Retrospective - Soldier: Where do you stand?
Introduction
This edition’s Retrospect article is drawn from the October-November 1949 editorial of the Australian Army Journal. It is, nonetheless, of enduring relevance. It poses the perennial question ‘... what sort of Army do we want and what sort of men do we want in it?’ Times have changed, most significantly to the extent that we need appropriately to include women in our inquiry.
Although the times have changed, the rigours, risks and privations of soldiering have not. In his memorable reflection on the unique nature of the profession of arms, General Douglas MacArthur eloquently reminded us that ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ constitute the creed of the soldier. These are timeless virtues. The characteristics of war are likewise timeless. It is violent, deadly and harsh.
Professional soldiers are men and women apart. They enter a contract of unlimited liability with their nation in that they may be required to die in the pursuit of their duty. Quite apart from the hazards of operational service, the demands of training, relocation and separation impose a degree of sacrifice on the soldier that has no equivalent in civilian reality. In an era of prosperity and individual empowerment, the chasm between the comforts of civilian and military life have never been greater.
Other than during the two World Wars, our Army has struggled to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of suitable people. Low unemployment, coupled with record prosperity, today creates a highly competitive labour market. Over time, we are constantly told this situation will be compounded by the adverse demographic trends of a lower birth rate and ageing population.
Earlier this year, the former Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, asserted that the Australian Defence Force would inevitably need to revert to conscription to avert a personnel crisis.
Was this the counsel of despair? Certainly, neither the Government nor the current Service Chiefs endorsed the proposal. A study of the deliberations of our Chiefs-of-Staff Committees over the past 50 years reveals a customary oscillation between arguments for improved service conditions and conscription as a panacea for personnel shortages.
Perhaps the conclusions of our editorial writer from 1949 warrant re-examination. He warned against the folly of simply improving pay and conditions. As he noted, generous conditions may attract ‘a bumper harvest of soft-handed, softhearted clock-watchers.’
His conclusions echo down the years. ‘It is simply not true that the ideal of community service is dead, not in this country at any rate. All over Australia thousands of men and women are engaged on voluntary, unpaid and, very often unrecognised service to the community.’ Australians take pride in our identity as a nation of volunteers.
Could it be that, Army in particular, does not place sufficient emphasis on the unique nature of service? Rather than seeking to attract young men and women through blandishments deemed necessary by advertising agencies, we need to emphasise tradition, sacrifice and service as the hallmarks of an Army career. The revival of Anzac Day, especially among the young, suggests that they grasp these intangibles. Perhaps we do not do them or ourselves credit by pretending the Army is just another job.
The Army is operating at a very high tempo. It is also undergoing a profound transformation under the rubric of the Hardened and Networked Army (HNA). Providing the hardware for the HNA will be relatively straightforward. But our success in finding robust, adaptable and compassionate men and women, capable of prevailing in the complex operational environment of the 21st century, will ultimately determine whether this initiative succeeds. It is perhaps time, as our editorial writer concluded, for an ‘... appeal for recruits couched in a loftier tone and on a higher spiritual level ...’
Soldier: Where do you stand?
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true.
- Shakespeare—King John, Act V, Scene VII
Ever since the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, millions and millions of words have been spoken and written around the theme that a war fought with these weapons will result in the sudden extinction of civilisation. The historian, of course, knows better. He knows that few civilisations and few nations have been wiped out by mechanical means. Civilisations and nations die, as a rule, from a disease of the soul, a paralysis of the spiritual force that gave them birth and sustained their growth. And he knows, too, that nearly all civilisations and nations that have fallen by the wayside were dying of this spiritual disease long before they had reached the highest point of their technological achievements.
Hair splitters sometimes argue that history does not repeat itself. They cannot, however, disprove the constant operation of the universal law that similar causes produce similar effects. Not that they haven’t tried of course. Ever and anon man, in his cups and his dreams and other seasons of maudlin vision, arrives at the exhilarating conclusion that the brilliant age graced by his own presence on earth has raised itself above the natural law. Grasshoppers, too, or those of them who drink or resort to sentimental novels and plays with happy endings, doubtless stage gallant little revolts in their hearts. But grasshoppers, like men, are always forced by the inexorable turn of the wheel of life back to the unpalatable truth that there is, after all, a very definite connection between the making of beds and the lying thereon.
Curiously enough, in these seasons of sad sobriety we, as individuals, always blame the other fellow. It is all the fault of the man next door. If he had only worked a bit harder, if he had only given a little to the service of the nation instead of devoting all his energies to the furtherance of his own selfish interests, we should never have gotten into this sorry mess. And the man next door, in the throes of his share of the hangover, is also blaming—the man next door.
Actually, you don’t have to wait for the next crash to hear this sort of talk. It is all around you every day; it is a favourite topic of conversation with all of us. Ask any soldier, for instance, why the Army, in both its Regular and Citizen Force branches, is below establishment. He is pretty sure to tell you that it is because men no longer care a hoot about their country, that they have no thoughts, and don’t intend to have any thoughts, about anything except easy money and easy living, racing horses and racing dogs, beefsteaks and beer. He could be right. On the other hand it is at least possible that he would be nearer the truth if he said: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves ...’ or words to that effect.
In the first place, what sort of an Army do we want and what sort of men do we want in it? Do we want regulars attracted by ‘conditions of service’, mere mercenaries selling their services for money alone? Do we want citizen soldiers anxious to earn ‘extra money’ in the service of their country, or to relieve the boredom of ‘spare time’ which we seem to suppose that active, virile young men possess in abundance? Or do we want men imbued with the highest ideals of citizenship and community service, men whose activities are not governed solely by the idea of pecuniary gain?
If we want mercenaries our problem is relatively simple. There are no manpower controls in this country. The labour market is free for all. We have only to raise the price and provide a sufficiently high scale of easy living through numerous ‘amenities’ and ‘concessions’ to gather in a bumper harvest of soft-handed, soft-hearted clockwatchers. And what sort of an army would these men make? Certainly not the sort of army that this country needs.
Too many people, without pausing to examine their own consciences, are ready to assert that patriotism is dead, that such vestiges of the ideal of community service still discernible are but fossilised remnants of an older and better age. It is so easy to say this, and so convenient too. It provides us at once with an excuse for failure and a sop to our conscience as we too surrender to the spiritual disease that ends in death.
It is simply not true that the ideal of community service is dead, not in this country at any rate. All over Australia tens of thousands of men and women are engaged on voluntary, unpaid and, very often, unrecognised service to the community. Indeed, public approbation is the last thing they seek. They do the job for its own sake, and they do it well. If people like this did not exist many the institutions we take for granted, and which contribute so much to the life of the community, would have collapsed long ago. And they are not all old folk. A surprisingly large number of young men, ideal types for military service, are putting enthusiastic efforts into some aspect of community work.
Why cannot we get some of these young men into the Army? Well, maybe these people are not so bored that they have spare time on their hands. Maybe they don’t want any extra money. Perhaps if we appealed to patriotism and idealism rather than the baser motives of self-interest we might gather some of them into our own fold.
That an appeal for recruits couched in a loftier tone and on a higher spiritual level will fall on many deaf ears may be taken for granted. But that it will yield an infinitely superior qualitative response is hardly open to question. And, having regard to the mission of our peacetime army, quality is much more important than quantity. Better to say with King Henry at Agincourt, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,’ than to fill our ranks with men morally and intellectually incapable of fulfilling the tasks which will fall to them when the bottom drops out of the present uneasy peace.
At any rate it is worth trying. But before we try the Army must be very sure of itself, very sure that it is not suffering, individually and collectively, from that disease of the soul which is fatal alike to civilisations, nations and institutions. Let every soldier then look into his own heart. If he sees there anything less than the highest ideals of service let him be silent, let him not cast aspersions upon his neighbour’s motives.
Only the soldier who feels within himself the spiritual force of idealism and obeys its urge is entitled to esteem himself as something superior to the ordinary ruck of his fellows, only then is he truly dedicated to the most exacting, but at the same time the most exalted role a servant of the state can be called upon to play.
Let us cultivate this moral grace, let us nourish it with selfless devotion to the interests of the service to which we have the privilege to belong. Then, uplifted by the spirit of consecration, and dignified by the sense of responsibility and quiet pride that accompanies it, let us invite like-minded men, in language they understand and appreciate, to join our exclusive brotherhood.
