The riddle of the West, more than any other, will plague future historians. How, why, did the nations of the West in a few years slide from seemingly unassailable security to the peril in which they stood after 1938?[1] Roman history offers no parallel to this rapid decline, for it is as though twenty years after Zama the Carthaginians were again at Rome’s gates. In World War I the Germans were beaten in the field, and their allies fell with them; not only was the sword taken from the German hand, it was snapped, and the German forbidden to reforge it. All this notwithstanding—and there had been nothing like it before 1914—the West in 1940 saw most of its more important states overrun, their armies smashed, and little between it and a defeat which the Germans promised would be utter, complete, and final—“total,” in the jargon they created. Then, having surmounted that crisis, the West, two short years after the war’s end, is faced with another major crisis, unmistakably similar to the first.
This is an essay in three parts: the first a brief statement that the problem lies and has always lain, not in the states hostile to the West, but in the West itself, and the latter two an attempt to divide the causes of the crisis, as they manifest themselves in the United States, into two groups, that they may be better examined in detail.
WE ARE THE PROBLEM
The problem to be discussed is this: How and why did the nations of the West pass from the security of 1919-1935 to the deadly, imminent peril of 1940-1942? Having surmounted that, why did they, predictably, come to face the dangers of the present? The dates given are debatable, but surely we can agree that there was a time when our situation was more secure than perilous, and another when the danger was deadly and obvious. The elements of the crisis cannot be found in material things, for in the early years of the Nazi regime there was no lack of arms, nor was there in 1945; and even in the blackest days, the potential resources of the Allies were superior to those of the Axis, though by then the enemy was superior in arms. Therefore, by elimination, we conclude that the solution to the riddle must be sought in the attitudes, values, and ideals with which the West approaches its problems. These traits brought it close to defeat before, and may ruin it in the future. All the factors behind the great debacle of 1940-1942 and the great disillusionment of 1945-1947 must be examined coldly and objectively if we are to minimize future trials. We must not be content with stopping short of the abyss; we must learn why we came so close.
May we not in this learn from both the Greeks and Germans? After the War of 1914—1918 the Greek nation sought security and expansion in Asia Minor. They were badly defeated by the Turks, but studied their defeat, learned its lessons, and applied them when they were attacked by Italy in World War II. The Germans subjected the whole of their effort in the First World War, both political and military, to the most minute scrutiny, and revised their approaches to war and diplomacy on the basis of their researches. Greek and German successes astounded the world, largely because they studied their defeats.
We Americans are part of the West. We must study the past few years as earnestly as must the French and British, for we had major defeats to our policies in the pre-war years, and came close to defeat in the opening months of our formal war with the Axis. We did not want World War II to begin, but it did; we wanted France and England to win with a minimum of disturbance to our affairs, yet France went under and England barely survived; we wanted to be free of concern with the Pacific so that we might avoid a two-front war, yet Japan attacked us. These instances may, I think, justly be called “defeats” or “failures,” possibly unavoidable yet still most unpalatable. We cannot dismiss this line of inquiry by simply pronouncing that we ought to have struck a balance between our resources and our commitments. We did just that; it seems to have been thought that the French Army, the Royal Navy, and the economic strength of the Allies, with which was placed American industry, would encompass the defeat of Germany. The balance was struck, but it was partly based on a gross overestimation of the French.
Research should also ask why our military-diplomatic position so weakened relative to Japan’s in the decade 1931-1941 that the Japanese thought it wise to force us into the war formally when by attacking only British and Dutch possessions they would have forced us to war with them for the unpopular purpose of “protecting British and Dutch imperialism,” as it would have been called. It is idle to mention Japanese obligations to Germany, for the Japanese attacked us to further their own ends, not because of the Pact of Berlin of 1940.
