Army & Navy: Soldier’s warning

As commander of the Second Army (see col. 2), Lieut. General Ben Lear’s duty has been to transform hundreds of thousands of young civilians into soldiers. Last week, flat-bellied and fit but pushing 64, Disciplinarian Lear announced that he would retire next month as a field officer. (His probable assignment: a desk job on onetime Chief of Staff Malin Craig’s general promotion board.)

Near the close of the command he has held for two and a half years, blunt Ben Lear gave his estimate of the young men the U.S. has sent him for training: essentially all right, but badly brought up. In a speech prepared for Army Day this week, General Lear gave civilian America an insight into the Spartan philosophy he has sought to instill. He also handed out a soldier’s estimate of the old U.S. way of life.

“… I suggest that you look to the family discipline, since the Army or the factories sooner or later inherit the children of the nation and have to cope with the type of discipline or lack of discipline that results from their home and school life.” Gadgets & Vitamins. “We have had great stadiums, a vast continent with lots of elbow room, and schools with acres of playgrounds. . . . We have advertised vitamins and health pills and laborsaving gadgets and all sorts of substitutes for good, clean, arduous, energetic, muscle-building and character-building human endeavor. . . .

“It’s not the gadgets that count, nor glittering automobiles doctored for high-octane gas and a speed of 90 miles an hour. Nor endless varieties of canned food, to make life easier for housewives. Nor any other of the impermanent signs of progress.

“We’ve had so-called high standards of living for the past generation — and one-third of our youth are unfit for military service. And many that pass our none-too-high physical standards for entrance into the Army require much time and patience to harden physically—even more time and patience to toughen morally. . . .”

To Evoke, to Develop. “The biggest job in the Army is to knock the complacency out of young officers and men, to make them realize that only by dint of their greatest effort, their utmost unselfishness, their infinite pains, and their capacity for self-sacrifice . . . will victory be attained. We must arouse in them the spirit of the offensive.

“Do you know what those words really mean? Many of our young people, despite their high-school and university educations, don’t know until they have been in the Army among combat troops for months—greatest effort, utmost unselfishness, infinite pains, capacity for self-sacrifice.

“The symbol of success in unselfishness in the Army is the timeless, ever-present devotion of the good noncommissioned officer and the officer toward their men. The symbol of greatest efforts and infinite pains is in the faithful, ardent, forceful, continuous training of every man to be a soldier, not cannon fodder. . . .

“Such men can stand at the feet of the Almighty and salute the hereafter with honor and pride. . . . Man himself … remains the decisive factor in battle. . . .”