esponsibility for
success. Within military forces, an element of command is owned by
every man who is doing his duty with intelligence and imagination.
That puts him on the side of the angels, and the pressure which he
exerts is felt not only by his subordinates but by those topside who
are doing less. Many a lazy skipper has snapped out of it and at last
begun to level with his organization because he felt the hot breath of
a few earnest subordinates on his neck. Many a battle unit has held to
ground which it had been ready to forsake because of the example of an
aid man who stayed at his work and refused to forsake the wounded.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was thinking on these things when he said
during World War II: "There is among the mass of individuals who carry
rifles in war a great amount of ingenuity and efficiency. If men can
talk naturally to their officers, the product of their resourcefulness
becomes available to all." But the art of open communication requires
both receiving and sending, and the besetting problem is to get
officers to talk naturally to men.

In the seventeenth century Marshal Maurice de Saxe rediscovered
cadenced marching which, along with the hard-surfaced roads of France,
had remained buried since the time of the Romans. He reinstituted
precision marching and drill within military bodies, and by that
action changed European armies from straggling mobs into disciplined
troops. The effects of that reform have been felt right down to the
present. Baron von Steuben, the great reorganizer of the forces in
George Washington's Army, simply built upon the principles which de
Saxe had set forth one century earlier. These two great architects of
military organization founded their separate systems upon one
controlling idea--that _if men can be trained to think about moving
together, they can then be led to move toward thinking together_. De
Saxe wanted keen men, not automatons; in that, he was singular among
the captains of his day. He started the numbering of regiments so that
they would have a continuing history and thereby benefit from _esprit
de corps_. He was the first to see the great importance of battle
colors and to standardize their use. Of his own military opinions he
wrote: "Experts should not be offended by the assurance with which I
deliver my opinions. They should correct them; that is the fruit I
expect from my work."

Now to take a look at von Steuben. He was the drillmaster of th