In discussing these matters let us assume a world of nation states, largely because these events happened in such a frame, and because institutions of such size and power do not quickly pass away—for example, paganism and slavery. Nothing human endures, and our system will follow the Roman Empire and the feudal system, for political forms are simply inventions, so many tools of the race in its efforts to master its environment, and like any tool are discarded when their inutility becomes generally apparent. But, mutatis mutandis, these reflections would apply to any social system, because any society needs force in some form or other, since there will always be many who will only be persuaded by force to behave in socially-acceptable ways. And again, in any society, the existing distribution of goods and privileges must be underwritten against those who know that patterns of distribution can be changed by stronger arms and stouter hearts. Let us also in our discussion have in mind that part of the West we inhabit, the United States, with which we are most familiar, and whose destinies lie in our hands.
I
THE MAGIC APPROACH TO POLITICS
Assembling the reasons for the present state of our diplomatic affairs into two major groups, I think the first should be our reliance on an essentially magical approach to world affairs, the belief that “good” policies (those with the stamp of social approval) must yield good results. Many of the solutions so confidently advanced in the Twenties and Thirties seem, in retrospect, not to have been solutions at all, in the sense that we speak of the solution to an arithmetic problem, but rather irrelevant phrases with a high emotional appeal to author and audience. The sophisticated policy-makers who would have smiled at the witch doctor’s obeah solemnly engaged in rites and rituals whose psychological content was exactly the same—for instance, the Kellogg Pact. A policy should not be judged by its emotional appeal to the policy-maker and his constituents, but rather by the possibility of its yielding the desired results. This elaboration of the obvious is stated because the ethical attitudes of the dominant and most articulate elements of the United States have in them unreasoning, conditioned dislikes of some policies, and equally unreasoning acceptances of others. The American statesman is always under pressure to adopt a “good” policy, to avoid a “bad” policy. Implicit in this is the assumption that “good” policies will succeed, and bad ones deservedly fail. If on the one hand we should not imagine that the end justifies the means—for politics is a branch of morality—on the other we should never assume that a policy with a high moral content is bound to succeed. One should remember that the ancient Hebrews would not defend Jerusalem on the Sabbath. This “good” policy never brought bands of angel defenders to the rescue; at least twice it caused the city’s fall. Let us examine certain “good” policies that were urged on this nation while the West was walking the broad and easy path to ruin.
“An appeal to world public opinion will stop the aggressor.” An appeal to public opinion is a good democratic method, it is familiar to the domestic audience, and it has no hint of evil. Unfortunately there is no world public opinion with a guarantee of similar responses from Lancashire, Osaka, and Carolina weavers. Further, these good people learn of the outside world through their several newspapers, which in the case of totalitarian states are controlled by the very groups that plan and conduct the aggressions. Many attempts to mobilize world public opinion were made in the Thirties, but expressions of disapproval stopped no aggressions.
“Set a good example.” “America must be a good example to the world.” “Disarmament by example.” The method of gentle correction by good example is familiar in everyday life, with parents setting good examples to children, wives to husbands, and so on. And besides, there is something subtly flattering in the picture of a radiantly good America shedding her light on a sinning but presumably grateful world that always brings a positive response from the domestic audience. Unfortunately in the Thirties the example would be reported to the public of the Fascist states by a controlled press, which if it noticed the good deed—a reduced arms budget, say—would present it as a sign of decadence, while the hard-bitten elite of the aggressor nation would marvel among themselves at the spectacle of a nation bent on suicide.
“Outlaw war.” This was a peculiarly American idea, for one of the dominant American traits is the urge to legislate people into Heaven by passing laws to solve moral problems, a process which appeases the pressure groups who urge the law and rarely disturbs the law-breakers. Unfortunately there will always be some who think that making the gesture solves the problem. For this reason the Kellogg Pact was especially mischievous, as it was ammunition for those who urged us not to arm, pretending that our arming would violate the Pact; it had no machinery for enforcement, yet was thought a positive safeguard, and so befuddled the public yet a little more.
