To convey the idea that an officer must by ingrained habit dispose himself to take action only after he has arrived at an exact formula, pointing exclusively in one direction, would mean only that under the conditions of war he could never get off his trousers-seat. For such fullness of information and confidence of situation are not given to combat commanders once in a lifetime.

It is customary to treat "estimate of situation" as if it were pure mathematical process, pointing almost infallibly to a definite result. But this is contrary to nature. The mind of man does not work that way, nor is it consistent with operational realities. Senior commanders are as prone as even the newest junior lieutenant to labor in perplexity between two opposing courses of action during times of crisis, and then make their decisions almost with the abruptness of an explosion. It is post-decision steadiness more than pre-decision certitude which carries the day. A large part of decision is intuitive; it is the byproduct of the subconscious. In war, much of what is most pertinent lies behind a drawn curtain. The officer is therefore badly advised who would believe that a hunch is without value, or that there is something unmilitary about the simple decision to take some positive action, even though he is working in the dark.

The youthful Col. Julian Ewell of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, reaching Bastogne, Belgium, on the night of December 18, 1944, with only his lead battalion at hand, insisted that he be given orders, even though higher headquarters could tell him almost nothing about the friendly or enemy situations. He got his orders, and with the one battalion moved out through the dark to counter-attack. So doing, he stopped cold the German XXXXVII Panzer Corps, and compelled Hitler to alter his Ardennes plan.

To grasp the spirit of orders is not less important than to accept them cheerfully and keep faith with the contract. But the letter of an instruction does not relieve him who receives it from the obligation to exercise common sense. In the Carolina maneuvers of 1941, a soldier stood at a road intersection for 3 days and nights directing civilian traffic, simply because the man who put him there had forgotten all about it. Though he was praised at the time, he was hardly a shining example to hold up to troops. Diligence and dullness are mutually exclusive traits. The model who is well worth pondering by all services is Chief Boatswain L. M. Jahnsen who on the morning of Pearl Harbor was in command of the yard garbage scow YG-17. She was collecting refuse from the fleet when the first Japanese planes came over. As the West Virginia began to burn, Jahnsen headed his scow into the heat and smoke and ordered his men to man their single fire hose. The old assignment forgotten, with overheated ammunition exploding all around him, he stood there directing his men in all that could be done to lessen the ruin of the fleet.

Within the services, a special glory attends those whose heroism or service is "above and beyond the call of duty." But they owe their fundamental character to the millions of men who have followed the path of duty above and beyond the call of orders.

Whatever the nature of an officer's assignment, there are compensations. The conventional attitude is to speak disparagingly of staff duty, sniff at service with a higher administrative headquarters as if it were somehow lacking in true masculine appeal, and express a preference for duty "at sea," "with troops" or "in the field." Although most of this is flapdoodle, it probably does no more harm than Admiral William F. Halsey's grimace over the fact that he once "commanded an LSD—Large Steel Desk." He is a poor stick of a military man who has no natural desire to try his hand at the direct management of men, if for no better reason than to test his own mettle. Even the avowed specialist is better equipped for his own groove if he has proved himself at the other game.

Staff work, however, has its own peculiar rewards. Chief among them are the broadening of perspective, a more intimate contact with the views, working methods and personality characteristics of higher commanders and the chance to become acquainted with administrative responsibility from the viewpoint of policy. Although it sounds mysterious and even forbidding, until one has done it, the procedures are not more complex nor less instructive than in any other type of assignment.

There are no inside secrets about what goes here that is different, or will not work equally well elsewhere. The staff is simply the servant of the general force; it exists but to further the welfare of the fighting establishment. Those within it are remiss if they fail to keep this rule uppermost. Consequently, no special attitude is called for, other than an acute receptiveness. The same military bearing, the same naturalness of manner which enable an officer to win the confidence and working loyalty of his men will serve just as well when he is dealing with higher authority.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DISCIPLINE

Though many of the aspects of discipline can be discussed more appropriately in other sections of this book, an officer must understand its particular nature within American military forces if he is to win from his men obedience coupled with activity at will.

It frequently happens that the root meaning of a word more nearly explains the whole context of ideas with which it is legitimately associated than the public's mistaken use of the same word. Coming from the Latin, "to discipline" means "to teach." Insofar as the military establishment of the United States is concerned, nothing need be added to that definition. Its discipline is that standard of personal deportment, work requirement, courtesy, appearance and ethical conduct which, inculcated in men, will enable them singly or collectively to perform their mission with an optimum efficiency.

Military discipline, in this respect, is no different than the discipline of the university, a baseball league or a labor union. It makes specific requirements of the individual; so do they. It has a system of punishments; so do they. These things are but incidental to the end result. Their main object is to preserve the interests and further the opportunity of the cooperative majority. But the essential difference between discipline in the military establishment and in any other free institution is this, that if the man objects, he still does not have the privilege of quitting tomorrow, and if he resists or becomes indifferent and is not corrected, his bad example will be felt to the far end of the line.

Though the failure to stop looting by our forces during World War II, and the redeployment riots which followed it, are both unpleasant memories, they underscored a lesson already affirmed by every American experience at arms. The most contagious of all moral diseases is insubordination, and it has no more respect for rank than the plague. When higher authority winks at its existence among the rank and file, it will contaminate upward as well as down. Once a man condones remissness, his own belief in discipline begins to wither. The officer who tolerates slackness in the dress of his men soon ceases to tend his own appearance, and if he is not called to account, his sloppy habits will shortly begin to infect his superior. There is only one correct way to wear the uniform. When any deviations in dress are condoned within the services, the way is open to the destruction of all uniformity and unity. This continuing problem of stimulating all ranks to toe-up to that straight line of bearing and deportment which will build inner confidence and win public respect is the main reason why, as George Washington put it: "To bring men to a proper degree of subordination is not the work of a day, a month, or a year." It calls not simply for a high-minded attitude toward the profession of arms but for infinitely patient attention to a great variety of detail. An officer has a disciplined hold upon his own job only when, like the air pilot preparing to take off, he makes personal check of every point where the machinery might fail. The stronger his example of diligence, the more earnestly will it be followed by the ablest of his subordinates, and they in turn will carry other men along. No leader ever fails his men—nor will they fail him—who leads them in respect for the disciplined life. Between these two things—discipline in itself and a personal faith in the military value of discipline—lies all the difference between military maturity and mediocrity. A salute from an unwilling man is as meaningless as the moving of a leaf on a tree; it is a sign only that the subject has been caught by a gust of wind. But a salute from the man who takes pride in the gesture because he feels privileged to wear the uniform of the United States, having found the service good, is the epitome of military virtue. Of those units which were most effective, and were capable of the greatest measure of self-help during World War II combat, it was invariably remarked that they observed the salute and the other rules of courtesy better than the others, even when engaged.

The level of discipline is in large part what the officers in any unit choose to make it. The general aim of regulations is to set an over-all standard of conduct and work requirement for all concerned. Training schedules, operational directives and other work programs serve the same end. But there is still a broad area in which the influence of every officer is brought to bear. To state what is required is only the beginning; to require what has been stated is the positive end. The rule of courtesy may be laid down by the book; it remains for the officer to rule by work rather than working by rules, and by setting the good example for his men, stimulate their acceptance of orderly military habits. A training schedule may stipulate that certain tasks be carried out but only the officer in charge can assure that the work will be accomplished with fidelity.

