It is easy enough to chart a course for the individual who is wise enough to make human relationships his main concern. But getting the knack of it is sufficiently more difficult that it is safe to say more talk has been devoted to this subject than to any other topic of conversation since Noah quit the Ark. From Confucius down to Emily Post, greater and lesser minds have worked at gentling the human race. By the scores of thousands, precepts and platitudes have been written for the guidance of personal conduct. The odd part of it is that despite all of this labor, most of the frictions in modern society arise from the individual's feeling of inferiority, his false pride, his vanity, his unwillingness to yield space to any other man, and his consequent urge to throw his own weight around. Goethe said that the quality which best enables a man to renew his own life, in his relation to others, is that he will become capable of renouncing particular things at the right moment in order warmly to embrace something new in the next.

That is earthy advice for any member of the officer corps. For who is regarded as the strong man in the service—the individual who fights with tooth and nail to hold to a particular post or privilege? Not at all! Full respect is given only to him who at all times is willing to yield his space to a worthy successor, because of an ingrained confidence that he can succeed as greatly in some other sphere.

For a fresh start in this study of getting along with people, we could not do better than quote what was published some time ago in the United States Coast Guard Magazine. Under the title "Thirteen Mistakes," the coast guardsmen raised their warning flares above the 13 pitfalls. It is a mistake:

  1. To attempt to set up your own standard of right and wrong.
  2. To try to measure the enjoyment of others by your own.
  3. To expect uniformity of opinions in the world.
  4. To fail to make allowance for inexperience.
  5. To endeavor to mold all dispositions alike.
  6. Not to yield on unimportant trifles.
  7. To look for perfection in our own actions.
  8. To worry ourselves and others about what can't be remedied.
  9. Not to help everybody wherever, however, whenever we can.
  10. To consider impossible what we cannot ourselves perform.
  11. To believe only what our finite minds can grasp.
  12. Not to make allowances for the weakness of others.
  13. To estimate by some outside quality, when it is that within which makes the man.

The unobserving officer will no doubt dismiss this list as just so many clichés. The reflective man will accept it as a negative guide to positive conduct, for it engages practically every principle which is vital to the growth of a strong spiritual life in relation to one's fellow men.

Certain of these points stand out as prominently as pips on a radar screen to the military officer bent on keeping his own ship out of trouble. The morals contained in 4, 5, 12, and 13 all come to bear in the story told by Sgt. Fred Miller about Pvt. Fred Lang of Hospital No. 1 on Bataan. Miller had tried to do what he could for Lang, but no one else in the detachment was willing to give him a break. He was an unlettered hillbilly and, being ashamed of his own ignorance, he was shy toward other men. The rest of the story is best told in Miller's words.

"When the Japs made their first bombing run on Marivales, most of us, being new at war, huddled together under such cover as we could find. Some people were hit outside. We stayed where we were. But we looked out and saw Lang. He was trying to handle a stretcher by himself, dragging one end along the ground in an effort to bring in the wounded. I remember one member of our group remarking, 'Look at old Lang trying to do litter drill right in the middle of a war.' Lang was killed by an enemy bomb that night. I guess he had to die to make us understand that he was the best man."

There is hardly an American who has been in combat but can tell some other version of this same story, changing only the names and the surroundings. All too frequently it happens in the services—we look at a man, and because at a casual inspection we do not like the cut of his jib, or the manner of his response, or are over-persuaded by what someone else has said about him, we reach a permanent conclusion about his possibilities, and either mentally write him off, or impair our own capacity for giving him help.

It suffices to say that when any officer has the inexcusable fault that he takes snap judgment on his own men, he will not be any different in his relations with all other people, and will stand in his own light for the duration of his career. Which leads to one other observation. When any man, bearing a bad efficiency report, comes to a new organization, it is a fact to be noted with mild interest, but without any prejudice whatever. Every new assignment means a clean slate, and there should be no hangover from what has happened, including the possible mistaken judgments of others. The system was never intended to give a dog a bad name. To be perpetually supervised, questioned and shadowed is to be doubted, and doubt destroys confidence and creates fear, slyness and discontent in the other individual. Every man is entitled to a fresh hold on security with his new superior. Any wise and experienced senior commander will tell you this, and will cite examples of men who came to him with a spotty record, who started nervously, began to pick up after realizing that they were not going to get another kick, and went on to become altogether superior. For any right-minded commander, it is far more gratifying to be able to salvage human material than to take over an organization that is sound from bottom to top.

However, the truth in point 9 applies universally. The studied effort to be helpful in all of our relations with our fellow men, and to give help not grudgingly, but cheerfully, courteously and in greater measure than is expected, is the high road to wide influence and personal strength of character. More than all else, it is the little kindnesses in life which bind men together and help each wayfarer to start the day right. These tokens are like bread cast upon the water; they ultimately nourish the giver more than the direct beneficiary. One of our best-known corps commanders in the Pacific War made it a rule that if any man serving under him, or any man he knew in the service, however unimportant, was promoted or given any other recognition, he would write a letter to the man's wife or mother, saying how proud he felt. He was not a great tactician or strategist but, because of the little things he did, men loved him and would ride to hell for him, and their collective moral strength became the bastion of his professional success.