| For historians, whatever their field of concentration, it is very difficult to avoid the subject of warfare. Although not continuous in the nature of the activity as is economic activity, warfare impinges itself so mightily upon the lives of peoples when it does occur that it necessarily raises questions about the causes of particular wars, and the further question of why it should exist at all. My own introduction to these problems came from a childhood growing up between the two great conflicts, World Wars I and II, and service in the latter. My choice of history as a major in college was much influenced by these experiences; I learned to analyze such things as immediate and underlying causes of particular conflicts, the conduct of the campaigns, and the changes occasioned by the outcome of the various wars. However, it seemed to me that a very important aspect was left virtually untouched: the subject of the experience itself. If everyone agreed, as all right-minded persons should agree, that war is horrible and unprofitable, then it should have been obvious that it was in the interest of all to eliminate the practice. Equally obviously, this had not occurred. If explanations such as original sin or fundamental human nature were rejected, then one was still left with the question of why, given all of its disadvantages, war seemed so attractive to successive generations of humans. |
| It was in the reading of memoirs of soldiers from other ages, in my conversations with veterans, and in the comparison of my limited experience of combat with the experiences of these others, that I began to find patterns which had nothing to do with the causes of particular wars but were, rather, general characteristics of the phe- |
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