physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations
bent to increase the sum of power at the front, where the two lines
writhe like wrestlers laboring for the final fall.

Yet it is seldom physical force that decides a long war. For war summons
skill against skill, head against head, staying-power against
staying-power, as well as numbers and machines against machines and
numbers. When an engine "exerts itself" it spends more power, eats more
fuel, but uses no nerve; when a man exerts himself, he must bend his
will to it. The extremer the physical effort, the greater the strain on
the inner or moral powers. Hence the paradox of war: just because it
calls for the maximum material performance, it calls out a maximum of
moral resource. As long as guns and bayonets have men behind them, the
quality of the men, the quality of their minds and wills, must be
counted with the power of the weapons.

And as long as men fight in nations and armies, that subtle but mighty
influence that passes from man to man, the temper and spirit of the
group, must be counted with the quality of the individual citizen and
soldier. But how much does this intangible, psychological factor count?
Napoleon in his day reckoned it high: "In war, the moral is to the
physical as three to one."

For war, completely seen, is no mere collision of physical forces; it is
a collision of will against will. It is, after all, the mind and will of
a nation--a thing intangible and invisible--that assembles the materials
of war, the fighting forces, the ordnance, the whole physical array. It
is this invisible thing that wages the war; it is this same invisible
thing that on one side or the other must admit the finish and so end it.
As things are now, it is the element of "morale" that controls the
outcome.

I say, as things are now; for it is certainly not true as a rule of
history that will-power is enough to win a war, even when supported by
high fighting spirit, brains, and a good conscience: Belgium had all
this, and yet was bound to fall before Germany had she stood alone. Her
spirit worked miracles at Liege, delayed by ten days the marching
program of the German armies, and thereby saved--perhaps Paris, perhaps
Europe. But the day was saved because the issue raised in Serbia and in
Belgium drew to their side material support until their forces could
compare with the physical advantages of the enemy. Morale wins, not by
itself, but by turning scale