This latter vice is the most important to point out, the others being more or less rare; but insubordination is an evil most frequent in our armies, and a most dangerous evil. Military operations have become so complicated and difficult in these days, that nothing is possible without the strictest obedience on the part of soldiers. In times when individual valor was almost everything, insubordination might have presented fewer inconveniences; but in these days, all is done through masses, and if the men do not obey, the armies are necessarily beaten because they cannot oppose an equal force to the enemy. Suppose the enemy to be 50,000 men strong in a certain place, that you yourself belong to a body of 50,000, and that you all together reach the same place at the same time as the enemy: you are equal in numbers, one against one, and you have at least as many chances as they; and if, besides, you have other qualities which they have not, you will have more chances. But if in the corps you belong to, there is no discipline, if every one disobeys--if, for example, when the order for marching is given, each starts when he pleases, and marches but as he pleases, you will arrive too late, and the enemy will have taken the best positions; there is then one chance lost. If, moreover, through the disorder in your ranks, you do not all arrive together, if there are but 25,000 men in a line, the others remaining behind, these 25,000 will be overwhelmed. As for those who do not reach the spot, think you they will escape the consequences of the battle? By no means; the disorder will not save them; it will deliver them defenseless into the hands of the pursuing enemy. Now, all disorder is followed by similar consequences. On the other hand, the obedience of the soldier being sure, the army is as one man who lends himself to all the plans, all the combinations; who takes advantage of all the happy chances, who runs less dangers because the business proceeds more rapidly, and that with less means one obtains more results. Such are the reasons for the punctilious discipline required of soldiers. We are treated as machines, you will say. Yes; if you resist: for then constraint becomes indispensable; but if you understand the necessity of the discipline, if you submit to it on your own accord, then are you no longer machines: you are men. The only way of not being a machine is then precisely to obey freely.