led to victory over the numerically superior.  Rome conquered the world with inferior forces; Frederick the Great with inferior forces withstood the allied armies of Europe.  Recent history shows us the victory of the numerically weaker Japanese army over a crushingly superior opponent.  We cannot count on seeing a great commander at our head; a second Frederick the Great will hardly appear.  Nor can we know beforehand whether our troops will prove superior to the hostile forces.  But we can try to learn what will be the decisive factors in the future war which will turn the scale in favour of victory or defeat.  If we know this, and prepare for war with a set purpose, and keep the essential points of view always before us, we might create a real source of superiority, and gain a start on our opponents which would be hard for them to make up in the course of the war.  Should we then in the war itself follow one dominating principle of the policy which results from the special nature of present-day war, it must be possible to gain a positive advantage which may even equalize a considerable numerical superiority.

[Footnote A:  Cf. v.  Bernhardi, “Vom heutigen Kriege,” vol. i., chap. ii.]

The essential point is not to match battalion with battalion, battery with battery, or to command a number of cannons, machine guns, airships, and other mechanical contrivances equal to that of the probable opponent; it is foolish initiative to strain every nerve to be abreast with the enemy in all material domains.  This idea leads to a certain spiritual servility and inferiority.

Rather must an effort be made to win superiority in the factors on which the ultimate decision turns.  The duty of our War Department is to prepare these decisive elements of strength while still at peace, and to apply them in war according to a clearly recognized principle of superiority.  This must secure for us the spiritual and so the material advantage over our enemies.  Otherwise we run the danger of being crushed by their weight of numbers.

We cannot reach this goal on the beaten roads of tradition and habit by uninspired rivalry in arming.  We must trace out with clear insight the probable course of the future war, and must not be afraid to tread new paths, if needs be, which are not consecrated by experience and use.  New goals can only be reached by new roads, and our military history teaches us by numerous instances how the source of superiority lies in progress, in conscious innovations based on convincing arguments.  The spiritual capacity to know where, under altered conditions, the decision must be sought, and the spiritual courage to resolve on this new line of action, are the soil in which great successes ripen.

It would be too long a task in this place to examine more closely the nature of the future war, in order to develop systematically the ideas which will prove decisive in it.  These questions have been thoroughly ventilated in a book recently published by me, “Vom heutigen Kriege” ("The War of To-day").  In this place I will only condense the results of my inquiry, in order to form a foundation for the further consideration of the essential questions of the future.