What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction in action, is the sense of discipline. This includes: respect for and confidence in his chiefs; confidence in his comrades and fear of their reproaches and retaliation if he abandons them in danger; his desire to go where others do without trembling more than they; in a word, the whole of esprit de corps. Organization only can produce these characteristics. Four men equal a lion. Note the army organizations and tactical formations on paper are always determined from the mechanical point of view, neglecting the essential coefficient, that of morale. They are almost always wrong. Esprit de corps is secured in war. But war becomes shorter and shorter and more and more violent. Consequently, secure esprit de corps in advance. Mental acquaintanceship is not enough to make a good organization. A good general esprit is needed. All must work for battle and not merely live, quietly going through with drills without understanding their application. Once a man knows how to use his weapon and obey all commands there is needed only occasional drill to brush up those who have forgotten. Marches and battle maneuvers are what is needed. The technical training of the soldier is not the most difficult. It is necessary for him to know how to use and take care of his weapon; to know how to move to the right and to the left, forward, to the rear, at command, to charge and to march with full pack. But this does not make the soldier. The Vendeans, who knew little of this, were tough soldiers. It is absolutely necessary to change the instruction, to reduce it to the necessary minimum and to cut out all the superfluities with which peacetime laborers overload it each year. To know the essential well is better than having some knowledge of a lot of things, many of them useless. Teach this the first year, that the second, but the essential from the beginning! Also instruction should be simple to avoid the mental fatigue of long drills that disgust everybody. Here is a significant sentence in Colonel Borbstaed's enumeration of the reasons for Prussian victory over the Austrians in 1866, "It was ... because each man, being trained, knew how to act promptly and confidently in all phases of battle." This is a fact. To be held in a building, at every minute of the day to have every movement, every attitude under a not too intelligent surveillance is indeed to be harried. This incessant surveillance weakens the morale of both the watched and the watcher. What is the reason for this incessant surveillance which has long since exceeded shipboard surveillance? Was not that strict enough? 3. Material and Moral Effect The effect of an army, of one organization on another, is at the same time material and moral. The material effect of an organization is in its power to destroy, the moral effect in the fear that it inspires.