A nationwide U. S. poll revealed that officers . of the U. S. Armed Forces are rated on an equal footing with radio announcers, but below public school teachers; and it is questionable if the British people would accord the members of their own officer corps a much higher standing. It is no denigration of public school teachers or radio announcers to submit that such a rating exhibits an alarming absence of a sense of relative values.
The Poll also reveals that the U. S. Navy showed up better than the other Services; a traditional tolerance in favor of the sailor that undoubtedly would be paralleled in Britain.
All races are the end-product of their own history; and with both English-speaking peoples a strong Puritan strain is deeply woven into the ethnological pattern. The Puritan—a phenomenon of the great social liberation and mercantilist upsurge that characterized the Renaissance—was self- righteously firm in his belief that material success was a sign of Divine favor. Warfare, which despoiled or impeded sober, steady commercial prosperity, was therefore anathema to him; and its practitioners regarded as both a menace to profitable trading and as freedom-curbing “instruments of tyranny.” The man-o’-wars-man was tolerated in his role as guardian of the Puritan hucksters’ maritime trading ventures. But the “lewd and licentious soldiery” were despised and resented, and their officers execrated, as epitomizing all that was evil in what the new up- thrusting merchantilist class regarded as the medieval anachronism of warfare.
With a great number of the general public, on both sides of the Atlantic, this heritage of distrust and antipathy towards the Serviceman is deeply ingrained. It is part of the complex of wariness and distrust which holds all authority as suspect, and is particularly resentful of anything that can be associated, however remotely, with autocratic rule. That is why blind prejudice against the officer class is so extremely hard to extirpate. For no one questions that the men who officered the first standing forces derived, in the main, from that martial medieval aristocracy which, by custom and tradition, regarded the practice of arms as the only activity compatible with their rank and lineage. Prowess in the field had brought them their valuable land grants, and their descendants “paid the rent” for their hereditary possessions by continuing to defend them in time of war. The fact that in so doing they constituted themselves the protectors of the country as a whole tended generally to be overlooked.
In some respects the introduction of missile weapons—first the long-bow and the arbalest and then the firelock—had the effect of proletarianizing warfare, since missiles “made all men alike tall.” But the steady replacement of the feudal levies by hired mercenaries, and these by bodies of regulars, did nothing to reconcile the ruck of the population to the incidence of warfare, or encourage greater tolerance for the men who engaged in it. In time of peace they appeared to contribute nothing to the public weal; in time of war the cost of their increased activity added considerably to the public woe. In short, a rabble of professional hired assassins, led by an aloof aristocratic elite, was calculated to find scant favor with a populace wherein each man strove primarily for himself, and loyalty to the community as such was a purely secondary consideration.
In France the possession of armorial bearings had been, and remained, a sine qua non of commissioned rank in either Service. Although the system was obviously open to abuse, the decapitation or degradation of the existent officer class in the early days of the Revolution, and the transfer of senior command and executive responsibility to the ruffianly wharf-rats appointed by the Committee of Public Safety, speedily reduced the Gallic fleet to a condition of hopeless inefficiency. In the years that followed, the French were to pay a bitter price for having so recklessly rooted out those members of the old noblesse, whose pride had been in the Navy they had served with such professional competence and fidelity.
Although dominated by a privileged elite, the British system was far more flexible, and was quite prepared to welcome any man of parts to the highest posts of responsibility, no matter how obscure his origins. The fleet which sailed to challenge the Spanish Armada in 1588 was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham. But his vice admiral was Francis Drake, who had started his seafaring career as a ship’s boy in a vessel engaged in the little-regarded coasting trade. Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovel, who distinguished himself by putting 20 enemy vessels out of action during the battle of La Hogue in 1692, had served a long apprenticeship before the mast ere attaining the dignity of the quarterdeck. The famous navigator, Captain James Cook, was the son of an impoverished agricultural laborer, and he had spent many years as deckhand in a coaster before gaining his Master’s certificate and entry into the Royal Navy. Between 1740 and 1760, under the enlightened administration of Field Marshal Lord Ligonier, 37 men were promoted from the ranks of the British Army; their commissions being awarded them free—the purchasing of commissions ended in the British Army in 1871— in recognition of their gallantry in the field.
But in the main, the men who officered the two fighting services came from the old landowning, aristocratic stock; and, all in all, they seldom proved unworthy of the trust reposed in them.
Throughout the Peninsular campaign of 1808-1814 the Duke of Wellington remained entirely confident of the ultimate issue. “I know the soldiers,” he pronounced; “their Officers can answer for them, and I can answer for the Officers.”
