It was said of him, as it was said of Grant, that he was not afraid of losses. Like Grant, he was a hammerer. Pershing could depend upon him, as Pétain could depend upon Mangin, to "break the line," and as Lee depended upon Jackson to arrive on time and ahead of the enemy. Considering the objectives he gained, his admirers regarded him as a master economist of lives, as he was, comparing what he gained for a given number of casualties with what many other divisions gained for their casualties. With an iron will be applied the principle that he who hesitates in war is lost. If you keep the upper hand, the enemy suffers more heavily than you. Summerall's standard was always what he was doing to the enemy, and his attitude toward the enemy was not that of a professional soldier who regards war as a game in which you are testing your wits against an adversary. He would at times exhibit a Peter the Hermit fervor when he spoke of his soldiers' crusade against the barbarians, or pointed out to them ruined villages and heart-broken peasants as another reason for charging again. With his staff around him in the midst of an action, he gave an impression of thorough grasp of their parts and his. In this, as in everything he did, he had a touch of the histrionic. He was most concretely modern in arranging his patterns of barrages, and at the same time it occurred to an observer that it would have taken only a change of garb and hardly of mood to make him perfectly at home among the knights before the walls of Jerusalem. By this time you will understand that he is of a type whose characteristics entreat a writer to fluency, and that there are several Summeralls.