After dashing out the lives of millions in vain assault against the enemy’s strength, it might not be amiss now to take a lesson from the objective aimed at by Paris three thousand years ago. Turning from myth to history, it may be useful to glance at two authentic examples of the use of the moral objective――which in each case changed the course of the world’s history. HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF THE MORAL OBJECTIVE First, from the Punic Wars. In the struggle between Rome and Carthage for the domination of the ancient world, the two mother cities with their government and population form the vital points――the moral objective. Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader, lives in history as, with Napoleon, the supreme military executant of all time. Yet similarly he appears to lack the gift of “grand strategical” vision. His objective is the armed forces of the enemy, but even the annihilating victory of Cannæ does not bring him to his goal, because Rome itself stands unmastered. The apologists for Hannibal are legion, but they cannot obscure the truth that by his failure to gain Rome he ultimately lost Carthage. Scipio Africanus, his ultimate conqueror at Zama, suffers from the misfortune that his own claims to fame are overshadowed by his adversary’s dramatic victories and heroic stand in Italy for so many years, which appeal to the sentimental imagination. But Scipio’s appreciation of the principle of the objective is surely more profound. Instead of seeking a decision in Italy, where his troops would suffer under the moral influence of Hannibal’s repeated victories in that theatre, Scipio, in face of the most weighty protests, embarks for Carthage. His immediate objective is to free Italy, and he realizes that a threat to Carthage will so act upon the moral of the citizens that they will recall Hannibal. The result proves the soundness of his judgment. Then, by striking at the resources of Carthage in Northern Africa he accomplishes the next step towards the subjugation of the Carthaginian will, and so to Zama, the flight of Hannibal himself to the East, and the capitulation of Carthage. Scipio’s moral objective triumphs over the “armed forces” theory of Hannibal.