Posted on 01/24/2007 2:19:07 AM PST by GLH3IL
The Secret of Victory
by
George S. Patton, Jr.
Despite the years of thought and oceans of ink which have been devoted to the elucidation of war, it's secrets still remain shrouded in mystery.
Indeed, it is due largely to the very volume of available information that the veil is so thick.
War is an art and as such is not susceptible of explanation by fixed formulae. Yet, from the earliest time there has been an unending effort to subject it's complex and emotional structure to dissection, to enunciate rules for it's waging, to make tangible it's intangibility. One might as well strive to isolate the soul by the dissection of the cadaver as to seek the essence of war by the analysis of it's records.
Yet, despite the impossibility of physically detecting the soul, it's existence is proven by it's tangible reflection in acts and thoughts.
So with war, beyond it's physical aspect of armed hosts there hovers an impalpable something which on occasion so dominates the material as to induce victory under circumstances quite inexplicable.
To understand this "something" we should seek it in a manner analogous to our search for the soul; and so seeking we shall perchance find it in the reflexes produced by the acts of the "Great Captains".
But whither shall we turn for knowledge of their very selves? Not in the musty tomes of voluminous reports or censored recollections wherein they strove to immortalize and conceal their achievements. Nor yet in the countless histories where lesser wormish men have sought to snare their parted ghosts.
The great warriors were too busy and often too inapt to write contemporaneously of their exploits (save in the form of propaganda reports). While what they later put on paper as biographies were retrospects colored by their vain strivings for enhanced fame, or by political conditions then confronting them.
War was an ebullition of their perished past. The violent simplicity in execution which procured success for them and which enthralled the world looked pale and uninspired on paper; so they "seasoned" it.
The race yearns to adore. Can it adore the simple or venerate the obvious? All mythology and folk lore rise in indignant protest at the thought. The sun gave light, therefore he was not hot gas nor a flame, but a god or a chariot. The "ignus fatuus" deluded men of nights. It was a spirit; nothing so simple as decomposition could serve the need.
So with the soldier. To pander to self love and racial urge he attributes to his acts profound thoughts which never existed.
The white-hot energy of youth, which saw in obstacles but inspirations, and in the enemy but the gage to battle, becomes too complacent and retrospective with age. The result of mathematical calculation and metaphysical erudition; of knowledge he never had and plans he never made.
With the efforts of the historians, the case is even worse. Those who write at the time are guilty of partisanship and the urge of hero worship. Those who write later are forced to accept contemporaneous myths and to view their subject through the roseate light which distance, be it of time or space, sheds ever to deprive us of harsh truth.
Further, the historian, no matter when he writes is by nature a man of thoughtful and studious habits utterly incapable of appreciating the roaring energy of a soldier. The motive of his life is admiration for reflection and ordered calculation. Can he attribute to his subject virtues other than those which in himself he esteems most highly? So all unwittingly he is bound to limn for us soldiers as utterly unlike themselves as those prissy and high-minded youths who stalk the pages of juvenile romances in the garb of the fourteenth century and with the manners of the twentieth.
Colored by self deception, shaded by scholarly book worms, our soldiers stand before us as devoid of life as the toothless portraits of Washington which adorn the walls of half our school rooms.
In peace, the scholar flourishes, in war the soldier dies; so it comes about that we view our soldiers through the eyes of scholars and attribute to them scholarly virtues.
Seeking obvious reasons for the obscure, we analyze their conduct as told by historians and assign as reasons for their success, apparent, trivial things.
Disregarding wholly the personality of Frederick, we attribute his victories to a tactical expedient, the oblique order of battle.
Impotent to comprehend the character of Rome's generals a great historian coins the striking phrase; "At this time the Roman Legionary shortened his sword and gained an empire" and we swallow it, thereby avoiding thought.
Our research is further muddled by the fabled heroism of all former fighters. Like wine, accounts of valor mellow with age, until Achilles dead for three thousand years stands peerless.
