provide what it might be hard to get.

_The Estimate of the Situation.--In no field of strategical work
is an accurate estimate of the situation more clearly necessary
than when it is to form the basis for the precise calculations
of logistics_. General strategical plans require a vividness of
imagination and a boldness of conception that find no field for
exercise in logistics; and tactics requires a quickness of decision
and a forcefulness of execution that neither strategy nor logistics
need; but neither strategy nor tactics calls for the mathematical
exactness that logistics must have, or be of no avail. Yet there
will be no use in working out the mathematically correct means to
produce certain result, if the real nature of the desired result
is underrated; there will be no use in working out laboriously how
many ships and tons of coal and oil are needed, if the estimate
of the situation, to meet which those ships and coal and oil are
needed, is inadequate.

The first step, therefore, in providing for the expansion of the
navy for war, is to estimate the situation correctly. The greatest
difficulty in doing this arises from a species of moral cowardice,
which tempts a man to underestimate its dangers, and therefore the
means required to meet them. _Probably no single cause of defeat
in war has been so pregnant with disaster as this failure to make
a sufficiently grave estimate of the situation_. Sometimes the
failure seems due more to carelessness than to cowardice; Napoleon's
disastrous underestimate of the difficulties of his projected Russian
campaign seems more due to carelessness than to cowardice; but this
may be due to a difficulty of associating cowardice with Napoleon.
But is it not equally difficult to associate carelessness with
Napoleon? What professional calculator, what lawyer's clerk was
ever more careful than Napoleon was, when dealing with problems of
war? Who was ever more attentive to details, who more industrious,
who more untiring? And yet Napoleon's plans for his Russian campaign
were inadequate to an amazing degree, and the inadequacy was the
cause of his disaster. But whether the cause was carelessness or
moral cowardice on his part, the fact remains that he did not estimate
the situation with sufficient care, and make due plans to meet it.

This unwillingness to look a difficult situation in the face one
can see frequently in daily life. Great difficulties seem to appall
some people. The