It is an explicable contradiction of the American birthright that to some of our people the military establishment is at best a necessary evil, and military service is an extraordinary hardship rather than an inherent obligation. Yet these illusions are rooted deep in the American tradition, though it is a fact to be noted not without hope that we are growing wiser as we move along. In the years which followed the American Revolution, the new union of States tried to eliminate military forces altogether. There was vast confusion of thought as to what freedom required for its own survival. Thomas Jefferson, one of the great architects of democracy, and still renowned for his "isolationist" sentiments, wrote the warning: "We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe until this is done." None the less, the hour came when the standing Army was reduced to 80 men. None the less, the quaint notion has survived that an enlightened interest in military affairs is somehow undemocratic. And none the less, recurring war has invariably found the United States inadequately prepared for the defense of its own territory. Because there has been a holdover of these mistaken sentiments right down to the present, there persists in many military officers a defensive attitude toward their own profession which has no practical relation to the strength of the ground on which they are enabled to stand. Toward any unfair and flippant criticism of the "military mind" they react with resentment, instead of with buoyant proof that their own minds are more plastic and more receptive to national ideals than those of any other profession. Where they should approach all problems of the national security with the zeal of the missionary, seeking and giving light, they treat this subject as if it were a private game preserve. It suffices to say of this minority that they are a barnacle on the hull of an otherwise staunch vessel. From such limited concepts of personal responsibility, there can not fail to develop a foreshortened view of the dignity of the task at hand. The note of apology is injected at the wrong time; the tone of belligerency is used when it serves no purpose. When someone arises within the halls of government to say that the military establishment is "uneconomic" because it cuts no bricks, bales no hay and produces nothing which can be vended in the market places, it is not unusual to hear some military men concur in this strange notion. That acquiescence is wholly unbecoming.