Concurrently with the efforts which have thus been made to ascertain the laws of war by general diplomatic agreement, the way for such agreement has been prepared by the labours of the Institut de Droit International, and by the issue by several governments of instructions addressed to their respective armies and navies. The _Manuel des Lois de la Guerre sur Terre_, published by the Institut in 1880, is the subject of the two letters which immediately follow. Their insertion here, although the part in them of the present writer is but small, may be justified by the fact that they set out a correspondence which is at once interesting (especially from its bearing upon the war of 1914) and not readily elsewhere accessible. The remaining letters in this chapter relate to the _Naval War Code_, issued by the Government of the United States in 1900, but withdrawn in 1904, though still expressing the views of that Government, for reasons specified in a note to the British _chargé d'affaires_ at Washington and printed in _Parl. Papers, Miscell._ No. 5 (1909), p. 8. The United States, it will be remembered, were also the first Power to attempt a codification of the laws of war on land, in their _Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States_, issued in 1863, and reissued in 1898. Some information as to this and similar bodies of national instructions may be found in the present writer's _Studies in International Law_, 1898, p. 85. _Cf._ his _Manual of Naval Prize Law_, issued by authority of the Admiralty in 1888, his _Handbook of the Laws and Customs of War on Land_, issued by authority to the British Army in 1904, and his _The Laws of War on Land (written and unwritten)_, 1908. The Institut de Droit International, which has been engaged for some years upon the Law of War at Sea, by devoting the whole of its session at Oxford, in 1913, to the discussion of the subject, produced a _Manuel des Lois de la Guerre sur Mer_, framed in accordance with the now-accepted view which sanctions the capture of enemy private property at sea. It is to be followed by a manual framed in accordance with the contrary view. _Cf._ the letters upon the _Declaration of London_, in Ch. VII. Section 10, _infra_. COUNT VON MOLTKE ON THE LAWS OF WARFARE