ABSTRACT
Hence the continuous efforts made throughout history to make war disappear from its pages; to make it only a part of the past. We have made some progress in this respect. We have outlawed war, but not very successfully. Even after the gigantic destruction caused by the Second World War we have witnessed so many armed struggles. While trying to abolish war we try to make it more humane, to limit its destructive possibilities. It is true that sceptics express serious doubts as to the value and effect of these efforts. To remind you only of Moltke’s famous letter to Bluntschli and the Portalis memoire to the Academy of Toulouse. And the letter published in the London Times in 1869, in which a famous Cambridge professor said: ‘To attempt to disarm war of its horrors is an idle dream and a dangerous delusion; let us labour at the more practical task of making it impossible.’
