Doolittle, crashed among the mountains and along the sea-coast of
Eastern China, after one of the most valiant strokes in our military
annals, their commander was among the few who had the added misfortune
of coming to earth within the Japanese lines. By fate's mercy, he just
happened to escape by walking between the enemy outposts. Farther
along, he saw the wreck of another of his planes. Then he came to a
third; it was smashed beyond hope. But its crew had already heard from
several other parties. They too had lost their B-25's to the fog, the
night and the crags. Doolittle realized then that everything was gone,
lives saved yes, but otherwise the expedition was a total ruin.
The Commander sat for a long time in the cockpit of the wrecked plane,
terribly depressed, thinking only of how totally he had failed.
At last one of the younger men, Sgt. Paul Leonard walked up to him and
said: "What's the matter, Colonel?"
Doolittle said: "It couldn't be worse. We've lost everything. We've
let the country down."
The kid said: "Why, Colonel, you've got this all wrong. You have no
idea how this looks to the United States. Don't you realize that right
now they're getting ready to make you a general? Why I'll make you a
bet they give you the Congressional Medal."
Doolittle thanked him. He thought it was a nice thing for the boy to
say. That kind of loyalty was worth having in a bad hour. The boy
started to walk away; he could tell that Doolittle didn't believe a
word of it. Then suddenly he turned and came on back.
"Colonel," he said, "I'd like to make a deal with you. Suppose I'm
right about it and you're wrong. So they give you a star and the
Congressional Medal. If that happens, will you agree to take me with
you wherever you go?"
Doolittle made him a solemn promise. Fresh courage came to him out of
the boy's tremendous earnestness.
And of course the boy was right, and the contract was kept, and all
things went well until, by a savage irony, Sgt. Leonard was killed in
the last German raid against Doolittle's headquarters in Europe
shortly before the war ended.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
USING REWARD AND PUNISHMENT
One of the illusions having greatest currency among our people is that
any green member of the fighting establishment is merely an American
civilian in a uniform, and that therefore, his spirit is nourished to
the extent that accommodations and usages of the service most nearly
duplicate what he has known elsewhere.
This belief is especially prevalent during wartime when every mother's
son puts on a new suit; it is natural to think that everything in the
service will better suit the boy if it smells like home. The corollary
of this rather quaint idea is that military organization is therefore
most perfect when it operates in the same way as the civil society.
Earlier in this book it has been suggested that these ideas need to be
questioned on two broad grounds: Do not both of them run counter to
the facts of encharged responsibility, and to human nature itself?
To emphasize it once again, the military officer is not alone an
administrator: _he is a magistrate_. There are special powers given
him by the President. It is within these powers that he will sit in
judgment on his men and that he may punish them when they have been
grievously derelict. This dual role makes his function radically
different from anything encountered in civil life--to say nothing of
the singleness of purpose which a fighting service is supposed to move
forward.
Moreover, the military officer is dealing with men who are submitted
to him in a binding relationship which by its nature is not only more
compelling but more intimate than anything elsewhere in society. As
much as the parent in the home, and far more than the teacher in the
school or the executive in business, he is directed to center his
effort primarily on the building of good character in other
individuals.
One need only compare a few points of advantage and disadvantage to
see why a better balanced sense of justice and fair play is required
of the military officer than of his brother in civil life, and why the
aim would be far too low if the fighting services did not shoot for
higher standards of personnel direction than are common in the
management of American business. Here are the points:
If any subordinate in the civilian vineyard feels that he is
getting a bad deal from his boss, and has become the object of
unfair discrimination, it is his royal American privilege to quit
on the spot, be he a policeman, a government factotum or a hod
carrier. He can then maintain himself by carrying his skill into a
new shop. But an enlisted member of the armed establishment cannot
quit summarily, and finally, if his commander is just wrong-headed
and arbitrary, it can be made almost impossible for him to
transfer out. However bad his fortune, he's stuck with it.
Nepotism is so general in our business and political life that the
people who suffer from its effect accept it more or less as the
working of nature; the results are therefore less destructive of
efficiency than they might be otherwise. It is common to see the
boss's nephew or his son get a good spot in the office and then
rise like a rocket, even though he is a third-rater. And it is not
less common to see a straw boss in a factory favor the man whom he
thinks might grease the wheels for him on the outside. But in the
armed establishment, favoritism on any grounds, and particularly
on such treacherous grounds as these, will destroy the foundations
of work and of control.
The armed establishment has its own body of law. Therein, too, it
differs from any civilian autonomy except the state itself. The
code is intended to enable a uniform standard of treatment to all
individuals in the regulating of all interior affairs. The code is
not rigid; its provisions are not absolute. It specifies the
general nature of offenses against society, and special offenses
against the good of the service. But, except for the more serious
offenses, particularly those which by their nature also violate
the civil code, it does not flatly prescribe trial and punishment.