Yet, through the murk of fact and fable rises ever to our view this truth; "The history of war is the history of warriors; few in number, mighty in influence."
Alexander, not Macedonia, conquered the world. Scipio, not Rome, destroyed Carthage. Marlborough, not the Allies, defeated France. Cromwell, not the Roundheads, dethroned Charles.
Were this true only of warriors we might well exclaim, "Behold the work of the historian", but it is equally the case in every phase of human endeavor. Music has it's myriad of musicians, but only it's dozen masters. So with painting, sculpture, literature, medicine, or trade. "Many are called, but few are chosen."
Nor can we concur wholly with the alluring stories in the advertising sections of our magazines which point the golden path of success to all and sundry who will follow that particular phase of "home education" that they happen to advocate. "Knowledge is power", but to a degree only. It's possession per se will raise a man to mediocrity, but not to distinction. In our opinion, indeed, the instruction obtained from such courses is of less moment to future success than is the ambition which prompted the study.
In considering these matters, sight should not be lost of the fact that while there is much similarity, there is also a vast difference, between the successful soldier and the successful man in other professions. Success due to knowledge and personality is the measure of ability in each case; but to all, except the soldier, it has vital significance only to the individual and to a limited number of his family and associates, while with the soldier success or failure means infinitely more as it must of necessity be measured not in terms of personal honor or affluence, but in the life, happiness, and honor of his men -- his country.
Hence, the search for that elusive secret of military success; soul, genius, personality; call it what you will; is of vital interest to us all.
As has been shown, history and biography are of but limited assistance and the situation is still further complicated by other circumstances which we shall now discuss.
First, we must get an harmonical arrangement between two diametrically opposed views; namely that there is "Nothing new under the sun" and to coin a phrase that there is "Nothing old".
Referring to the first assumption, that of immutability, we refer to the tendency, well attested in the records of these historians, to consider the most recent past war as the last word, the sealed pattern of all future contests to insure peace.
For this theory we of the military profession are largely to blame. First we realize, none better, that in the last war it was necessary to make many improvisations and to ply our trade with ill assorted tools. We then read our books and note with a thrill of regret that in the war next preceding our own experience, "Things ran with the precision of a well oiled machine", for so the mellowing influences of time have made it appear to our authors.
In our efforts to provide for the avoidance, in future, of the mistakes which we personally have encountered and to insure to ourselves, or to our successors, the same mathematical ease of operation of which we have read we proceed to enunciate rules.
In order to enunciate anything we must first have a premise. The most obvious is the last war. Further, the impressions we gained there were the most vivid we have ever experienced; burned on the tablets of our memories by the blistering flash of exploding shell; etched on our souls by the incisive patter of machine gun bullets, our own experiences become the foundation of our thoughts and, all unconscious of personal bias, we of necessity base our conceptions of the future on our experience of the past.
Beyond question, personal knowledge is a fine thing, but unfortunately it is too intimate. When, for example, we recall a railroad accident, the picture that most vividly presents itself to us is the severed blue-grey hand of some child victim; not the misread signals which precipitated the tragedy.
So with war experiences. The choking gas that strangled us sticks in our memory to the more or less complete exclusion of the important fact that it was the roads and consequent abundant mechanical transportation peculiar to western Europe which permitted the accumulation of enough gas shells to do the strangling.
Even when no personal experience exists we are certain to be influenced by the most recent experience of others. Because in the Boer War the bayonet found no employment, we all but abandoned it, only to seize it again when the Russo-Japanese conflict re-demonstrated it's value.
Going back further we might point to countless other instances of similar nature. Witness the recurrent use and disuse of infantry and cavalry as the dominant arm according to the most recent "lesson" derived from the last war based invariably on SPECIAL CONDITIONS, in no way bound to recur, yet always presumed as immutable.
So much for the conservatives; now for the optimists; the "Nothing Old" gentry.
