How to approach the adversary? How to pass from the defensive to the offensive? How to regulate the shock? How to give orders that can be executed? How to transmit them surely? How to execute them by economizing precious lives? Such are the distressing problems that beset generals and others in authority. The result is that presidents, kings and emperors hesitate, tremble, interrogate, pile reports upon reports, maneuvers upon maneuvers, retard the improvement of their military material, their organization, their equipment. The only leaders who are equal to the difficulties of future war, come to conclusions expressed in almost the same terms. Recently General de Negrier, after having insisted that physical exhaustion determined by the nervous tension of the soldier, increased in surprising proportions according to the invisibility of the adversary, expressed himself as follows: "The tide of battle is in the hands of each fighter, and never, at any time, has the individual bravery of the soldier had more importance. "Whatever the science of the superior commander, the genius of his strategic combinations, the precision of his concentrations, whatever numerical superiority he may have, victory will escape him if the soldier does not conduct himself without being watched, and if he is not personally animated by the resolution to conquer or to perish. He needs much greater energy than formerly. "He no longer has the intoxication of ancient attacks in mass to sustain him. Formerly, the terrible anxiety of waiting made him wish for the violent blow, dangerous, but soon passed. Now, all his normal and physical powers are tried for long hours and, in such a test, he will have but the resoluteness of his own heart to sustain him. "Armies of to-day gain decisions by action in open order, where each soldier must act individually with will and initiative to attack the enemy and destroy him. "The Frenchman has always been an excellent rifleman, intelligent, adroit and bold. He is naturally brave. The metal is good; the problem is to temper it. It must be recognized that to-day this task is not easy. The desire for physical comfort, the international theories which come therefrom, preferring economic slavery and work for the profit of the stranger to the struggle, do not incite the Frenchman to give his life in order to save that of his brother. "The new arms are almost valueless in the hands of weakhearted soldiers, no matter what their number may be. On the contrary, the demoralizing power of rapid and smokeless firing, which certain armies still persist in not acknowledging, manifests itself with so much the more force as each soldier possesses greater valor and cool energy. "It is then essential to work for the development of the moral forces of the nation. They alone will sustain the soldier in the distressing test of battle where death comes unseen.