Appeal to Reason

This week, at posts along the Atlantic seaboard from South Carolina to the Canadian border, soldiers of Lieut. General Hugh Aloysius Drum's First Army fell in for special Armistice Day formations. To hardened Regulars, newly mobilized National Guardsmen, Organized Reserves, one-year volunteers--all the components of the new U. S. Army except conscripts--officers intoned an order-of-the-day. To many a top sergeant, Hugh Drum's dicta on how to train the new army sounded new & strange. Expecting that it would, Hugh Drum had pointedly commanded his subordinates to post his order where their men could always see it. Excerpts:

"We should appreciate that we are a newly assembled combat Army. ... All walks of American life are represented. These conditions present individual and group problems [which] . . . should be solved in our American way. ... A competitive system should be devised to bring to the front individuals who have . . . leadership superiority. Demonstrated individual worth, especially leadership, should be given greater consideration than longevity and seniority of service. . . .

"The American youth is intelligent . . . he has lived the life of a free man. . . . His family environment and schooling have trained him to expect in his leaders practical knowledge, aggressively applied --an appeal to reason rather than to fear or emotion. ... A domineering or paternalistic type of leadership will fail with him, especially if combined with inferior knowledge, indecision, inertia. . . .

"Discipline has a broader significance than mere punishment. ... It is secured through mental, moral and physical training combined with an intelligent understanding of the reasons for standards and conduct and the objectives in view. . . . Poor discipline is generally the result of inferior leadership and is evidenced by excessive courts-martial; a high percentage of desertion and absence without leave; slovenly dress, inattention to saluting . . . general inefficiency. . . . The successful leader must, first, have a thorough understanding on his own part of [these principles]. . . . Further, he must constantly keep in mind the twin objectives of the selective service law, i.e., 1) to train an adequate military force . . . 2) to return to civil life young Americans inculcated with a high sense of duty and patriotism."

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