Fortunately it was not to happen that the "mechanical heads" should triumph once again in the Prussian army, as Scharnhorst had feared. The conditions had been completely altered since 1806. The introduction of universal service entailed on the officer educational duties which had not fallen to him in the old army. Also, although the army did not have an opportunity of gaining new experience of war on a large scale, the dangerous tendencies with which it had become infected were none the less successfully overcome. In this connection valuable service was rendered by the Prince of Prussia. His clear understanding in regard to military matters enabled him to form a very just estimate of the limits within which a rational training by means of drill ought to be confined, and this at a time when a one-sided training, with a view principally to the requirements of parades, seemed still to be completely in the ascendent. In notes which he made in the year 1840,[8] the Prince laid down principles which still hold good at the present day. He wrote: "The sole purpose of the drilling-ground is, in my opinion, to achieve order. If the spirit of order exists in a troop, it is possible to do anything with it; without order nothing is possible." The parade step, and the preparatory practice for it, the Prince held to be indispensable, "if," he says, "we are to have troops and not a mere assembled mob." Thus the Prince assigned to the parade the importance which properly belongs to it, and to which it can justly lay claim even at the present day. A very careful training by means of drill is an indispensable preparation. Therefore, in the same notes, the Prince says further in regard to drill: "Uniformity is indispensable. Why should one be permitted to do his task well, and another to do it badly? ... Either we intend to have a trained troop or else a mob of undisciplined men. That is a point which must be settled." Further he says that the objectionable term "Trillen" is constantly applied to what is really no more than soldierly discipline, as opposed to rustic clownishness. The future Emperor expressed very finely his firm and unshakable confidence in the efficiency of the army for purposes of war when he said that suspicions ought not to be entertained concerning the spirit of the army merely because, in addition to its actual achievements, it presented a handsome outward appearance. "Any one who has had to do with the army for twenty years will have only one opinion on this head, namely, that the spirit and the will of the army are above all praise, and that such an _esprit de corps_ exists in it as never before."