The level of discipline should at all times be according to what is needed to get the best results from the majority of dutiful individuals. There is no practical reason for any sterner requirement than that. There is no moral justification for countenancing anything less. Discipline destroys the spirit and working loyalty of the general force when it is pitched to the minority of malcontented, undutiful men within the organization, whether to punish or to appease them. When this common sense precept is ignored, the results invariably are unhappy.

However, it is not here inferred that what has to be done to build strong discipline in forces will at all times be welcomed by the first-class men within a unit, or that their reaction will always be approval. Rather, it is to say that they will accept what is ordered, even though they may gripe about it, and that ultimately their own reason will convince them of the value of what is being done.

Until men are severely tried, there is no conclusive test of their discipline, nor proof that their training at arms is satisfying a legitimate military end. The old game of follow-the-leader has no point if the leader himself, like the little girl in a Thomas Hardy novel, is balked by insuperable obstacles one-quarter inch high. All military forces remain relatively undisciplined until physically toughened and mentally conditioned to unusual exertion. Consider the road march! No body of men could possibly enjoy the dust, the heat, the blistered foot and the aching back. But hard road marching is necessary if a sound foundation is to be built under the discipline of fighting forces, particularly those whose labors are in the field. And the gain comes quickly. The rise in spirits within any organization which is always to be observed after they rebound from a hard march does not come essentially from the feeling of relief that the strain is past, but rather from satisfaction that a goal has been crossed. Every normal man needs to have some sense of a contest, some feeling of resistance overcome, before he can make the best use of his faculties. Whatever experience serves to give him confidence that he can compete with other men helps to increase his solidarity with other men.

It must be accepted that discipline does not break down under the strain of placing a testing demand upon the individual. It is sloth and not activity that destroys discipline. Troops can endure hard going when it serves an understandable end. This is what they will boast about mainly when the fatigue is ended. A large part of training is necessarily directed toward conditioning them for unusual hardship and privation. They can take this in stride. But no power on earth can reconcile them to what common sense tells them is unnecessary hardship which might have been avoided by greater intelligence in their superiors. When they are overloaded, they know it. When they are required to form for a parade two hours ahead of time because their commander got over-anxious, or didn't know how to write an order, again they know it! And they are perfectly right if they go sour because this kind of thing happens a little too often within the command.

Within our system, that discipline is nearest perfect which assures to the individual the greatest freedom of thought and action while at all times promoting his feeling of responsibility toward the group. These twin ends are convergent and interdependent for the exact converse of the reason that it is impossible for any man to feel happy and successful if he is in the middle of a failing institution. War, and all training operations in preparation for it, have become more than ever a problem of creating diversity of action out of unity of thought. Its modern technological aspects not only require a much keener intelligence in the average file but a higher degree of initiative and courageous confidence in his own judgments. If the man is cramped by monotonous routine, or made to feel that he cannot move unless an order is barked, he cannot develop these qualities, and he will never come forward as a junior leader. On the other hand, the increased utilization of the machine in military operations, far from lessening the need of mutual support and unified action, has increased it. One of the hazards of high velocity warfare is that reverse and disaster can occur much more swiftly than under former systems. Thus the need for greater spiritual integration within forces, and increased emphasis upon the values of more perfect communication in all forms, at the same time that each individual is trained to initiate action for the common good. Only so can the new discipline promote a higher efficiency based on a more steadfast loyalty of man to man. In the words of Du Picq, who saw so deeply into the hearts of fighting men: "If one does not wish bonds broken, one should make them elastic and thereby strengthen them."

The separate nature of military service is the key to the character of the discipline of its several forces. In the United States, we have fallen into the sloppy habit of saying that a soldier, bluejacket, airman, coast guardsman or marine is only an American civilian in uniform. The corollary of this quaint notion is that all military organization is best run according to the principles of business management. The truth of either of these ideas is to be disputed on two grounds: both are contrary to truth and contrary to human nature. An officer is not only an administrator but a magistrate, and it is this dual role which makes his function so radically different than anything encountered in civil life—to say nothing of the singleness of purpose by which the service moves forward. Moreover, the armed service officer deals with the most plastic human material within the society—men who, in the majority, the moment they step into uniform, are ready to seek his guidance toward a new way of life.

However, these fancies are but tangential aspects of a much larger illusion—that the Armed Services of the United States, since they serve a democracy, can better perfect themselves according to the measure that they become more and more democratic. Authority is questioned in democratic countries today, not only in government, but in industry, the school, the church and the home. But to the extent that military men lose their faith in its virtue and become amenable to ill-considered reforms simply to appease the public, they relinquish the power to protect and nurture that growth of free men, free thought and free institutions which began among a handful of soldiers in Cromwell's Army and was carried by them after the Restoration to the North American mainland. The relation of the military establishment to American democracy is as a shield covering the body. But no wit of man can make it a wholly "democratic" institution as to its own processes without vitiating its strength, since it progresses through the exercise of unquestioned authority at various levels.

One of these levels is the plane on which an ensign or second lieutenant conducts his daily dealings with his men. George Washington left behind these words, which are as good today as when he uttered them from his command post: "Whilst men treat an officer as an equal, regard him no more than a broomstick, being mixed together as one common herd, no order nor discipline can prevail." Out of his experience in the handling of deck divisions during World War II, Edmund A. Gibson, Boatswain's Mate, First Class, also said something which, put alongside Washington's words, brings the whole subject of officer-man relationships into clear focus: "Speaking for Navy men, I am certain that they are entirely without any feeling of inferiority, social or otherwise, to their officers. If superiority or inferiority of any kind enters into their contemplation at all, it is in the shape of a conviction, doubtless a wrong one, that every serviceman, as a professional warrior, is above the narrow interests which obsess the civilian."

Those who have served both as officer and under-officer well understand the appropriateness of these two ideas, each to the other, that the superior position of the officer must be preserved for the good of the service, but that this engages recognition of the individual equality of the enlisted man. They know, if they have observed well and truly during their service in the ranks, that the highest type enlisted man wants his officer to act the part, maintain dignity and support the ideals which are consonant with the authority vested in him by the Nation. But this same man at the same time expects his officers to concede him his right to a separate position and to respect his privacy. It is a pitiable eminence that is not well founded upon sure feeling for the value of its own prestige and the importance of this factor at all levels.

In the military service of the United States, there is always room for firm and forthright friendship between officer and man. There is room for a close, uniting comradeship. There is room for frank intellectual discussion and the exchange of warm humor; no man goes far if he is all salt and no savor. There is room for that kind of intimacy which enables each to see the other as a human being, know something of the other's emotions and help clear the atmosphere for honest counsel on personal and organizational problems.

But there is no room for familiarity, since as in any other sphere, it breeds contempt. When it occurs, respect flies out the window, the officer loses part of his command authority and discipline breaks down. Familiarity cannot obtain between the superior and the subordinate without the vice of favoritism entering into the conduct of organizational matters, even though the former is guilty only of an over-zealous goodwill and the latter is otherwise sensible to the interests of the unit. The chief damage comes from the effect upon all others. It is when all the bars are let down that men communicate those inner failings which a greater reserve would keep under cover. Familiarity toward a superior is a positive danger; toward a subordinate, it is unbecoming and does not increase his trust. In excess, it can have no other effect than a breach of confidence on both sides.

Changes in the environmental situation do not alter the natural proprieties of this relationship between any two men, the one having higher authority and the other having the obligation of obedience. Under the conditions of modern war, the two not infrequently may be required to work together as a unit, almost apart from the influence of organizational discipline. Hardship and necessity may compel them to extend the limit of personal accommodation to each other. They may go into battle together. They may sleep in the same bed or foxhole. They may drink from a common bottle and draw upon each other for the means to keep going. But in adapting one's course according to the rigors of any unconventional situation, authority is maintained only through the exercise of a higher sense of responsibility. However, the rule is applied according to the circumstance, the rule itself remains inflexible.

