ous approaches to this subject, there is need to discuss here only
a relatively few points which could not conveniently be treated
elsewhere.

This is the touchstone of success.

To any officer starting on a life career, it is impossible to
overstate its importance. For the moment, we can forget the words duty
and responsibility. The question is: "How do I get ahead?" And for a
junior there is one main road open--he will strive to achieve such a
communion of spirit with his subordinates that he will know the
personality and character of every one of his men, will understand
what moves and what stops them, and will be sympathetic to their every
impulse.

This is the main course. The great principles of war have evolved from
centuries of observation on how men react in the mass. It could not be
otherwise than that any officer's growth in knowledge of when and how
these principles apply to varying situations, strategical and
tactical, come primarily of the acuteness of his powers of observation
of individual men, and of men working together in groups, and
responding to their leadership, under widely different conditions of
stress, strain and emotion.

The roots of this kind of wisdom are not to be acquired from book
study; books are a help only as they provide an index to what should
be sought. The sage who defined strategy as "the art of the possible"
(the art of politics has been defined in the same words) wrote better
than he knew. The cornerstone of the science of war is knowledge of
the economy of men's powers, of their physical possibilities and
limitations, of their response to fatigue, hope, fear, success and
discouragement, and of the weight of the moral factor in everything
they do. Man is a beast of burden; he will fail utterly in the crisis
of battle if there is no respect for his aching back. He is also one
of a great brotherhood whose mighty fellowship can make the worst
misery tolerable, and can provide him with undreamed strength and
courage. These are among the things that need to be studied and
understood; they are the main score. It is only when an officer can
stand and say that he is first of all a student of human material that
all of the technical and material aspects of war begin to conform
toward each other and to blend into an orderly pattern. And the
laboratory is right outside the office door. Either an officer grows
up with, and into, this kind of knowledge through reflecting on
everything