The Armed Forces Officer - United States. Department of Defense

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the Armed Services nevertheless hold that the keystone of the arch, among fighting forces, is the inculcation of military ideals and the stimulation of principles of military action. Unless orientation within the services is balanced in this direction, the military spirit of all ranks will suffer, and the forces will deteriorate into an assembly of Americans who, whatever their enthusiasms for the nation, will lack an organized capacity to serve it efficiently along the main line of resistance.

      To round out any discussion of how military ideals are formed, much more needs to be said about the nature of courage on the battlefield and, in preparation for it, about the winning and meaning of loyalty within the Armed Services and how instruction on these points and all related matters is best advanced within the organization.

      But the object of this chapter is to define certain governing principles. The substantive parts of the subject can be more clearly presented further along in the book.

       RESPONSIBILITY AND PRIVILEGE

       Table of Contents

      There is a common saying in the services, and elsewhere, that greater privileges grow out of larger responsibilities, and that the latter justifies the former. This is part truth and part fable.

      In military organization, as in industry, business, and political life, the more important a man's position, the more lavish he is likely to be in his office appointments and living arrangements, and the greater the care that is apt to be taken in freeing him of trifling annoyances.

      But that is only partly because of the need for him to conserve his time and energy. When men are successful, they like the good things of life. Why deny it? Not one individual in 10,000 would aspire to power and authority if it meant living like a hermit.

      There is no way that the military establishment can denature human nature, and change this determining condition. Nor is there any reason why it should wish to do so. Its men, like all others, develop a sense of well-being from those advantages, many of them minor, which attend, and build prestige, both in private and in official life. The incentive system by which our country has prospered has always recognized that privilege is a reward for effort and enterprise. The American people have always accepted that reasonable, harmless privileges should attend merit. It is by enhancing the prestige of leaders and by making their positions attractive that the Armed Forces get better officers and men.

      One of the keenest-minded Americans of our time has said: "Responsibilities are what devolve upon a person, and privileges are what he ought not to have, but takes." In a perfect universe, that would be a perfect truth. But men being as they are, prideful and desirous of any mark of recognition, privileges are the natural accompaniment of rank and station, and when not wilfully misused, may contribute to the general welfare. At all levels, men will aspire more, and their ambition will be firmer, if getting ahead will mean for them an increase in the visible tokens of deference from the majority, rather than simply a boost in the paycheck. To complain about this quality in human nature is as futile as regretting that the sun goes down.

      However, since it is out of the abuse of privilege that much of the friction between authority and the rank-and-file arises, the subject can't be dropped at that point. What puts most of the grit into the machinery isn't that privileges exist, but that they are exercised too often by persons who are not motivated by a passionate sense of duty. For it is an almost inviolable rule of human behavior that the man who is concerned most of all with his responsibilities will be fretted least about the matter of his privileges, and that his exercise of any rightful privilege will not be resented by his subordinates, because they are conscious of his merit.

      We can take two officers. Lieutenant "A" enters the service with one main question in mind: "Where does my duty lie?" So long as he remains on that beam, he will never injure the morale of the service by using such privileges as are rightfully his as an officer. But in the mind of Lieutenant "B" the other idea is uppermost: "What kudos do I get out of my position?" Unless that man changes his ways, he will be a troublemaker while he remains in the service, a headache to his fellow officers and a despoiler of those who are under him.

      In recent years, we have learned a lot about American manpower. We have seen enough of the raw material under testing conditions to know that, with the exception of the occasional malcontent who was irreparably spoiled before he left home, American young men when brought into military organization do not resent rank, and are amenable to authority. Indeed, they expect that higher authority will have certain advantages not common to the rank-and-file, because that is normal in our society in all of its workday relationships.

      But they do not like to have their noses rubbed in it by officers who, having no real moral claim on authority, try to exhibit it by pushing other people around. And when that happens, our men get their backs up. And they wouldn't be worth a hoot in hades if they didn't.

      Even as privilege attends rank and station, it is confirmed by custom, and modified by time and environment. What was all right yesterday may be all wrong tomorrow, and what is proper in one set of circumstances may be wholly wrong in another.

      Take one example. In Washington's Continental Army, a first lieutenant was court-martialed and jailed because he demeaned himself by doing manual labor with a working detail of his men. Yet in that same season, Major General von Steuben, then trainer and inspector of all the forces, created a great scandal and almost terminated his usefulness by trying to rank a relatively junior officer out of his quarters. Today both of these usages seem out of joint. Any officer has the privilege of working with his men, if he needs exercise, wishes to see for himself how the thing is done, or feels that an extra hand is needed on the job at a critical moment. As for any notion that his quarters are his permanent castle no matter who comes, he had best not make an issue of the point!

      But to emphasize it once again, duty is the great regulator of the proper exercise of one's rights. Here we speak of duty as it was meant by Giuseppe Mazzini, Italy's great patriot of the early Nineteenth Century, when he said: "Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every effort to its fulfillment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty." For finally the key lies in this, that out of high regard for duty comes as a natural flow that sense of proportion which we call common sense.

      Adjustment and dignity in any situation are impossible when minds are bent only on a code of conduct rather than on action which is consistent with the far objectives. In the early stages of World War II, it was not unusual to see a junior officer walking on the public sidewalk, hands free, and looking important, while his wife tagged along, trying to keep step, though laden like a pack mule. This was because someone had told him that it was not in keeping with an officer's dignity to be seen heavily burdened. In the nature of things, anyone so lacking in gallantry as that would stimulate very little respect for the officer corps.

      Actually, in these times, there are relatively few special privileges which attend officership, and though the war brought perhaps a few excesses, the post war trend has been in the other direction.

      Normally, an officer is not expected to buck a chow line, or any other queue in line of duty, if he is sensibly in a rush. The presumption is that his time is more valuable to the service than that of an enlisted man. Normally, an officer is not expected to pitch a tent or spend his energy on any hand labor incidental to housekeeping. Normally, he has greater freedom of action and is less bound by minor restrictions than the ranks.

      But the accent in these things is decidedly on the word normally. If a mess line were in an area under general fire, so that added waiting meant extra danger, then only a poltroon would insist on being fed first. And while an officer wouldn't be expected to pitch a tent, he would dig his own foxhole, unless he was well up in grade. At that, there were a few high commanders in World War II who made it a point of pride to do their own digging from first to last. Greater "freedom of action," too, can go out the window, for conditions arise, particularly in war, when freedom of action can not be permitted anyone except the very top authority. When

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