“Rely on international law” is a potent maxim in polite Western circles, where only eccentrics are openly against law. But there are pitfalls to legalism, for one may come to rely on international law per se for protection, as perhaps the Low Countries did in 1940. Their reliance upon the law of neutrality, instead of upon the common sense course of Franco-British aid, may have been most legal, but we still suffer from its after-effects. Municipal law is a real safeguard because it has the sanctions provided by courts and jails: but aside from the meaning given it by force, international law is verbiage, and if a statesman thinks it has strength beyond that interested parties can muster on its behalf, he errs greatly. Exaggerated regard for the form and letter of the law and for precedent are among the real weaknesses of the West. May they not have been among the reasons Mr. Chamberlain persisted in his fatal policies, which might have worked had there been Birmingham lawyers at the head of Germany and Italy, instead of revolutionary nihilists?
“Don’t provoke others.” This suggests no design for conquest on the part of one’s neighbors, something which should be verified, for such a state of affairs is essential to the success of this approach. In our relations with Canada or Mexico, for example, we should avoid anything that might give offense, for disagreements between us are most unlikely to be grave or even serious; but we would be unwise to make of this a general rule and abstain from taking necessary measures in time, as we abstained from fortifying our Pacific Islands on the argument that someone might be offended thereby. It will be enlightening to recall that Hitler had resolved on the destruction of Poland before he raised the question of Danzig. Nothing the Poles did was relevant to “provoking” one who had already marked them for his prey; their only recourse was to arm at top speed, and the advice given them by the Allies, that the Poles should not mobilize, was completely in error. A nation resolved on aggression will not be deterred by the inoffensive conduct of its prey. On the other hand a demonstration or demarche, such as Theodore Roosevelt’s sending the Fleet around the world or the Anglo-American concentration before Trieste in 1945, may clear the air like a thunderstorm.
Running through these “good” policies, which themselves reflect the values of our community, is the notion that our neighbors in this world are folk like ourselves, sharing our values, and in the more extreme form of this delusion are thought to be transplanted American differing only in speech and dress from ourselves.—“Our assumption of the universality of moral order and good will,” as Isaac Rosenfeld wrote in the New Republic for July 19, 1943. We may not say that our notions are better or worse than our neighbors’, but they are very different, and we should be aware of it. A Londoner once invited a German friend to a lecture on political philosophy, and so for a few hours the German was treated to sound British views on the greatest good for the greatest number, the rights of the individual, the sanctity of the home, limitations on state power, and other ideas we have long thought self-evident. But they were not self-evident to the German; indeed, they only angered him. What was this materialistic emphasis on happiness, the happiness of the majority? Where was the duty of the citizen to the State? Why did the Herr Professor never speak of the joy of sacrifice for it? Surely, too, it is plain that in any group some are born to lead, others to follow. There is a tremendous gap between these views on the roles of State and Citizen; men have died and will die again because of it.
Thus far we have examined one set of the fallacies coming from the domination of certain ethical rules and emotional attitudes, translated into policies because statesmen and constituents both had been conditioned to think them “good” and thus bound to yield the desired results. Now let us examine a second cause of the many disasters that have befallen us.
II
A SECOND CAUSE
The second cause is our failure to see that a sound foreign policy depends on public opinion and armed force, which has resulted in a lack of a wholesome interaction between the people and the policy-makers, and in a failure to study and understand the nature and proper uses of armed force. In saying that public opinion and armed force are the pillars supporting our policy, one makes an arbitrary division of a complex whole. Opinion sets limits to the strength available, and to its uses, while awareness of strength or weakness reacts on opinion. Morale is an obvious factor in military might, and what is morale but a form of opinion? It would, however, be pedantic to say that policy must be based on the nicest calculations of armed strength. In the first place, no such calculations can be made. The mistakes of “military experts” are a public jest, and as for the professionals, it is well- known how widely the Russian armed forces were underestimated in 1941. We will never know just how strong our rivals are, and we are weak or strong in relation to them. For another matter, a bold statesman often makes moves unjustified by the strength at his disposal, but still calculated to match the ineptitude of his opponents. Until 1939, Hitler’s policies probably outran the Wehr-macht’s ability to support them, yet he went from success to success. If one thinks a statesman’s policies must nicely match his strength, then Hitler’s were foolhardy; yet he went from success to success, while his Franco-British opponents failed, with their policies in line with the weak anti-aircraft defenses of London in 1938. That Hitler eventually failed must be small consolation to a Frenchman who looks back at the lost opportunities of 1935-1938, when the French Army could have saved the French Republic.