Officers and men working together as a compact team, in any type of military operation where success, and coordinated action in the face of danger, depend mainly upon the moral resources within one small group, develop a closer camaraderie and become less formal than is normal elsewhere throughout the services. The close confinement in which tank forces, airplane crews and submarine crews must operate would stifle morale and torture nerves otherwise. Whatever the patience of men under such conditions, sooner or later they get on each other's nerves. Therefore that system of relationships is best which is least artificial and most relaxing to the spirit of the natural man. But to construe this as a deviation from the standards of discipline is to mistake the shadow for the substance.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MORALE

To grow in knowledge of how to win a loyal and willing response from military forces, there must first be understanding of the springs of human action, what they are, and how they may be directed toward constructive ends. This done, the course which makes for the perfecting of forces during peacetime training need only be extended to harden them for the risk and stress of war.

The mainspring is morale. The meaning of the word is already known in a general way to every man who has qualified for officership, so it is hardly necessary to redefine it. A World War II bluejacket said it this way: "Morale is when your hands and feet keep working when your head says it can't be done." That says it just as well as anything written by du Picq or Baron von Steuben. Nothing new need be added.

The handiest beginning is to consider morale in conjunction with discipline, since in military service they are opposite sides of the same coin. When one is present, the other will be also. But the instilling of these things in military forces depends upon leadership understanding the nature of the relationship.

As to discipline, until recent years, military forces tended to stress the pattern rather than the ideal. The elder Moltke, one of the great masters of the military art, taught his troops that it was of supreme importance that they form accurately in training, since the perfection of their formations would determine their efficiency in battle. Yet in the Franco-Prussian War, these formations proved utterly unsuited to the heavily wooded terrain of the theater, and new ones had to be devised on the spur of the moment.

This is the familiar story. It was repeated by United States forces in World War II during the Normandy hedgerow fighting and the invasions of the Central Pacific atolls. Troops had to learn the hard way how to hit, and how to survive, in moving through jungle or across the mountains and desert. When that happened, the only disciplinary residue which mattered was obedience to orders. The movements they had learned by rote were of less value than the spiritual bond between one man and another. The most valuable lesson was that of mutual support. And unless this lesson was supported by confidence in the judgment of those in authority, it is to be doubted that they were helped at all.

Finally, that confidence is the sine qua non of all useful military power. The moral strength of an organic unity comes from the faith in ranks that they are being wisely directed and from faith up top that orders will be obeyed. When forces are tempered by this spirit, there is no limit to their enterprise. They become invincible. Lacking it, however, any military body, even though it has been compelled to toe the mark in training, will deteriorate into a rabble under conditions of extraordinary stress in the field, as McDowell's Army did at Bull Run in the American Civil War, and as Hitler's Armies did in 1945 after the Rhine had been crossed at Remagen.

In its essentials, discipline is not measured according to how a man keeps step in a drill yard, or whether he salutes at just the right angle. The test is how well and willingly he responds to his superiors in all vital matters, and finally, whether he stands or runs when his life is at stake. History makes this clear. There are countless examples of successful military forces which had almost no discipline when measured by the usual yardsticks, yet had a high battle morale productive of the kind of discipline which beats the enemy in battle. The French at Valmy, the Boers in the South African War, and even the men of Capt. John Parker, responding to his order on the Lexington Common, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here," instance that men who lack training and have not been regimented still may express themselves as a cohesive force on the field of fire, provided that they are well led.

If we will accept the basic premise that discipline, even within the military establishment of the United States, is not a ritual or a form, but is simply that course of conduct which is most likely to lead to the efficient performance of an assigned responsibility, it will be seen that morale does not come of discipline, but discipline of morale.

True enough, our recruits are given a discipline almost from the moment that they take the oath. Their first lesson is the necessity for obedience. They are required immediately to conform to a new pattern of conduct. They respond to disciplinary treatment even before they learn to think as a group and before the attitude of the group has any influence upon them. Discipline bears down before morale can lift up. Momentarily, they become timid before they have felt any pain. These first reactions help condition the man to his new environment. They are in part demoralizing, but on the upswing he begins to realize that half the fun in life comes of seeing what one can do in a new situation. The foundation of his morale is laid when he begins to think of himself as a member of the fighting establishment, rather than as a civilian. Thereafter all that is done to nourish his military spirit and to arouse his thirst for professional knowledge helps to build his moral power.

But follow the man a little longer. The time quickly comes when he knows his way around in the service. His earlier fears and hesitations are largely gone. He acquires strength and wisdom from the group. He becomes able to judge his own situation against an attainable standard within the service. He is critically conscious of the merits of his superiors from what he has himself experienced and what others tell him. He knows what is boondoggling and what is not.

From that point on, discipline has little part in alerting the man or in furthering the building of his moral power. That which moves him mainly is the knowledge that he is a personal success, and that he belongs to an efficient unit which is in capable hands. Certain of the outer signs of discipline, such as the cadence of the march or snap in the execution of the manual, he may subconsciously reenforce his impression of these things. But if he feels either that he is an outsider or that the club isn't worth joining, no amount of spit and polish will alter his opinion.

He is able to recognize a right and reasonable discipline as such, even though it causes him personal inconvenience, because he has acquired a sense of military values. But if it is either unduly harsh or unnecessarily lax, he likewise knows it and wears it as a hairshirt, to the undoing of his morale. Though the man, like the group, can be hurt by being pushed beyond sensible limits, his spirit will suffer even more sorely if no real test is put upon his abilities and moral powers. The greater his intelligence, the stronger will be his resentment. That is a law of nature. The enlightened mind has always the greatest measure of self-discipline but it also has a higher sense of what constitutes justice, fairplay and a reasonable requirement in the performance of duty. If denied these things, he will come to hold his chief, his job, and himself in contempt. The greater part of man's satisfactions comes of activity and only a very small remnant comes of passive enjoyment. Forgetting this rather obvious fact in human nature, social reformers aim at securing more leisure, rather than at making work itself more satisfactory. But it need not be forgotten in the military service.

Even to those who best understand the reasons for the regimenting of military forces, a discipline wrongfully applied is seen only as indiscipline. Invariably it will be countered in its own terms. No average rank-and-file will become insubordinate as quickly, or react as violently, as a group of senior noncommissioned officers, brought together in a body, and then mishandled by officers who are ignorant of the customs of the service and the limits of their own authority. Not only are they conscious of their rights, but they have greater respect for the state of decency and order which is the mark of a proper military establishment than for the insignia of rank. It is this firm feeling of the fitness of things, and his unbounded allegiance to an authority when it is based on character which makes the NCO and the petty officer the backbone of discipline within the United States fighting establishment. Sergeant Evans of "Command Decision" was an archtype of the best ball carriers among them. In a sense, they remain independent workmen, rather than a tool of authority, until the hour comes when they fall in completely with someone their own nature tells them is good. In the past, we have not always made the wisest use of this latent strength. The normal desire of the veteran who has won his stripes by hard service is to support his officers and reduce the friction down below. Whatever is done to lessen his dignity and prestige damages morale and creates new stresses in the relations between the officer corps and the ranks. When he is rebuffed, either because those above him are indifferent to his pride or are unaware that he is their chief advocate among the men, the military machinery loses its cushion and becomes subject to increasing shock. Said a newly arrived lieutenant to an old sergeant of the 12th Cavalry: "You've been here a long time, haven't you?" "Yes sir," replied the sergeant. "The troop commanders, they come and they go, but it don't hurt the troop."

