y. It is much worse for the inexperienced
when accident does not render him this service, but one report supports
another, confirms it, magnifies it, finishes off the picture with fresh
touches of colour, until necessity in urgent haste forces from us a
resolution which will soon be discovered to be folly, all those reports
having been lies, exaggerations, errors, &c. &c. In a few words, most
reports are false, and the timidity of men acts as a multiplier of lies
and untruths. As a general rule, every one is more inclined to lend
credence to the bad than the good. Every one is inclined to magnify the
bad in some measure, and although the alarms which are thus propagated
like the waves of the sea subside into themselves, still, like them,
without any apparent cause they rise again. Firm in reliance on his own
better convictions, the Chief must stand like a rock against which the
sea breaks its fury in vain. The role is not easy; he who is not by
nature of a buoyant disposition, or trained by experience in War, and
matured in judgment, may let it be his rule to do violence to his own
natural conviction by inclining from the side of fear to that of
hope; only by that means will he be able to preserve his balance. This
difficulty of seeing things correctly, which is one of the greatest
sources of friction in War, makes things appear quite different from
what was expected. The impression of the senses is stronger than the
force of the ideas resulting from methodical reflection, and this goes
so far that no important undertaking was ever yet carried out without
the Commander having to subdue new doubts in himself at the time of
commencing the execution of his work. Ordinary men who follow the
suggestions of others become, therefore, generally undecided on the
spot; they think that they have found circumstances different from what
they had expected, and this view gains strength by their again yielding
to the suggestions of others. But even the man who has made his own
plans, when he comes to see things with his own eyes will often think
he has done wrong. Firm reliance on self must make him proof against
the seeming pressure of the moment; his first conviction will in the end
prove true, when the foreground scenery which fate has pushed on to
the stage of War, with its accompaniments of terrific objects, is drawn
aside and the horizon extended. This is one of the great chasms which
separate CONCEPTION from EXECUTION.

CHAP