ABSTRACT
All great captains have been convinced that war is quite as much a matter of psychology as of strategy. Strategical errors may of course have various causes, such as lack of munitions and supplies, unforeseen events, and so forth; but many of them arise from psychological factors alone. Many strategical mistakes in a campaign are brought about by psychological errors which were committed at its beginning. For example, the French Government knew perfectly well what the effective force of the German Army was in 1870, for this information was published in many different compilations; but it was a victim to one of those erroneous comparisons which cause so many mistaken convictions. Psychological factors had an absolutely preponderant share in the Allies' utilization of their fleet, for their efforts were paralysed by that great psychological dominant, timidity, whose consequences have proved disastrous indeed.
