The American military system essentially does and must presuppose the squad leader to be as efficient in his domain, as is the commanding general in his. Indeed, an American army made up of prime privates, and the more petty leaders, might pound through, in a pinch, even though faultily disposed betimes by the bestarred and besilvered; whereas, under the reverse circumstance, it would almost certainly suffer defeat at the hands of an evenly-schooled foe.
But a properly trained, led, and served army would not necessarily close a given case. Assume such an army at points on the field with an inferior enemy, and the hazard might still be settled by swivel-chair soldiers, as it very nearly was in the War of the Rebellion; also very nearly was by round-table strategists who insisted that Foch should keep his general reserves massed where he knew he could not use them to advantage, as he had planned, to pummel the German divisions, piled up in a close pocket, where they were glaringly open to raking flank fire.
Fortunately, that issue was settled by the purblind German General Staff, which was so obsessed by the idea of the spectacular capture of Paris, that it could not see Amiens; Amiens, seen at the time by all of the Allied leaders as plainly the objective of the German grand plan of attack. Whether or no Hindenburg now lashes himself thereof in order to spare his former imperial masters, false leadership defeated Germany; and it came right close to spoiling the battle broth for the Allies.
So much of seeming diversion is employed to set off the fact that social and prison progress has been held up in America, particularly during the last three decades, by “false leadership.”
For example, consider this master stroke, framed by a much-quoted minister of the gospel: “Possibly something is to be granted to punishment as a deterrent. No doubt some people are to some extent restrained from wrong doing by fear of punishment.”
The person who penned those lines—underscoring of which is ours—knew that had religious creeds relied solely for their carrying power on strictly voluntary service for God from the heart of man, they had limped to an early demise.
Had the writer marked it that not even “fear of punishment” condign by the Almighty “restrains” by-choice criminals from “wrong doing,” he would have made the best case possible against punishment as a “deterrent”; yet only the best case possible, since the efficiency of deterrence is to be judged by its effect upon the normal mass, and not upon the abnormal few.
In such instance, the qualifying word points the difference as between the mere “tough” brawler, “restrained” from going the limit, and the ruthless blood-spiller whom fear of punishment eternal does not feaze. Monstrosities occur in all forms of animal life. When the monstrous human strikes, he must be struck accordingly.
Moreover, before we reach final conclusions, we must know the order and ordering of our deterrence; must know it up through the gamut of the apprehension, the conviction, and the sentence of lawbreakers, and then through the gamut of their prison activities.
False procedure as to any one of the four processes named will invalidate any general statement of negation concerning the efficience of punishment for crime. Procedure in America has been false in every named particular. Therefore, the actual effect of just and necessary legal punishment for crime cannot have been declared.