The armed establishment has its own body of law. Therein, too, it differs from any civilian autonomy except the state itself. The code is intended to enable a uniform standard of treatment to all individuals in the regulating of all interior affairs. The code is not rigid; its provisions are not absolute. It specifies the general nature of offenses against society, and special offenses against the good of the service. But, except for the more serious offenses, particularly those which by their nature also violate the civil code, it does not flatly prescribe trial and punishment. Military law, in this respect, has more latitude, and is more congenial, than civil law covering minor offenders. Rarely arbitrary in its workings, it premises the use of corrective good judgment at all times. It regards force as an instrument only to be used for conserving the general good of the establishment. The essential power behind the force is something spiritual--the will and conscience of the great majority, expressing itself through the action of one or several of their number. Its major object is not punishment of the wrong-doer but protection of the interests of the dutiful. This view of military law is four-square with the basic principle of all action within the armed services--_that in all cases the best policy is one which depends for its workings on the sense of duty in men toward each other, and thereby strengthens that sense through its operations._ Put in these terms, the attitude of the service toward the problem of correction as a means of promoting the welfare of the general establishment obviously reposes a tremendous burst in the justice and goodwill of the average officer. It would be useless to blink the fact. But there is this to be said unalterably in favor of the military system's way of handling things: If the organization of the whole human family into an orderly unit is ever to be made possible, it will be done only because many men, of all ages and working at many different levels, develop this faculty for passing critical, impartial judgment on the conduct and deserts of those whom they lead, instead of regarding it as a special kind of wisdom, given only to the few anointed. Nor is that all. Not only the knowledge but the sense of duty in men is imperfect. In every society are men who will not obey the law of their own accord. Unless the authority which receives and interprets the law will also impose it, by force if necessary, the reign of law soon ceases. Whether an ordered society is to exist thus depends upon whether there are citizens enough, fixed with a sense of duty, to obey it and to enforce it.