I call to mind one of my comrades, an officer in the medical service. His red cross armlet protected him. Upon the roof of the field hospital he had with his own hands conspicuously unfurled the great neutral flag. I remember the circumstances perfectly. The cannonade had ceased. Our ears, which for three successive hours had been deafened by an infernal noise, were astonished by this sudden, palpitating, and immense silence. The men of our regiment, sent forward on a bayonet charge across the open, had been mowed down in masses. The survivors retreated in headless, incoherent, almost indifferent groups. While this was in progress I saw some of the men pause, quietly strike the plum-trees with their rifles, fill their mouths and their pockets with the unripe fruit, and continue on their way with the same careless gait as if at manœuvres. But the Prussians were in hot pursuit. We saw them advancing in regular order, close at hand, at first in open formation, and subsequently by sections. They halted, fired, bounded forward, fired again. Repeatedly they fired upon our field hospital, where the flood of bleeding flesh overflowed into the little garden behind the house. Dzing, dzing. Their bullets cannoned among our utensils, broke off limbs from the little fruit trees shading our wounded, and sometimes covered the poor hungry fellows with plum branches. The whole of our staff was at work, and the work was overwhelming, utterly disproportionate to the equipment and the personnel. Yet it was all the better, for excessive labour blinds us to danger. When the body is utterly exhausted, this reacts upon the mind, which becomes dull and insensible, so that imagination is paralysed. No doubt when, all of a sudden, quite close to your ears, a passing bullet utters its sharp but gentle flute-like note, the mind starts and rears like a frightened horse. It is invaded by a flow of precise and positive thoughts of self-preservation. But this is for a moment only. The act upon which you are engaged is mechanically finished, and there you are at your post, just as before. Heroism? The word is too lofty. It is better to say simply that action is a vice which holds the mind in its powerful grip and prevents reflection. In actual warfare, all ordinary men are worth pretty much the same; all are, as circumstances vary, equally cowardly or equally courageous. But the leaders are different. I am now of opinion that the true leaders, those to whose troops panic is unknown, are those who never abandon their men’s minds to themselves even for a moment, who keep these minds permanently occupied, concentrated upon the immediate vision of some simple and direct action which has to be performed.