No longer, in any quarter, is it an obscure fact that the United States has arrived at an important juncture in history. The world situation has projected our country so far into the foreground of events that its place in the limelight is, if anything, too prominent for comfort. We find ourselves, as it were, “Standing, with reluctant feet, where the Brook and River meet.” Our expectation, along with that of the rest of the democratic and some of the non-democratic world, is that we will handle ourselves confidently and competently despite our lack of that longer political seasoning which other great countries have had before rising to a position of equal pre-eminence. In this general picture, our military and naval affairs are of the greatest moment, not only to us, but to all.
Small wonder, then, that since the end of hostilities a question of great public interest has concerned the size and organization of the armed forces, together with the means of providing adequate numbers of personnel to carry out the commitments for which we have made ourselves responsible. £)n the whole, we have passed rather easily from our pre-Pearl Harbor notions to new ideas. Who in 1940, even though the European war was in progress, would have prophesied a peacetime draft eight years later? Far from denoting apathy, such a development points up the flexibility and the fundamental good sense of the American people, upon which two qualities so much of the victory depended in war, and still depends in peace.
With our armed forces, the situation is still fluid; important matters of organization and control remain unsettled. But this much is certain: whereas heretofore our Army and Navy were constricted organizations capable of huge expansion for war, hereafter our three armed forces must be machines built for war, capable of being maintained in a suitable kind of reduced-but-ready status. Despite the financial burden implied by this conclusion it appears to be inescapable, and we must accept it until considerable further stability is attained in international politics.
Because of increased public interest in military affairs, a great deal has been said and written since V-J Day about the discipline and internal philosophy of the armed forces. In regard to these matters the situation is likewise still fluid—no final results are apparent in any objective sense, and cannot be for some time to come. It seems as if the surveys and arguments that have appeared in so many publications have not, even yet, fully explored the subject. And the subject, for the first time in our history, has become of permanent importance to our people. It is therefore one that will come up, again and again, until all existing dissatisfaction has been replaced by substantial approval.
In general, the published comments on the discipline and internal philosophy of our forces have taken one of two main lines: that of strict orthodoxy, or that of destructive criticism. The first approach is summarized in the trite argument that “an army can’t be run without discipline,” and the second is epitomized by the disgusted GI or naval veteran who “would rather do anything on the outside” than stay in. Obviously neither of these attitudes can ultimately prevail. Just as plainly neither is devoid of all merit. A final adjustment between them is inevitable, important, and greatly needed, but has not yet been attained or even closely approached. Much depends upon such adjustment. Without it the peacetime draft, so ardently desired by the services, must prove a boomerang.
As in all things, a cool, clear, detached approach is essential to constructive thinking. Therefore, neither the ingrained beliefs of one group nor the fresh resentments of the other should be permitted to becloud our vision.
The first salient fact to be bravely recognized has indeed been accorded recognition, although not very loudly. It is that a large number of the sovereign people of the United States, in uniform, were mightily offended during World War II by certain of the basic military tenets and usages governing them. Wartime soldiers and sailors may have been similarly offended before; if so, no crisis resulted. There might be no crisis now, but for the fact that the armed forces, along with the rest of the nation, have arrived at a historic crossroads. The logical conclusion is that a satisfactory settlement of existing differences in ideas must be reached. Otherwise, an unsatisfactory settlement may be precipitated at some future time. Sovereign power remains in the hands of the people, to whom it belongs; its exercise against the retention of such military usages, customs, and regulations as antagonize the people is only a question of time unless a settlement is effected, or unless all unsettled issues should be merged in the devastating fact of a new war—something to which no one looks as a solution to any domestic problem. Let us realize, therefore, that we have a job to do, which, if well done, will pay rich dividends.
The next important point to be candidly recognized is that the door is not closed to improvement in military ideas. One of the numerous magazine articles dealing with the proposed peacetime draft pointed out that George Washington thought we should have conscription in peacetime. Our present problem, succinctly stated, is to develop the very discipline and internal military philosophy we would have evolved by now if our first President’s thought had been effectuated. Had the United States always had a system of peacetime conscription, the rough edges of that problem would most certainly have been well worked down by the present time. Instead, the military have always been a class apart, with brief interludes in which they first swallowed and then disgorged a huge civilian component. That era is past. Let us all be aware of the fact.
The third important point is that, notwithstanding the other considerations, we must always have stricter and more rigid discipline in military than in civil life, together with unquestioning obedience to orders and unshakable respect for duly constituted authority, so that military discipline is different in kind from civilian discipline, to a certain extent. Some writers have recently taken pains to justify the very necessity of military rank and discipline— have, as it seems, assumed that resistance to those entire ideas has lain at the root of the expressed dissatisfaction with certain of their features. Nobody, least of all a veteran, can reasonably doubt that when a wartime commander conducts his fateful symphony, his orchestra must respond to the full, without wasting time or energy in considering the merits of the selection or of its interpretation. Let us therefore not be ashamed of the austere requirements of war.
