Viewing page 111 of 236

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

    With the air forces the conditions are quite different. The officer is the fighting unit. And though often he has other units to right and left these are in separate machines, separately directed, and the reactions of the mass are largely lost.
    In the infantry let a man misconduct himself in the face of the enemy and all his comrades will see and understand. In the air a pilot may misconduct himself, and allege motor or other trouble, and no man can say with certainty it was not true.
    These characteristics make the kind of discipline demanded of the air forces different from that required of other arms of the service. For in so far as the former is concerned it must be approached as a corps of officers. A higher standard of performance must be demanded of it, but the rigidity of line discipline cannot and should not be demanded. It is intellectual discipline that must be striven for. This does not mean that the exact rendering of military courtesies, the respect for superiors and other characteristics of any military body should not be diligently sought. But it means merely that the independence, that from the nature of things the airman possesses in the performance of his duties, requires that he be led to this performance by the highest cultivation of moral and intellectual qualities; he must be made not to live up to a standard in some one else's eyes, but to set himself an ideal and be himself the merciless judge of his own performance. The fear of losing prestige in the eyes of his comrades can exercise no such influence as in other arms. He must be made to fear most of all any lowering of his own pride and self respect, since it is these that must sustain him in his lonely trial.

- 23 -