It is always the duty of an officer to intervene, toward the protection of his own men against any manifest injustice, whatever its source. In fact, this trust is so implicit that he should be ready to risk his professional reputation upon it, when he is convinced beyond doubt that the man is being unfairly assailed, or that due process is not being followed. Both higher authority and civil authority occasionally overreach; an officer stands as a shield protecting his men against unfair treatment from any quarter. _But it is decidedly not his duty to attempt to cheat law or thwart justice for the sake of his men simply because they are his men._ His job, as Shakespeare puts it, is "to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, to wrong the wronger till he render right." Finally, the best policy on punishments is to eliminate the frictions which are the cause of most transgressions. When a ship is happy, men do their duty. Scarcely anything will cross them up more quickly than to see rewards given with an uneven hand. Even the stinker who has no ambition but to duck work can recognize a deserving man, and will burn if that man is bypassed in favor of a bootlicker or some other lightweight. Nothing is more vain than to give a promotion, or any reward, in the hope, or on the promise, that the character who receives it will hit the sawdust trail and suddenly reform. Duty is the only sure proving ground. Men, like motors, should be judged on their all-around performance. There is no other way to generate the steady pull over the long grind. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN FITTING MEN TO JOBS 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 will fill him with those frustrations which are conceded to be the cause of most of the mental and moral disorders of mankind. Therefore if all men could become rightly placed, we would have Utopia tomorrow. This theory of what humanity mainly cries for is perforce rejected by the military establishment, for several eminently practical as well as ideal reasons. It discounts man, his plastic and impressionable nature, his response to all that goes on around him and his marked ability to adjust to any environment. He is not like a bolt fitted into a hole by a riveter, nor merely clay in the hands of the potter. What he becomes is mainly of his own making. Further, the theory does not meet the needs of the situation, since in the services, as elsewhere, there are not enough better holes to go around, and no man is ready to say that he is good for nothing but life as a file-closer.