The study, of course, is no new one, but there can be no objection to calling it by the new name of Bellology--a convenient term, quite capable of holding its own with Sociology or its congeners. The only novelty I have aimed at is one of treatment, and consists in never losing sight of the fact that to all military customs there is a moral and human side which has been only too generally ignored in this connection. To read books like Grose’s ‘Military Antiquities,’ one would think their writers were dealing with the manners, not of men but of ninepins, so utterly do they divest themselves of all human interest or moral feeling, in reference to the customs they describe with so laudable but toneless an accuracy. The starting-point of modern bellological studies will, undoubtedly, always be the Parliamentary Blue Book, containing the reports (less full than one might wish) of the Military International Conference that met at Brussels in 1874, to discuss the existing laws and customs of war, and to consider whether any modification of them were either possible or desirable. Most of the representatives appointed to attend by the several Powers were military men, so that we are carried by their conversation into the actual realities of modern warfare, with an authority and sense of truth that one is conscious of in no other military book. It is to be regretted that such a work, instructive as it is beyond any other on the subject, has never been printed in a form more popular than its official dress. It was from it that I first conceived the idea of the following pages, and in the sequel frequent reference will be made to it, as the source of the most trustworthy military information we possess, and as certain to be for some time to come the standard work on all the actual laws and customs of contemporary warfare. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE LAWS OF WAR. PAGE The prohibition of explosive bullets in war 2 The importance of the Declaration of St. Petersburg of 1868 3 The ultimate triumph of more destructive methods 4 Illustrated by history of the crossbow or the musket 5 Or of cannons, torpedoes, red-hot shot, or the bayonet 5 Numbers slain in modern and earlier warfare 8 The laws of war at the Brussels Conference of 1874 10 Do the laws of war tend to improve? 13 A negative answer suggested from reference 13 1. To the use of poison in war 14 2. To the bombardment of towns 15 3. To the destruction of public buildings 16 4. To the destruction of crops and fruit-trees 16