LECTURE I
DISCIPLINE AND AUSTERITY
Whether there should be compulsory
military training in America is a question
which some people will answer
yes or no according to their general theories and
others according to their observation of the actual
effects of such training on moral character. But
whatever our views may be on this familiar question,
whether we regard military service as ethically
helpful in its influence or as morally injurious,
we cannot differ as to the need in our national
character of those qualities of self-control,
of quick and unquestioning obedience to duty,
of joyful contempt of hardship, and of zest in
difficult and arduous undertakings which, rightly
or wrongly, we consider soldierly, which we attribute
in such rich measure to our forefathers,
and which the moral exigencies of our national
task to-day as peremptorily demand. To put
these primary and elemental needs as sharply as
possible, let us call them discipline and austerity.
Our American character needs more of both.
I do not know a better starting point than is found in one of those vivid modern touches upon
