Wars of conquest bring about curious results and in unexpected ways. While greed, lust and fanaticism have been the three great impelling and underlying motives for most of the wars which man thrusts upon his fellow-men, one far nobler motive has been the occasional and the only just cause of strife, namely, the desire for liberty; still this is always secondary and the product of some other man's or people's greed. As only by the cataclysms of the natural world has it been prepared for man's habitation, so by some wars have come benefits unforeseen, with an amelioration of the condition of mankind in general, which could not have been secured by any less drastic measures. It is, however, a sad commentary on man's intelligence that most honor is paid to those who have taken the most lives rather than to those who have saved them. No school boy in the remotest districts but is brought up with some trifling knowledge of the world's heroes, so-called, though they were in reality the world's wholesale murderers. Yet you may find many persons, credited with higher education, who are still densely ignorant of the benefits conferred by those two greatest discoveries in the world's history (both of Anglo-Saxon origin), _anaesthesia_ and _antisepsis_, who will talk entertainingly and at length of Darius, Caesar, Hannibal and the more modern military lights, yet who never heard of Morton nor of Lister. Yet if to-day you inquire what is doing in the various parliaments of the world you learn that the talk is ever of more numerous and more powerful engines of destruction, and that those in power have no time to devote to improvements in the army or navy medical service, and that it is even now impossible to secure anything like adequate attention to our needs in this direction. Means of taking human life must be constantly at hand; means of saving it are of small importance until the emergency has arisen; and then the blame for inadequate provision of both means and men falls not where it belongs, on the politicians who would not look ahead, but upon the administration of the medical department, who work to the point of desperation and despair in times of peace, who keep perpetual vigil, with scant recognition of the sacredness of their purpose, and scant aid in its accomplishment. Are the lessons of the South African, the Spanish-American and the Russo-Japanese wars to be forgotten almost before they have been recited? Are we prepared to-day to give adequate care and attention to our soldiers and sailors were war in sight? You well know that we are not; every military or naval surgeon knows we are not; the medical profession generally knows it; and our legislators have been told it until we are tired of repeating it. Yet, what is the result? The same indifference on their part, the same ignorance of what it all means; and on the part of the public the same blindness and fatuous confidence that "everything is all right."