who represent the brain of the armies—have a life not very different from that of men of any intellectual calling; much less of physical strife than is called for in many civil occupations; less than falls to the lot of engineers, ranchers, sailors, miners, and so on. Even with armies the pugnacity must be translated into intellectual and not into physical effort.59
The very fact that war was long an activity which was in some sense a change and relaxation from the more intellectual strife of peaceful life, in which work was replaced by danger, thought by adventure, accounted in no small part for its attraction for men. But, as we have seen, war is becoming as hopelessly intellectual and scientific as any other form of work: officers are scientists, the men are workmen, the army is a machine, battles are "tactical operations," the charge is becoming out of date; a little while and war will become the least romantic of all professions.
In this domain, as in all others, intellectual force is replacing sheer physical force, and we are being pushed by the necessities even of this struggle to be more rational in our attitude to war, to rationalize our study of it; and as our attitude generally becomes more scientific, so will the purely impulsive element lose its empire over us. That is one factor; but, of course, there is the greater one. Our respect and admiration goes in the long run, despite momentary setbacks, to those qualities which achieve the results at which we are all, in common, aiming. If those results are mainly intellectual, it is the intellectual qualities that will receive the tribute of our