It was a mere quibble on the part of General Sir William Napier to complain that the Peninsular War had been “fought in the pale shade of the aristocracy.” The old families had been generously represented in the field, and their scions had shared all the ardors of the campaign on similar terms to those endured by their comrades in arms; they had bled and fallen in like proportion to the rest. But the path to advancement had never been barred on the score of birth or upbringing.
By the end of the six years of conflict, dozens of men had exhibited such outstanding quality as to warrant their promotion from the ranks. In one regiment alone—the 61st Foot—21 NCOs had been commissioned; while out of 200 infantry formations, all the quartermasters and 90 of the adjutants were ex-rankers.
In certain cases these somewhat hasty promotions scarcely turned out a lasting success. There is a world of difference between wartime and peacetime conditions of service, and some of the newly-commissioned failed to survive the transition, to fit smoothly into their unaccustomed surroundings. Moreover, having been subjected for the first time to the temptation involved in handling public funds, some of them had proved flagrantly dishonest. Quartermaster William Surtees, of the Rifle Brigade, complained that he could not secure a paymastership owing to the misconduct of many of those who had earlier been promoted to the rank. Numerous scandals and complaints of “conduct unbecoming an Officer and gentleman” led to an enquiry by a Royal Commission.
Giving evidence before this authority, at a time when the social gulf between one class and another was far wider than it is today, Wellington unhesitantly affirmed that, in general, the promotion of men from the ranks was not to be recommended. “In truth, they do not make good Officers,” he pronounced. “ . . . they are brought into society ... to which they are not accustomed; they cannot bear being at all heated with wine or liquor; ... in general they are quarrelsome; and they are not persons who can be borne in the society of the Officers of the Army; they are men of different manners altogether.”
Experience had gone a long way to support Campbell Dalrymple’s unequivocal contention, that “Officers should be men of property, or nearly related to those who are, as the best security against encroachments being made by their means on the liberty of the people”—and, it may be added, on the public purse.
For that matter, the man in the ranks himself was inclined rather to resent than rejoice in the promotion of one of his own kind to commissioned rank. “The Officers are commented on and closely observed,” recorded Rifleman John Harris of the 95th, whose British Army service was from 1803 to 1807: “The men are proud of those who are brave in the field and kind and considerate to the soldiers. ... Nay, whatever folk may say on the matter, I know from experience in our Army that the men like best to be officered by gentlemen, whose education has rendered them kind in manner, than by your coarse officer whose style is brutal and overbearing.”
It is to be noted that Harris had no comment to make on the courage, the power of decision, the faculty of leadership, the sheer officer-like quality of those he had kept under scrutiny. Those were attributes he took for granted. For it had ever been the honored tradition in the British Fighting Forces that no enterprise, however modest in scope, should lack personal leadership by an officer. It was his proud privilege to show the way; if need be, to be stricken down first, and to fall “with all his wounds in front.” Indeed, throughout the whole of World War I it was a matter of unending amazement to the Germans that the British should “waste” junior officers on minor enterprises that they themselves would have entrusted to a corporal. But, if the tradition was maintained at grievous cost in young life, it paid a handsome dividend in the strong feeling of mutual dependence it inspired between the leaders and the led.
The enormous expansion of the Royal Navy begotten of the 20-year struggle between Britain and Revolutionary and Napoleonic France had witnessed a lowering of standards for the Officers of the Sea Service similar to that experienced in the Army. Apart from merit, a good deal of promotion had been secured through parental influence and political patronage. Equally, a number of exceedingly rough diamonds had found their way to the quarterdeck, where their undoubted skill as seamen was not always matched by their faculty of command or their ability to get the best out of their subordinates. Socially, moreover, they found themselves anything but at home with the majority of their messmates. In consequence, they were inclined to try and carry things off by a blustering, aggressively defensive attitude which only made their acceptance the more difficult. With sympathetic appreciation of the need for harmony amongst a community cooped up for long periods within the cramped confines of the contemporary warship, the Admiralty instituted a weeding-out process known as “passing for a gentleman.” All those who failed to come up to the minimum standard required were put on half-pay. Since some of those thus relegated possessed, amongst other unendearing characteristics, the habit of spitting into their rum and water, if called away on duty, to ensure that no one would drink it in their absence, it can be appreciated that their room was rather to be preferred to their company!
