Yet all the time, in some ruined peasant's house, bourgeois
villa, or destroyed château, the Army commander is studying his maps, receiving his reports, and sending out his orders, and, in spite of the pandemonium of noise, the dust and confusion of the strife, and, as things were on Monday and Tuesday, the blizzard in the heavens, is controlling the engagement and creating order in the ceaseless crash and agitation of the combat. A modern battle, quite apart from its heroism and self-sacrifice, and the glorious defiance of Death the conqueror, affords the most perfect proof obtainable of man's unconquerable mind, of his imagination, and of his energy. Besides being the most emotional and the most romantic thing the world affords, a battle is also the biggest " business proposition " which the human mind can conceive.