These are of several species but first in order of importance come the specialists.
Due either to super-abundant egotism and uncontrolled enthusiasm or else to limited powers of observation of the activities of other arms, these people advocate in the most fluent and uncompromising manner the vast FUTURE potentialities of their own weapon. In the next war, so they say, all of the enemy will be crushed, gassed, bombed, or otherwise speedily exterminated, depending for the method of his death upon whether the person declaiming belongs to the tank, gas, air, or other special service.
Due to the (unfortunate) fact that many of them possess considerable histrionic ability and much verbosity, they attract public attention. The appeal of their statements is further strengthened because, in the first place, they deal invariably in mechanical devices which intrigue the simple imagination. In the next place the novelty of their schemes and assertions has a strong news interest which insures their notice by the press. This last fact is of peculiar advantage to the present crop of specialists because in the last war the maximum press activity was on the western front. Here the preliminary cavalry activities had ended before the shock of the world cataclysm had been sufficiently dissipated to permit detailed accounts, while due to necessary restrictions, correspondents could not witness infantry fights in detail and therefore filled their articles with accounts of the noisy or noisome activities of the special arms whose preliminary activities they could see and whose novelty assured public interest.
Earlier examples of this newspaper tendency to exploit the bizarre is instanced in the opening accounts of the Civil War where "Masked Batteries" and "Black Horse Cavalry" seemed to infest the whole face of nature. Or again, the undue importance attached to the "Dynamite Ship", the Vesuvius at Santiago or the storied prowess of the submarine just after it's invention.
Mention of the optimists would be incomplete without some reference to those super visionaries, the Pacifists.
Like the Specialists, the stupendous nature of their claims gains a hearing and effects a due consideration of war by the fact that it influences the minds of potential soldiers and hampers the activities of the armed forces by way of reduced financial support. To these people the history of the race, from the fierce struggles in primordial slime to the present day, is a blank. At their bidding all is changed. In a moment, the twinkling of an eye, the lion loses his appetite and the lamb his fear. Avarice and ambition, honor and patriotism are no more, all merge in a supine state of impossible toleration. To them the millions who have nobly perished for an ideal are fools, and a sexless creature too debased to care and too indolent to strive is held up for emulation.
Nor are they deterred in their schemes for complete disarmament by the fear of cost to themselves or their country because, for themselves, they know that by benefit of sex, weak eyes, flat feet, or a limber conscience they will avoid the conflicts that their unarmed policy will produce. For their country they care not at all -- let it perish; so long as they may survive.
Both the standpatters and the progressives have reason of sorts and as we have pointed out we must seek to harmonize the divergent tendencies.
A British writer has said, "The characteristic of war is it's constant change of characteristic", but as is ever the case with aphorisms his remark needs explanation.
There is an incessant and constant change of "means" to attain the inevitable "end", but we must take care not to let these inevitable sundry means, past or predicted, attain undue eminence in the perspective of our minds. Since the beginning, there has been an unending cycle of them, and for each, it's advocates have claimed adoption as the sole means of successful war. Yet, the records of all time show that the unchanging ends have been, are, and probably ever shall be, the securing of predominating force, of the right sort, at the right place, at the right time.
In seeking a premise for the enunciation of rules for the employment of this predominating force, we must cull from past experience or study, the more permanent characteristics, select our weapons, and assign to them that importance which reason and the analogy of experience indicate that they will attain.
Bearing these considerations, and the definition of predominant force in mind, we shall resume our search for the secret of victory.
No matter what the situation as to clarity of his mental perspective, the conscientious soldier approaches the solution of his problem more or less befuddled by phantoms of the past and deluded by unfounded or unproven hopes for the future. So handicapped, he assumes the unwonted and labored posture of a student, and plans for perfection so that when the next war comes that part of the machine, for which he may be responsible, shall instantly begin to function with a purr of perfect preparation.
