All I said with reference to the Pearl Harbor debacle was that the necessary data for an opinion was not yet in and that we should reserve judgment until the data was available. I added, in effect, that this was no time for the intelligent minority to be adding to the flood of rumors and armchair opinions flying through the country. I still say so. As an intelligent and educated man, you have a responsibility to your less gifted fellow citizens to be a steady and morale-building influence at this time. Your letters do not indicate that you are being such.
I am going to try to take up a number of points one at a time, some from your letters, some from related matters.
“Aid and comfort to the enemy, phui. Morale damage, hell.” (From your letter) I am going to have to be rather directly personal about this. It may not have occurred to you that I am a member of the armed forces of the United States at the present moment awaiting orders, for sea duty I hope. Such comments as you have made to me might very well damage the morale of a member of the armed forces by shaking his confidence in his superior officers. There happens to be a federal law forbidding any talk in wartime to a member of the armed forces which might tend to destroy morale in just that fashion — a law passed by Congress, and not just a departmental regulation. It so happens that I am sufficiently hard-headed, tough-minded, and conceited not to be much influenced by your opinions of the high command. I think I know more about the high command than you do. Nevertheless, you were not entitled to take the chance of shaking my confidence, my willingness to fight. And you should guard your talk in the future. It might, firsthand, secondhand, or thirdhand, influence some enlisted man who had not the armoring to his morale that years of indoctrination gives me.
Bear in mind that my advice to you is based on a lawf specifically intended by the Congress under the Constitution to restrict the freedom of speech of civilians in wartime in their relations with the military. If you don’t like the law, write to your congressman about it. If you feel you must express yourself, write it down and save it until the war is over-but don’t tell a member of the armed forces that his superiors are stupid and incompetent. Don’t write to Ron [L. Ron Hubbard] in such a vein. He has not my indoctrination and he is in the battlefield. If you feel that the high command is incompetent, take it up with your congressman and your senators. Those of us in the service must work under the officers that are placed over us-it doesn’t help to try to shake our confidence in them.
…I’ve dug down into my personal funds many times to entertain visiting congressmen, visiting notables, etc. There are no funds appropriated for such things; the commissioned officers pay for them themselves. Naval officers act as scout masters for sea scouts. They are always available to speak before any body of persons willing to listen-travel to and from at his own expense, or charged to ship’s service (aprivate fund) by his C.O. We always have had public relations officers and we always have done everything we knew how to do to foster goodwill for the navy. In addition to that, the naval affairs committees of both houses are kept constantly informed in detail of the needs of the navy and the strategic reasons therefor.
Our efforts were pitifully inadequate. How could they be adequate? In the first place, we aren’t advertising men and we don’t know how. In the second place, even if we knew how, we had no appropriations to work with. All we could do was to talk, and that got us damned little newspaper space and no billboards. Of course, we could get an occasional scholarly article published-much good that did!
…You may consider my reaction as a type form professional reaction; it derives from my orientation and indoctrination. It is quite evident from the suggestion you made and your answer to my reaction that you have not the slightest understanding of the psychology of a professional military man. I don’t know quite how to explain this. It is a heavily emotional matter and goes back to some basic evaluations. Let me put it this way: Take a young boy, before he has been out in the business world. Put him into the naval academy. Tell him year after year that his most valuable possession and practically his only one is his personal honor. Let him see classmates cashiered for telling a small and casual lie. Let him see another classmate cashiered for stealing a pair of white silk socks. Tell him that he will never be rich but that he stands a chance of having his name inscribed in Memorial Hall. Entrust him with secrets. Indoctrinate him so that he will consider himself locked up and unable to move simply because his sword has been taken away from him. Feed him on tales of heroism. Line the corridors of his recitation halls with captured flags. Shucks, why go on with it-I think you must see what I am driving at. That will produce a naval officer, a man you can depend on to be utterly courageous in the face of personal danger regardless of the sick feeling in his stomach, but it won’t produce an advertising man.