Arms and the Man is most obviously an attack on the false ideals of warfare and the soldier’s profession. Late nineteenth century British society, especially the aristocratic element, tended to see war as noble and soldiers as brave, courageous, fearing nothing—resolved to conquer or die. Many military melodramas of the period upheld these virtues, but they were performed for a civilian audience; soldiers themselves did not think this way, as Shaw has Bluntschli make clear. Not a pacifist, Shaw is not opposed to war when necessary, but he does demand that it be seen for what it is—war makes men tired and hungry, afraid and nervous. In the person of Bluntschli and in his comments about battle, Shaw establishes the opposition with Raina and Sergius, the arch romantics of the play. The satire of the play is aimed at the poetic view of war and the soldier and at the commonplace conjunction between the soldier, aristocracy, and love. These were the staples of the standard military melodrama of the period; here, Raina breaks the pattern in which only the brave deserve the fair and chooses for her mate the practical, professional, middle-class Bluntschli.