The heart and brain of Ardant du Picq guarded faithfully a worthy but discredited cult. Too frequently in the course of our history virtues are forsaken during long periods, when it seems that the entire race is hopelessly abased. The mass perceives too late in rare individuals certain wasted talents--treasures of sagacity, spiritual vigor, heroic and almost supernatural comprehension. Such men are prodigious exceptions in times of material decadence and mental laxness. They inherit all the qualities that have long since ceased to be current. They serve as examples and rallying points for other generations, more clear-sighted and less degenerate. On reading over the extraordinary work of Ardant du Picq, that brilliant star in the eclipse of our military faculties, I think of the fatal shot that carried him off before full use had been found for him, and I am struck by melancholy. Our fall appears more poignant. His premature end seems a punishment for his contemporaries, a bitter but just reproach. Fortunately, more honored and believed in by his successors, his once unappreciated teaching contributes largely to the uplift and to the education of our officers. They will be inspired by his original views and the permanent virtue contained therein. They will learn therefrom the art of leading and training our young soldiers and can hope to retrieve the cruel losses of their predecessors. Ardant du Picq amazes one by his tenacity and will power which, without the least support from the outside, animate him under the trying conditions of his period of isolated effort. In an army in which most of the seniors disdained the future and neglected their responsibilities, rested satisfied on the laurels of former campaigns and relied on superannuated theories and the exercises of a poor parade, scorned foreign organizations and believed in an acquired and constant superiority that dispenses with all work, and did not suspect even the radical transformations which the development of rifles and rapid-fire artillery entail; Ardant du Picq worked for the common good. In his modest retreat, far from the pinnacles of glory, he tended a solitary shrine of unceasing activity and noble effort. He burned with the passions which ought to have moved the staff and higher commanders. He watched while his contemporaries slept.