One of the very worst ways of trying to secure officers of real integrity and quality is by the process known as “raising men for rank”—bestowing rank on an individual according to the number of men he personally succeeds in enrolling. Obviously, the man who has been forced to tout around to all and sundry to rake in the necessary quota of recruits to qualify him for his rank, is hardly in a position to impose discipline upon those to whose suffrages he owes his command.
In the 1775 flurry of improvisation that characterized Washington’s valiant attempt to expand the militia into something approximating a standing army, “raising men for rank” was an expedient resorted to with consequences that were sometimes downright disastrous. Respect for the officers they had nominated was as rare amongst the rank and file as was ready obedience to their orders. “It was sometimes the case,” Charles Stedman noted, “that when a company was forming, the men would choose for their Officers those who consented to throw their pay into the joint stock with the privates; from which Captains, Lieutenants, Ensigns, Serjeants, Corporals, drummers and privates drew their equal shares. Could it be wondered,” he adds, “that a Captain should be tried and broke for stealing his soldiers’ blankets, or that an Officer should be found shaving his men in the face of visitors of distinction?” With such an undiscriininating method of securing men for command, it is scarcely surprising to find Washington complaining that these officers were “nearly of the same kidney with the privates, . . . generally speaking the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw.”
As for the men themselves, Washington wrote, “their want of discipline, and refusal of every kind of restraint or government, have produced an entire disregard of that order and subordination necessary to the welldoing of an army . . . They regard their Officers no more than broomsticks.” In the circumstances, Joseph Hawley had no little justification for his qualms when he wrote to Washington, “There is much cause to fear that the Officers will fail in a day of trial (rather) than the privates.”
It was a long time, however, before Nathaniel Greene could persuade the responsible Congressional authorities to realize that, “Officers are the very soul of an Army, and you may as well attempt to animate a dead body as to expect to employ an Army to advantage when the Officers are not perfectly easy in their circumstances and happy in their Service.” In the outcome, the Congress, however reluctantly, was forced to adopt a code for the government of its armed forces which included the following uncompromising article.
Whatsoever Commissioned Officer shall be convicted, before a general court martial, of behaving in a scandalous, infamous manner, such as is unbecoming the character of an Officer and a gentleman, shall be discharged from the Service.
The sea imposes its own discipline on those who sail it; and the officers commanding the embryo Revolutionary Navy and the swarm of privateers started with the advantages accruing from the employment of hands already reconciled to that form of subordination inseparable from “working” a ship. When it came to command in action, however, the officers were not always successful in imposing that discipline essential to the proper fighting of their vessel. The reverse suffered in 1779 in the “combined op” at Castine, at the mouth of the Penobscot, was attributable rather to lack of efficient command and slovenliness of discipline than to any want of personal courage or the will to win. In John Paul Jones’s encounter with the Drake off Karrickfergus, conditions on board the American craft got so completely out of hand that the Commodore bitterly recorded that “Plunder rather than honour was the object of the Ranger's Officers and crew ... I ran every chance of being killed and thrown overboard.” The ring-leader of the unruly seamen was the First Lieutenant Thomas Simpson; a few days later his disobedience of orders was so flagrant that Jones was left with no option but to put him under arrest.
At one stage in the desperate fight between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis, three of the senior petty officers panicked so badly as gravely to jeopardize the outcome of the action. The commodore could look for no support from his subordinate officers, and it was not until he had personally felled the master-at-arms to the deck that some semblance of discipline was restored to the ship’s company.
In the circumstances it is entirely comprehensible that John Paul Jones should harbor few illusions as to the questionable value of the uncouth and insubordinate type of officer that the exigences of wartime had elevated to the quarterdeck. Writing to the Naval Committee of Congress as to what he considered to be essential in the make-up of a naval officer, he roundly affirmed: “The Navy is essentially and necessarily aristocratic. True as may be the political principles for which we now contend, they can never be perfectly applied or even admitted aboard ship, out of port or off soundings. This may seem a hardship, but it is . . . the simplest of truths. While the ships sent forth by Congress may, and must, fight for . . . human rights and republican freedom, the ships themselves must be ruled and commanded at sea under a system of absolute discipline.”
