War, a struggle by force of arms carried on between different states (international war) or tribes, or between different parties in the same state (civil war). The laws of war are treated of in this work in a long series of articles, such as those on International Law, Articles of War, Blockade, Contraband, Enemy (where the declaration of war is dealt with), Martial Law, Neutrality, &c. The means of conducting warfare come under such heads as those of Army, Navy, Fortification, Siege, Strategy, Tactics. Many of the great wars of history have separate articles—Crimean War, Peninsular War, Seven Years' War, Thirty Years' War, War of the Spanish Succession, Wars of the Roses, &c.—or are discussed in the histories of the countries they affect (Carthage, Rome, France, Germany, Turkey, United States, &c.) and of the commanders who waged them (Alexander, Cæsar, Hannibal, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington); see, too, the articles on great battles, Waterloo, &c.
It is difficult to estimate even approximately the cost, directly and indirectly, of great wars, apart from the loss of life. But some notion of the war expenditure of Great Britain may be gathered from the table at NATIONAL DEBT, showing the amount of the debt at successive dates. The cost of the Russian war to Britain is set down at close on £70,000,000; the loss in men was 20,526, of whom 12 per cent. died in battle, the rest in hospital. The American civil war was estimated to have cost the nation 600,000 lives and $10,000,000,000. Besides the fearful loss in men (290,000) and cost in money (£316,000,000) to France of the Franco-German war, there was added the war indemnity of 5000 millions of francs. In the one bloody battle of Gravelotte alone the victorious Germans lost 328 officers and 4900 men dead, and 571 officers and 14,000 men wounded; the French loss was 13,000 men. See also AMBASSADOR (for Declaration of War), BATTLE, GENEVA, and the lists appended to ARMY and to INTERNATIONAL LAW; and works on the Art of War by Clausewitz (trans. 1873), Jomini (trans. Phila. 1875), Hamley (1878), Wheeler (New York, 1880), Derrécaigaix (trans. Washington, 1889), Maurice and Fitzgerald (1889), Douglas Owen (1890), and Köhler (3 vols. 1888–90).
THE WAR DEPARTMENT has charge of everything connected with the army. In Great Britain it is a department of the state under a cabinet minister, the Secretary of State for War (abroad, war minister), assisted by a permanent and a parliamentary under-secretary. The War Office, the manufacturing departments, the Ordnance Survey, all forts, barracks, stores, government land used for military purposes, and vessels employed in carrying ordnance stores, &c. are under the War Department as well as the army itself. The letters W D with a broad arrow between them is the mark by which the War Department property is distinguished.
THE WAR OFFICE is the immediate office of the
Secretary of State for War, who, under the sovereign, is the head of the army, and responsible for everything connected with it. Before the Crimean war the administration of the army was divided amongst the War Office, Horse Guards, Ordnance Office, Treasury, Colonial Office, and Foreign Office. In 1856 it was concentrated in the War Office, which was divided into three great branches representing roughly men, money, and matériel under the Officer Commanding in Chief, the Financial Secretary, and the Surveyor-general of the Ordnance respectively. By an order in council of 21st February 1888 the War Office was reorganised, the Surveyor-general of the Ordnance abolished, and his duties divided between the Finance and Military departments—the first, under the Financial Secretary, to include the divisions of the Accountant-general and Directors of Contracts, Clothing, and Ordnance Factories; the second, under the Commander-in-Chief, those of the Adjutant-general, or Chief Staff Officer (discipline, enlistment, military education, &c.), the Military Secretary (appointments, honours, &c.), Quartermaster-general (supplies, quarters, transport, &c.), Inspector-general of Fortifications (forts, lands, submarine mines, &c.), Director of Artillery (warlike stores, inventions, &c.), Director of Military Intelligence, Directors-general of the Army Medical Department and of Military Education, Chaplain-general (Church of England only, other denominations are under the permanent Under-secretary of State for War), and Principal Veterinary Surgeon. By a reorganisation in 1895, the Secretary of State controls administration of the Army Service, the heads of departments being responsible to him; whereas formerly the Commander-in-chief was supreme head of the Military departments, with the Adjutant-general as his staff-officer.