What we have to face, consequently, is not a prospective revolution in military customs, but rather an effective program of readjustment. The outlook should not create concern for the cherished and painfully built ideals of the military services—ideals that are and always have been perfectly sound—but rather should create enthusiasm for the essential and profitable task of shaping a military society more nearly suited to our condition, and therefore a tool of vastly increased potential power. The nub of our difficulty is, very simply, the hardship of separating those features of military society which are traditional yet objectionable ornaments to the structure of the military services from those other features which are the foundation stones, the beams, and the girders of the military edifice. This task is more difficult than it should be because of the intellectual weaknesses of human beings (on both sides of any argument) in yielding to prejudice, preference, and self-importance at the expense of reason. Thus has it ever been, and shall be hereafter. But the work must go on. The only real question is whether we will do it ourselves, or wait to have it done for us, inevitably and perhaps much less satisfactorily, in the future. Successful work performed by the services themselves in the near future is very much in order. Mere tinkering, however, is no less harmful when done by the services than when done by civilian critics. Any work that is done must be based upon some serious theory.
The mere antiquity of military organizations as a feature of civilized life is no guarantee that their present organizational discipline has evolved as far as is desirable. Admittedly, there has never been a political entity quite like the United States. One may suppose, boldly but perhaps quite soundly, that there has never been a foreign military organization quite like that which the United States ought to have. If so, we can hardly look to Europe for a model. Neither can we look to our own history and no farther. Our services have lived apart from our people so long that we cannot draw too much upon the past in making plans for the future.
Indeed, our traditional practices proved costly in an unexpected way during the late war. The wartime Navy contained many so- called “mustang” officers. Some of them were excellent officers, and others were men of ability, who, as commissioned officers, had no success in leadership. To try to ascertain the factor which produced such disparate results in men of essentially equivalent background was puzzling. Apparently it was something very personal. Now, one who has suffered much in an organization may tend to become proud of his sufferings. “I did it for many years, now let them do it” was the stock answer of the second type of “mustang” to all propositions involving less hardship for enlisted men. Their peculiar psychology went far to minimize their often good or even excellent efficiency and ability. The conclusion obtruded itself that there was a simple explanation—colossal self-indulgence. Here was the wounded enlisted ego of years gone by, now dressed in gold, salving itself at the expense of its masters—citizens of the United States who were winning a war for their country. It became quite evident that a deep-seated, subconscious resentment against the service, engendered in much the same ways as the ill-will they were themselves creating in the enlisted personnel under them, was effectively preventing some of these officers from continuing to be good leaders. A great pity, and a great lesson. The fault was not theirs. Theirs was only a maladjustment; as the Navy’s children, they had been dominated too much. Those who were of sterling character could recoup their loss; the others could not. Here is the core and kernel of the whole immense question. Surely there must be an organizational discipline for military service which will unfailingly, consistently, and uniformly give to Americans the things they require—individual opportunity, a degree of individual importance, self-respect—and which can yet be an organizational discipline which will provide the service itself with a full measure of all those features of subordination, obedience, and respect for authority throughout the chain of command which it needs and must have. The satisfaction of these various needs should not depend upon rank, station, or type of duty, and least of all upon anyone’s personality or policy.
The two sets of requirements are not inconsistent. The best leaders have always managed to fill both sets of needs to a sufficient extent. But military organizations have not always required this fulfillment, or even made it easy, and in wartime it has not always been attained, at least not until the stresses of battle intervened to supply the deficiencies of leadership. From now on, in our forces, a better average of leadership than that just described would appear to be a necessity. Unless we find means to attain it, one may well doubt that the statement of the Army’s Chief of Staff, when he formally recommended conscription in preference to a huge regular establishment, will ever come true. He said that the plan recommended by him was better calculated to capitalize the military ability of the American people. This cannot prove to be true unless the plan, having now been adopted at least in part, performs to the satisfaction of the people. The civilian citizens will insist upon and must be accorded great influence; if fundamental differences are allowed to remain between their basic beliefs and those of the armed services, the services will be compelled, in the long run, to yield. We must draw our strength from where it is. Our strength resides in the length and breadth of the land.
A restatement of the elements of the overall problem under discussion is not a simple endeavor, but it may be approached thus: it appears that real progress often takes the form of effecting a workable reconciliation of apparent opposites. Civilization itself is mainly an attempted synthesis of mankind’s animal and intellectual natures. (Its many defects can be tagged as imperfections in the attempted process. War is one of these.) Are there, then, conflicting elements in the organizational discipline of a military body? Patently, there are.
