All this is but preliminary or preparatory work. The decisive act is that by which the chief of the staff, from the information he has thus acquired, constructs a problem and designs its solution--puts to himself the question, What is now to be done? and answers it. Thus in the last analysis the soul of the organism resides in the chief of the staff, and is manifested in the exercise of his peculiar faculties. It therefore becomes necessary to investigate the nature and origin of the qualities in virtue of which he is fitted for his post. The _Order of Teaching_ of the War Academy explains the method by which, in an elementary stage, the intellectual faculties requisite for command are developed and trained. The mental outfit of the ideal general is there analyzed into its constituent parts, which are classified according to their importance. The highest place is assigned to military history as "the most effective means of teaching war during peace."[1] Accordingly the study of military history, to which so large a space is assigned in the course of the War Academy, is pursued on a higher plane by the great general staff, which has a special department for its cultivation. In this historical work, and in the method on which it is conducted, lies the secret of Prussian generalship. The leading ideas of the school must be sought in the writings of Clausewitz,[2] the great exponent of the lessons learned in Prussia from the wars against Napoleon. Clausewitz distinguishes the mere narration of events, which gives at most the superficial relations of cause and effect, from their critical examination. In the critical method applied to military history he defines[3] three stages or operations. There is first the historical process proper, which has for its object the ascertainment of the facts so far as this is possible with the existing materials. Upon the basis thus furnished the military student will proceed to seek to understand the events in their relations as cause and effect, and then when their real historical connection[4] has thus been determined will undertake to form a judgment as to the fitness of the means employed for the ends which it was sought to attain. It is in this last process that the educational value of military history is to be sought. The Prussian School aims not only at developing the power of comprehension, but also at forming the character.[5] Accordingly it requires that the student should not merely make himself acquainted with the facts of a campaign, and with the general bearings of theory upon its events. He is expected in every case to form a definite conclusion as to what ought to have been done. He must clearly make up his mind what course he would himself have adopted in the circumstances which confronted the general whose operations he is studying.