lity to think about their work. It weakens at every point
where they consider that there is a negative respect for their
intelligence; the dignity in any work is not inherent in the job
itself but in the attitude of others toward it. Cabinet ministers,
college presidents and industrial magnates will quit their jobs when
they feel they no longer have the confidence of those to whom they are
responsible. That experience is as demoralizing to great men as to the
mine-run. Equally, the feeling of compensation which comes with any
token of recognition is one of those touches of human nature which
make all men akin. If men of genius and good works did not find Nobel
prizes and honorary college degrees highly gratifying, this custom
would have faded long ago. It is as rewarding to them to be called
good at their job as it was to the New Jersey street sweeper who
pushed his broom so diligently that he swept halfway into the next
town before discovering his mistake.

The far inferences of these things should be reasonably clear to every
officer of the fighting establishment. It makes little difference
whether a man is digging a ditch or is working up a loading table for
an invasion: what he thinks about his work will depend in large
measure upon the attitude of his superiors. He will develop no great
conviction about what he is doing except as it is transmitted to him.
_The fundamental cause of any breakdown of morale and discipline
within the armed service usually comes of this, that a commander or
his subordinates transgress by treating men as if they were children
or serfs instead of showing respect for their adulthood._

The requirements of modern war are such that we certainly do not want
to turn out one man exactly like another, or turn the majority into
mechanical men, capable of one set function. But the rule applies to
officers as well as men. The greater freedom which is needed has
nothing to do with social behavior or privilege. It is the freedom to
think boldly and originally for the common good, for, to quote Kant
again: "What one learns the most fixedly and remembers the best is
what one learns more or less by oneself."

Thus in the matter of sizing up men, judging of their capacities and
trying to get them rightly placed, the need is not a formula, since no
formula will work. It is only by keeping principles uppermost in our
thoughts that the greatest measure of common sense will prevail in our
actions. That is