Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them… - Stephen E. Ambrose

their troops had not yet landed. Eisenhower was appalled by both British tactics and British strategy. “If one has to fight,” he told Gruenther, “then that is that. But I don’t see the point in getting into a fight to which there can be no satisfactory end, and in which the whole world believes you are playing the part of the bully and you do not even have the firm backing of your entire people.” Eisenhower said he had talked to an old British friend who was “truly bitter” about Eden’s gunboat diplomacy, and who had declared, “This is nothing except Eden trying to be bigger than he is.” Eisenhower said he “did not dismiss it that lightly. I believe that Eden and his associates have become convinced that this is the last straw and Britain simply had to react in the manner of the Victorian period.”29 The news over the weekend was quite disheartening. On Saturday, Dulles had entered Walter Reed

No matter how bad things got, no matter how anxious the staff became, the commander had to “preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable.” Eisenhower realized that “optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction.” He learned that a commander’s optimism “has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory — that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow.

Discipline won’t do it, because discipline relies on punishment, and there is no punishment the Army can inflict on a front-line soldier worse than putting him into the front line.3