men
is not more important than thoughtful attention to their spiritual
wants, and their moral needs. In fact, if we would give a little more
priority to the latter, the former would be far more likely to come
along all right.

The average American enlisted man is quite young when he enters
service, and because he is young, he is impressionable. What his
senior tells him becomes a substitute for the influence and teaching
that he shed when he left his home or school. That need not mean a
senior in age! _He looks to his officer, even though the latter may be
junior in years, because he believes that the man with rank is a
little wiser, and he has faith that he will not be steered wrong._

Despite all the publicity given to VD, American kids don't know a
great deal about its reality, and even though the greater number of
them like to talk about women, what they have to say rarely reveals
them as worldly-wise.

If an officer talks straight on these subjects, and believes in what
he says sufficiently to set the good example, he can convince his
better men that the game isn't worth the candle, and can save even
some of the more reckless spirits from a major derail.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

KEEPING YOUR MEN INFORMED

Nobody ever told the South Sea savage about the nature of air in
motion. He had never heard of wind and therefore could not imagine its
effects. Thus when he heard strange noises in the treetops and there
was a howling around certain headlands, while other headlands were
silent, he could believe only that the spirits were at work. He would
strain his ear to hear what they had to say to him, and never being
able to understand, he would become all the more fearful.

It all sounds pretty silly. And yet civilization is a great deal like
that. We pride ourselves today in saying, particularly within the
western nations, that men and women are better informed than ever
before in the history of the world. What we really mean by that is
that they are overburdened with more kinds of fragmentary information
than any people of the past. They know just enough about many major
questions of the day that either they are driven to the making of
fearful guesses about the unknown, or they try to close their minds to
the subject, vainly seeking consolation in the half-truth, "What I
don't know can't hurt me."

Therein lies a great part of the problem. For it is a fair statement
that if all of the mystery could be str