In this scholarly avocation soldiers of all important nations use at the present time what purports to be the best mode of instruction -- the applicatory method. The characteristics of some concrete problem are first studied in the abstract and then tested by applying them with assumed forces and situations in solving analogous problems either on the terrain or on a map representation of it.
This method not only familiarizes the student with all of the tools and technicalities of his trade, but also develops the aptitude for reaching decisions and the self assurance derived from demonstrated achievement.
But as always, there is a fly in the ointment. High academic performance demands infinite intimate knowledge of details and the qualities requisite to such attainments often inhabit bodies lacking in personality. Also the striving for such knowledge often engenders the fallacious notion that capacity depends on the power to acquire such details, not the ability to apply them.
Obsessed with this thought, students plunge in deeper and ever deeper, their exertions but enmeshing them the more until like mired mastodons they perish in a morass of knowledge where they first browsed for sustenance.
When the prying spade of the unbiased investigator has removed the muck of official reports and the mire of self-laudatory biographies from the swamp of the World War, then the skeletons of many such military mammoths will be discovered. Amidst their mighty remains will lurk elusive the secret of German failure.
Beyond question, no soldiers ever sought more diligently for pre-war perfection. They built and tested and adjusted their mighty machine and became so engrossed in it's visible perfection, in the accuracy of it's bearings, and the compression of it's cylinders, that they neglected the battery. When the moment came, their masterpiece proved inefficient through lack of the divine afflatus, the soul of a leader.
Truly in war; "Men are nothing, a man is everything."
Here we must most vigorously deny that anything in our remarks is intended to imply belief in the existence of spontaneous untutored inspiration. With the single exception of the divinely inspired Joan of Arc, no such phenomenon has ever existed and as we shall show, she was less of an exception than a coincidence.
We require and must demand all possible thoughtful preparation, and studious effort possible, so that in war our officers may be equal to their mighty trust -- the safety of our country.
Our purpose is not to discourage such preparation, but simply to call attention to certain defects in it's pursuit. To direct it not towards the glorification of the means -- study; but the end -- victory.
In acquiring erudition, we must live on, not in, our studies. We must guard against becoming so engrossed in the specific nature of the roots and bark of the trees of knowledge as to miss the meaning and grandeur of the forests that they compose.
Our means of studying war have increased as much as have our tools for waging it, but it is an open question as to whether this increase in means has not perhaps obscured or obliterated one essential detail, namely the necessity for personal leadership.
Because Alexander as a boy learned the art from the stories told by Philip's veterans or the rhymed chronicles of mythological contests is no reason for assuming that, considering the time, he was less versed in the warfare of his day than was at our period that great military scholar and practitioner Ferdinand Foch. Simple as was the schooling of Alexander, his requirements were simpler.
All down the immortal line of mighty warriors the same is true. Hannibal, Caesar, Heraclius, Charlemagne, Richard, Gustavus, Tourraine, Frederick, Napoleon, Grant, Lee, Hindenburg, Allenby, Foch, and Pershing; were all deeply imbued with the whole knowledge of war as practiced at their several epochs.
But also, and mark this, so were many of their defeated opponents. As has been pointed out, the secret of victory lies not wholly in knowledge. It lurks invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning -- the warrior soul.
There is no better illustration of the potency of this vitalizing element than is portrayed in the story of the "Maid of Orleans". For more than 90 years prior to her advent, the armies of France had suffered almost continuous defeat at the hands of their British opponents. The reason for this state of things lay not in the inferiority of French valor, but in the reappearance of the foot soldier armed with the missile weapon -- the long bow -- as the temporary dominating influence on the battlefield. As a result of the recurrence of this tactical condition, France suffered almost continuous defeats with the result that her people lost confidence. They developed an inferiority complex.
Then came Joan, whose flaming faith in her heaven sent mission re-kindled the national spirit. Yet, as great as were her powers, it is idle to suppose that, all unschooled in war as she was, she could have directed, unaided, the energy that she produced.
