Any officer is one among many. Behind the smallest unit is the total power of the combined services. In the main, effectiveness develops out of unity of effort. To commit one's force to desperate, unhelped enterprises, when there is support at hand which may be had for the asking, may be one road to glory, but it is certainly not the path to success in War. The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was made immortal by Tennyson's poem, but it was as foolhardy as asking a troop of Boy Scouts to capture Gibraltar. In battle, a main obligation of those who lead is to make constant resurvey of the full horizon of their resources and means of possible support. This entails in time of peace the acquisition of a great body of knowledge seemingly unrelated to the administration of one's immediate affairs. It entails, also, facing forthrightly toward every task, or assignment, giving it a full try, sweating out every obstacle, but not being ashamed to ask for help or counsel if it proves to be beyond one's powers. _To give it everything, though not quite making the grade personally, is merely an exercise in character building. But to have the mission fail because of false pride is inexcusable._ The prayer that Sir Francis Drake wrote down for his men as he led them forth to a great adventure might well be repeated by any leader in the hour when he begins to despair because in spite of his striving he has not gained all he sought: "O Lord God, when Thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same until it is thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the true glory." The courage to start will carry a man far. Under the conditions of either war or peace, it is astonishing how many times all things come in balance for the man who is less fearful of rebuff than of being counted a cypher. One of Britain's great armored leaders, Lt. Gen. Sir Giffard Martel, digested the lesson of his whole life experience into this sentence: "If you take a chance, it usually succeeds, presupposing good judgment." Finally, it comes to that, for the willingness to accept calculated risks is of the essence of effective personal performance within the military profession. There must be careful collection of data. There must be weighty consideration of all known and knowable factors in the given situation. But beyond these things, what? To convey the idea that an officer must by ingrained habit dispose himself to take action only after he has arrived at an exact formula, pointing exclusively in one direction, would mean only that under the conditions of war he could never get off his trousers-seat. For such fullness of information and confidence of situation are not given to combat commanders once in a lifetime.