army and navy--I mean the men enlisted and discharged during peace
time--and find a relatively large number who made conspicuously good
records after returning to civil life. As a matter of fact, we find
nothing of the kind.

What we do find is that not a few enlisted men who chose the army or the
navy as their permanent career have won commissions and made fine
records. There were no better general officers in the war than men like
Harbord of our army and Robertson of the British, both of whom rose from
the ranks. But isn't it fair to say that the discipline imposed on these
men was accepted gladly and accepted in the terms of their fundamental
interest, and that these men are not really exceptions to what I have
said?

I venture to predict that there will be a very different record to tell
as to the success in civil life of those men now leaving the Army, who,
because they believed in the cause and wished to participate to the full
in the great enterprise, gladly submitted themselves to the discipline
for the purpose of increasing their efficiency.

In a month or so you can teach an enthusiastic man, who is fired by a
big idea, all the discipline he needs for carrying out his duties and
profiting by his opportunities, but you can't reverse the process and
incite enthusiasms as a result of the application of discipline.

Don't think that I want to minimize the merits of military discipline
for military purposes. Of course, coordination and subordination are
absolutely necessary in the handling of large bodies of men. Even the
men in France who deserted to the front, as many of them did, no matter
how much we may sympathize with their desire to get into the game, had
to be disciplined. Someone had to stay behind and see to the supplies.
The point we are discussing is the carrying over of this principle of
military discipline intact into civilian life. So far as discipline
brings about regularity of life, of exercise, so long as it ministers to
alertness, we can use it, but as between discipline on the one hand, and
initiative and team play on the other, to meet our academic or our
national needs, I am for initiative and team play.

Please don't misunderstand me. By reducing the present emphasis on
external discipline, after childhood has been passed, I don't mean a
lowering of standards. External discipline, it seems to me, is often
really imposed as a substitute for high standards; something supposed to
be just