Public opinion is to be regarded as one pillar of foreign policy because our state is organized to give it sovereign power, and we must therefore examine certain of its characteristics in the field we have been discussing. We may consider public opinion as popular response to a stimulus, a definition broad enough to include widespread law evasion as well as actions at the polls on election day. In this complex picture are certain simplifying elements. Perhaps the most important of these is the tradition that politics ends at the water’s edge, with divisions, however deep, cutting across rather than along party lines, so that the distinguished Republican who began diplomatic action against the aggressor states became Secretary of War for a Democratic Chief Executive, while for a time his naval colleague was a former G.O.P. vice-presidential candidate. Children everywhere learn patriotism and unity from their school books, and from the cultural atmosphere about them. The same ideals dominate our political thought, and the exceptions are so alien that none but a few dupes doubt their origin. Sectionalism still smolders, but it has never weakened us at war, and on every field the Southern soldier has nobly upheld the traditions of the Army of Northern Virginia. The class struggle, though present, has not taken an ugly aspect, and the deep traditions of self-government and of compromise suggest an orderly evolution towards a more complete economic democracy. So far the domestic reflections of class strife have not taken the bloody form that the struggle for political freedom once took in England, or in this country (the American Revolution). Racial tension exists, but the Negro’s numerical weakness plus the traditions of compromise, of ordered political evolution mentioned above, suggest that a mutually satisfactory adjustment will in time be reached without bloodshed or civil strife. We are, then, gratifyingly free from many of the causes of weakness that have so plagued other parts of the West, such as France and Belgium.
CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION
What, then, are some of the characteristics of American public opinion on foreign affairs that may have had an unfortunate effect upon our destiny? Perhaps first has been the easy belief that what we locally regard as the fundamentals of civilized behavior are thus accepted by all groups with whom we have come into contact. Our definitions of right, wrong, honor, justice, democracy, the sanctity of treaties, the worth of human life, were thought to be self-evident and universally accepted. The Japanese and the American both speak of “honor,” but it means quite different things to each, and each thinks the other insincere. The average American still cannot believe that any government anywhere would under any circumstances destroy the persons, property, and honor of his family as a matter of calculated policy. On the successful conclusion of the last war, it was very widely thought on this side of the Atlantic that Fate itself having demonstrated the universal truth of our ideas, we having won, they would be adopted by all and sundry with whom we might thereafter deal on a basis of complete mutual understanding.
Companion to these notions is the belief that the existing grand distribution of the liberties and properties of nations is unchangeable, established by the very nature of things. The totalitarian premise has been that social arrangements must ultimately match the distribution of armed power. Our social arrangements have endured so long, and are so widely accepted within the society, that we forget the role of force in creating a social system.[2] If today the opportunity to engage in business is not a monopoly granted by the Crown, it is because there was a smart pushing of pikes at Marston
Moor and Naseby, not because a rising bougeoisie was making money. In the last decade we have seen just what money can do against resolute soldiery. To be sure, force is not the greatest or only factor in creating or shaping a social system, but because the successful users of force can have their way for several generations, there will always be those to think that quite long enough for them.
