III. The National Military Establishment

William Frye

American Political Science Review, 1949, vol. 43, issue 3, 543-555

Abstract: The purpose of a military organization is to fight and win wars. This dictates its form, creates its methods, explains its nature. A military organization must be flexible in structure, but inflexible in discipline. It commands, and it must be commanded; but it also leads, and must be led. Its orders must be at once peremptory and persuasive, its authority unquestioned but openminded, not rigid.It creates and uses a science of force and power, a machine of destruction; but it is not itself a machine, or mechanical. It calls upon every resource of the human intellect and heart, and its proper use is more an art than a craft or a science. For it is a synthesis of the ideas and emotions of men, and its greatest strengths and worst flaws are imponderables.

Date: 1949
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