THE MEANS TO THE MORAL OBJECTIVE After this brief historical survey, let us turn to consider the means by which the moral objective, of subduing the enemy’s will to resist, can be attained. These means can be exercised in the military, the economic, the political, or the social spheres. Further, the weapons by which they are executed may be military, economic, or diplomatic――with which is included propaganda. As war is our subject, the diplomatic and economic weapons, except in a military guise, are outside our purview. There appears little doubt, however, that the economic weapon in the struggle between rival national policies during so-called peace has possibilities still scarcely explored or understood. Again, the military weapon can be wielded in the economic sphere without any open state of war existing. In the Ruhr we saw the French aiming, by a military control of Germany’s industrial resources, to subdue the latter’s will to resist French policy, and with the further motive of a moral disruption between the German states. What, however, are the ways in which the military weapon can be employed to subdue the enemy’s will to resist _in war_? The question demands that we first examine how the moral attack takes effect, and how the will of an enemy people is reduced to such a degree that they will sue for peace rather than face a continuation of the struggle. Put in a nutshell, the result is obtained by dislocating their normal life to such a degree that they will prefer the lesser evil of surrendering their policy, and by convincing them that any return to “normalcy”――to use President Harding’s term――is hopeless unless they do so surrender. It is an old proverb that “So long as there is life, there is hope,” and this Ciceronian saw may be adduced to support the argument that in the case of people who fight best “with their backs to the wall” only death will end their resistance. This may be true of individuals, or even of considerable bodies of men; the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race afford examples――though such cases have almost always occurred when surrender was as fatal as continued resistance. As soldiers know well, time throws an heroic glamour over events of the past, and national pride leads to pardonable exaggeration of great deeds. Such _résistance à mort_ is probably as rare as that mythical bayonet charge and hand-to-hand clash with cold steel so beloved of tradition and the painter of battle scenes. The latter myth was exposed by the long-dead Ardant du Picq, that French soldier-realist who refused to bow before the altar of the martial tradition. And the Great War finally dissipated it. Imaginative soldiers, especially those in the supply services, might write letters home describing such close quarter fights, war-correspondents safely behind the lines might retail such martial exploits for the benefit of a sensation-loving public, but the real fighting soldier soon found