§ 130. According to articles 14 and 16 of the Hague Regulations every belligerent[263] must institute on the commencement of war a Bureau of Information relative to his prisoners of war. This Bureau is intended to answer all inquiries about prisoners. It must be furnished by all the services concerned with all the necessary information to enable it to make out and keep up to date a separate return for each prisoner, and it must, therefore, be kept informed of internments and changes as well as of admissions into hospital, of deaths, releases on parole, exchanges, and escapes. It must state in its return for each prisoner the regimental number, surname and name, age, place of origin, rank, unit, wounds, date and place of capture, of internment, of the wounds received, date of death, and any observations of a special character. This separate return must, after conclusion of peace, be sent to the Government of the other belligerent. [Footnote 263: And likewise such neutral States as receive and detain members of the armed forces of the belligerents; see article 14.] The Bureau must likewise receive and collect all objects of personal use, valuables, letters, and the like, found on battlefields[264] or left by prisoners who have been released on parole, or exchanged, or who have escaped, or died in hospital or ambulances, and must transmit these articles to those interested. The Bureau must enjoy the privilege of free postage. [Footnote 264: See above, § 124.] [Sidenote: Relief Societies.] § 131. A new and valuable rule, taken from the Brussels Declaration, is that of article 15 of the Hague Regulations making it a duty of every belligerent to grant facilities to Relief Societies to serve as intermediaries for charity to prisoners of war. The condition of the admission of such societies and their agents is that the former are regularly constituted in accordance with the law of their country. Delegates of such societies may be admitted to the places of internment for the distribution of relief, as also to the halting-places of repatriated prisoners, through a personal permit of the military authorities, provided they give an engagement in writing that they will comply with all regulations by the authorities for order and police. [Sidenote: End of Captivity.]