In reporting on the then prospective military pay raise, the editors of U. S. News and World Report noted that Navy re-enlistments had fallen off from 46% to 8.1%. In so doing they echoed the concern expressed by Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas in an address to the Navy League at Detroit, in which he had produced the shocking figures that even among career people the re-enlistment figure had dropped in one year from 90% to 48%. In the most optimistic terminology of the market place, this might be classified as an unhealthy recession. As to non-career people, there is no concealing the “crash”: here less than 3% are signing up for another tour.
“That is really too bad,” I can hear you saying—“If they don’t want to re-enlist in this most exclusive of the services, then let’s get some others who do!”
That, too, is quite a problem, and as Secretary Thomas pointed out, on a monthly 1954 input requirement of 12,500, the Navy recruiters fell short by 1700 in September, and by 4000 in October of that year The really critical part of this situation is the cost of training replacements. When we say, in effect, “OK, son, if you don’t like the way we play, pick up your battleship and go on home!”—that’s a fine independent spirit—but it costs money—and time.
We can’t very well order Reserves to active duty in peacetime, and space limitations afloat create versatility requirements of a standard seldom found except among volunteers or enlistees. What then are we to do?
It seems that every effort is being made on the material side to make more attractive the lot of service personnel. Some of the so- called fringe benefits are being retained against opposition—or are even being recaptured.
Certainly the new military pay raise is a nice fresh carrot to have dangling around.
But man does not live by carrots alone. Nor does a sailor respond to such a lure by itself, even given the benefit of however many pretty trimmings about the fringes. This all helps. But, as the Secretary pointed out, something of the spirit must be added. There has to be the ingredient of individual motivation of service to the country, and there has to be recognition by the public.
Mr. Thomas, in his address at Detroit, put it in the form of a challenge to the Navy League members all over the country— that they strive to “create an atmosphere of renewed public pride in peacetime military service.” He suggested that “if there were more appreciation and esteem by the American public for military service, more of our young people would understand our country’s need of their services and would choose it as a career.” In such a light, the Secretary feels, the virtues of service and devotion to country may be seen in clearer definition— and may be expected to result in enabling us to keep—and to keep up—a first class Navy.
Anyone who has at heart the interests of the Navy can voice an unqualified “Amen” to these sentiments. But now comes the cold clear light of the next day—and with it, the practical problem of translating these aspirations into eager, alert, trained, responsive, live young American bodies—who are willing and proud members of the naval establishment.
To speak of individual motivation for, and public recognition of, the Service is to talk of the two sides of the coin. Indeed, the first follows the second. If something is highly thought of, people want to belong to it. If the Services in general and the Navy in particular enjoy their proper place in popular esteem, the size and shape of the carrot, while interesting, won’t be controlling. How can this popular esteem be created or induced?
I come now to the delicate part of this little treatise—and I had better be careful what I say and how I say it: the line at this point becomes very fine between helpful suggestion, which I intend—and implied criticism, which I do not.
It seems to me that the answer, in reality and inescapably, is tied up with the word prestige—the prestige of the Armed Forces— the prestige of the Navy. From the figures referred to above and cited by the Secretary of the Navy, no Gallup poll is required to point up the conclusion that this is at or near an all-time low.
For the Navy League—or for any of us for that matter—to say to the Body Politick, “Tarry a moment, think ye well of the Navy!” is essentially a boot-strap operation. The impetus must come from outside and higher up. If a bank is wobbly, the tide may be turned and a disastrous run averted by nothing more complicated than some courageous citizen coming up publicly with a big cash deposit. By this one act of faith, confidence is restored. The idea that one well- known leader thinks an institution is good—- and sound—and important—and gives public demonstration of this conclusion, touches off a chain reaction of renewed faith. It is the sign for which the people scan the skies.
