ll warm toward a leader when they come to believe
that all the energy he stores up by living somewhat within himself is
at their service. But when they feel that this is not the case, and
that his reserve is simply the outward sign of a spiritual miserliness
and concentration on purely personal goals, no amount of restraint
will ever win their favor. This is as true of him who commands a whole
service as of the leader of a picket squad.

To speak of the importance of a sense of humor would be unavailing if
it were not that what cramps so many men isn't that they are by nature
humorless but that they are hesitant to exercise what humor they
possess. Within the military profession, it is as unwise as to let the
muscles go soft and to spare the mind the strain of original thinking.
Great humor has always been in the military tradition. The need of it
is nowhere more delicately expressed than in Kipling's lines:

My son was killed while laughing at some jest,
I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time
When jests are few.

Marcus Aurelius, Rome's soldier philosopher, spoke of his love for the
man who "could be humorous in an agreeable way." No reader of Grant's
_Memoirs_ (one of the few truly great autobiographies ever written by
a soldier) could fail to be impressed by his light touch. A delicate
sense of the incongruous seems to have pervaded him; he is at his
whimsical best when he sees himself in a ridiculous light. Lord
Kitchener, one of the grimmest warriors ever to serve the British
Empire, warmed to the man who made him the butt of a practical joke.
There is the unforgettable picture of Admiral Beatty at Jutland. The
_Indefatigable_ has disappeared beneath the waves. The _Queen Mary_
had exploded. The _Lion_ was in flames. Then word came that the
_Princess Royal_ was blown up. Said Beatty to his Flag Captain
"Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our ... ships
today. Turn two points nearer the enemy." Admiral Nimitz, surveying
the terrible landscape of the Kwajalein battlefield for the first
time, said gravely to his Staff: "It's the worst devastation I've ever
seen except for that last Texas picnic in Honolulu." There is a
characteristic anecdote of General Patton. He had just been worsted by
higher headquarters in an argument over strategy. So he sat talking to
his own Staff about it, his dog curled up beside him. Suddenly he said
to the animal: