In the files of the Navy Department there is a picture of Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, the famed commander of Task Force 58, coming on board a flagship to take command of a force of carriers. Officers and men are lined up at spick-and-span attention. The Admiral himself appears as a little man in a rumpled khaki uniform, tieless and wearing an informal garrison cap. Under his arm is a book, and in the photograph the title can be read as "Send Another Coffin." Mitscher liked detective stories; he didn't like ceremonial pomp.
An interviewer who called on Gen. Ira C. Eaker when he was leading 8th Air Force against Germany found "a strikingly soft-spoken, sober, compact man who has the mild manner of a conservative minister and the judicial outlook of a member of the Supreme Court. But he is always about two steps ahead of everybody on the score, and there is a quiet, inexorable logic about everything he does." Of his own choice, Eaker would have separated from military service after World War I. He wanted to be a lawyer and he also toyed with the idea of running a country newspaper. In his off hours, he wrote books on aviation for junior readers. On the side, he studied civil law and found it "valuable mental training."
On the eve of the Guadalcanal landing, Gen. A. A. Vandegrift's final order to his command ended with the stirring and now celebrated phrase: "God favors the bold and strong of heart." Yet in the afterglow of later years, the Nation read a character sketch of him which included this: "He is so polite and so soft spoken that he is continually disappointing the people whom he meets. They find him lacking in the fire-eating traits they like to expect of all marines, and they find it difficult to believe that such a mild-mannered man could really have led and won the bloody fight." When another officer spoke warmly of Vandegrift's coolness under fire, his "grace under pressure," to quote Hemingway's phrase, he replied: "I shouldn't be given any credit. I'm built that way."
The point is beautifully taken. Too often the man with great inner strength holds in contempt those less well endowed by nature than himself.
While there are no perfect men, there are those who become relatively perfect leaders of men because something in their makeup brings out in strength the highest virtues of all who follow them. That is the way of human nature. Minor shortcomings do not impair the working loyalty, or growth, of the follower who has found someone whose strengths he deems worth emulating. On the other hand, to recognize merit, you must yourself have it. The act of recognizing the worthwhile traits in another person is both the test and the making of character. The man who scorns all others, and thinks no one else worth following, parades his own inferiority before the world. He puts his own character into bankruptcy just as surely as does that other sad camp follower of whom Thomas Carlyle wrote: "To recognize false merit, and crown it as true, because a long tail runs after it, is the saddest operation under the sun."
Sherman, Logan, Rawlins and the many others hitched their wagons to Grant's star because they saw in him a man who had a way with other men, and who commanded them not less by personal courage than by patient work in their interest. Had Grant spent time brooding over his civilian failures, he would have been stuck with a disorderly camp and would never have gotten out of Illinois.
The nobility of the private life and influence of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the grandeur of his military character are known to every American school boy. His peerless gifts as a battle leader have won the tribute of celebrated soldiers and historians throughout the English-speaking world. Likewise, the deep religiosity of his great lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, the latter's fiery zeal and the almost evangelical power with which he lifted the hearts of all men who followed him, are hallmarks of character that are vividly remembered in whatever context his name happens to be mentioned.
If we turn for a somewhat closer look at Grant it is because he, more than any other American soldier, left us a full, clear narrative of his own growth, and of the inner thoughts and doubts pertaining to himself which attended his life experience. There was a great deal of the average man in Grant. He was beset by human failings. He could not look impressive. He had no sense of destiny. In his great hours, it was sweat, rather than inspiration, dogged perseverance, rather than the aura of power, which made the hour great.
Average though he was in many things, there was nothing average about the strong way in which he took hold, applying massive common sense to the complex problems of the field. That is why he is worth close regard. His virtues as a military leader were of the simpler sort which plain men may understand and hope to emulate. He was direct in manner. He never intrigued. His speech was homely. He was approachable. His mind never deviated from the object. Though a stubborn man, he was always willing to listen to his subordinates. He never adhered to a plan obstinately, but nothing could induce him to forsake the idea behind the plan.
History has left us a clear view of how he attained to greatness in leadership by holding steadfastly to a few main principles.