In war, where everything must be treated individually, only those regulations will work well which are primarily addressed to the leaders.  This includes everything that your manual has to say concerning the wounded and the sick, the physicians and their medicines.  The general recognition of these principles, and also of those which have to do with the prisoners of war, would mark a notable step in advance and bring us nearer the end which the Institute of International Law is pursuing with such admirable perseverance.

Very respectfully,

COUNT MOLTKE.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 38:  From Count Moltke’s Letters from Russia, permission Harper & Brothers, New York.]

[Footnote 39:  Kopecks are equal to about one cent each.]

[Footnote 40:  A part of the castle in Marienburg, Prussia, containing the hall where the knights of the German order, “Deutsche Ritter,” held their conclaves; also the hall itself, one of the showplaces of Eastern Prussia.—­TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 41:  A whip with short handle and long thong.—­TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 42:  Militia of the Emperor, but differently constituted from the American militia or Prussian Landwehr.—­TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 43:  One of the summer palaces of the Emperor.]

FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER[44]

TRANSLATED BY CLARA BELL AND HENRY W. FISCHER

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

The days are gone by when, for dynastical ends, small armies of professional soldiers went to war to conquer a city, or a province, and then sought winter quarters or made peace.  The wars of the present day call whole nations to arms, there is scarcely a family that does not suffer by them.  The entire financial resources of the State are appropriated to the purpose, and the different seasons of the year have no bearing on the unceasing progress of hostilities.  As long as nations continue independent of each other there will be disagreements that can only be settled by force of arms; but, in the interest of humanity, it is to be hoped that wars will become less frequent, as they have become more terrible.

Generally speaking, it is no longer the ambition of monarchs which endangers peace; the passions of the people, its dissatisfaction with interior conditions and affairs, the strife of parties, and the intrigues of their leaders are the causes.  A declaration of war, so serious in its consequences, is more easily carried by a large assembly, of which none of the members bears the sole responsibility, than by a single man, however high his position; and a peace-loving sovereign is less rare than a parliament composed of wise men.  The great wars of the present day have been declared against the wish and will of the reigning powers.  Now-a-days the Bourse has assumed such