To comment on these things, however, is to emphasize once again the supreme importance of the judgment of the officer in dealing with all of his military associates in such way that he will support that native pride, without which a man cannot remain whole, and at the same time direct it toward the betterment of the organization. To lecture troops about the importance of morale and discipline serves no earthly purpose, if the words are at odds with the general conditions which have been imposed on the command. They impose their values only as reflection of the leader's entire thought concerning his men. At the same time, there is this to be remembered, that even when things are going wrong at every other level, men will remain loyal and dutiful if they see in the one junior officer who is nearest them the embodiment of the ideals which they believe should apply throughout the service. That is the main object lesson in that remarkable novel written around a World War II Navy auxiliary, "Mister Roberts." But it holds just as true in our ground and air forces as for those afloat.

Morale comes of the mind and of the spirit. The question is how it is to be developed. Admiral Ben Moreell has stated a formula in understanding terms by his explanation of what made the Seabees notable for competence and devotion to duty during World War II. This is what he said: "We used artisans to do the work for which they had been trained in civil life. They were well led by officers who 'spoke their language.' We made them feel that they were playing an important part in the great adventure. And thus they achieved a high standard of morale." The elements underscored by Admiral Moreell deserve special note.

Satisfaction in a work program.

Mutual confidence between leaders and ranks.

Conviction that all together were striving for something more important than themselves.

True, that was wartime, and the challenge was apparent to all concerned. But the principles hold good under any and all conditions, and can be applied to any organization by the officer who approaches his task with enthusiasm and imagination. The mission of keeping the world at peace, through a moral strengthening of the security structure of the United States, is a more difficult objective than that which confronted fighting forces after Pearl Harbor. In his book, "World War: Its Cause and Cure," Lionel Curtis stated our problem in its broadest and most challenging terms: "Civilization began with a war between freedom and despotism: we are now fighting its latest campaign, and our task is to make it the last."

Under training conditions or in combat, the mental ills and the resulting moral and physical deterioration which sometimes beset military forces cannot be cured simply by the intensification of disciplinary methods. It is true that the signs of a recovery will sometimes attend the installation of a more rigid, or less rigid, discipline. This onset is in fact usually due to the collateral influence of an increased confidence in the command, whereby men are made to feel that their own fortunes are on the mend. Then discipline and morale are together revitalized almost as if by the throwing of an electric switch.

In Army history, there is no better example of the working of this principle than the work of Brig. Gen. Paul B. Malone of St. Aignan-sur-Cher, France, in 1919. He took over a command where slackness and indiscipline were general. The men were suffering terrible privation and too many of their officers were indifferent to their needs. Many of the men had been battle casualties. Some had been discharged from hospitals before their wounds were healed. The mess was abominable. The camp was short of firewood and other supply. In freezing weather, men were sleeping on the ground with only a pair of blankets apiece. The death toll from influenza, pneumonia, and the aggravation of battle wounds rose daily. Despair and resentment over these conditions began to express itself in semiviolent form. Every fresh breach of discipline was countered with harassing punishments until an air of wretched stagnation hung over the whole camp. General Pershing visited the base. The men refused to form for him. When he tried to address them at a mass meeting, they wouldn't hear him out. Instead of taking any action against the men, he sent for General Malone.

The new commander arrived without any instructions except to determine what was wrong and correct it. With soldierly instinct, he recognized that the indiscipline of the camp was an effect and not a cause. But even as he gave orders for relieving the physical distress of the men, he demanded that they return to orderly habits.

He walked around the areas. Already, on his order, duck-boards were being laid through the mud, and the whole physical setup was in process of reorganization. The men, grown listless from weeks of mistreatment, paid no heed. "Get on your feet! I'm your general. I respect you but I want your respect," were his words. They restored the situation. The first impact of this one man on that camp was never forgotten by anyone who saw it. It is a point to remember: A firm hold at the beginning pays tenfold the dividend of a timid approach, followed by a show of firmness later on. Within 48 hours the physical condition of the camp was showing improvement and 60,000 men were again doing their duty and bearing themselves in a military manner. The lessons from this one incident stand out like beams from a searchlight battery.

One man is able to accomplish a miracle by an act of will accompanied by good works.

The morale of the force flows from the self-discipline of the commander, and in turn, the discipline of the force is reestablished by the upsurge of its moral power.

The inculcation of military habits and thoughts is the only means by which these forces may be made to work together toward more perfect ends, so that control can be exercised promptly.

When the redeployment period which followed World War II threatened a complete collapse to the morale of the general military establishment, the remedy attempted by some unit leaders was to relax discipline and the work requirement all around. Other officers met this crisis by improving the conditions of work, setting an example which proved to the men that they believed in its importance and paying sedulous attention to the personal problems of those within the unit. They found that they could still get superior performance in the midst of chaos. Organic strength materializes in the same way on the field of war. However adverse the general situation, men will stick to the one man who knows what he wants to do and welcomes them to a full share in the enterprise.

The rule applies in matters great and small. No man who leads a squad or a squadron, a group of men or a group of armies, can develop within his force a well-placed confidence in its own powers, if he is uncertain of himself or doubtful of his object. The moral level of his men is mainly according to the manner in which he expresses his personal force working with, and for, them. If he is timid or aloof, uncommunicative and unenthusiastic, prone to stand on his dignity and devoid of interest in the human stuff of those who are within his charge, they will not respond to him, and he will have raised a main barrier to his own success. If, given a course or taking one of his own choice, he worries so greatly about the obstacles in his way that he cannot make penetrating search for the clear channel, he will waste the powers of his men even though he may have won their sympathy.

It would be futile to make these comments on the nature of moral leading if it were not fully within the power of the average young officer to cut his cloth according to the suggested pattern. The commonplace that human nature cannot be changed is untrue. The characters of each of us, and of all of our acquaintances, are greatly affected by circumstances. No man's impulses are fixed from the beginning by his native disposition; they remain plastic until the hour of his death, and whatever touches his circumference, influences them for better or worse. The power of decision develops only out of practice. There is nothing mystic about it. It comes of a clear-eyed willingness to accept life's risks, recognizing that only the enfeebled are comforted by thoughts of an existence devoid of struggle.

Nothing more radical is being suggested here than that the officer who would make certain that the morale of his men will prove equal to every change cannot do better than concentrate his best efforts upon his primary military obligation—his duty to them. They dupe only themselves who believe that there is a brand of military efficiency which consists in moving smartly, expediting papers and achieving perfection in formations, while at the same time slighting or ignoring the human nature of those whom they command. The art of leadership, the art of command, whether the forces be large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity. Only the officer who dedicates his thought and energy to his men can convert into coherent military force their desire to be of service to the country. Such were the fundamental values which Napoleon had in mind when he said that those who would learn the art of war should study the Great Captains. He was not speaking of tactics and strategy. He was pointing to the success of Alexander, Caesar, and Hannibal in moulding raw human nature, and to their understanding of the thinking of their men and of how to direct it toward military advantage. These are the grand objects.

Diligence in the care of men, administration of all organizational affairs according to a standard of resolute justice, military bearing in one's self, and finally, an understanding of the simple facts that men in a fighting establishment wish to think of themselves in that light and that all military information is nourishing to their spirits and their lives, are the four fundamentals by which the commander builds an all-sufficing morale in those within his charge.

