In these words is reflected the effect of an exhausting triumphal progress which the second army had pushed into the heart of the enemy country. Here, in fact, the thought might well intrude: Have we not now had victory enough? And yet at that time less than five months of war had elapsed, and the course of the war had been extraordinarily successful. The troops had not undergone anything like such tremendous experiences as they have had in the present World War. In this War the consciousness that our national existence is at stake has raised us above ourselves. All of us, leaders as well as men, have human weaknesses, and assuredly not all German soldiers are heroes by nature. But it is precisely in this--in the fact that the weak are carried along with the strong--that the educative force of this struggle for the existence of Germany is revealed. The weak could not do otherwise than strive to be heroes. Reverses, such as were occasionally inevitable in this long and tremendous War, have doubtless had a temporarily depressing effect upon the troops, and after efforts and a consumption of nervous force such as have never been experienced in any previous wars, the craving for rest has sometimes made itself felt. But even in the third year of the War, the fire of war did not merely flicker with a dim light, but was constantly rekindled to fresh flame. In Transylvania and Roumania and in Eastern Galicia in 1917 the troops displayed an ardour equal to that of the first days of the War. The magic of victory enabled them to defy all the difficulties of the ground and all the inclemencies of the weather. They would not, of course, have been a national army, linked to the homeland by a thousand ties, if they had felt no desire for the conclusion of a long war, a war demanding ever fresh sacrifices, and if a calmer feeling had not taken the place of the enthusiasm of the first months. But it was just such a feeling that was necessary for the accomplishment of such gigantic achievements in the West and in the East. What was wanted was not enthusiasm, but the living heroic sense of duty on the German soldier. Moreover, there exists in our army a cool contempt for danger, such as elsewhere has only been exhibited in picked professional armies, and yet ours has remained a national army in the best sense of the word. Clausewitz declares[5]: "If we look at a wild warlike race, then we find a warlike spirit in individuals much more common than in a civilised people; for in the former almost every warrior possesses it, whilst in the civilised, whole masses are only carried away by it from necessity, never by inclination."