ngly for
him, and when their bodies are spent, their nerves are gone.

Looking after the welfare of men, however, does not connote simply
getting them into the open air and giving them a chance to kick the
ball around. The services are pretty well organized to provide their
personnel with adequate sport and recreational facilities, and to
insure an active, balanced program, in any save the most exceptional
circumstance. Too, the provisions made for the creature comforts of
men are ample, experience-tested, and well-regulated.

It is not so much that a young officer needs to have book instruction
about the detail of these things. Such is the system that they can
hardly escape his notice, any more than he can escape knowing where to
get his pay check and by which path he goes to the barbershop.

What counts mainly is that he should fully understand the prime
importance of a personal caring for his men, so that they cannot fail
of a better life if it is within his power and wisdom to lead them to
it.

Once the principle is grasped, and accepted without any mental
reservation, time and experience will educate him in the countless
meetings of situations which require its application.

There are times and situations which require that all men be treated
identically, for the good of organization. There are also occasions
when nothing else suffices but to give the most help, the most
encouragement, the most relief to those who are most greatly in need.
Grown men understand that, and the officer, approaching every
situation with the question in his mind: "What does reason say about
what constitutes fair play in this condition?" cannot go far wrong in
administering to the welfare of those who serve under him.

_It is moral courage, combined with practice, which builds in one a
delicate sense of the eternal fitness of things._

One example: Under normal training conditions, it would be fair play,
and the acceptable thing, to rotate men and their junior leaders to
such an onerous task as guard duty. But if a unit was "dead beat"
after a hard march, and an officer, pursuing his line of duty, walked
among his men, inspecting their blistered feet and doing all he could
to ease each man's physical discomfort, he would then be using
excessively poor judgment if he did not pick out the men most
physically fit to do whatever additional duty was required that night.

But infinite painstaking in attending to the physical welfare of