There are other motor forces and mechanisms, most of which come under the heading of management principles, and are therefore discussed in other portions of this volume. The exception is the greatest force of all—patriotism. It may be deemed beyond argument that belief in the social order and political doctrine of their country is the foundation of a loyal, willing spirit in military forces. Yet this alone cannot assure efficiency in training or a battle elan which is the result of proper training methods. There is nothing more soulless than a religion without good works unless it be a patriotism which does not concern itself with the welfare and dignity of the individual. This is a simple idea though wise men in all ages have recognized it as one of the most profound truths. From Aristotle on down the philosophers have said that the main force in shaping the characters of men is not teaching and preaching, though these too are important, but the social framework in which a man lives. In an age when there is widespread presumption that practical problems can be solved by phrases, the military body needs more than ever to hold steadfastly to first principles. It does no good for an officer to talk patriotism to his men unless he stands four-square with them, and they see in him a symbol of what is right with the country. Under those circumstances, he can always talk to them about the cause, and what he says will be a tonic to morale.

In the Normandy invasion, a young commander of paratroops, Lt. Col. Edward C. Krause, was given the task of capturing a main enemy communications center. Three hours before the take-off he assembled his Battalion, held a small American flag in front of them and said these words; "This is the first flag raised over the city of Naples. You put it there. I want it to be the first flag raised over a liberated town in France. The mission is that we will put it up in Ste. Mere Eglise before dawn. You have only one order—to come and fight with me wherever you land. When you get to Ste. Mere Eglise, I will be there."

The assignment was kept. Next morning, Krause and his men raised the flag together, even before they had completed capture of the town. As Americans go, they were extremely rugged individualists. But they were proud of every line of that story.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ESPRIT

To proceed toward a better understanding of esprit and its part in the building of military forces, it is necessary to look beyond the organization and consider the man.

The life of any socially upright individual is organized around only a few basic loyalties and the degree of satisfaction which he derives from existence can usually be measured in terms of his service to them. He is loyal first to himself, for failing that, he fails in loyalty to all else. If he cannot acquit himself ably for his own sake, he cannot do honor to anything less personal. Along with loyalty to self come loyalty to our beliefs, loyalty to family, loyalty to country, loyalty to friends, and loyalty to humanity in general.

Stated as a factual and not as an ideal matter, the interesting and important thing that happens to a man when he enters military service is that, the moment he takes the oath, loyalty to the arms he bears ranks first on the list, above all other loyalties. To get ahead, to serve himself well, he must persevere in ways that are most useful to the organization. If the circumstances of his family are reduced because of this new loyalty, his means of compensating them is to strive for such honor as may come to him through service to the United States. In his life, service to country is no longer a beautiful abstraction; it is the sternly concrete and unremitting obligation of service to the regiment, the group or the ship's company. He parts with old friends and finds new ones.

In this radical reorientation of the individual life and the arbitrary imposition of a commanding loyalty is to be found the key to the esprit of any military organization. Too long esprit has been regarded as something bequeathed to the unit by the dead hand of tradition. There is nothing moribund about it. It is a dynamic and vital substance conducted to the living by the living. We can banish from our minds the idea that esprit is what the regiment, the ship or the company gives the man because of some spark which its past deeds and the legends thereof have lighted in him. Esprit, at all times, is what the unit gives the man, in terms of spiritual force translated into constructive good. Considering what the unit has taken from him initially, its obligation is great indeed.

To see this clearly, we need to look once again at what happens to the individual when he puts on the uniform. The basis of his life changes in broad and fundamental ways. His legal status is changed; the extent and intensity of his obligations are magnified. He puts aside the banner of individualism for that of obedience. Yet in the words of Chester Barnard: "Scarcely a man, I think, who has felt the annihilation of his personality in some organized system, has not also felt that the same system belonged to him because of his own free will he chose to make it so."

To that must be added the further thought that while the military service is antecedent to the individual who enters it, that individual is also in a sense antecedent to the service. He becomes a factor in the equation which expresses the achievement or the failure of the service in its particular mission. The thoughtful commander will give careful regard to that relationship. One man cannot make or break an Army or a Navy, but he can help break it, since each service at all times derives its nature from the quality and wills of its men. General Harbord, in The American Army in France, expressed it this way: "Discipline and morale influence the inarticulate vote that is constantly taken by masses of men when the order comes to move forward—a variant of the crowd psychology that inclines it to follow a leader. But the Army does not move forward until the motion has carried. 'Unanimous consent' only follows cooperation between the individual men in ranks."

But we can go one step beyond General Harbord's suggestion that the multiplied individual acceptance of a command alone gives that command authority. It is not less true that the multiplied rejection of a command nullifies it. In other words, authority is the creature rather than the creator of discipline and obedience. In the more recent experiences of our arms, under the stresses of battle, there are many instances of troops being given orders, and refusing to obey. In every case, the root cause was lack of confidence in the wisdom and ability of those who led. When a determining number of men in ranks have lost the will to obey, their erstwhile leader has ipso facto lost the capacity to command. In the final analysis, authority is contingent upon respect far more truly than respect is founded upon authority. In the words of Col. G. F. R. Henderson: "It is the leader who reckons with the human nature of his troops, and of the enemy, rather than with their mere physical attributes, numbers, armament and the like, who can hope to follow in Napoleon's footsteps."

Esprit then is the product of a thriving mutual confidence between the leader and the led, founded on the faith that together they possess a superior quality and capability. The failure of the spirit of any military organization is less frequently due to what men have forgotten than to what they can't forget. No "imperishable record" of past greatness can make men serve with any greater vigor if they are being served badly. Nor can it sustain the fighting will of the organization so much as one mil beyond the radius within which living associations enable men to think great thoughts and act with nobility toward their fellows. Unless the organization's past conveys to its officers a sense of having been especially chosen, and unless they respond to this trust by developing a complete sense of duty toward their men, the old battle records might as well be poured down the drain, since they will not rally a single man in the hour of danger. Said Col. LeRoy P. Hunt in a mimeographed notice to his troops just prior to the Guadalcanal landing: "We are meeting a tough and wily opponent but he is not sufficiently tough and wily to overcome us because We Are Marines." (The capitals are Hunt's.)

Personality plays a part in the ability to command, both under training conditions and under fire. But though a man be a veritable John Paul Jones or Mad Anthony Wayne in the time of action, his hardihood will never wholly undo any prior neglect of his men. While men may be rallied for a short space by someone setting an example of great courage, they can be kept in line under conditions of increasing stress and mounting hardship only when loyalty is based upon a respect which the commander has won by consistently thoughtful regard for the welfare and rights of his men, and a correct measuring of his responsibility to them.

There are a few governing principles, and before considering their application in detail we should think first about the file. He is a Man; he expects to be treated as an adult, not as a schoolboy. He has rights; they must be made known to him and thereafter respected. He has ambition; it must be stirred. He has a belief in fair play; it must be honored. He has the need of comradeship; it must be supplied. He has imagination; it must be stimulated. He has a sense of personal dignity; it must not be broken down. He has pride; it can be satisfied and made the bedrock of his character once he gains assurance that he is playing a useful and respected part in a superior and successful organization. To give men working as a group the feeling of great accomplishment together is the acme of inspired leadership.