Another point is that men reared in the liberal, democratic tradition simply could not believe that such a thing as the totalitarian mentality exists in this age. This mind, with its characteristic belief that everything outside the charmed circle of the elite is so much of uncaught slaves and unseized plunder, would have been perfectly understandable and normal to a Crassus off to loot the East, but the Western bourgeois and his leaders simply could not grasp it. The idea seems to have been that some. boundary changes and an indemnity would be the only consequences, for their historical memory seems to have encompassed only 18th and 19th Century wars of limited objective. David Starr Jordan, writing when the Kaiser was in his heyday, said: “On the whole it would be better for any nation to be thrashed and pass over temporarily into control of another nation than to continue the monstrous expenditures now going on in England and Germany...” His spiritual successors of the Thirties sponsored and took the Oxford Oath. But facing them was the Nazi, who intended to seize and enslave everything for his direct personal benefit. His principal opponent was at first the poilu who had been taught that wars settle nothing and that his father was a fool to have fought the Germans before. The youth of England and America were exposed to much the same sort of lessons, as those of us who were in school in the Thirties will recall, but were lucky in that the falsity of these doctrines had been exposed before the great testing time came.
Believing that no great alterations in the scheme of his life are possible, let alone seriously contemplated, the American finds it easy to dismiss alarmists even as he did before the great awakening of 1940. What is called complacency is probably part of this same mental pattern. If the existing order of things cannot be changed, then certainly the citizen need not concern himself, for not even defeat could alter the even tenor of his days. “Wars settle nothing.” Probably World War I of itself settled nothing. Neither did the First Punic War, to which these giant struggles of the present era may be compared.
THE MYTH OF AMERICAN SUPERIORITY
The belief in an effortless American superiority has been noticeable in our appraisal of others. This belief, shared by all nations as regards themselves—as Gypsies call themselves “The Men,” or “The People,” and as the paranoid Germans fondly call themselves herrenvolk—is very strong in American thinking, and makes it easy for us to believe all manner of nonsense about prospective enemies, just as we did of the Japanese. We held the Japanese naive to think themselves descended from gods and ruled by deity incarnate, but were ourselves quite willing to talk of a six weeks’ war. This belief in our vast superiority made us slow to see danger, for who would dare attack us? It made us slow to begin arming, for surely our industry could with matchless ease overtake and crush the Axis. A more sober appraisal of American strength would surely have led to a genuine national demand for rearmament before 1940. Those missing arms might have stopped the coming of war, or prevented the fall of France. A strong line abroad cannot be reconciled with disarmament and retrenchment at home. There is a strong “moral” influence in our political reactions, perhaps a legacy of those Nonconformists and Pilgrim Fathers who remain the spiritual forefathers of most Americans, regardless of their ultimate national origins. We like to address other nations in terms of moral exhortation, and think our duty done when we have called the transgressor’s attention to his sins. Such condemnation of the wicked appeals to the popular mind, though only rarely is it followed by any sort of action (as the transgressors are doubtless well aware!), for action might lead to war and so make us one with the wicked we have been castigating. Because of this ethical content in our approach to politics, our clergy had for a time a powerful influence on our foreign affairs—an influence which, by its emphasis on U. S. disarmament, was possibly not of the best.
Public attitudes may be inconsistent, and a politician trying to be guided by them may find himself on the horns of a dilemma. We wanted Hitler beaten, but did not want to war on him to make sure of it. We wanted China to win, but did not want to war with Japan. There is ample evidence of conflicting public desires today as regards economy and a strong line abroad. Such conflicting desires may not be of equal intensity at any one time; that is, in the Thirties we were undoubtedly more anxious to avoid war than we were to aid the victims of aggression. By 1940 some sort of resolution of this conflict was probably reached; that is, aid to England was approved, even though it might lead to war. But a most confusing situation was produced in which isolationists claimed that eighty per cent of the people wanted to avoid war, and they created a whole structure of argument on that foundation, while interventionists were prompt with equally imposing totals of answers to different ways of presenting the problems of war and peace. Some of our more puzzling diplomatic actions may have been stop-gaps to meet emergencies until such time as the wishes of Congress and the public were clear.
