In the modern world victory has inclined more and more to that side which carefully prepares beforehand to throw a force, superior alike in armament and numbers, against the vitals of its enemy.

Assuming that the combatants are fairly equal in physical qualities--and the spread of liberty has undoubtedly lessened the great differences that once were observable in this respect among European peoples--war becomes largely an affair of preliminary organisation.

That is to say, it is now a matter of brain rather than muscle.

Writers of the school of Carlyle may protest that all modern warfare is tame when compared with the splendidly rampant animalism of the Homeric fights.

In the interests of Humanity it is to be hoped that the change will go on until war becomes wholly scientific and utterly unattractive.