vous revulsion;
and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in
instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The
hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays,
tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen
into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins
to show in its more vital dimensions. Here the substantial differences
between man and man, and between side and side, begin to appear as they
can never appear in training camp.

Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a
matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage,
energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the
most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at
various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and
the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive
mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between
a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at
first hand capable of assuming for itself the position of leadership.

But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important
as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience,
especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a
torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of.
Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the
general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the
reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the
flattering stimulus of always going forward--a state of mind that may
cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making
impossible decisive strokes of strategy.

In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the
utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the
power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the
temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies.
No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who
does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for
men to face an issue--_if they believe in it_. There are times when men
seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own
demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the