LOYALTY
By Rear Admiral R. H. Jackson, U. S. Navy
The theme which I have chosen for my address is loyalty. I will define loyalty and show you that it is the foundation of all the virtues and that in some form it is of constant application throughout our career. That here to-day I am employing it in my address to you—a loyalty to this institution.
Loyalty is ordinarily defined as fidelity to superior, to duty, etc. A synonym of fidelity which is in turn derived from fides, faith.
But loyalty connotes feeling or sentiment, strong or enthusiastic, accompanying a sense of allegiance. It begets action; it is faith with works.
Royce tells us:
Loyalty is indeed an old word and a precious one and the general idea of loyalty is still far older than the word, and immeasurably more precious. For everybody has heard of loyalty; most prize it; but few perceive in its inmost spirit what it really is—the heart of all the virtues, the central duty among all the duties.
In loyalty is the fulfillment of the whole moral law.
Justice, charity, wisdom, spirituality, are all defined in the terms of enlightened loyalty. For loyalty is the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.
Nor is loyalty mere emotion. Adoration and affection may go with loyalty; but they can never alone constitute loyalty.
Furthermore the devotion of the loyal man involves a sort of restraint or submission of his natural desire to the cause.
Loyalty without self-control is impossible.
The loyal man serves. That is he does not merely follow his own impulses.
He looks to his cause for his guidance. This cause tells him what to do and how to do it.
His devotion furthermore is entire. His is ready to live or to die as the cause directs.
In this cause is your life, your will, your opportunity, your fulfillment.
Furthermore, loyalty is contagious. It affects not only you, the fellow servant of your own special cause, but also those who know of this act.
Loyalty is a good that spreads. Live it and you thereby cultivate it in other men.
Now you may say this is a fine philosophy; but where is the application to the service? I would not be a true exponent of the applicatory system if I did not endeavor to point out that loyalty is to be practiced daily.
At this moment I am applying it to this institution, the War College.
The previous valedictorians have shown their loyalty to the college in their addresses.
One gave a sketch of the college, its growth, its excellent work and its benefit to the service and went forth as a missionary urging that more officers be sent to profit by its course.
Another partly in his own words, and parly in those of Kipling in prose and in poetry testified to the benefits that he and all of his class has received, and commended the soundness of the doctrine.
To the testimony of these witnesses the graduation class echoes a loud aye, aye; most heartily responds aye, aye.
The college doctrine brings out the need for loyalty to the leader, and loyalty to the plan.
My theme is to emphasize the need of an all-embracing loyalty to the service and the flag—a loyalty to loyalty.
Now this does not always exist.
We know officers who are not loyal to the Naval Academy, their foster-mother. Yet that institution made them in part what they are. They thus become disloyal to themselves.
On board ship the officers and crew are generally most loyal to the ship and to the captain. Woe betide the ship if this be not so. If they be not loyal, they themselves are to blame, and their character is adversely affected by this lack of loyalty.
But in how many ships do we find any loyalty to the division or to the fleet as a whole?
The most successful division commander that I have ever known had on the after turret of the flagship the words "For the Fleet." Every officer and every man in that division was better for that motto.
Let us turn to the "Articles for the Government of the United States Navy" which is our military guide, we might say our Bible, and see what position loyalty holds.
The commanders of all fleets, squadrons and vessels belonging to the navy shall show in themselves a good example of virtue, honor, patriotism and SUBORDINATION.
Now patriotism is loyalty to the country.
Subordination is loyalty to authority, to the commander and to his plan. Insubordination is disloyalty.
Virtue, which here means valor or courage, implies a willingness to fight for one's beliefs and principles. Timidity or cowardice implies a willingness to abandon them, a disloyalty to them.
Honor is a nice sense of what is just, right and true.
Honor is really loyalty to self.
Thus we see that the first two principles virtue and honor are founded on loyalty and the latter two patriotism and subordination are really forms of loyalty itself.
So that our navy Bible may be said to be founded on these three, virtue, honor and loyalty, but the greatest of these is loyalty.
It is interesting to find that in the Oriental mind the virtues of military character are but two: Filial piety and loyalty. Character is likened unto a cart of which the two wheels are their virtues. Without these wheels the cart is a wreck.
So that even in the Oriental mind, which so often looks at things topsy-turvy, loyalty is also the base of all character, military and moral.
Now what are some of the enemies of loyalty?
They are well known and should be guarded against constantly; idle gossip, loose criticism, a willingness to believe the worse; snap judgment without waiting for facts—these are disloyalty to the cause, whether it be embodied in a personality or an ideal.
Lord Jervis, one of the strongest characters in naval history, who brought the British fleet to a high state of discipline at most turbulent period in its history, voices a warning concerning the
danger that lurks in this practice in the wardroom.
Discipline begins in the ward-room. I dread not the seaman. It is the indiscreet conversation of the officers and their presumptuous discussion of the orders received that produce all our ills.
The remedy is simple.
Take no part in such practices, and so far as possible suppress them.
The Oriental idea is illustrated in the group of the three monkeys that with hands over mouth, eyes and ears, respectively; speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil.
But this is rather a negative attitude, in keeping with the Oriental mind.
We find in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians a much more vigorous, a western remedy. Founded, too, on sound psychology:
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.
Here is no mere closing the senses to the evil reports which may all be lies; but an active searching out of the good, "If there be any virtue, if there be any praise think on these things."
But there is a narrow, restricted form of loyalty, that is not a true loyalty, not a "loyalty to loyalty," and that is partisanship.
Against that we must be on our guard. For partisanship is a blind devotion to person or party, it engenders rivalry, jealousy and bitterness. The person no longer feels lifted out of himself and dedicated to a sacred cause. But secretly feels he is responding to the baser motives within, desire for unlawful exercise of power, lust for revenge, unfair advantage. Yet this pseudo-loyalty, this tendency to form cliques, is all too frequent as military history can attest.
The remedy is to choose for our loyalty the ideal, not the personal, not the admiral alone, but the fleet; not the navy alone, but the flag.
I have already quoted from St. Paul, a great leader and the personification of loyalty.
I quote once more from his valedictory written at Rome shortly before his death to Timothy, his beloved fellow-worker in the cause.
For I am already being offered (as a sacrifice) and the time of my departure is at hand; I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.
Here is the message and the wish that we of the graduating class bear to you and to the service, and which we take away in our own heart from this institution.
When the time comes, as come it must, when we shall cease from public service to our country and to our flag, whether it be merely to terminate our active naval careers, and seek repose among family and friends, or whether it be to take our last long cruise to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, may we one and all be able to say freely and conscientiously and gladly:
I have fought a good fight; I have finished my cruise; I have kept the faith; I have been loyal to loyalty.