Under Jefferson, who publicly inveighed against “the ruinous folly of an American Navy,” John Paul Jones’s dream of a naval academy and the sort of officer it would be capable of producing, had no chance of immediate realization; although the Army contrived to found its school of instruction at West Point in 1802. But somehow the proud tradition of skilled, unseeking service to the country, bred in the years of struggle for independence, was kept alive and faithfully nurtured, to flame into full vigor with the War of 1812. Jacob Brown and the youthful Winfield Scott at Chippewa, and cautious, canny “Old Hickory” at New Orleans, were worthily matched in professional competence and patriotic resolution by the men who officered a largely improvised Navy. For Isaac Hull of the Constitution, Stephen Decatur of the United States, Commodore William Bainbridge, and James Lawrence of the Chesapeake, like Jesse Elliott, Oliver Hazard Perry and Thomas MacDonough, the “victors of the Lakes,” were leaders such as John Paul Jones would have approved wholeheartedly on every count. Despite official neglect, frustration and discouragement the admirable tradition of the “officer and gentleman” had been firmly established, and was destined to be worthily maintained.
Throughout the 19th century, Britain continued to rely on the traditional officer-producing class of the community to furnish her fighting services with men fitted, by birth, breeding, and education, to take up commissions. It is true, of course, that the British officer derived from a particular social class. But there was no specific officer caste—a very different thing.
It was the cultivation of a definite Junker officer caste which constituted the handicap under which Germany labored from the days of Frederick the Great to the collapse of the Imperial Army in 1918. They were unquestionably men of the highest patriotic sentiments, and thoroughly devoted to their duty. But the unbridled power with which they were invested bred an insufferable arrogance that scorned anything approaching human relationship between themselves and the ordinary rank and file. “When an Officer comes on parade,” Frederick had insanely pronounced, “every man on the barrack square should tremble in his shoes.” To this preposterously dehumanized Zopfwesen system of terrorization the Prussian military school of thought had been only too extravagantly faithful.
There is, as there must always be, an intangible gulf between the man in the ranks and those set in authority over him. But it should be implied rather than insisted upon; a matter of common sense acceptance rather than an excuse for a bullying arrogance on the one hand and a cringing—or mutinous— servitude on the other. Discipline is essential in any armed service; it is what distinguishes a trained fighting force from a rabble in arms. But the best discipline is that which is based upon mutual confidence and respect—an attitude of mind that transcends all differences in rank.
Mankind was always a difficult instrument to play upon, and nowadays an infinitely more delicate touch is demanded than was called for in times gone by. With the spread of literacy and the rise in the general level of intelligence, sheer domination has very largely been replaced by manipulation and persuasion; by the realization by both parties to an order—by the individual who gives it as by the man who carries into execution—that it has been voiced because it is necessary and fully justified by the prevailing demands of the service.
To wield authority, then, is to exercise responsibility. Some men are born with a flair for the exercise of authority; it is a priceless heritage bequeathed them by their forbears. With others the faculty is latent, and needs the stimulus of encouragement. In either case it calls for the support of that professional competence which is the end-product of rigorous training, and whose outcome is the sort of self-assurance that is born of complete confidence in the ability to tackle whatever task may come to hand. It is the business-like confidence of the leader that inspires his subordinates to put their trust in him; they know that he knows—and knows just a bit better than they do. If he can be assured of that un- hesitant surrender to his will, to his power of decision, then the man with the gold lace on his sleeves has mastered the secret of man- management—the plane upon which discipline must operate within the terms exacted by contemporary social relationship. If he cannot thus be assured, then the sooner he sheds his uniform, the better for the Service for which he is obviously unfitted.
In effect, if a man is demonstrably on top of his job; is dignified but never pompous; friendly without indulging in, or encouraging, undue familiarity; aloof yet always approachable; stern with others because he is even sterner and more demanding with himself; quick to praise but ever patient in reproof, then he is of real officer quality. And no one will more readily or whole-heartedly give recognition to the fact than the men who come under his command.
Caught in some dereliction of duty by General W. T. Sherman, in the course of his Georgian campaign, the delinquent trooper quite reasonably argued, “Well, General, you can’t expect all the cardinal virtues for thirteen dollars a month.”
You cannot expect the warrior-virtues of courage, fortitude, chivalry, subordination, and unselfish devotion to duty for any sum of dollars a month. For these are among the things the dedicated Serviceman gives— freely and entirely without calculation. And although his rates of pay and pension may, and should, ensure a reasonable standard of living for him and his dependents, in a society very largely devoted to the acquisition of material possessions, the man who is well content to serve something he regards as more important than his pocket, is bound to be looked upon with a certain amount of bewildered contempt, however subconscious.
It is difficult to persuade the ulcer-ridden plutocrat that men do exist “whose only avarice is to serve”; that there are ears deaf to money talking in its husky, silken voice of wealth, celebrity, and power. Money can pay for a war, but only men can fight it. Money can make a nation powerful; only the serviceman can make it safe.
