"Attack with the bayonet is the means with which finally to vanquish the enemy; no soldier will wish to abandon its use. The confidence of the men in the naked steel cannot be sufficiently aroused and encouraged, but its application must have been made possible by the previous course of the fight and have been prepared for by means of effective gunfire.... If the bayonet contests so frequently described in French accounts of the Italian campaign of 1859 were stripped of their dramatic glamour, if we could ascertain the simple prosaic truth, it would have to be admitted in reference to by far the greater number of them that the enemy had already been demoralised by more or less considerable losses and shunned a genuine encounter." Even prior to this date[3] the Field-Marshal wrote: "General Niel, it is true, ascribes his victory (in the Battle of Solferino) to the bayonet. It may be resorted to whenever the attack has been pushed to a struggle of man against man. As a general rule, this only occurs when it is presupposed that the opponent will not accept battle." We have already explained the psychological factors which come into play in the World War and embitter it in a manner which had not to be reckoned with in the time of Moltke. The Field-Marshal, moreover, could not foresee when, in the essay we have quoted, he cited a few instances taken from the Wars of Liberation, in which attacks were made with clubs and bayonets "under conditions in which firearms could not be effective," that such conditions would, at a future date, present themselves repeatedly upon fronts extending for miles.