The military thesis is easily described. It consists in the ideals of discipline, service, and obedience which spell the difference between an organized body and an ordinary gathering. It has been summed up by a British admiral as “the one word, obey.” But so complex a matter as organizational discipline cannot be summed up so concisely; only a thesis can be put in that way. Again, in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor, when the grave danger threatening our country put us all in the most serious mood we have ever been in, an Army officer said over the radio, “ . . . from now on you will do as you are told. Iron discipline will win the war.” He was addressing young people, and the statement was a natural one for him to make. At this time we might well inquire with great care what kind of discipline helped most to win the war. Definitely, something much greater than the iron discipline the general had in mind.
The military antithesis, on the other hand, is not easily stated. Commonly it is called “individualism,” but the full meaning of that word is difficult to assess. Individuals themselves are all too often rather hard to assess. The eternal mainspring of each individual, however, is his ego. That word is a well chosen one; indeed we might still more appropriately use the emphatic, egomet. Not even the “typical Prussian” could ignore the ego; he derived self-esteem from the simple fact of being organized. We must serve our ego in some other way. Indeed, our doctrines of naval leadership, as officially promulgated, recognize the vital importance of each individual’s self-respect and pride. But our organizational discipline has often failed, in many respects, to give life to our doctrines of leadership. We must cure this illness.
There are, of course, those steeped in the military thesis who would feel that looking to the ego for the key to improvement would amount to sabotage. So it might, were we seeking to substitute antithesis for thesis, but not if we are seeking to make progress.
Why are commanding officers who impose a high standard of proficiency and efficiency upon their commands generally well liked and respected (if they are also respectable men)? Not so much because the persons under their command admire and respect the commanding officer for his own sake (although they do) as because they admire and respect themselves for their association with him, and for the achievements they have been made to attain. Such a man is a successful leader. There is nothing wrong in the egoistic features of his success; all success is entirely desirable. A taut ship is a happy ship if it encourages self-respect on the part of the crew; otherwise it is known as a “hell ship” and is anything but happy. Moreover, the success in performance of duty which “hell ships” have sometimes attained in the past was purchased, not merely too expensively, but with a currency that is going to be called out of circulation—namely, the abuse of power. To counterfeit successful leadership is not going to be as easy as it has been. Of course it was never possible to more than a limited extent, but there has been an area in which a leader could get unearned results.
Progress, as we have said, is very often a struggle toward more perfect synthesis of apparently inconsistent things. A particular conflict may be describable as one between reason and emotion, art and science, the practical and the ideal, or otherwise, but each crisis springs out of some imperfect balance, and each failure out of inability to find a better balance. In any given case, the completely irreverent and pessimistic conclusion is that thesis and antithesis, while perhaps equally valid, are truly irreconcilable, so that we are compelled to make a definite and permanent choice between them. Faith in progress, on the other hand, is a belief that there is an ultimate unity in nature which prevents the first conclusion from being true. If we have that belief, we must also believe that evil stems from yielding everything to either thesis or antithesis, after the manner of fanatics. Sometimes people put their trust wholly in the one or the other of the opposing propositions because they would rather work for it than remain conscious of any conflict; this onesidedness lends a comforting purpose to their lives. And so there is a classical type of military man who, believing fanatically in the military thesis, has no doubts. Also, he believes that warfare, including personnel administration and leadership, is the one art which has been pushed, and long ago too, into its last full flower of development. Of him we must beware.
Morale is not to be found in anything but a team. To some extent, we can all identify our own ego with that of the group-—if we may ascribe an ego to the group. But we Americans cannot carry this affinity to its logical extreme of complete or substantial merger. The American people are well acquainted with disciplined teamwork; they do not, however, believe in regulation as an abstract divinity. Their attitude toward the 18th Amendment was a prime example of that fact in recent times. Their attitude toward the government of George III should not be overlooked, either—and many of those who served in the late war, like the colonists, experienced tyranny in action.
With us, a team that had achieved synthesis in its organizational discipline would be one in w;hich each individual serves the unit as an undivided part of it and where, at the same time, his function and his ego are reasonably happy together. Such a condition is a legitimate and most desirable goal of leadership. Is it rash to venture the opinion that this has been the condition, more or less, of those American units which have been most successful in respect to morale? What about units like air and submarine crews, and certain intelligence activities, wherein military virtues are practiced by small groups or even isolated individuals? Service in these units denotes more than average individual responsibility. Such service is more satisfying to the ego, and the units concerned are elite on that account, quite as much as on account of having select personnel. Therefore, an organizational discipline which takes proper account of the individual ego would be taking account of the military antithesis.