Like the fire beneath the boiler, she produced the steam. Ready to her hand she found competent machinery for it's utilization in the shape of those veteran soldiers, Dunois, La Hire, and Saint Railles.
The happy coincidence of her ignorant enthusiasm and their uninspired intelligence produced the phenomenal series of victories which freed France.
It seems a far cry from the Virgin Maiden to the professional pugilist, yet there is much in the way of similarity in their dominant characteristics. In all closely contested ring battles between opponents of equal weight (force) the decision almost invariably goes to the fighter who is better endowed with faith, self-confidence, and a courageous spirit. But, we must again point out that no pugilist, no matter how so confident or courageous, has ever succeeded over an equal enemy unless to his spiritual attributes he has added the combined knowledge of, and skill at, his profession.
We shall now seek to evaluate and place in their just ratio the three essentials to victory; Inspiration, Knowledge, and Force (Mass).
Considering Napoleon as the apogee of military ability, we note that whereas he won many battles with numbers inferior to the enemy, he never lost a battle when he was numerically superior. In other words, even his transcendent ability was not equal, on every occasion, to the task of counterbalancing numerical inferiority.
Again, when he was confronted with the admittedly incapable Austrian generals of 1796, he destroyed armies; while later, particularly after 1805, his victories were far less overwhelming.
So it was with Caesar. Against the Nervae he was a consuming flame, yet against Romans a successful contender. Grant in the Wilderness was as nothing when compared to Grant at Donaldson or before Vicksburg.
The three preceding cases represent soldiers of the highest type both mentally and spiritually, but with perhaps a shade more emphasis on their spiritual side.
By way of contrast we may note how the learned, but uninspired, Prussians of 1870 triumphed over the poorly led French while, in 1914, their equally learned and uninspired descendants were far less successful in the face of better opposition.
We may therefore postulate that no one element, be it Soul, Knowledge, or Mass is dominant; that a combination of any two of these factors gives a strong presumption of success over an adversary relying on one alone, and that the three combined are practically invincible against a combination of any other two.
Comparing our own resources as to mass with those of any possible opponent or group of opponents, we strike at lease a balance.
The demonstrated ability of our trained leaders in past wars shows that, so far as education in concerned, our officers have no superiors and few equals. This being so, victory will fly to or desert our standards in exact proportion to the presence, or absence, in our leaders of the third attribute. Of what does it consist?
As has been noted, the records of all trades and professions show that it is the rare individual, rising like a mountain peak through the clouds of billowy mediocrity, who attains success.
He starts from the same upper reaches, be it hill or hero; yet the cataclysm which causes the former is as imponderable as the conditions which produce the latter. So it seems, yet as surely as the earthquake was the result of pre-ordained and computable contractions, so surely is the leader the product of obscure, yet ascertainable, circumstances.
The future happiness and existence of races cannot be relegated to the realm of uncertainty contained in that plausible but indefinite assurance that, "Genius is born, not made." If this were so, the World War, among other crimes, might well have been charged against it the sin of practicing an undue use of birth control. Certainly, despite a superabundance of educated aspirants, none of the participants produced an inspired leader.
It would be impious to attribute this dearth to God alone. The system of military education, and be it noted, the universal system (of draft) must be at fault.
That "Man cannot live by bread alone", and that "As a man thinketh so is he", have been for generations droned from countless pulpits as the texts for prolix and unconvincing sermons until the cogency of the phrases has been somewhat dulled, yet, they contain an infinity of truth.
Dry knowledge, like dry rot, destroys the soundest fiber. A constant search for soul-less fundamentals, the effort to deregularize the irregular, to make complex the simple, to assume perfect men, perfect material, and perfect terrain as the pre-requisites to war has the same effect on the soldier student. Indeed, the statement that, "Education is a device by which men fool themselves into a sense of efficiency" is too often apposite.
