real nature of the price which subjugated populations pay for the blessings of civilisation, sounder views on such subjects would perhaps become more prevalent. As has been said above, if the severities produced always and everywhere the tranquillising effects which are generally expected from them, it might be a duty to acquiesce, as it is the duty of a surgeon to inflict pain as the price of an ultimate good.

• Remote impact
   
  Here during the American Civil War (1861-1865) we can see the burnt out warehouses and ruined cities. The cities are largely without people and show the remaining chimney stacks and unsupported blackened walls of disintegrating buildings. The casual observer would find little to distinguish the cities of the Confederacy from the photographs of 1870 Strasbourg taken during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Indeed moving forward during the First World War large numbers of picture postcards of towns such as Ypres and Arras were sold showing similar cities. The only real difference is in the explosive power of the weapons used to create the devastation. By the Second World War with the blanket bombing of civilian centers such as Coventry, Dresden, Tokyo and innumerable others - the aerial photographs of the ruins somehow remove us from what actually happened. We see bricks, tiles and splintered wood rather than the bodies beneath them.
   
  
• Near distance impact
   
  We better comprehend what actually happens during war when confronted by images of those that have directly suffered its consequences. They are not the fighters but the civilians whose lives are dragged into turmoil by the battles that surround them. When Adrian J. Ebell photographed the refugees from the Indian attacks on the Northern Plains that led to the First Indian War he understood their meaning. Illustrations based on the photographs were published in 1863 in Harper's New Monthly Magazine and forced political action. Single images such as the young naked girl running from exploding napalm in the Vietnam War bring home real events in the way words rarely can. We are surrounded by images of the bus bomb victims in Israel and the reactive collateral damage on civilians of the targeted assassinations of Palestinians by the IDF.
   
  
• Full impact
   
  Alongside the fates of individuals there are the fates of entire peoples and ethnic groups who have been persecuted and massacred because of race hatred, jealousy and bigotry. The genocide of Armenian Massacres (1915-23) left little photographic evidence whereas the Holocaust of the Second World War left so much that one would have to be unbalanced or prejudiced to question its veracity. Through our lives genocides continue - the 1994 Rwandan genocide with its hatreds that continue with massacres in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the 1982 Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia massacres in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila (Chatila), the massacres during the Balkan wars carried out by Serbian forces at Vukovar in 1991 and Srebrenica in 1995.
   
  Whole massacres have been blamed on others for political expediency. The execution of the 4,443 Polish officers whose bodies were disinterred from the Katyn Forest by the Germans in 1943 and Radio Berlin broadcast "a most horrific discovery" on 13 April 1943 claiming the Russian forces had done it - it was over 45 years later on 7 March 1989 that the Polish Government finally revealed that the Soviet NKVD under Stalin's orders had killed them whereas previously it was claimed that the German Army was responsible.

• Recreations of contemporary news events: The stereocards marketed by the Universal View Co. (Philadelphia Pa, Lawrence Kan) and E.W. Kelley (Chicago : Dallas, Tex : Augusta, Ga) come from different stereoview series but all appear to have been taken on the same day with the same cast of extras even though they purport to be real events. Some of the cards have titles that relate to real events Boer Artillery, Battle of Spion Kop. South Africa but the landscapes, trees, uniforms have no relationship to the contemporary photographs of the real battle. Some of the cards bear the mark of William H. Rau Publishers (Philadelphia, U.S.A.) and his life dates (1855-1920) mean that he could have taken them but this is not certain.
   
  
• Recreations for industrial exhibitions: The industrial exhibitions included a wide range of entertainment including staged events. Some of the stereoviews shown here come from the "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" held in St. Louis (USA) in 1904. The photographs by H.C. White (The Perfec Stereograph) show recreations of scenes from the Boer War that have far more activity in them than the actual war photographs.
   
  
• Patriotic scenes: Other images created scenes that showed the heroic troops in a romantic vein. These resemble theatrical stock shots and were to entertain rather than deceive.

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