Army & Navy – MORALE: What Are We Fighting For?

“I had rather have a [soldier] that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows. . . .”—Cromwell.

At Army posts and camps in the U.S. this week soldiers gathered in groups for a compulsory one-hour-a-week discussion period. The subject of their more or less self-conscious pondering: What are we fighting for?

The high command was trying to indoctrinate its troops. It had been trying for 21 months, on a voluntary basis, with unimpressive results. With discussions now a prescribed part of military training, the Army hoped to make up for lost time.

The Gospel Train. Mainspring of the new wind-up is the Orientation & Education course at the Army’s School for Special Services, in Lexington, Va. There key men are learning how to lecture, use films and news maps, arm the nation’s soldiers with knowledge and moral conviction.

Two groups of some 360 specially selected officers have finished O. & E.’s 14-day course and have gone back to their posts to pass their learning on to other officers and noncoms who will preside over soldier powwows. Last week a third group at Lexington plowed its way into eight hours a day of intensive classroom work. So far the compulsory part of the program has not been extended to overseas units.

Best summary of O. & E.’s education program is its own 36-page bible: Guide to the Use of Information Materials, a mixture of mild-mannered good thoughts, tough pep talks and salty advice.

The Aims. Says the Guide: “There is no room for discussion of anything short of total military victory over the enemy.” We aim to end gangsterism in international affairs, restore “law as the rule of action in the intercourse of nations.”

The Enemy. Not only the rulers but the people of the Axis nations are our enemies. “We cannot overthrow the Japanese military caste short of complete defeat of the Japanese people such as will compel them to submit to our discipline.”

The Allies. It is every man’s duty to improve Anglo-American relations; no single condition is more vital to victory and the restoration of peace than “an uninterrupted friendship with England.”

Americans do not subscribe to the Soviet Union’s system of government, but they believe in the principle for which the Red soldiers fight: the right to determine how they shall be governed.

Rumors which create suspicion of the Allies are like self-inflicted wounds. Overplaying the U.S. effort and underplaying the Allies’ “may be understandable in a civilian press striving for street sales and circulation,” but such conceits are not becoming to U.S. troops.

Hatred. “An-eye-for-an-eye” is outmoded doctrine. The new rule: “If your enemy shoots your toe, you shoot his head.” A soldier must be “anxious to work bodily destruction upon the foes of his country.” Japan’s war leaders are malevolent, uncivilized men. Their murder of the Doolittle flyers was an action which made “the name of the Japanese Army stink.”

Racial Groups. “The work of the Army will be seriously impeded if any racial group is held back from full participation in the war effort.”

The Nation. Anyone who suggests that the Armed Forces will run things after the war should get his knuckles rapped. That kind of talk is irresponsible and “not a proper subject for those who are conditioning the thinking of military personnel.” Domestic nonpartisan politics, such as prohibition, may be discussed.

Home News. News from the home front should be handled by discussion leaders and by Army newspapers so as to inform, not incite. The story that manpower is due to be drafted into war factories will probably make the average soldier more content. Stories of gas rationing and other rigors also provide “an uplift.” Restraint should be shown in the spreading of information about high wages, big profits.

Morals. Under the heading The Female Form in Army Newspapers, the Guide says all it has to say about morals. It is not the function of Army information channels to provide pinups for dugout walls. But the Guide “cannot refrain” from quoting an editorial from an Alaskan post’s newspaper saluting a strip-tease artist who posed for pictures for the paper: “You are the bear grease on our lupin-root cakes. You are the seal blubber in our bowl of salmon berries. You are the liver of the caribou.” The Guide acknowledged that in this isolated garrison the pin-up was more warming than “any mere coal fire.”

The Truth. Chief aim of the teachers should be to present the truth, let the soldiers decide. “For a short while only can morale be stimulated by the dope of false propaganda. Then like a drug, the more [the soldier] swallows the more has to be prescribed.” Response of the U.S. soldier to windiness and empty talk, the Guide warns, is “the retort courteous of the 1918 Army: ‘All together boys!—Some etc.!'”