War is conflict. Fighting is an elemental exposition of the age-old effort to survive. It is the cold glitter of the attacker's eye, not the point of the questing bayonet, that breaks the line. It is the fierce determination of the driver to close with the enemy, not the mechanical perfection of tank, that conquers the trench. It is the cataclysmic ecstasy of conflict in the flier, not the perfection of his machine gun, which drops the enemy in flaming ruin. Yet, volumes are devoted to armaments; and only pages to inspiration.
Since, by necessity, limitations of map problems inhibit the student from considering the effects of hunger, emotion, personality, fatigue, leadership, and many other imponderable, yet vital, factors, he first neglects and then forgets them.
Obsessed with admiration for the intelligence which history has ascribed to past leaders, he forgets the inseparable connection between plans, the flower of the intellect, and execution, the fruit of the soul. Hooker's plan at Chancelorsville was masterly, it's execution cost him the battle. The converse was true at Marengo. Yet, since the historian, through lack of experience and consequent appreciation of the inspirational qualities of generals, fails to stress them, he does emphasize their mental gifts which, since he shares, he values. The student blindly follows. Hugging the notion of "intelligence", he pictures armies of insensate pawns moving with the precision of machines and the rapidity of light, guided in their intricate and resistless evolutions over the battlefield by the cold effulgence of his emotionless cerebrations as transmitted to them by wire and radio through the inspiring medium of coded messages.
Doubtlessly, he further assumes the same superhuman intelligence will translate those somber sentences into words of fire, which shall electrify his chessmen into frenzied heroes who, heedless of danger, shall dauntlessly translate the still born infants of his brain into heroic deeds.
Was it so with Caesar as he rallied the 12th Legion? Could the trackless ether have conveyed to his soldiers via the medium of radio waves the inspiration that Napoleon imparted by his ubiquitous presence when before Rivoli he rode five horses to death, "To see everything for himself?"
Staff systems and mechanical communications are valuable, but above and beyond them must be the commander. Not as a disembodied brain linked to his men by lines of wire and radio waves, but as a living presence, an all pervading visible personality.
The unleavened bread of knowledge will sustain life, but it is dull fare unless leavened by the yeast of personality.
Could seamanship and shooting have made the Bon Homme Richard prevail over the Serapis or have destroyed the French fleet in Abukar Bay if John Paul Jones and Horatio Nelson had been other than they were? What intellectual ghost replete with stratagem could have inspired men as did these two who, in themselves, have epitomized not only knowledge of war, but the spirit of battle.
In defining the changeless characteristics of war we mentioned force, place, and time. In our calendar of warriors Napoleon Bonaparte and Stonewall Jackson stand pre-eminent in their use of the last of these -- time. Of the first his soldiers boasted, "He wins battles more with our legs than with our bayonets." Jackson's men proudly called themselves "Old Jack's Foot Cavalry".
Libraries have been written on the deeds of both men. Shrewd critics have assigned success to all manner of things; as tactics, shape of frontiers, happily placed rivers, mountains or woods, intellectual ability, or to the use of artillery. All in a measure true, but none vital. Nor is it even in the speed of the operations that the secret lays, but in the inspiring spirit with which they so inoculated their soldiers as to lift weary footsore men out of themselves and to make them march, forgetful of agony, as did Messna's division after Rivoli or Jackson's at Winchester.
No words ever imagined could have produced such prodigies of endurance as did the sight of the boy general ill perched on his sweating horse or of the stern puritan plodding ever before them on Little Sorrel. The ability to produce endurance is but an instance of that same martial soul which arouses in it's followers that resistless emotion defined as "elan", the "will to victory", or "viscousness", depending upon whether the vocabulary used is French, German, or Pacifist, respectively. However defined, it is akin to that almost cataleptic burst of physical and mental exuberance shown by the athlete when he breaks a record or plunges through the tacklers, and by the author or artist in the creation of a masterpiece. The difference is that in the athlete or artist, the ebullition is auto-stimulated. With an army it is the result of external impetus -- leadership.
