are forged only by _doing_
together that which they have been made convinced is constructive.
Their view of its importance is usually contingent upon what others
tell them, and upon a continuing emphasis thereof. _Unity is all at
one time a consequence of, and a cause and condition for great
accomplishment._ Toward that end, it is neither vital nor desirable
that all members of the group coincide in their motives, ideas and
methods of expression. What is important is that each man should know,
and to a reasonable extent incorporate into his own life the thoughts,
desires and interests of the others. Such sentiments, fixed by
repetition, remain as a habit during the life of the group, and
provide the base for disciplined action. But when men are not thus
drawn together and the cord of sympathy remains unstrung, there is no
basis for control, nor any element of contact by which the group may
identify itself with some larger entity and profit by transfusion of
its moral strength.

_The absence of a common purpose is the chief source of unhappiness in
any collection of individuals._ Lacking it, and the common standard of
justice which is one of its chief agents, men become more and more
separate units, each fighting for his own rights. Yet paradoxically,
if an organic unity is to develop within any body of free men, drawn
from a free society to serve its military institutions, and if the
fairest use is to be made of their possibilities, the processes of the
institution must embody respect for the dignity of the individual, for
his rights, and not less, for his desire for worthwhile recognition.
The profile of every man depends upon the space which others leave
him. "Of himself," said Napoleon, "a man is nothing." But every man
also contributes with his every act to the level of what his group may
attain. One of the foremost leaders in the United States Navy in World
War II said this about the integrity of personality: "Every person is
unique. Human talents were never before assembled in exactly the same
way that they have been put together in yourself. Nothing like you
ever happened before. No one can predict with accuracy how you will
grow in your particular combination of skills if allowed complete
freedom of movement." If there is one word out of place in that
statement, it is "complete;" no one has complete freedom but a
buccaneer, and it is for the exercise of it that organized society
swings him from a gibbet. It is