Military law, in this respect, has more latitude, and is more
congenial, than civil law covering minor offenders. Rarely
arbitrary in its workings, it premises the use of corrective good
judgment at all times. It regards force as an instrument only to
be used for conserving the general good of the establishment. The
essential power behind the force is something spiritual--the will
and conscience of the great majority, expressing itself through
the action of one or several of their number. Its major object is
not punishment of the wrong-doer but protection of the interests
of the dutiful. This view of military law is four-square with the
basic principle of all action within the armed services--_that in
all cases the best policy is one which depends for its workings on
the sense of duty in men toward each other, and thereby
strengthens that sense through its operations._
Put in these terms, the attitude of the service toward the problem of
correction as a means of promoting the welfare of the general
establishment obviously reposes a tremendous burst in the justice and
goodwill of the average officer. It would be useless to blink the
fact. But there is this to be said unalterably in favor of the
military system's way of handling things: If the organization of the
whole human family into an orderly unit is ever to be made possible,
it will be done only because many men, of all ages and working at many
different levels, develop this faculty for passing critical, impartial
judgment on the conduct and deserts of those whom they lead, instead
of regarding it as a special kind of wisdom, given only to the few
anointed. Nor is that all. Not only the knowledge but the sense of
duty in men is imperfect. In every society are men who will not obey
the law of their own accord. Unless the authority which receives and
interprets the law will also impose it, by force if necessary, the
reign of law soon ceases. Whether an ordered society is to exist thus
depends upon whether there are citizens enough, fixed with a sense of
duty, to obey it and to enforce it.
At first glance, the responsibility seems extraordinarily heavy and
difficult. But with broadening experience, it becomes almost second
nature to an officer quickly to set a course by which to judge
individual men in relation to the affairs of organization, provided
that he has steered all along in the light of a few elementary
principles.
Concerning reward, and equally with respect to punishments, no more
pertinent words could be said than those uttered long ago by Thomas
Carlyle: "What a reflection it is that we cannot bestow on an unworthy
man any particle of our benevolence, our patronage or whatever
resource is ours--without withdrawing it, and all that will grow out
of it, from one worthy, to whom it of right belongs! We cannot, I say;
impossible; it is the eternal law of things."
He said a number of important things in this one brief paragraph.
There is first the thought that when any reward, such as a promotion,
a commendation or a particularly choice assignment is given other than
to the man who deserves it on sheer merit, some other man is robbed
and the ties of organization are weakened.
Next, there is this proposition: if, in the dispensing of punishment,
undue leniency is extended to an individual who has already proved
that he merits no special consideration, in the next round a bum rap
will be given some lesser offender who is morally deserving of a real
chance. The Italians have an epigram: "The first time a dog bites a
man, it's the dog's fault; the second time, it's the man's fault."
According to Carlyle, these things have the strength of a natural law.
Nor is it necessary to take his word for it. Any wise and experienced
military administrator will say approximately the same thing and will
tell of some of the bad examples he has met along his way.... The
commander who was afraid to punish anybody and by his indecision
punished everybody.... The lieutenant who had such a bad conscience
about his own weak handling of a bad case of indiscipline that he
threw the book at the next offender and thereby spoiled a good man and
gained the ill will of the company.... The old timer who smarted under
excessive punishment for a trivial offense, broke under it, got into
worse trouble, and became a felon.... The officer who promoted his
pets instead of his good men and at last found that there were no good
men left.... The skipper who condoned a small case of insolence until
it swelled into a mutiny.... The fool who handled every case alike, as
if he were an animal trainer instead of a builder of human character
... and so on, ad infinitum. It is a long and sorry list, but the
overwhelming majority of dutiful executives in the armed services
avoid these stupid blunders by following a Golden Rule policy toward
their men.
If lack of obedience is the most frequent cause of service men being
brought on the carpet, then as obedience is a moral quality, so should
punishment be employed as a moral act, its prime purpose being to
nourish and foster obedience. Before meting punishment, it is
necessary to judge a man, and judgment means to think over, to
compare, to weigh probable effects on the man and on the command, and
to give the offender the benefit of any reasonable doubt. Before any
punishment is given, the questions must be faced: "What good will it
achieve?" If the answer is none, then punishment is not in order.
Punishment of a vindictive nature is a crime; when it is given
uselessly, or handed out in a strictly routine manner, it is an
immoral act.
But when punishment has to be awarded, the case must be handled
promptly, and its issue must be stated incisively, so that there is no
room for doubt that the officer is certain about his judgments. Men
know when they are in the wrong, and even when it works to their
disadvantage, they will feel increased respect toward the officer who
knows what should be done, and states it without hemming and hawing.