In considering war, we must avoid that adoration of the material as exemplified by scientists who deny the existence of aught they cannot cut or weigh.
In war tomorrow, we shall be dealing with men subject to the same emotions as were the soldiers of Alexander; with men but little changed for better or for worse from the starving, shoeless Frenchmen of 1796. With men similar, except in their arms, to those who the inspiring powers of a Greek or a Corsican changed at a breath to bands of heroes; all enduring and all capable.
No! History as written and read does not divulge the source of leadership. Hence, it's study often induces us to forget it's potency.
As a mirror shows us not ourselves, but our reflection, so it is with the soul and with leadership. We know them, but by the acts they inspire or by the results they have achieved.
Like begets like. In the armies of the great we seek the reflection of themselves and we find; Self-Confidence; Enthusiasm; Abnegation of Self; Loyalty; and Courage.
Resolution, no matter how so adamant, mated to knowledge, no matter how so infinite, never begat such a progeny.
Such offspring arises only from blood lines as elemental as themselves. The leader must be incarnate of them.
Nor is the suggestion of Nicodemus as to re-birth (John III, 3-6) the only means of producing such a leader. There are certainly born leaders, but the soldier may still overcome his natal defects by unremitting effort and practice.
Self-Confidence of the right sort, as differentiated from bumptious presumption based in ignorance, is the result of proven ability, the sense of conscious achievement. It's existence pre-supposes enthusiasm for without this quality, no one could endure the travail of acquiring self-confidence. The enthusiasm which permits the toil and promises the achievement is simply an all-absorbing pre-occupation in the profession elected.
Endurance, too, is linked with self-confidence. Mentally, it is the ability to subvert the means to the end, to hitch the wagon to a star and to attain it. Physically, it pre-supposes sufficient enthusiasm to force on nature, no matter how reluctant, the obligation of constant bodily fitness through exercise. The expanding waist line means the contracting heart line, both in length and vigor. Witness Napoleon at and after Jena.
Abnegation of self seems perhaps incongruous when applied to such selfish persons as Frederick or a Napoleon, but this is not the case. Self can be subordinated to self. The Corsican leading his grenadiers at Lodi subordinated the life of Boneparte to the glory of Napoleon.
Loyalty is frequently only considered as faithfulness from the bottom up. It has another and equally important application, that is from the top down. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of the great (who remained great) is unforgetfulness of and loyalty to their subordinates. It is this characteristic which binds, with hoops of iron, their juniors to them.
A man who is truly and unselfishly loyal to his superiors is of necessity so to his juniors, and they to him.
Courage, moral and physical, is almost a synonym of all the foregoing traits. It fosters the resolution to combat and cherishes the ability to assume responsibility, be it for successes or for failures. No Bayard ever showed more of it than did Lee after Gettysburg.
But, as with the biblical candle, these traits are of no military value if concealed. A man of diffident manner will never inspire confidence. A cold reserve cannot beget enthusiasm, and so with the others, there must be an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace.
It then appears that the leader must be an actor and such is the fact. But with him, as with his bewigged compeer, he is unconvincing unless he lives his part.
Can a man then acquire and demonstrate these characteristics? The answer is; they have -- they can. For, "As a man thinketh, so is he."
The fixed determination to acquire the warrior soul, and have acquired it to either conquer or perish with honor, is the SECRET OF VICTORY.
G. S. Patton, Jr., Major
March 26, 1926
We need a modern day leader with Patton's understanding of what we must to to win in Iraq. Yeah the weapons are different, but effective leadership is a constant ingredient that is in far too limited of a supply in the Beltway.
Not only is leadership in short supply inside the Beltway, but the cajones to use the weapons to their maximum potential is absent....
Thanks for the post.
Thank God (the real one) for men like Patton. Awesome read.
I had no idea that Patton was so verbose...
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