ABSTRACT
By 1870 G. Moynier was sure that they were riding the crest of a great wave of enlightenment and reason that would wash away the remnants of barbarism and create a new and higher stage in the development of civilization. In the spring of 1870, Moynier published his most important work to date, a three hundred-page essay on the Geneva Convention. The great task of the nineteenth century, in Moynier's view, was elimination of the last vestiges of barbarism. Of these, "war, which still breaks out so frequently, even in the center of the most advanced civilization, is the most terrible, the most striking expression of this barbarian prejudice." Moynier and his colleagues had no option but to test informed opinion as best they could. French army surgeons were evidently still wedded to the idea that they were combatants first and physicians second and believed that wearing the badge of neutrality would be seen as a confession of weakness.