Equally, the man in the fighting forces must reconcile himself to bear with the loathing and distrust of the pseudo-intellectuals and the so-called “progressives.” For he stands for the positive, for facing firmly up to the unpleasant and the threatening, and dealing with them dynamically; something always to be dreaded and, if possible, evaded by folk who refuse to relate their high-flown but nebulous sense of values to cold, uncompromising reality. It is quite beyond their intellectual grasp to realize that the man in uniform is not the enemy of peace, but its ever- vigilant guardian.
Since he unreservedly realizes the value of, and fully subscribes to, a rank structure which confers superiority on his seniors, the serviceman also finds himself up against all those who make a fetish of “equality.” This is a concept to which no more fervent lip service is paid than by those who are not only determined to “keep up with the Joneses,” but are resolved to hustle past them and leave them standing. It is this type of individual who blindly demands that officers and men should be subsisted, housed and even paid alike, refusing to realize that acceptance of increased responsibility carries with it the right to additional privileges.
Since they are trained in the school of cool, objective common sense, the men who form the backbone of the fighting forces—whatever their rank—fully and frankly realize that universal equality is an impossibility; that there can never be complete equality of reward where there is not equality of service. The leaders of the Armed Forces, and the governing elite—they are the brains of the nation and should have equality amongst themselves. So should the different grades in the officer corps and black-coated workers in the governmental executive, the professions and industry; for they are the nation’s heart and viscera. So should the rank and file and the manual workers; for they are the essential limbs of the State. But the serviceman needs no telling that these classes are not equal to each other; that each man is no more and no less than the equal of his workmate and neighbor, and is to be judged according to the value of his service to the community. Nor does he need informing that the wise man sees in inequality not so much an injustice as an opportunity.
The end-product of a lengthy and intensive system of technical and general education, of a steady process of indoctrination in the ideals to which his life is dedicated, the officer is not the man to gauge his importance by the length of his morning shadow. Training, application and experience have certainly given him self-assurance. Yet, in all things he remains profoundly humble, since he appreciates only too acutely that he must go on learning to the very end of his days.
He knows that the discipline he exacts, and himself abides by, is not a servitude but a will to serve; that the authority he wields is not only an opportunity but a trust; that the surest way of securing the unqualified loyalty of those who look to him for leadership is to make a confident demand for it.
The most potent danger of modern times is, that words have become more important than facts. In general, it is what people are told about a thing, not its value, the quality or menace of the thing itself, but what is “put across”—its “image,” if you will—about it, that is what counts. But that, thanks be, is not the way of the Serviceman. He deals in fundamentals; and the eternal verities are not susceptible to dressing up so as to conform to the passing whim of the moment.
Gustave le Bon once wrote, “Whatever has been the ruling power in the world has in the main enforced its authority by means of that irresistible force expressed by the word ‘Prestige’.” It is prestige, based upon his subordinates’ and his superiors’ assessment of his qualities as a man and as a leader, which permits the officer to demand of those under him that they obey him, and follow him—if necessary, to the death.
If the prestige of the officer is not fully supported by public esteem, then that of his subordinates is lowered in like proportion, until the whole country has come to lack faith in the fighting services on whose prowess and devotion to duty its very survival ultimately depends.
It may be faintly ironic, but the fact remains that “the code of honour which governs the conduct of the American Officer derives from the aristocratic forms against which the men of the Revolution struggled”; while his only concern with being “equal” is being equal to his job. As Mahan summed it up, “In no event will there be money in it; but there may always be honour and quietness of mind, and worthy occupation—which are better guarantees of happiness.”
With so high a standard there will be those, of course, who fail to make the grade. On investigation, it will usually be found that they are individuals who sought to get more out of the service than they were prepared to put into it. But of the vast majority who survive the test to enjoy their President’s “special trust and confidence,” or to rate as their Sovereign’s “trusty and well beloved servant,” their chosen course is more than an occupation, more than a profession. It is a vocation, a consecration to be a belief in service. In this personal surrender to a dedicated way of life, all other interests are subordinated, and the individual inspired by this ideal “is not on the common roll of men, but is of the company of the elect”:
“ . . . the Happy Warrior Who, doomed to go in company with Pain And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable twain, Turns his necessity to glorious gain.”
This is the man who, in public eyes, rates with radio announcers and a little below public school teachers; the man for whose honorable title no editor or publisher will willingly accord even the minor tribute of a capital letter—a small thing, but starkly symptomatic.
In today’s world of ceaseless turmoil and constant menace, it is surely time to subject the guardians of our lives and liberties to a little thoughtful re-evaluation.