What I am about to suggest may not perform the miracle, but I believe it can. I believe it can because it will be a symbol of the reversal of a trend which has been nearly disastrous to the prestige of the Armed Forces. This trend—or movement—has been going on now for several years. It operates in the name of “economy,” “elimination of duplication,” and “civilian control.” It has resulted in subjugation of career military men to a new and expensive hierarchy of civilians, the dissipation of their energies and experience in endless and often needless, or wastefully duplicatory, conferences called to reach “coordinated positions.” It has resulted in the effective infiltration of the Armed Forces at all levels—and in the invasion of their planning chambers and innermost secret places by a great number of well-meaners with authority to make continuing demands for information, but with no responsibility for the time and effort wasted, nor for work left undone, that their queries may be answered within the usual “deadlines.” By this insistent and continuing cancerous process, the Armed Forces have been, in effect, infiltrated and their security jeopardized, a sense of futility engendered, and in the language of the Pennsylvania divorce statute, they have arrived at a posture in which “their condition has become intolerable and life a burden.” Is it any wonder, then, that many of the Navy’s finest have preferred quietly to bow out? And that those who remain are confronted with a growing crisis? Or that they lift up their eyes to the hills and look for a sign of hope or relief?
In this situation the suggestion is respectfully tendered that the first sign must come from the First Citizen. The first thing that is needed in the restoration of the prestige of the Armed Forces is three more seats at the table. The Armed Forces deserve to be represented personally—by their respective Service Secretaries—in the President’s official family. To state the matter more bluntly— if our Commander in Chief—the President of the United States, does not believe that his people in the Army, Navy, and Air Force need—and rate—the prestige of having their respective Secretaries at his right hand in his Councils, why should the good people of the Navy League concern themselves with the matter? or more broadly, why should the good people?
It does not do to say, “Oh—they are all represented by the Secretary of Defense!” The Secretary of Defense is in effect Assistant President for Defense. He is too far removed from the grass roots of the Services for the purposes of which I speak. He represents rather a ponderous, impersonal, monolith—without tradition and without a soul —actual or potential. We need in addition, a personal, service representative at the President’s table, one who can say, “Mr. President, I’m sorry, but I don’t think my man-o-warsmen would go for this,” or. “My people would certainly like that,” or “Mr. President, my people and their dependents have to have enough doctors—and we’ve got to keep good doctors!”
The current status of the Service Secretaries is not one calculated to inspire prestige, service-wise. They fit in somewhere in the Defense hierarchy along with some ten or thirty Deputy or Assistant Secretaries of Defense.
There are no legal obstacles to the President’s appointing to his official family whomsoever he will. In fact a new one—the Secretary of Peace—may soon be added. A consideration of the interests being served by this appointment is not within the scope of this paper. It provides a basis, however, for a fortiori reasoning. Many considerations support this proposed re-recognition of the Armed Forces. Budgetwise, each is responsible for the proper and efficient administration of a sum which far exceeds that subject to the control of other non-defense Departments or Agencies of the government combined. It is not intended to suggest that a large money bag—by itself—should qualify any Department for Cabinet representation. The size of the fund, however, supplies some measure of the area of interest, or, more properly, the segment of the American public which has to do—in one way or another —with the Department concerned. When the Secretary of the Navy once again sits and speaks at the President’s Cabinet meetings, he will be representing the young lieutenant standing the mid-watch on his destroyer in the far away Pescadores, the wet-nosed seaman in boot school at Great Lakes, an antisubmarine lookout in the North Atlantic, or the Marine Sergeant on maneuvers in South Korea; in addition to those on active duty, he will also be representing the host of Reserve and Retired naval officers and men throughout the country, the bookkeeper in the Naval Supply Depot at Bayonne, the electronic engineer of Grumman Aircraft Company at Bethpage—all of whom, and to varying degrees, love the Navy they have served so well over the years. It seems to me that these are all entitled to participate— through the Secretary of the Navy—with their Commander-in-Chief as he takes his council with the elders.
This is one of the few really fine things that can be accomplished at no expense to the taxpayer. From such a simple sign, people beyond counting will take heart. It will lead the way in re-establishing and revitalizing the interest and popular esteem in which the Services are held throughout the land. And it can be accomplished with so little discomfort— just three more seals at the tablet.