Another factor that may distort our thinking is the persistence of popular stereotypes about the several nations of the world. A most exaggerated notion of English power was current before the war, perhaps a reflection of school history texts in which so many pages dealt with our relations with an overwhelmingly powerful England. There may be a sort of cultural lag at work, leading us to appraise nations on the basis of what they were in our youth; thus, some of us may have been judging the Nazi police state on the basis of notions of a gemütlich Germany gone these 30 years or more. Another mental factor to be listed in passing is the fashionable ignorance of military matters on the part of the American elite. One need only read the daily press and current magazines to see that such ignorance still exists on the part of the articulate portion of the elite. In the last decade, ignorance of things military was not good preparation for meeting its problems.
To summarize, a failure to appreciate the role of public opinion in foreign affairs is a grave error for the leaders of a democracy. This appreciation must go beyond a mere paying of formal homage on suitable occasions, it must be an active principle of the daily conduct of affairs. There must be a steady flow of factual information, to the maximum consistent with security considerations. This does not imply a propaganda machine; close liaison with the legislative branch will meet most of the requirements. The statesman should periodically brief the public on the situation as he sees it. Of all contemporary statesmen Winston Churchill was pre-eminent in this regard. Without informing his people he could never have guided them. Beginning with his great exposes of German rearmament, his speeches tore the mask from German designs on the small neutrals, on the Balkans, and on Russia, and each time well in advance. His accounts of the English position were always frank, and yet inspiring. He needed little of a propaganda machine, he himself was an army. Not everyone can match Mr. Churchill in prescience and eloquence, but his appreciation of the role the public should play is neither a secret nor a monopoly.
That from three to four years is the absolute minimum of time in which to build a modern military machine (assuming some prior preparations) strongly suggests the need of forethought in policy, and of knowing too what our vital interests are; for if a crisis is to be met, it must be anticipated, and preparations begun, three years before, and the necessary diplomatic and military preparations completed in time. Because of our quadrennial presidential elections we are under something of a handicap, for the three-year danger period demands that a new President must foresee trouble during his first year in office, and the Congress must see it too, if a coherent program is to be laid down and carried through; yet in that first year the President is apt to be sufficiently occupied merely in organizing his administration and acquiring the feel of his great office. Then, too, many Presidents have entered office strongly pacifist in the orthodox American way, and the process of enlightenment may take some time. There is also the very real possibility that the executive and the legislative branches may not see eye to eye. We all recall that conference in the summer of 1939 when Mr. Roosevelt tried to get a group of Congressional leaders to support some relaxation of our neutrality laws in advance of war, only to learn from certain Congressmen that they had better sources of information than did the President, and that those sources said “No war!” It is well that the Senate, with its power over treaties, and its continuity of membership, has had some of its most distinguished members take part in conducting our diplomatic business, thus giving its advice as well as its consent.
An enlightened public opinion is our best and surest shield, for it can give continuity to policy, as for example the Monroe Doctrine, and can demand vigilance and faithfulness in the execution of it. Public opinion must settle on the policy it wants, and then must assure itself that the United States Government can carry out that policy. If we can have this sort of agreement, then we have the basis of a sound military policy and an equally clear directive to the State Department. Possibly it will be a directive to organize a system of collective security, possibly a Grand Alliance, but, in any event, a clear lead to all concerned with the national security.
We have been at some pains to insist on the role of force and the need of force in a well-organized community, whether of nations or of individuals, for the mark of a settled and civilized community is not the abolition of force, but its use for social ends and communal good. Because war is a great evil, some have hastily concluded that any use of force in any context is a great evil. Yet communities use force to restrain the homicidal maniac. It must be recalled that the dominant opinion in Western Europe shrank from using force to stop the Nazis between 1935 and 1938, when a resolute stand might have caused the collapse of the Nazi regime. As a result, and in the names of peace and justice, the peoples of Europe were delivered to the Nazis when they might easily have been saved. Let us have no more of those follies in days to come. The West will not survive if it models its attitudes on those of Mr. Gandhi. Our liberties are not the gift of a permanently indulgent deity. We rent them from Fate, and periodically the rent falls due.
