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334 merely embroidery about this primal fact. Save in so far as he develops in his men and nation this fitness to win, the leader is of little more account than his officers, his men, and the mass of the nation whence they all come. And the great men of history have been not those who have planned the most brilliant strategies but those who have been able to carry out what they have planned through those below them being also inspired with the single-hearted desire to destroy the enemy. The full possession of that desire has implied caution where caution was required, rashness when rashness was the better way, cunning when cunning was needed; but always because of the fulness of the desire. It is the secret of victory in the world of Nature and was as fully in evidence with battleships and destroyers in the Sea of Japan as with triremes round the Islands of the Ægean in the centuries long since dead. It was as great a power then as now, no greater and no less, since it alone is the eternal verity in the struggle to control the seas.