The showing of firmness is the first requirement in this kind of
action. It is as foolish to go back on a punishment as to threaten it
and not follow through. The officer who is always running around
threatening to court martial his subordinates is merely avowing his
own weakness, and crying that he has lost all of his moral means. Even
the dullest men do not mistake vehemence and abuse for signs of
strength.
To punish a body of men, for offenses committed by two or three of
their number, even though the offense is obnoxious and it is
impossible to put the finger on the culprits, is the act of a sadist,
and is no more excusable within military organization than in civilian
society. Any officer who resorts to this stupid practice will forfeit
the loyalty of the best men in his command. There is no reason why it
should be otherwise.
As a general rule, it is a serious error to reprimand a subordinate in
the presence of any other person, because of the unnecessary hurt to
his pride. But circumstances moderate the rule. If the offense for
which he is being reprimanded involves injury of any sort to some
other person, or persons, it may be wholly proper to apply the
treatment in their presence. For example, the bully or the smart-aleck
who wantonly humiliates his own subordinates is not entitled to have
his own feelings spared. However, in the presence of his own superior,
an officer is always ill-advised to administer oral punishment to one
of his own juniors, since the effect is to destroy confidence both up
and down the line.
It is always the duty of an officer to intervene, toward the
protection of his own men against any manifest injustice, whatever its
source. In fact, this trust is so implicit that he should be ready to
risk his professional reputation upon it, when he is convinced beyond
doubt that the man is being unfairly assailed, or that due process is
not being followed. Both higher authority and civil authority
occasionally overreach; an officer stands as a shield protecting his
men against unfair treatment from any quarter. _But it is decidedly
not his duty to attempt to cheat law or thwart justice for the sake of
his men simply because they are his men._ His job, as Shakespeare puts
it, is "to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, to wrong the
wronger till he render right."
Finally, the best policy on punishments is to eliminate the frictions
which are the cause of most transgressions. When a ship is happy, men
do their duty. Scarcely anything will cross them up more quickly than
to see rewards given with an uneven hand. Even the stinker who has no
ambition but to duck work can recognize a deserving man, and will burn
if that man is bypassed in favor of a bootlicker or some other
lightweight.
Nothing is more vain than to give a promotion, or any reward, in the
hope, or on the promise, that the character who receives it will hit
the sawdust trail and suddenly reform.
Duty is the only sure proving ground. Men, like motors, should be
judged on their all-around performance. There is no other way to
generate the steady pull over the long grind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FITTING MEN TO JOBS
In civilian society, what amounts to a cult has developed around the
idea that the average person has a natural bent for some particular
job or profession, which if thwarted will fill him with those
frustrations which are conceded to be the cause of most of the mental
and moral disorders of mankind.
Therefore if all men could become rightly placed, we would have Utopia
tomorrow.
This theory of what humanity mainly cries for is perforce rejected by
the military establishment, for several eminently practical as well as
ideal reasons.
It discounts man, his plastic and impressionable nature, his response
to all that goes on around him and his marked ability to adjust to any
environment. He is not like a bolt fitted into a hole by a riveter,
nor merely clay in the hands of the potter. What he becomes is mainly
of his own making.
Further, the theory does not meet the needs of the situation, since in
the services, as elsewhere, there are not enough better holes to go
around, and no man is ready to say that he is good for nothing but
life as a file-closer.
But the last and main reason why the theory is no good is that it
doesn't square with human experience. A narrow classification system
invites the danger of overspecialization and lessens the team play
which is so indispensable to all military enterprise. It is possible
for the machine to break down totally from lack of interchangeability
in its parts.
We learn much from war, but some of the most obvious lessons are
disregarded. One of the things that it should teach us is the
tremendous adaptability of the average intelligent man, his ability to
take hold of work altogether remote from any prior experience, master
it, and find satisfaction in it, provided he is given help and
encouragement by those who already know.
This is the great phenomenon of war--greater than the atomic bomb or
supersonic flight. Former bookkeepers emerge as demolitions men.
Divinity students become pharmacist's mates. School teachers operate
tanks. Writing men turn into navigators. Woodsmen become lecturers.
Longshoremen specialize in tactics. And all goes well.
Then when it is all over, and everyone gets back in his well-worn
groove, the social scientists explain that these miracles occurred
because under the stimulus of great fear and excitement which attends
a period of national emergency, individuals will sublimate their main
drives, and adjust temporarily to what would be otherwise an onerous
personal difficulty. Sheer poppycock! Normal men do not feel pressed
by fear simply because a state of war exists; their chief emotions
change scarcely at all. These transformations occur only because the
man had the potential all along, and with someone backing him up _and
giving him the feeling of success_, his incentives became equal, at
least, to anything he had known in his peacetime occupation.
