Not only did aeroplanes make excursions over the enemy lines for purposes of reconnaissance, but also for purposes of bomb-throwing. Not only were the enemy harassed repeatedly by the bombing of their quarters, their camp, their munition dumps and other establishments, but also troops concentrating for an offensive were attacked in this way with satisfactory results. Moreover, by raids into the enemy country carried out by squadrons of aircraft, we were able to inflict damage on fortifications, sources of military supplies, and other military establishments. In the course of these raids some unfortified places without military significance have had to suffer. The bombardment of these places is in itself objectionable, but the limits of what is permissible are in this matter in many ways elastic. A new weapon opens up its own paths, as is shown, for example, by the submarine war. In any case, in this contest of nations with its economic background, the War is turned more and more against the enemy countries, and the principle hitherto accepted that war is made only against the armed power of the enemy is, in this case as in other spheres, relegated to the background. In regard to the weapons which have proved most effective in the hands of the infantry, this World War, incredible as it may appear, has witnessed to a certain degree a retrograde development. The opposed forces, although equipped with long-distance rifles, were brought so close to one another, that they had recourse to the naked steel, and the hand-grenades of a past age were once again revived, though in an improved form. To be sure, instances occurred in the Russo-Japanese War, where the contending parties were for long periods in very close proximity to one another, and also in the Boer War many of the battles were fought, at any rate in part, at very close range; but the general tendency was to regard these as exceptions and to explain them as the result of local conditions or of the national characteristics of the contending parties, and to reckon the normal range of infantry righting as from 800 to 400 yards. Even with such an imperfect weapon as was the needle-gun compared with the present-day magazine rifle, Moltke in 1865 unconditionally gave to firearms the first place as regards effectiveness. He wrote[2]: