belligerents? For offences of that sort there is no earthly
judge. Success can come only from the religious moral
education of individuals and from the feeling of honour and
sense of justice of commanders who enforce the law and conform
to it so far as the exceptional circumstances of war permit.

"This being so, it is necessary to recognise also that
increased humanity in the mode of making war has in reality
followed upon the gradual softening of manners. Only compare
the horrors of the Thirty Years' War with the struggles of
modern times.

"A great step has been made in our own day by the
establishment of compulsory military service, which introduces
the educated classes into armies. The brutal and violent
element is, of course, still there, but it is no longer alone,
as once it was. Again, Governments have two powerful means of
preventing the worst kind of excesses--strict discipline
maintained in time of peace, so that the soldier has become
habituated to it, and care on the part of the department which
provides for the subsistence of troops in the field. If that
care fails, discipline can only be imperfectly maintained. It
is impossible for the soldier who endures sufferings,
hardships, fatigues, who meets danger, to take only 'in
proportion to the resources of the country.' He must take
whatever is needful for his existence. We cannot ask him for
what is superhuman.

"The greatest kindness in war is to bring it to a speedy
conclusion. It should be allowable with that view to employ