Precision in personal habits, precision in drill and precision in daily living are the high road to that kind of discipline which best insures cool and collected thought and unity of action on the field of battle. When men, working together, successfully attain to a high standard of orderliness, deportment and response, each to the other, they develop the cohesive strength which will carry them through any great crisis. For this reason mainly, military life is far more exacting than civil life. But the services hold that what is best for the many can be achieved without cramping the personal life or blighting individuality and initiative. Within the frame of our system, we can achieve obedience and discipline without destroying independence and impulse. This is idealism, though we seldom think about it in that light. Further, it is all the better that in the beginning these impressions are developed obliquely, rather than through the direct approach of reading a lecture on ideals and ethics, since it means that the man is assisted to reach certain conclusions by himself, and as Kant has said, those things which a man learns pretty much on his own become the ideas that he is least likely to forget. Looking at this subject in its largest aspect, it should be perfectly clear that any institution must know what its ideals are before it can become coherent and confident, and that there must be present in the form of clearly available ideas an imaginative conception of the good at which the institution aims. This is fully recognized in the American armed establishment. For many years, the program of indoctrinating military ideals has been inseparably linked with instruction in democratic ideals, teaching as to the American way of life and clear statement of the policies and purposes of the Government of the United States in its relations with all others powers and peoples. Moreover, it is an accepted principle in all services that this mission can not be carried forward competently except by those officers who are directly in charge of forces. It is not a job for chaplains or orientation specialists, because it cannot flourish unless it is in the hands of those leaders whom men know well and in whom they place their confidence. When men are well led, they become fully receptive to the whole body of ideas which their leaders see fit to put before them. There are two points which follow, as a matter of course. An officer's ability to talk effectively on these or other subjects to his men can be no better than his information, irrespective of his zeal or of his own firm belief in the ideals of his country and service.