Excerpt from Army Sanitary Administration and Its Reform Under the Late Lord Herbert

IT has been well and truly said that, in long wars, the real arbiter of the destinies of nations is not the sword, but pestilence.

It is this destroying angel which, following on the march of armies, exacts of every man to the full whatever penalties follow on the infraction of natural law.

In times past, war has been conducted in more or less forgetfulness, sometimes in total oblivion, of the fact, that the soldier is a mortal man, subject to all the ills following on wet and cold, want of shelter, bad food, excessive fatigue, bad water, intern perate habits, and foul air.

And so the waste of human life, and the destruction of human health and happiness, have been, in all ages, many times greater from disease than from actual encounter in the field.

If peace has its victories as well as war, it has also its unnecessary losses from disease and death. Only the losses of peace are greater than those of war because they are daily and constant, while war occurs at intervals of time.

To endeavour to prevent this destruction of life is by no means to encourage war, no more than to attend on the sick and wounded in a field hospital is to encourage war.

The object is primarily one of humanity. It is to save life, and to diminish suffering. And all Who engage in this work are, in the best sense, savers of men.

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