THE PROBLEM OF THE WEST
In these pages the conviction has been expressed that the problem of the West is in the minds and hearts and souls of those of us who are the West. There is no German problem, but there are very real French, British, and American problems. Self-criticism, self-searching, are very hard; it is easier to blame one’s troubles on someone else. The bombing of Rotterdam was a dreadful thing, and those who did it were justly punished. But what of those who would not arm in time, and so made the bombing inevitable? What is their guilt, their defense? At least part of the West was ready for a master in 1940, and whose fault was that? It is fortunate that the Germans lack political capacity, or German hegemony in Europe would be an accomplished fact. They traded the mastery of Europe for a saturnalia of “Nordic” fantasies of blood and terror. The West they almost conquered was so drugged that even the barbarisms done before its eyes for years made no impression on the popular mind of the Continent until experienced at first hand. The vile Quislings only practiced what many had preached for years—non-resistance, collaboration, peace at any price. Those doubts and weaknesses, those profound feelings of guilt that paralyzed the will, may have been only the aftermath of the slaughters and frustrations of 1914-1918, or they may reflect the trend that Oswald Spengler thought he saw, the coming of the Caesar-ready masses. If that be so, then there is no problem of the West, for the West will fall to the next conqueror.
In the resistance of the underground movements, in the dogged British stand of 19401941, in the vitality with which most of Europe’s peoples are rebuilding, in the manner in which the American people have risen to meet the challenge of these somber but stirring times, lie the best guarantee that in the future as in the past the West will continue the great fountainhead of arts, arms, and law.
A graduate of the University of Chicago, Mr. Sunderland served in the Field Artillery during World War II, his final assignment being with the Historical Section, Theater Headquarters, India-Burma Theater. At present he is on duty in the Historical Division, Department of the Army, Washington, D. C.
★
IT WAS WORTH IT
Contributed by LIEUTENANT COMMANDER H. B. SEIM, U. S. Navy
“Notify me as soon as you see the Captain returning,” growled the Executive Officer, “and be certain that the warning is timely. I want to be here on the quarterdeck before he starts up the brow.”
The Captain, resplendent in frock coat, sword, ribbons, and gloves, had just left the ship to make an official call on the Mayor. Since this busy 8-to-12 watch was one of my first top watches as Officer of the Deck, the Exec had taken special pains to give me detailed instructions. The Skipper of my first ship was stern, strict, and exacting, particularly in regard to quarterdeck courtesies and side honors. The Executive Officer demanded an even higher degree of smartness.
But as noon drew near, my watch scattered to carry out the usual noontime procedure—the boatswain’s mate to pipe the crew to dinner, the messenger, to report twelve o’clock to the commanding officer, and the quartermaster to break the meal pennant at the main yard.
Suddenly I saw with horror the Captain walking down the dock to board the ship. With no messenger available, all seemed lost, when salvation appeared in the form of a radio messenger wandering aimlessly along the deck.
“Tell the Exec that the Captain is coming aboard and is almost at the brow now!” I fairly shrieked.
Much to my surprise, the Exec, made it, but he must have been in an awful hurry. It was worth the ten days I got in hack to see his confusion and embarrassment when the Captain, with a chilling stare of disapproval, snapped, “Commander, it is customary to wear a necktie with the blue service uniform!”
(The Proceedings will pay $5.00 for each anecdote submitted to and printed in, the Proceedings).
[1] Probably the last year in which France and England could have beaten the Nazis; possibly the last year in which a genuine rapprochement with the Soviets was attainable.
[2] This attitude went to wonderful lengths. One of my college texts managed to discuss the downfall of the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire without once mentioning Alexander.