produced by knowledge.  This is shown everywhere.  We see the awkward and shy recruit ripen into a clear-headed smart sergeant; and the same process is often traced among the higher commands.  But where the mental development is insufficient for the problems which are to be solved, the personality fails at the moment of action.  The elegant guardsman Bourbaki collapsed when he saw himself confronted with the task of leading an army whose conditions he did not thoroughly grasp.  General Chanzy, on the other hand, retained his clear judgment and resolute determination in the midst of defeat.  Thus one of the essential tasks of the preparations for war is to raise the spiritual level of the army and thus indirectly to mould and elevate character.  Especially is it essential to develop the self-reliance and resourcefulness of those in high command.  In a long military life ideas all too early grow stereotyped and the old soldier follows traditional trains of thought and can no longer form an unprejudiced opinion.  The danger of such development cannot be shut out.  The stiff and uniform composition of the army which doubles its moral powers has this defect:  it often leads to a one-sided development, quite at variance with the many-sidedness of actual realities, and arrests the growth of personality.  Something akin to this was seen in Germany in the tentative scheme of an attack en masse.  United will and action are essential to give force its greatest value.  They must go hand in hand with the greatest spiritual independence and resourcefulness, capable of meeting any emergency and solving new problems by original methods.

It has often been said that one man is as good as another; that personality is nothing, the type is everything; but this assertion is erroneous.  In time of peace, when sham reputations flourish and no real struggle winnows the chaff from the coin, mediocrity in performance is enough.  But in war, personality turns the scale.  Responsibility and danger bring out personality, and show its real worth, as surely as a chemical test separates the pure metal from the dross.

That army is fortunate which has placed men of this kind in the important posts during peace-time and has kept them there.  This is the only way to avoid the dangers which a one-sided routine produces, and to break down that red-tapism which is so prejudicial to progress and success.  It redounds to the lasting credit of William I. that for the highest and most responsible posts, at any rate, he had already in time of peace made his selection from among all the apparently great men around him; and that he chose and upheld in the teeth of all opposition those who showed themselves heroes and men of action in the hour of need, and had the courage to keep to their own self-selected paths.  This is no slight title to fame, for, as a rule, the unusual rouses envy and distrust, but the cheap, average wisdom, which never prompted action, appears as a refined superiority, and it is only under the pressure of the stern reality of war that the truth of Goethe’s lines is proved: