The Armed Forces Officer Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2

Other things being equal, a superior rating will invariably be given to the officer who has persevered in his studies of the art of self-expression, while his colleague, who att...

In that gallery of Great Americans whose names are conspicuously identified with the prospering of the national arms in peace and war, there are almost as many types as there ar...

Mutual respect and courtesy are indispensable elements in military organization. The junior shows deference to the senior; the senior shows consideration for him. The salute is...

Upon being commissioned in the Armed Services of the United States, a man incurs a lasting obligation to cherish and protect his country and to develop within himself that capac...

In the same way that knowledge of individual nature becomes the key to building strength within the group, an understanding of crowd nature is essential to the preservation of t...

Among the ever-pressing problems of the commander, and equally of the young officer schooling himself to the ways of the service, is the seeking of means to break down the natur...

In the history of American arms, the most revealing chapter as to the nature of the human animal does not come from any story of the battlefield but from the record of 23 white...

Any stranger making a survey of what Americans are and how they get that way would probably see it as a paradox that within the armed establishment the inculcation of ideals is...

To grow in knowledge of how to win a loyal and willing response from military forces, there must first be understanding of the springs of human action, what they are, and how th...

Instruction is just about the begin-all and end-all of every military officer's job. He spends the greater part of his professional life either pitching it or catching it, and t...

If you like people, if you seek contact with them rather than hiding yourself in a corner, if you study your fellow men sympathetically, if you try consistently to contribute so...

The saying of the Old Sergeant that, "It takes a war to knock the hell out of the Regular Army," applies as broadly to war's effects upon the general peacetime establishment.

It is altogether possible for a young officer his first time in battle to be in total possession of his faculties and moving by instinct to do the right thing, provided that he...

In one of his little-known passages, Robert Louis Stevenson did the perfect portrait of the man who finally failed at everything, because he just never learned how to take hold...

In civilian society, what amounts to a cult has developed around the idea that the average person has a natural bent for some particular job or profession, which if thwarted wil...

To put it in a nutshell, the moral of this chapter is that when men are moral, the moral power which binds them together and fits them for high action is given its main chance f...

The life of any socially upright individual is organized around only a few basic loyalties and the degree of satisfaction which he derives from existence can usually be measured...

The main purpose of this book is to stimulate thought and to encourage the average young officer to seek truth for, and in, himself. It is never a good idea to attempt a precise...

Though many of the aspects of discipline can be discussed more appropriately in other sections of this book, an officer must understand its particular nature within American mil...

There is a main reason why the word "mission" has an especial appropriateness to the military services and implies something beyond the call of duty. The arms of the United Stat...

Inasmuch as most of this book has been directed toward covering the various approaches to this subject, there is need to discuss here only a relatively few points which could no...

One of the illusions having greatest currency among our people is that any green member of the fighting establishment is merely an American civilian in a uniform, and that there...

There is a common saying in the services, and elsewhere, that greater privileges grow out of larger responsibilities, and that the latter justifies the former. This is part trut...

In one of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son there is to be found this bit of wisdom: "Dispatch is the soul of business and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method....

During any period when the United States Coast Guard shall operate as a part of the United States Navy, the Cadets, United States Coast Guard Academy, the United States Coast Gu...

An admiring contemporary spoke of Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the European Recovery Program, as "the kind of man who if tossed through the air would always pick out the rig...

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 noise...

To what has been said, just a few things should be added so that the problem of generating greater powers of leadership within the officer corps may be seen in its true light.

The regulations that govern precedence among officers of the same service and among the services in relation to each other have a very real utility not only in determining succe...