In the degree that the disciplinary method and the training procedure of the military service, and the common sense of his superiors, combine to nourish these satisfactions in the individual, esprit de corps comes into being and furthers his advance in the practice of arms and his potential usefulness as a fighting man. He becomes loyal because loyalty has been given to him. He learns to serve an ideal because an ideal has served him. For it is to be remembered that it is always the Army, the Navy or the nation that disengages the man from his old moorings, but it is the regiment or the ship's company which gives him a fresh anchor and enables him to feel secure again. The service cancels out the man's old life; the unit gives him a fresh start in a new environment, which may prove salutary or utterly damnable, as the man and the unit together make it. Where there is enlightened leading, neither can fail the other. The majority of men, so long as they are treated fairly and feel that good use is being made of their powers, will rejoice in a new sense of unity with new companions even more than they will mind the increased separation from their old associations. The ability to adjust is itself a landmark of success in the life of a normal individual.

This is the primary gift of the organization to the man and the primary advantage of its relationship to him. Once it has given the file a sense of belonging, it restores his balance. It is this feeling of possession which is the beginning of true esprit. Without it, the man becomes a derelict. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the man who lacks it, and does not aspire to it, will almost invariably be unsuited for combat or any military responsibility of consequence, not because he is disrespectful of tradition, but because he is a social outcast with no sense of duty to his fellows.

Referring once again to the list of satisfactions due the man, it will be noted that they differ little, if at all, from the demands of his spirit before he has put on the uniform. But there should be marked also the vital difference that whereas a complex of social and economic forces and of totally disconnected influences contribute to his outlook so long as he is a civilian, the measure of his satisfactions is almost wholly in the hands of the organization once he has raised his right hand and taken the oath of military service to country. The condition of his health, the amount of his pay, the organization of his leisure time, his diet, his sleeping habits, his sex problems, even the manner in which he shaves and wears his hair, are matters of organizational concern. Within the new company, he may either attain greatly, or miserably fail. It should speak to him with the voice of Stentor, the bronze voice of 10,000 men—meaning the thousand or so who are still with the ship, the group or the regiment, and the thousands who are in the shadows but who once served it well, thereby inspiring those who follow to give an extra portion of service to their fellows. Unless tradition has that effect upon the living, it will not produce esprit, but military "mossbackism."

What does this imply in terms of practical application? Simply that the custodianship of esprit must ever be in the hands of the officer corps. When the heart of the organization is sound, officership is able to see its own reflection in the eyes of the enlisted man. For this simple reason: insofar as his ability to mould the character of troops is concerned, the qualifying test of the leader is the judgment placed upon his military abilities by those who serve under him. If they do not deem him fit to command, he cannot train them to obey. But if they see in one man directly over them a steady example, the strongest of their number will model after him, instead of sagging because of weakness elsewhere in the command structure.

This point is irreducible. Though an officer have absolute confidence in himself, and though he have an instinct amounting to genius for the material things of war, these otherwise considerable gifts will avail him little or nothing if his manner is such that his troops remain unconvinced of his capacity and doubtful of his power to maintain command in periods of extreme trial. He will fail because he has not sufficiently regarded the LAW OF PERSONALITY—LOOKS, ACTIONS, WORDS.

Among military men, there has been much mistaken praise for the virtue of "mechanical obedience." There is no such thing. Men think in their smallest actions; if this were not so, it would not be possible to lead them. What has been blindly termed "mechanical response" requires perhaps a higher concentration of will than any other type of action, and hence of thought itself, since the two are inseparable. The forces in which this characteristic was outstanding have been those which were led with the highest degree of intelligence and of understanding of human nature. For unity of spirit and of action, which is the essence of esprit de corps, is of all military miracles the most difficult to achieve.

Yet its abiding principle is simple. It comes of integrity and clarification of purpose. The able officer is not a Saul waiting for the light to strike him on the Damascus road, but a Paul having a clear understanding that unless the trumpet give forth a certain sound at all times, none shall prepare himself for the battle.

Given such officers, the organization comes to possess a sense of unity and of fraternity in its routine existence which expresses itself as the force of cohesion in the hour when all ranks are confronted by a common danger. It is not because of mutual enthusiasm for an honored name but because of mutual confidence in one another that the ranks of old regiments or the bluejackets serving a ship with a great tradition are able to convert their esprit into battle discipline. Under stress they move and act together because they have imbibed the great lesson, and experience has made its application almost instinctive, that only in unity is there safety. They believe that they can trust their comrades and commanders as they would trust their next of kin. They have learned the necessity of mutual support and a common danger serves but to bind the ranks closer.

But the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong. The newest unit—one born only yesterday—is as susceptible to a vaulting esprit as any which traces its founding to the beginnings of the Republic. Led by those who themselves are capable of great endeavour, who are quick to encourage and slow to disparage, and are ever ready to make due acknowledgment of worthy effort and to let men know wherein they are forging ahead, any military organization serving our flag will come to count this among its strengths.

There are no tricks to the building of esprit. Its techniques are those which come naturally in the course of stimulating the interest of ranks in all of the great fundamentals of the military profession, rather than selling short their intelligence, and taking it for granted that they want nothing beyond the routine of work, liberty, mess call, and payday.

But there is one pitfall. Toward the growth of esprit, the attitude, "My organization first, and the rest nowhere," never pays off. It begins with the idea, "The service first, and my unit the best in the service." In all human enterprise, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The citizen who thinks most deeply about his country will be the first to share the burdens of his community and neighborhood. The man who feels the greatest affection for the service in which he bears arms will work most loyally to make his own unit know a rightful pride in its own worth. Among all of the military services from out of the present and past, none has been more faithful to this principle than the United States Marine Corps. Among its members, being a Marine is the thing that counts mainly; after that comes service to the Regiment or Battalion. Even the other services marvel at the result. Though they take due pride in their own virtues and accomplishments, they still regard the esprit of the Marine with admiration, and more than a little envy. What is the secret? Perhaps it is this, that the Corps emphasizes the rugged outlet for men's energies, and never permits its members to forget that the example of courage is their most precious heritage.

Six years after his defeat at Wake Island, the things that remained uppermost in the mind of Col. James P. S. Devereux, as he put together the story of the most tragic hours of his life, were the heroisms of the individuals who had been trained in a tradition to which he had fully committed his own purpose. One incident of that day, typical of many, is best related in Devereux's own words.

"Master Sergeant J. Paszkiewicz, a Marine for 20 years, was caught in the first blast at the airfield. Bombs shattered his right leg. He started crawling off, dragging his smashed leg limply behind him. The second wave of bombers came in. Paszkiewicz reached a little pile of wreckage and found what he wanted, a piece of wood. With a little fixing it could serve as a crutch. The bombs were dropping again. Paszkiewicz started hobbling off. He seemed to be going the wrong way. Somebody tried to help him, but he wasn't having any. Lieutenant David D. Kliewer saw him stumbling along on his makeshift crutch, giving first aid to the wounded or trying to make a dying man a little easier."

Could a man give that much, and could his superior, Devereux, have remembered it so vividly from amid his own personal trials, unless both had been inspired by the traditions of the Corps?



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KNOWING YOUR JOB

In one of his little-known passages, Robert Louis Stevenson did the perfect portrait of the man who finally failed at everything, because he just never learned how to take hold of his work.

It goes like this: "His career was one of unbroken shame. He did not drink. He was exactly honest. He was never rude to his employers. Yet he was everywhere discharged. Bringing no interest to his duties, he brought no attention. His day was a tissue of things neglected and things done amiss. And from place to place and from town to town he carried the character of one thoroughly incompetent."

