in the chain of force, if
all hands work a little more carefully toward the growth of a common
awareness of all terminology, all process and all purpose.

Once pronounced, the object also requires to be seen in due
proportion. The principle does not entail that a corporal must
perforce know everything about operation of a company which concerns
his captain, to be happy and efficient in his own job. But it does set
forth that he is entitled to have all information which relates to his
personal situation, his prospects and his action which it is within
his captain's power to give him. A coxswain is not interchangeable
with a fleet admiral. To "bigot" him (make available complete detail
of a total plan) on an operation would perhaps produce no better or
worse effect than a slight headache. But if he is at sea--in both
senses of that term--with no knowledge of where he is going or of his
chances of pulling through, and having been told of what will be
expected of him personally at the target, still has no picture of the
support which will be grouped around him, he is apt to be as
thoroughly miserable and demoralized as were the sailors under
Columbus, when sailing on and on, they came to fear that they would
override the horizon and go tumbling into space.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan wrote of the policy applied at his
COSSAC planning headquarters during World War II: "Right down to the
cook, they were told what had happened, what was happening, along with
their part in it, and what it was proposed to do next."

Paraphrasing Montaigne, President Roosevelt told the American people
during a great national crisis that the main thing they need fear was
fear itself. In matters great and small, the fears of men arise
chiefly from those matters they have not been given to understand.
Fear can be checked, whipped and driven from the field when men are
kept informed.

The dynamics of the information principle lies in this simple truth.
We look at the object through the wrong end of the telescope when in
the military service we think of information only as instruction in
the cause of country, the virtues of the free society and the record
of our arms, in the hope that we will make strong converts. These are
among the things that every American needs to know, but of themselves
they will not turn an average American male into an intelligent,
aggressive fighter. Invigorated action is the product of the free and
well-informed mind