Dr. J. Macdonell, in a recent lecture, has touched on this subject. “It must be owned,” he says, “that the progress in mitigating the evils of war have been immense—that acts of useless violence which were once habitual are now exceptional, and are punished or condemned by military opinion. Ask those who say, ‘Things are much as they were: the grim realities of war no better than before,’ to note the matter-of-fact way Comines de Hoissard relates cruelties as the necessary accompaniments of warfare; then compare with such passages some of the many handbooks published by European Governments for the use of their troops. It has been truly said that the difference between the methods of the Thirty Years’ War and of the War of the Spanish Succession is the difference between darkness and twilight; the difference between warfare as understood by Tilly and Pappenheim and that described in modern official Manuals is the difference between light and darkness. Everywhere is recognised that only effective injuries are justifiable. The modern soldier strikes hard, he doesn’t mutilate or destroy for the love of destruction.” The Rev. Edmund Warre has drawn a vivid picture of the wretched plight of the slaves labouring at the oars, who suffered intense discomfort and were in continual danger. “In a hot climate, with but very little ventilation, it must have been exceedingly trying to take part in a laborious mechanical toil with perhaps some hundred or two of human beings stark naked and packed so closely that there was not room, as Cicero says, for even _one_ man more. The heat, the smells, the toil must have been terrible to any one undergoing it against his will—so terrible as to suggest that even death itself were better than such drudgery. A dull dead feeling of despair must have crept over man and crew in such a case, and though the lash might keep them going under ordinary circumstances, such spirits could not be relied upon in times of emergency, Besides the question of discomfort, the actual danger was very great. The crews were liable at any moment to be drowned or burnt, or, in the case of defeat, butchered by the victors—perhaps, as at Sybota, deliberately in cold blood. Conceive the moment of conflict and its horrors, when the sharp-pointed beak came crashing through the timbers, smashing them right and left along with the helpless mass of human beings, while the water followed swift upon the blow, perhaps just giving time to the Thranites (the rowers on the topmost of the three benches in the Trireme, who had the most work and the longest oars) to swarm up upon the deck, while the helpless Thalamites (the rowers on the lowest bench) were drowned at once.”