After the last shell was fired on the western front in the First World War. and the last bullet was spent, the study of war and military history was cast by society into the outer circles of Hell. True, the mountain of memoirs, debates, arguments and petty squabbles grew every year, but the serious study of war went out of fashion. Now, in an age of global conflict, guerrilla war, ultimate deterrents and the obscenities of destruction produced by modern technology, the study of war is once more respectable.