The operations of Chiang Kai Chek against the Japanese are another example of rejecting the enemy's style; over the enormous terrain of China, the defending armies could scatter and hide from aircraft; the cities fell or were gutted by fire; but the people moved around them, the armies remained. Japan's attack on Britain and ourselves began with islands, where the lesson of China could not be applied; and the islands were dependencies, not free nations like China, so the psychology of defense was also different; in the opening phases there was no choice and the Japanese forced us to accept their way of making war. Their way, it appears, is appropriate to their beliefs, their requirements in food, their capacity to imitate Europe, and dozens of other factors, not precisely similar to ours. Their experience and outlook in life and ideas of honor may lead to the suicide bomber; ours do not. Our dive bombers feel no shame if they miss a target; they have a duty which is to save their ships and return for another try; it is against the whole natural tradition of the west that a man should kill himself for the honor of a ruler; we would not send out an army with orders to gain honor by death, as we prefer to gain honor by victory. So in the true sense it would be suicidal for us to imitate the Japanese; our heroism-to-the-death is the arrival, at the final moment, of a last reserve of courage and devotion; it is not a planned bravery, nor a communal devotion, it is as private as liberty—or death.
Our heroism rises out of our lives. Our science of victory will have to be based on our lives, too, on the way we manufacture, play games, read newspapers, eat and drink and bring up children. It is the function of our high command to translate what we can do best into a practical military strategy. The civilian's function is to provide the physical and moral strength needed to support the forces in the field. Here the civilian is qualified to make certain demands, because we know where our intellectual and moral strength lies; we can work to keep the tactics of variety operative in the field of public emotion.
The next two chapters are a translation of the tactics of variety into terms of propaganda and its objective, which is unity of action.
CHAPTER III[ToC]
United...?
When I began to write this book the unity "made in Japan" was beginning to wear thin; when I finished people were slowly accustoming themselves to a new question: they did not know whether an illusion of unity was better than no unity at all.
We know now that we were galvanized into common action by the shock of attack; but to recoil from a blow, to huddle together for self-protection, to cry for revenge—are not the signs of a national unity. Before the war was three months old it was clear that we were not united on any question; while we all intended to win the war, the new appeasers had arrived—who wanted to buy themselves off the consequences of war by not fighting it boldly; or by fighting only Japan; or fighting Japan only at Hawaii; we disagreed about the methods of warfare and the purpose of victory; there were those who wanted the war won without aid from liberals and those who would rather the war were lost than have labor contribute to victory; and those who seemed more interested in preventing profit than in creating munitions; it was a great chance "to put something over"—possibly the radicals could be destroyed, possibly the rich; possibly the President or his wife could be trapped into an error, possibly a sales tax would prevent a new levy on corporations, possibly labor could maneuvre itself into dominance; the requirements of war could be a good excuse for postponing all new social legislation and slily dropping some of the less vital projects; and the inescapable regimentation of millions of people, the necessary propaganda among others, could be used as an opportunity for new social experiments and indoctrination. In these differences and in the bitterness of personal dislike, people believed that the war could not be won unless their separate purposes were also fulfilled; our activities were not designed to fit with one another, and we were like ionized particles, held within a framework, but each pulling away from the others.