No one would say that the picture is overdrawn or that the poor devil got other than his just deserts. In the summing up, the final judgment that is put on a man by other men depends on his value as a working hand. If he has other serious personality faults, they will be overlooked as somewhat beside the point, provided that he levels with his job. But if he embodies all of the surface virtues, and is shiftless, any superior with sense will mark him for the discard, and his coworkers will breathe a sigh of relief when he has gone on his way.

Within the armed services, the tone of grudging admiration is never missing from such altogether familiar comments as:

"He's a queer duck but he has what it takes."

"We can't get along with him but we can't get along without him."

By such words, we unconsciously yield the palm to the man who, whatever his other shortcomings, excels us in application to duty. One of the worst rascals ever raised in Britain said that while he wouldn't give a farthing for virtue, he would pay 10,000 pounds for character, because, possessing it, he would be able to sell it for much more.

Is it possible then that men of thoroughly good intentions will neglect the one value which a knave says is worth prizing? Not only is it possible; it happens every day! We see officers of the armed establishment who, thinking themselves employed all day, would still, if they had to make an honest reckoning of the score after tattoo sounded, be compelled to say that they had done exactly nothing. Lacking some compelling duty, they may have read several hours mechanically, neither studying what was said, making notes, nor reflecting on the value and accuracy of it. Such papers as they signed, they had glanced over perfunctorily. If any subordinate approached them with some small matter, they reacted by trying to get rid of him as quickly as possible. When they entered the company of their fellow officers, they partook of it as little as they could, not bothering to enter vigorous conversation, failing to make any note of the character and manner of their associates, and learning not at all from the words that were said.

It is all good enough, and yet strangely it is neither good nor is it enough. That idea of what life in the officer corps is meant to be simply cannot stand up under the pressures of modern operations. True enough, assignments do not all have the same level of work requirement, and one is sometimes handed a wide open opportunity to goldbrick. But taking advantage of it is like the dope habit; the more that it is sniffed, the greater becomes the craving of the nervous system. It is harder to throw off sloth than to keep it from climbing onto one's back in the first place. And finally, the truth of the matter is this, that there is never any assignment given an armed service officer which entitles him to waste any of the working hours of his day. Though he be marking time in a casual depot or replacement center, there still awaits his attention the entire range of military studies, through which he can advance his own abilities. And if he is not of a mind for tactics, map-reading, military law, and training doctrine, it still follows that the study of applied psychology, English composition, economic geography and foreign languages will further his career. Just as a rough approximation, any officer's work week should comprise about 50 percent execution and the other half study, if he is to make the best use of his force. The woods are loaded with go-getters who claim they are men of action and therefore have no need of books; that they are "the flat-bottoms who can ride over the dew." Though they are a little breezier, they are of the same bone and marrow as the drone who is always counseling halfspeed. "Don't sweat; just get by; extra work means short life; you're better off if they don't notice you." This chant can be heard by anyone who cares to listen; it's the old American invitation to mediocrity. But while mediocre, as commonly used, means "indifferent, ordinary," it also has in old English the odd meaning "a young monk who was excused from performing part of a monk's duties." And that, too, fits. It is always worthwhile to ask a few very senior officers what they think of these jokers who refuse to study. They will say that the higher up you go, the more study you have to make up, because of what you missed somewhere along the line. They will say also that when they got to flag or star rank, things didn't ease off a bit.

But not all wisdom is to be found in books, and at no time is this more true than when one is breaking in. What is expected of the novice in any field is that he will ask questions, smart ones if possible, but if not, then questions of all kinds until he learns that there is no such item as reveille oil and that skirmish line doesn't come on spools. For on one point there should be no mistake: the newly appointed officer is a novice. Though many things go with the commission, the assumption that he is all wise to all ways of the service, and will automatically fit into his element as neatly as a loaded ship settles down to its Plimsoll's mark, just isn't among them. Within the services, seniors are rarely, if ever, either patronizing or intolerant of the greenness of a new officer; they just stand ready to help him. And if he doesn't permit them to have that chance, because he would rather pretend that he knows it all, they will gradually become bored with him because of the manifest proof that he knows so very little.

Wisdom begins at the point of understanding that there is nothing shameful about ignorance; it is shameful only when a man would rather remain in that state than cultivate other men's knowledge. There is never any reason why he should hesitate, for it is better to be embarrassed from seeking counsel than to be found short for not having sought it.

In one of the toughest trades in the world of affairs—that of the foreign correspondent—initial dependence upon one's professional colleagues is the only certain stepping stone to success. A man arrives in strange country feeling very much alone. His credentials lack the weight they had at home. The prestige of his newspaper counts for almost nothing. Even the name of his home city stirs little respect. The people, their ways, their approaches and their taboos are foreign to him. This sweeping environmental change is crushing to the spirit; it would impose an almost insuperable moral handicap if the newcomer could not go to other Americans who have already worked the ground, ask them how the thing is done, seek their advice about dealing with the main personalities, learn from them about the facilities for processing copy, and soak up everything they have to say about private and professional procedures. Then as the ropes grow gradually familiar in the grasp, confidence and nervous energy come flooding back.

Surely there is a close parallel between this experience and that of the journeyman moving from the familiar soil of civilianism to the terra incognita of military life. But there is also the marked difference that everyone he meets can tell him something that he needs to know. More particularly, if he has the ambition to excel as a commander of men, rather than as a technician, then the study of human nature and of individual characteristics within the military crowd become a major part of his training. That is the prime reason why the life of any tactical leader becomes so very interesting, provided he possesses some imagination. Everything is grist for his mill. Moreover, despite the wholesale transformation in the scientific and industrial aspects of war, there has been no revolution in the one thing that counts most. Ardant du Picq's words, "The heart of man does not change," are as good now as when he said them in an earlier period of war. Whatever one learns for certain about the nature of man as a fighting animal can be filed for ready reference; the hour will come when it will be useful.

We have emphasized the value of becoming curious, and of asking questions about what one doesn't know, and have said that even when the questions are a little on the dumb side, it does no harm. But the ice gets very thin at one point. The same question asked over and again, like the same error made more than once, will grate the nerves of any superior. It is the mark of inattention, and the beginning of that "tissue of things neglected and things done amiss" which put Stevenson's oddball character in the ditch. When an officer lets words go in one ear and out the other like water off a duck's back, to quote the Dutch janitor, he is chasing rainbows by rubbing fur in the wrong direction.

Ideally, an officer should be able to do the work of any man serving under him. There are even some command situations in which the ideal becomes altogether attainable, and a wholly practicable objective. For it may be said without qualification, that if he not only has this capability, but demonstrates it, so that his men begin to understand that he is thoroughly versed in the work problems which concern them, he can command them in any situation. This is the real bedrock of command capacity, and nothing else so well serves to give an officer an absolutely firm position with all who serve under him. As said elsewhere in this book, within the armed establishment, administration is not of itself a separate art, or a dependable prop to authority. When administrators talk airily of things that they clearly do not understand, they are simply using the whip on the team without having control of the reins.

However, the greater part of military operation in present days is noteworthy for the extreme diversity and complexity of its parts, and instead of becoming more simplified, the trend is toward greater elaboration. It is obviously absurd to expect that any officer could know more about radio repair than his repairman, more about mapping than his cartographical section, more about moving parts than a gunsmith, more about radar than a specialist in electronics and more about cypher than a cryptographer. If the services were to set any such unreasonable standard for the commissioned body, all would shortly move over into the lunatic fringe. Science has worked a few wonders for the military establishment but it hasn't told us how to produce that kind of man.

Plainly, there must be a somewhat different approach to the question of what kind of knowledge an officer is expected to possess, or the requirement would be unreasonable and unworkable.

