It is not so much that a young officer needs to have book instruction about the detail of these things. Such is the system that they can hardly escape his notice, any more than he can escape knowing where to get his pay check and by which path he goes to the barbershop.
What counts mainly is that he should fully understand the prime importance of a personal caring for his men, so that they cannot fail of a better life if it is within his power and wisdom to lead them to it.
Once the principle is grasped, and accepted without any mental reservation, time and experience will educate him in the countless meetings of situations which require its application.
There are times and situations which require that all men be treated identically, for the good of organization. There are also occasions when nothing else suffices but to give the most help, the most encouragement, the most relief to those who are most greatly in need. Grown men understand that, and the officer, approaching every situation with the question in his mind: "What does reason say about what constitutes fair play in this condition?" cannot go far wrong in administering to the welfare of those who serve under him.
It is moral courage, combined with practice, which builds in one a delicate sense of the eternal fitness of things.
One example: Under normal training conditions, it would be fair play, and the acceptable thing, to rotate men and their junior leaders to such an onerous task as guard duty. But if a unit was "dead beat" after a hard march, and an officer, pursuing his line of duty, walked among his men, inspecting their blistered feet and doing all he could to ease each man's physical discomfort, he would then be using excessively poor judgment if he did not pick out the men most physically fit to do whatever additional duty was required that night.
But infinite painstaking in attending to the physical welfare of men is not more important than thoughtful attention to their spiritual wants, and their moral needs. In fact, if we would give a little more priority to the latter, the former would be far more likely to come along all right.
The average American enlisted man is quite young when he enters service, and because he is young, he is impressionable. What his senior tells him becomes a substitute for the influence and teaching that he shed when he left his home or school. That need not mean a senior in age! He looks to his officer, even though the latter may be junior in years, because he believes that the man with rank is a little wiser, and he has faith that he will not be steered wrong.
Despite all the publicity given to VD, American kids don't know a great deal about its reality, and even though the greater number of them like to talk about women, what they have to say rarely reveals them as worldly-wise.
If an officer talks straight on these subjects, and believes in what he says sufficiently to set the good example, he can convince his better men that the game isn't worth the candle, and can save even some of the more reckless spirits from a major derail.