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m on general principles disinclined to make any bombastic statement about myself. Yet since this too is one of the factors contributing to supremacy in war and is believed among all men to be of greatest importance,--I mean that men who are to fight well must secure an excellent general--necessity itself has rendered quite indispensable some remarks about myself, their purpose being to enable you to realize still more the fact that not only are you such soldiers that you could conquer even without a good leader, but I am such a leader that I can win even with poor soldiers. I am at that age when persons attain their greatest perfection both of body and intellect and suffer deterioration neither through the rashness of youth nor the feebleness of old age, but are strongest because in a condition half-way between the two. Moreover I possess such a nature and such a training that I can with greatest ease discern what requires to be done and make it known. Experience, which causes even the ignorant and the uneducated to appear to be of some value, I have been acquiring through my whole political and whole military career. From boyhood till now I have been continually exercised in similar pursuits; I have been much ruled and done much ruling, from which I have learned on the one hand what kind of orders and of what magnitude must be issued, and on the other how far and in what way one must render obedience. I have been subject to terror, to confidence: as a result I have made it my custom neither to entertain any fear too readily nor to venture on any hazard too heedlessly. I have met with good fortune, I have met with failure: consequently I find it possible to avoid both despair and excess of pride. [-18-] "I speak to you who know these facts and make you who hear them my witnesses not in the intention of uttering idle boasts about myself,--your consciousness of the truth being sufficient glory for me,--but to the end that you may in this way bring home to yourselves how much better we are equipped than our opponents. For, while they are inferior to us in quantity both of soldiers and of money and in diversity of equipment, in no one respect are they so strikingly lacking as in the age and inexperience of their general. About him I need in general make no exact or detailed statement, but to sum up I will say this, which you all understand, that he is a veritable weakling in body and has never himself been victor in any im
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