Honestly, this reminds me of something from Mark Twain’s satirical A Defense of General Funston. Funston was fighting to conquer the Philippines and trying to track down insurgents. He hatched a scheme to be fake-captured by Phillippinos loyal to him, but while they were en route, they ran short of supplies, and begged the insurgents for food. The insurgents sent them food, then welcomed them in to their hideout and fed them, after which Funston’s “captors” opened fired and murdered their hosts.

By the custom of war, all these things are innocent, none of them is blameworthy, all of them are justifiable; none of them is new, all of them have been done before, although not by a Brigadier-General. But there is one detail which is new, absolutely new. It has never been resorted to before in any age of the world, in any country, among any people, savage or civilized. It was the one meant by Aguinaldo when he said that “by no other means” would he have been taken alive. When a man is exhausted by hunger to the point where he is “too weak to move,” he has a right to make supplication to his enemy to save his failing life; but if he take so much as one taste of that food–which is holy, by the precept of all ages and all nations–he is barred from lifting his hand against that enemy for that time.

It was left to a Brigadier-General of Volunteers in the American army to put shame upon a custom which even the degraded Spanish friars had respected. We promoted him for it.