What then were the qualities which made Marlborough so astonishingly successful in the field--and not in the field only--for you must remember that he was no less great as a diplomatist than as a general? First I should say what Wellington termed his strong cool common-sense. This sounds perhaps a small matter to you; but what after all is common-sense? It is above all the faculty of seeing things as they are, and of framing your action accordingly. The faculty of seeing things as they are, swift, true and penetrating insight into the heart of things, undistracted by their outward semblance--this, whether it be the attribute of statesman, general, poet or painter, is genius. And to frame your actions, as a man of action, upon real insight, what does that mean? It means transcendent moral courage, the courage of faith in one's own judgement, the courage to depart from beaten tracks, the courage to brave the disapprobation of those who cannot do without such tracks, the courage, in a good sense, to take liberties. It is the union of courage with insight which makes a man original. And there was another form of genius which Marlborough possessed in a supreme degree, the faculty of taking infinite pains. When his army started for the Danube not a man knew whither he was bound; yet at every stage food was ready for all, and at certain points shoes to replace those worn out on the march, and money to provide the troops with pay. For, as Marlborough well knew, soldiers who have not what they need will help themselves, and plunder means indiscipline, and indiscipline turns an army into a rabble. Any officer can flog and shoot and punish, and say that he enforces discipline; but a good officer prefers to enforce it by removing all temptation to indiscipline. Next, Marlborough possessed in a transcendent degree the divine gift of patience--patience which conquers all things. His temper was almost miraculously placid and calm. Time after time the Dutch deputies thwarted his shrewdest strokes and most brilliant combinations; and time after time he endured their maddening mischief without a murmur, without even a semblance of displeasure, waiting for better times, and preferring to bear almost any mortification rather than endanger the common cause. There are few things greater in Marlborough than this. "I would not have that man's temper for the world," he is reported to have remarked when watching a groom who was fighting his horse in the saddle. So strongly marked was this characteristic that when once, in order to deceive his enemy, he grew from day to day more cantankerous and pretended at last to lose all self-control, his army declared sorrowfully that Corporal John had lost his wits. And this epithet--Corporal John--brings me to the last great gift of Marlborough, his extraordinary personal charm. It nowhere appears that he laid himself out particularly to attract his fellow-creatures; but not one of them could resist him. His men adored him.