The distinction lies in the difference between the power to do a thing well and that of being able to judge when it is well done. A man can say that a book is bad, though not knowing how to write one himself, provided he is a student of literature. Though he has never laid an egg, he can pass fair judgment on an omelette, if he knows a little about cookery, and has sampled many good eggs, and detected a few that were overripe.

"He who lives in a house," said Aristotle, "is a better judge of it being good or bad than the builder of it. He can say not only these things, but wherein its defects consist. Yet he might be quite unable to cure the chimney, or to draw out a plan for his rooms which would suit him better. Sometimes he can even see where the fault is which caused the mischief, and yet he may not know practically how to remedy it."

Adjustment to a job, and finally, mastery of it, by a service officer, comes of persistent pursuit of this principle. The main technique is study and constant reexamination of criteria. To take the correct measure of standards of performance, as to the value of the work itself, and as to the abilities of personnel, one must become immersed in knowledge of the nature, and purpose, of all operations. There is no shortcut to this grasp of affairs. The sack is filled bean by bean. Patient application to one thing at one time is the first rule of success; getting on one's horse and riding off in all directions is the prelude to failure. All specialists like to talk about their work; the interest of any other man is flattering; all men grow in knowledge chiefly by picking other men's brains. Book study of the subject, specialized courses in the service schools, the instructive comments of one's superiors, the informed criticism of hands further down the line and the weighing of human experience, at every source and by every recourse, are the means of an informed judgment. It was the scientist, Thomas Huxley who reminded us that science is only "organized common sense."

Other things being equal, the prospect for any man's progress is largely determined by his attitude. It is the receptive mind, rather than the oracle, which inspires confidence. General Eisenhower said at one point that, after 40 years, he still thought of himself as a student on all military questions, and that he consciously mistrusted any man who believed he had the full and final answer to problems which by their nature were ever-changing.

But priggishness about knowledge is not more hurtful than is the arbitrary use of it to limit action. To rule by work rather than to work by rules must be the abiding principle in military operations, for finally, when war comes, nothing else will suffice. In peacetime, absolute accountability is required, because dollar economy in operations is a main object. This entails adherence to rigid forms, time-consuming, but still necessary. In many of war's exigencies, these forms frequently have to be swept aside, to bring victory as quickly as possible and to save human life. In the book, "General Kenney Reports," that great air commander spoke at one point of a difficulty in one of his combat groups. "It was a lot of hard-working earnest kids, officers and enlisted men, who were doing the best they could under poor living and eating conditions. But their hands were tied by the colonel in command whose passion for paper work effectually stopped the issuing of supplies and the functioning of the place as an air depot should. He told me that he thought 'it was about time these combat units learned how to do their paper work properly.' I decided that it would be a waste of time to fool with him so I told him to pack up to go home on the next plane."

Though this is a tragic example of wrong-headedness, it is by no means unique. The profession moves ahead, and national security advances with it, because of men who have the confidence and courage to toss the rule book out the window when it doesn't fit the situation, and who dare to trust their own decisions and improvise swiftly.

But in all walks of life, this willingness to take hold of the reins firmly is by no means common among men in relatively subordinate positions who can play it safe by falling back on "SOP."

But there is also a far wider vista than that which is to be viewed only within the services themselves, and its horizons are almost infinite. The American way in warfare utilizes everything within the national system which may be applied to a military purpose toward the increase of training and fighting efficiency. Much of our potential strength lies in our industrial structure, our progress in science, our inventiveness and our educational resources. Toward the end that all of these assets will be given maximum use, and every good idea which can be converted to a military purpose will be in readiness to serve the nation when war comes, there must be a continuing meeting of minds between military leadership and the leaders and experts in these various fields during peace.

That union cannot be perfected, however, unless there is a sufficient number of men on both sides of the table who can think halfway into the field of the man opposite. Just as the civilian expert in electronics, airplane manufacture or motion picture production needs to know more about the military establishment's problem and requirements if he is to do his part, the service officer with whom he is dealing needs to be informed on industry's resources, possibilities and limitations if he is to enable the civilian side to do its part well. The same for science. The same for education, and all other backers of the fighting force.

An enlightened Englishman, D. W. Brogan, in a book written during World War II, "The American Character," gave us this thought: "The American officer must think in terms of material resources, existing but not organized in peacetime and taking much time and thought and experiment by trial and error to make available in wartime. He finds that his best peacetime plans are inadequate for one basic reason: that any plan which in peacetime really tried to draw adequately on American resources would cause its author to be written off as a madman; and in wartime, it would prove to have been inadequate, pessimistic, not allowing enough for the practically limitless resources of the American people—limitless once the American people get ready to let them be used. And only war can get them ready for that. The American officer can draw then, but not before, on an experience in economic improvization and in technical adaptation which no other country can equal."

This is true to the last syllable, and it means in essence that unless the American officer can think of the whole nation as his workshop, and along with his other duties, will apply himself as a student, seeking to understand more and more about the richness and the adaptability of our tremendous resources, neither he nor the country will be relatively ready when war comes.

There is a last point to be made on the matter of attitude. The most resolute opposition to changes in any system usually comes from those who control them. That is universally true, and not peculiar to military systems; but the services are foremost in recognizing that, as a consequence, the encouragement of original thought at the lower levels is essential to over-all progress.

All depends upon the manner. We can ponder the words of William Hazlitt, "A man who shrinks from a collision with his equals or superiors will soon sink below himself; we improve by trying our strength with others, not by showing it off." They are good so far as they go, but something new should be added. There is a vast difference between contending firmly for ideas that seem progressive when one is reasonably sure of one's data, and the habit of throwing one's weight around through a mistaken belief that this of itself manifests an independence of spirit which inspires respect.

Truculence can never win the day. Restraint, tolerance, a sense of humor and of proportion and the force of logic are the marks of the man qualified for intellectual leading. Within the services, even though he has no great rank, there is practically nothing he cannot carry through, if his proposals have the color of reason and propriety, and if he will keep his head, keep his temper, and keep his word.



CHAPTER NINETEEN

KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR MEN

An admiring contemporary spoke of Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the European Recovery Program, as "the kind of man who if tossed through the air would always pick out the right trapeze."

Within any military organization, there is always a number of such men, enlisted and commissioned. They know how and where to take hold, even in the face of a totally unexpected and unnerving situation, and they have what amounts to an instinct for doing the right thing in a decisive moment.

If it were not so, no captain of the line would ever be able to manage a company in battle, and no submarine commander would be able to cope with an otherwise overwhelming danger. These men are the foundation of unit integrity. The successful life of organization depends upon husbanding, and helping them to cultivate, their own powers, which means that their initiative and vigor must never be chilled by supercilious advice and thoughtless correction.

They will go ahead and act responsibly on their own when given the confidence, and if they want it, the friendship, of their commander. But they cannot be treated like little children. The lash will ruin them and the curb will merely subdue that which needs to be brought forward. As in handling a horse with a good temper and a good mouth, nothing more is needed than that gentle touch of the rein which signals that things are under control.

From where the executive sits, the main secret of building strength within organization comes of identifying such men, and of associating one's authority with theirs, so it is unmistakable in whose name they are speaking and acting. One of the acid tests of qualification in officership is the ability properly to delegate authority, to put it in the best hands, and thereafter to uphold them. If an officer cannot do that, and if he is mistrustful of all power save his own, he cannot command in peace, and when he goes into battle, his unit strength will fragment like an exploding bomb, and the parts will not be rewelded until some stronger character takes hold.