That is the long-and-short of it. If our average man couldn't become a
jack of many trades, and a master of several, the United States would
never be able to meet a major war emergency.
For these reasons, service concepts of how men should be fitted to
jobs do not develop around the simple notion that it is all a matter
of putting a square peg in a square hole--which is the one best way to
deny the peg any room for expansion. The doctrine is that _men are
many sided, that they learn their own powers and likes through
experiment, that they are entitled to find what is best for them, and
that having found it, their satisfactions will still derive mainly
from intelligent and interested treatment by their superiors_.
Every officer arrives sooner or later at the point where he has a
direct hand in the placement of men. By way of preparation for that
responsibility he should do two things mainly--learn all that he can
from his superiors about its technical aspects, and in his own
thinking, concentrate on principles to the exclusion of detail.
The fundamental purpose of all training today is to develop the
natural faculties and stimulate the brain of the individual rather
than to treat him as a cog which has to be fitted into a great
machine.
The true purpose of _all_ rules covering the conduct of warfare and
all regulations pertaining to the conduct of its individuals is to
bring about order in the fighting machine rather than to strangle the
mind of the man who reads them.
Thus in the assignment of men to work within any military
organization, no amount of perfection in the analysis of skills and
aptitudes can compensate for carelessness in their subsequent
administration. The uniformed ranks are not mechanics, storekeepers
and clerks primarily, but fighting men. This makes a difference. The
optimum over-all results do not come from the care exercised in seeing
that every man is placed at exactly the right job but from the concern
taken that in whatever job he fills, he will feel that he is supported
and that his efforts are appreciated. There is scarcely a good man who
has served long within the profession without filling a half-dozen
roles requiring vastly different skills. And looking back, what would
the average one say about it? Not that he was happiest where the
nature of the task best suited his hand, but happiest where his
relations with his superiors gave him the greatest sense of
accomplishment.
That is the human nature of the equation. We can let the economist
argue that what a man puts into a job is largely dependent on what he
takes out of it. And we can let the philosopher answer him that the
fault in his proposition is that he has turned it the wrong way
'round. Regardless of which man has put the cart before the horse,
there are two basic truths which outweigh the merits of the argument.
First. _All human progress has come of the willingness of a man at a
particular time to undertake a job which no one had ever done before._
Second. _The main reward of any job is the knowledge that worthwhile
work has been accomplished._
This last may sound like a corny maxim, but it's true. The reason
maxims become corny is because they're true.
Despite all of the present-day emphasis on paycheck security as the
mainspring of human action, the far stronger force which moves man as
a social being is his desire for a secure place in the respect and
affections of his associates, including his chief or his employer.
Gary Cooper, playing in "The Cowboy and the Lady," used the line, "I
aims, ma'm, to be high-regarded." Except for the few wrong-headed
people, he was speaking for the whole human family.
The man who can get along without wanting or needing words of approval
from other people is fit for a cell by himself, either padded or
barred.
Loyalty in the masses of men waxes strong in the degree that they are
made to believe that real importance is attached to their work and to
their ability to think about their work. It weakens at every point
where they consider that there is a negative respect for their
intelligence; the dignity in any work is not inherent in the job
itself but in the attitude of others toward it. Cabinet ministers,
college presidents and industrial magnates will quit their jobs when
they feel they no longer have the confidence of those to whom they are
responsible. That experience is as demoralizing to great men as to the
mine-run. Equally, the feeling of compensation which comes with any
token of recognition is one of those touches of human nature which
make all men akin. If men of genius and good works did not find Nobel
prizes and honorary college degrees highly gratifying, this custom
would have faded long ago. It is as rewarding to them to be called
good at their job as it was to the New Jersey street sweeper who
pushed his broom so diligently that he swept halfway into the next
town before discovering his mistake.
The far inferences of these things should be reasonably clear to every
officer of the fighting establishment. It makes little difference
whether a man is digging a ditch or is working up a loading table for
an invasion: what he thinks about his work will depend in large
measure upon the attitude of his superiors. He will develop no great
conviction about what he is doing except as it is transmitted to him.
_The fundamental cause of any breakdown of morale and discipline
within the armed service usually comes of this, that a commander or
his subordinates transgress by treating men as if they were children
or serfs instead of showing respect for their adulthood._
The requirements of modern war are such that we certainly do not want
to turn out one man exactly like another, or turn the majority into
mechanical men, capable of one set function. But the rule applies to
officers as well as men. The greater freedom which is needed has
nothing to do with social behavior or privilege. It is the freedom to
think boldly and originally for the common good, for, to quote Kant
again: "What one learns the most fixedly and remembers the best is
what one learns more or less by oneself."