"Uprooted from its political soil, national life displayed itself the intellectual fields exclusively. 'To think and to suffer' became the watchword of the Jewish people." They brought their "extraordinary mental energy" to the task. "The spiritual discipline of the school came to mean for the Jew what military discipline is for other nations." Dubnow notes that the Jewish people without an army live as if in a future world where nations no longer rise up against each other in war. Hence, for the Jews, their history has become "spiritual strivings" and cultural contributions. "If the inner life and social and intellectual development of a people form the kernel of history, and politics and occasional wars are but its husk, then certainly the history of the Jewish Diaspora is all kernel."