ABSTRACT
Warfare is one of the most complex and puzzling aspects of human behaviour and seems to have been a part of the human condition from time immemorial. Since war has been such a steady companion of humankind, the idea of trying to find a 'moral' basis for large-scale armed conflict had certainly antedated the Christian tradition of the Just War'. One obvious way out of the fact that no amount of religious or philosophical quibbling seems to prevent wars, suggests that the tendency for organised group conflict is a sort of 'relict psychological pattern', that once in the distant past it had served some evolutionary advantage, but has since become not only useless, but an actual threat. In terms of advances in healthcare, war did appear to confer some short-term legacy of good, for example, the development on a large scale of antibiotics such as penicillin to fight infection.
