Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage, energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at first hand capable of assuming for itself the position of leadership. But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience, especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of. Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the flattering stimulus of always going forward--a state of mind that may cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making impossible decisive strokes of strategy. In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies. No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for men to face an issue--_if they believe in it_. There are times when men seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the chance to face death or to bear an inhuman load. This state of mind does not exist of itself; it is morale at its best, and it appears only when the occasion strikes a nerve which arouses the super-earthly vistas of human consciousness or subconsciousness. But it commonly appears at the summons of a leader who himself welcomes the challenge of the task he sets before his followers. It is the magic of King Alfred in his appeal to his chiefs to do battle with the Danes, when all that he could hold out to them was the prospect of his own vision, This--that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.