To get back to the notebook, it should be loose-leaf and well-bound, else it is not likely to be given permanent use. Whether it is kept at home or the office is immaterial. What matters is that it be made a receptacle for everything that one hears, reads or sees which may be of possible future value in the preparation of classroom work. Books can't be clipped; but short, decisive passages can be copied, and longer ones can be made the subject of a reference item. Copying is one way of fixing an idea in the memory. While on the subject of books, it is all right to quote the classics and to be able to refer to the great authorities on the science of war. But it is more effective by far to read deeply into such writers as Clausewitz, Mahan and Fuller, and to find some of their strongest but least-known passages for one's self, than to rely on the more popular but shop-worn quotations which are in general circulation. Such old chestnuts as, "The moral is to the material as three to one," do not refresh discourse.
Even so, the classics are only one small field worth cultivating. Nearly every major speech by current military leadership contains a passage or two well worth salting away. The writings of the philosophers, the publications of the industrial world, the daily press and the scientific journals are goldmines containing rich nuggets of information and of choice expression worth study and preservation.
In fact, the military instructor has the whole world as his workshop. His notebook should be as ready to receive some especially apt saying by a new recruit as the more ponderous words uttered by the sages. And it should contain, not less, comments on techniques and methods used by other speakers and instructors, which were visibly unusually effective.
Above all, the consistent use of obvious and stereotyped devices and methods of presentation should be avoided. For the fact is that no one has yet discovered the one best way. In our service thinking, we tend to get into a rut, and to use none but the well-tried way. For example, we overwork the twin principles of thought-surprise and thought-concentration, and in the effort to produce dramatic effect, we sometimes achieve only an anticlimax. Using the techniques of the advertising world, the military instructor puts his exhibits behind a screen, in order to buildup anticipation, and at the appropriate moment he yanks the cover off. This is perfectly effective, in some instances. But it becomes a reductio ad absurdum when he is working with only one chart, or a pair or so of objects. Let's say that he is talking about one machine gun, and he has one chart highlighting its characteristics. How much more impressive it would be if they were in the open at the beginning and he were to start by saying: "Gentlemen, I am talking about this one gun and what keeps it going. It is more important that you see and know this gun from this moment than that you be persuaded by what I am about to say!"
It is a very simple but inviolable rule that where there is an obvious straining to produce an effect by the use of any training aid, then the effect of the training aid is lost and the speaker is proportionately enfeebled. A famous World War II commander said of all operations: "It is the chaps, not the charts, that get the job done."
What needs to be kept in mind is the psychological object in their use. The scientists tell us, and we can partly take their word for it, that people learn about 75 percent of what they know through their sight, 13 percent through their hearing, and 12 percent through their other senses. But this is a relative and qualitative, rather than an absolute, truth. It has to be so. Otherwise, book study, which employs sight exclusively, would be the only efficient method of teaching, and oral instruction, which depends primarily on sound impact, would be a wasteful process.
The more fundamental truth is that when oral instruction is properly done, the mind becomes peculiarly receptive because it is being bombarded by both sight and sound impressions. Nor is this small miracle wrought primarily by what we call training aids. The thoughts and ideas which remain most vivid in the memory get their adhesive power because some particular person said them in a graphic way in a pregnant moment. Our working thoughts are more often the product of an association with some other individual than not. We remember words largely because we remember an occasion. We believe in ideas because first we were impressed by the source whence they came.
The total impression of a speaker—his sincerity, his knowledge, his enthusiasm, his mien, and his gestures—is what carries conviction and puts an indelible imprint on the memory. Man not only thinks, but he moves, and he is impressed most of all by animate objects. Vigorous words mean little or nothing to him when they issue from a lack-luster personality.
Artificiality is one of the more serious faults, and it is unfortunately the case that though an instructor may be solid to the core, he will seem out of his element, unless he is careful to avoid stilted words and vague or catch-all phrases and connectives. Strength in discourse comes of simplicity.
But it has become almost an American disease of late that we painfully avoid saying it straight. "We made contact, and upon testing my reaction to him, found it distinctly adverse" is substituted for "I met him and didn't like him." But what is equally painful is to hear public remarks interlarded with such phrases as "It would seem," "As I was saying," "And so, in closing," "Permit me to call your attention to the fact" and "Let us reflect briefly"—which is often the prelude to a 2-hour harangue.