he relishes his membership within a fighting
establishment and thinks those thoughts which would best put his arms
to efficient use. The military establishment neither declares nor
makes war; these are acts by the nation. But it is the duty of the
military establishment primarily to succor the nation from any great
jeopardy.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ENVIRONMENT

The saying of the Old Sergeant that, "It takes a war to knock the hell
out of the Regular Army," applies as broadly to war's effects upon the
general peacetime establishment.

In the rapid expansion of the armed service which comes of a national
emergency, nothing seems to remain the same. Old units fill up, and
change their character. By the time they have sent out three or four
cadres of commissioned and enlisted leaders to form the base for
entirely new organizations, little remains of the moral foundation of
the parent unit except an honored name.

Promotion is rapid and moves are frequent among the higher commanders.
No sooner does a man feel fairly settled under a new commander, and
confident that he will get along, than he looks up to see someone else
filling the space.

Installations grow like mushrooms. Schools multiply at a phenomenal
rate. The best qualified men are taken away so that they will become
better qualified, either by taking an officers' course or through
specialist training. Their places are taken by men who may have an
equal native ability, but haven't yet mastered the tricks of the
trade. This piles high the load of work on those who command.

The intake and the pipelines in all services fill with men of a quite
different fiber and outlook than those which commonly pass through the
peacetime training establishment.

Particularly in the drafts which flow to the army there is a curious
mixture of the good with the bad. The illiterates, the low IQs and the
men who are physically a few notches below par are passed for service,
though under normal conditions the recruiting standards shut them out.
At the other end of the scale are the highly educated men from the
colleges, and the robust individuals from the factory and farm. In
natural quality they are as well suited to the service as any who seek
it out in peacetime, but in disposition they are likely to be a
little less tractable. On the whole, however, there is no radical
difference between them, if we look at both groups simply as training
problems for the study of the offic