Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers, and the natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of moral strength, as compared with the Japanese, affected all ranks of our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions—a war in which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country—the same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have sufficient resolution to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding with unshakable tenacity the positions assigned them, our troops often retreated, and in such cases our commanding officers of all ranks, without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right. Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however, never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war, together with our final acquisition of numerical preponderance and a noticeable decline of Japanese ardour, gave us reason to regard the future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate victory. In both Russian and foreign papers numerous articles have appeared in which the Commander-in-Chief has been accused of a lack of determination in the conduct of various battles. Without any real basis for their statements, critics have represented that orders to retire were for some unknown reason more than once given by him at a moment when victory lay in our hands. Comments upon his indecision and frequent change of orders were so common that the idea became universal that it was Kuropatkin, and Kuropatkin alone, who prevented the army and corps commanders from defeating the enemy.