rained to
initiate action for the common good. Only so can the new discipline
promote a higher efficiency based on a more steadfast loyalty of man
to man. In the words of Du Picq, who saw so deeply into the hearts of
fighting men: "If one does not wish bonds broken, one should make them
elastic and thereby strengthen them."

The separate nature of military service is the key to the character of
the discipline of its several forces. In the United States, we have
fallen into the sloppy habit of saying that a soldier, bluejacket,
airman, coast guardsman or marine is only an American civilian in
uniform. The corollary of this quaint notion is that all military
organization is best run according to the principles of business
management. The truth of either of these ideas is to be disputed on
two grounds: both are contrary to truth and contrary to human nature.
An officer is not only an administrator but a magistrate, and it is
this dual role which makes his function so radically different than
anything encountered in civil life--to say nothing of the singleness
of purpose by which the service moves forward. Moreover, the armed
service officer deals with the most plastic human material within the
society--men who, in the majority, the moment they step into uniform,
are ready to seek his guidance toward a new way of life.

However, these fancies are but tangential aspects of a much larger
illusion--that the Armed Services of the United States, since they
serve a democracy, can better perfect themselves according to the
measure that they become more and more democratic. Authority is
questioned in democratic countries today, not only in government, but
in industry, the school, the church and the home. But to the extent
that military men lose their faith in its virtue and become amenable
to ill-considered reforms simply to appease the public, they
relinquish the power to protect and nurture that growth of free men,
free thought and free institutions which began among a handful of
soldiers in Cromwell's Army and was carried by them after the
Restoration to the North American mainland. The relation of the
military establishment to American democracy is as a shield covering
the body. But no wit of man can make it a wholly "democratic"
institution as to its own processes without vitiating its strength,
since it progresses through the exercise of unquestioned authority at
various levels.

One of these levels is the plane on which