There was also the antagonism between themAnd he...
There was also the antagonism between themAnd he couldn't find the bone on which all this was grafted
"I suppose I am annoyed," Hearn said at last"The rooking the enlisted men got on their meat isn't going to make them love you any
"They'll blame Hobart or Mantelli or the mess sergeantThat's hardly to the point anywayYou don't really care, you know that
Damn if he'd give anything away free"If I did, you certainly couldn't understand it
"I imagine I couldI probably have a normal allotment of decent impulses
"You don't think, RobertThe root of all the liberals' ineffectiveness comes right spang out of the desperate suspension in which they have to hold their minds
Right spang out of it! It was almost pleasant to find a bit of mid-western earth in all the polished and refracted facets of the General's speech"Name calling is always easy," Hearn muttered
"Oh, think, man, will you? If you ever followed anything through to the end, not one of your ideas would last for an instantYou think it's important to win this war, don't you?"
"Yes, but I still don't get the tie-up with the meat
"Well, then, follow me out in thisAnd you're going to have to take my word, for I've made a studyWhen I was your age, gold gucci watches a little older, the type of thing that preoccupied me was what makes a nation fight well
"I imagine it would be a kind of identity between the people and the country whether it's for good reasons or bad
The General shook his head"That's a liberal historian's attitudeYou'd be surprised what a tiny factor that is The lamp was beginning to sputter and he reached over to adjust the valve, his face lit rather dramatically for a moment by the light source beneath his chin"There are just two main elementsA nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it hasAnd the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past
"That's the whole works, huh?"
"There's one other big factor I've played with for a timeIf you're fighting in defense of your own soil, then perhaps you're a little more effective
"Then you come back to my point
"I wonder if you know how complicated that isIf a man fights on his own soil, it's also a great deal easier for him to desertThat's one problem I never have to consider on AnopopeiIt's true the other thing overweighs it, but stop and think about itFondness for a country is denim chanel bag all very lovely, it even is a morale factor at the beginning of a warBut fighting emotions are very undependable, and the longer a war lasts the less value they haveAfter a couple of years of war, there are only two considerations that make a good army: a superior material force and a poor standard of livingWhy do you think a regiment of Southerners is worth two regiments of Easterners?"
"I don't think they are
"Well, it happens to be true The General placed his fingertips together judiciously and looked at Hearn"I'm not peddling theoriesAnd the conclusions leave me, as a general officer, in a poor positionWe have the highest standard of living in the world and, as one would expect, the worst individual fighting soldiers of any big powerOr at least in their natural state they areThey're comparatively wealthy, they're spoiled, and as Americans they share most of them the peculiar manifestation of our democracyThey have an exaggerated idea of the rights due themselves as individuals and no idea at all of the rights due othersIt's the reverse of the peasant, and I'll tell you right now it's the peasant who makes the soldier
"So what you've got to do is break them down," Hearn saidEvery time an enlisted man d&g bags sees an officer get an extra privilege, it breaks him down a little more
"I don't see thatIt seems to me they'd hate you moreBut they also fear us moreI don't care what kind of man you give me, if I have him long enough I'll make him afraidEvery time there's what you call an Army injustice, the enlisted man involved is confirmed a little more in the idea of his own inferiority He smoothed the hair over his temple"I happen to know of an American prison camp in England which'll be a terror once we invade EuropeThe methods used will be brutal, and it's going to cause a stink eventually, but it happens to be necessaryIn our own back yard we have a particular replacement depot where an attempt was actually made to kill the Colonel in commandYou aren't capable of understanding it, but I can tell you, Robert, that to make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladderMen in prison camps, deserters, or men in replacement camps are in the backwaters of the Army and the discipline has to be proportionately more powerfulThe Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates
"Where do I fit into this?" Hearn askedThere are such things as bay bag chloe papal dispensations The General grinned at him, lit another cigaretteAlmost entirely muted, a burst of laughter from the recreation tent filtered through the bivouac to them"You take the man who's out on guard right now, and listens to that laughterIt seems to me there'd come a time when he'd want to turn his machine gun aroundThe time soldiers start doing that is when an army is about defeatedUntil then, the hate just banks in them, makes them fight a little betterThey can't turn it on us, so they turn it outward
"But you've a big gamble there," Hearn said"If we lose the war, you've produced a revolutionIt seems to me in terms of your interest it would be better to lose the war by being overgood to the men, and avoid the revolution afterward"That would be one of your liberal weeklies, wouldn't it? You're an ass, RobertWe're not going to lose the war, and if we did, you don't think Hitler would grant a revolution, do you?"
"Then what you're saying is that you people can't lose the war either way
"You people, you people," the General parroted"That's a bit of Marxism, isn't it, the great big capitalist conspiracyJust how do you know so much about Marxism?"
"I've played around with itI doubt if you really omega mens watch fake h