Military success requires primarily the intelligent direction against the enemy of the forces employed. The general staff originated as the auxiliary instrument of this direction, and as such is found, at least in a rudimentary form, in every army. In Prussia alone its full importance was understood, and it received an organization peculiarly suited to its purpose. The distinction was steadily kept in view between the all-important conduct of the operations against an enemy and the subordinate though necessary business of administration.[2] Every function directly bearing upon the conception or design of the action of the army or of its principal parts against the enemy was assigned to the general staff, which thus became an enlargement of the commander's mind, serving to facilitate his performance of his most characteristic and most difficult duty. To the command thus strengthened the army was rendered pliable partly by means of a suitable subdivision into permanent autonomous bodies, and partly through the organization of the administrative side by side with the military services. The army corps--managing its own internal affairs--having its adjutancy, its auditoriat, and its intendancy to supply its needs with the assistance of and in connection with the ministry of war--is a body easily amenable to the strategical direction proceeding from a general centre. Thus the growth of the organ of strategical direction was necessarily accompanied by a corresponding development of other military institutions by which the perfect adaptability of the organism to the directing agency was attained and preserved. The importance of the office of chief of the general staff of the army led to its being filled by selection. The confidence reposed in a chosen chief implied that he should be unhampered in the means of fulfilling his duties. He was therefore entrusted with the selection, and eventually with the training, of the officers for his own department. The design of military operation involves the most complete knowledge of the military sciences, and the most perfect mastery of the military art. Accordingly the great general staff has become a school of generalship, from which have emanated a series of masterpieces of military history and historical criticism, while its individual members have produced valuable works dealing with the various branches of the theory of the art of war. The attachment of the War Academy to the general staff for which it is the training school is the means of raising to the highest level the standard of military education.