e a deserving man, and will burn
if that man is bypassed in favor of a bootlicker or some other
lightweight.

Nothing is more vain than to give a promotion, or any reward, in the
hope, or on the promise, that the character who receives it will hit
the sawdust trail and suddenly reform.

Duty is the only sure proving ground. Men, like motors, should be
judged on their all-around performance. There is no other way to
generate the steady pull over the long grind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

FITTING MEN TO JOBS

In civilian society, what amounts to a cult has developed around the
idea that the average person has a natural bent for some particular
job or profession, which if thwarted will fill him with those
frustrations which are conceded to be the cause of most of the mental
and moral disorders of mankind.

Therefore if all men could become rightly placed, we would have Utopia
tomorrow.

This theory of what humanity mainly cries for is perforce rejected by
the military establishment, for several eminently practical as well as
ideal reasons.

It discounts man, his plastic and impressionable nature, his response
to all that goes on around him and his marked ability to adjust to any
environment. He is not like a bolt fitted into a hole by a riveter,
nor merely clay in the hands of the potter. What he becomes is mainly
of his own making.

Further, the theory does not meet the needs of the situation, since in
the services, as elsewhere, there are not enough better holes to go
around, and no man is ready to say that he is good for nothing but
life as a file-closer.

But the last and main reason why the theory is no good is that it
doesn't square with human experience. A narrow classification system
invites the danger of overspecialization and lessens the team play
which is so indispensable to all military enterprise. It is possible
for the machine to break down totally from lack of interchangeability
in its parts.

We learn much from war, but some of the most obvious lessons are
disregarded. One of the things that it should teach us is the
tremendous adaptability of the average intelligent man, his ability to
take hold of work altogether remote from any prior experience, master
it, and find satisfaction in it, provided he is given help and
encouragement by those who already know.

This is the great phenomenon of war--greater than the atomic bomb or
supersonic flight. Former bookkeepers emerge as demolitions