We can take two officers. Lieutenant "A" enters the service with one main question in mind: "Where does my duty lie?" So long as he remains on that beam, he will never injure the morale of the service by using such privileges as are rightfully his as an officer. But in the mind of Lieutenant "B" the other idea is uppermost: "What kudos do I get out of my position?" Unless that man changes his ways, he will be a troublemaker while he remains in the service, a headache to his fellow officers and a despoiler of those who are under him. In recent years, we have learned a lot about American manpower. We have seen enough of the raw material under testing conditions to know that, with the exception of the occasional malcontent who was irreparably spoiled before he left home, American young men when brought into military organization do not resent rank, and are amenable to authority. Indeed, they expect that higher authority will have certain advantages not common to the rank-and-file, because that is normal in our society in all of its workday relationships. But they do not like to have their noses rubbed in it by officers who, having no real moral claim on authority, try to exhibit it by pushing other people around. And when that happens, our men get their backs up. And they wouldn't be worth a hoot in hades if they didn't. Even as privilege attends rank and station, it is confirmed by custom, and modified by time and environment. What was all right yesterday may be all wrong tomorrow, and what is proper in one set of circumstances may be wholly wrong in another. Take one example. In Washington's Continental Army, a first lieutenant was court-martialed and jailed because he demeaned himself by doing manual labor with a working detail of his men. Yet in that same season, Major General von Steuben, then trainer and inspector of all the forces, created a great scandal and almost terminated his usefulness by trying to rank a relatively junior officer out of his quarters. Today both of these usages seem out of joint. Any officer has the _privilege_ of working with his men, if he needs exercise, wishes to see for himself how the thing is done, or feels that an extra hand is needed on the job at a critical moment. As for any notion that his quarters are his permanent castle no matter who comes, he had best not make an issue of the point! But to emphasize it once again, duty is the great regulator of the proper exercise of one's rights. Here we speak of duty as it was meant by Giuseppe Mazzini, Italy's great patriot of the early Nineteenth Century, when he said: "Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every effort to its fulfillment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty." For finally the key lies in this, that out of high regard for duty comes as a natural flow that sense of proportion which we call common sense.