We hardly need remind ourselves that the individual ego must not be allowed to run away with the team; that way lies disaster. (Let us also remember that this truth is no less applicable when it involves those in a superior position. The superior who not only fails to respect his subordinates, but is actively hostile toward them, is by no means unknown. What shall we say about such a superior? Principally that he is self-indulgent. The fussbudget of high military rank, also, is an example of a self-indulgent person; his fussiness serves no other purpose so well as to satisfy his own ego, unless it be to bolster the ego of those subordinates who succeed, from time to time, in pleasing him. The first type of superior is fatal to morale; the second is detrimental to it.)
Considered in slightly different aspects, the egos of leader and led provide an understanding of most of the minor difficulties and annoyances in the day-to-day practice of leadership. Whenever high-handedness of a leader is in excess of what the situation justifies, trouble is born. Again, recalcitrant subordinates can often be salvaged through an appeal to their own ego when other methods fail to produce any gain, for self-esteem is the last personal characteristic to die in the destructive process of disgruntlement. And yet again, a job and an opportunity to perform it with some dignity and satisfaction are far more appealing to the ego than to function for appearance only, or to be imposed upon as a means of taking up the slack or covering up the weaknesses in plans and procedures, or to have the duty of providing for some contingency which will never happen, or to be and be made to feel not subordinate but servile.
We have, then, considered statements of the military thesis and antithesis. Notwithstanding the length of the world’s military history and tradition, it is quite possible that some nation may yet materially improve the correlation of the individual and the collective aspects of organizational discipline. If so, who among the nations is as well qualified as we? We may properly recall once again that in the political history of the world there has not been another government quite like our own. One imagines that our native contribution to military history is only now to be fully developed. We have a great opportunity.
This paper has not undertaken any extensive discussion of particulars. There has been quite a bit of that, elsewhere. An attempt has been made, rather, to discuss principles. But there are two issues bulking so large in the problem with which this paper concerns itself that it seems imperative to include them as postscripts.
The first of these is military justice. Much has been written about it; many persons have taken the floor to defend the old system in its entirety. Comparisons have been drawn with the functioning of civil courts, and so on. The theory has been advanced that military justice is, in fact, superior to civil justice. Let us assume, without conceding, that military justice as administered during World War II was as good as civil justice. How does that help? It was nevertheless detrimental to morale. More so, perhaps, in some services than in others. What was there, then, which was detrimental to morale? From all reports, it was the unshakable conviction of enlisted personnel that they were not uniformly accorded equal rights before the law with other classes of military society. A defense of the procedural machinery of courts-martial is so oblique a reply to this challenge as to evoke damaging suspicion. The hour grows late; such approaches do no good. Fortunately it seems as if progress is being made in connection with military justice. The efforts now underway, if continued, should contribute rich results.
The second of these matters has been known in the public prints as “caste.” If one looks closely nowadays, one may observe some Army officers whose uniforms are hardly distinguishable from those of privates. If this is not an illusion, the criticism of “caste” must be responsible. The Army’s move may or may not be a sound one. In either case, the complaints about “caste” are social, not sartorial. Such damage as has been done by “caste” in creating a great reservoir of ill- will (which was basically unnecessary) cannot be undone; one might as well pretend that Pearl Harbor never happened. But it is the future that counts now.
There seems to be no reasonable doubt that the traditional powers, privileges, and distinctions of our commissioned officers exceed those which are due to their office alone. Powers and distinctions necessary to the efficient execution of the office to which they are appurtenant must be zealously preserved. To identify these distinctions and powers and separate them from others is not easy, and is rendered more difficult by traditional doctrine, which recognizes no such division as is here suggested. But the truth is that those powers and distinctions are even now doomed, which are founded merely on the historical fact that the commissioned and non-commissioned personnel of European military forces were fully and sharply divided in social and educational background, so that there was a clear distinction in fact between commissioned officers and other personnel. Of this distinction the first group naturally took full advantage. It seems a perfectly safe prediction that, in the future, the body of officer personnel in all of our armed forces will be less and less like the description of Marcus Goodrich—an “aureate nimbus from which the ever-present lightning plays.” That body must, therefore, become more and more a military aristocracy founded upon merit alone, whose members will have powers, privileges, and distinctions conducive to the proper performance of their functions and assured to them through being necessary. These prerogatives may be broader than some persons now think, and narrower than others suppose. It is impossible to foretell. But they will be redefined, to the end that in a future day, when every American in uniform consistently and unimpededly feels himself individually responsible for the organized endeavors of which he is a part, our strength will be greater than now. We shall then have written our native Preface to Leadership, whose swiftly following chapters will show brilliance on every page.