What a truce is

Even during a war, the sovereign authorities are accustomed to grant certain rights, which,…I may call ‘intercourse of war’.…Among these are included the truce, the right of safe-conduct and the ransom of prisoners. A truce is an agreement by which warlike acts are for a time abstained from, though the state of war continues. I say, ‘though the state of war continues’, for…there is no middle ground between war and peace. War, furthermore, is the name of a condition which can exist even when it does not carry forward its operations.

This I say that we may know: that, if an agreement has been made which is to be valid in time of war, this will be valid also in a truce, unless it is clearly apparent that the agreement applies not to the state of war but to its acts. On the contrary, if anything has been said in regard to peace, this will not be applicable in time of truce.…Nevertheless, if it shall be apparent that the sole and only determining cause of an agreement was the cessation of warlike acts, it may happen that what has been said of a time of peace will in that case apply during the truce, not from the force of the word, but from a sure inference as to the intention [of the parties], regarding which we have spoken elsewhere.