Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [158]
I recognize that I have not given a fair share so far to good and encouraging and pleasant things, but since my object has been to look for the origins of our discontent, the emphasis has necessarily been on trouble. Probably this is not unjustified because, on balance, I think the twentieth century so far has contained more bad than good, though it may look different from the future looking back. Perspective changes every view. The world is old and history long—some four thousand years of recorded history, of which the 1960s represent a quarter of one percent. In that perspective now-ism dwindles.
Does it serve any purpose to have unrolled this gloomy catalogue? I am not sure, but possibly the confusion of our time may seem less senseless and absurd when it can be shown to spring from real and demonstrable causes. It generally helps to know the reason for things.
Address, Pomona College, February 1969.
Generalship
My subject tonight was suggested by your Commandant with no accompanying explanation; just the word “Generalship,” unadorned. No doubt he could safely assume that the subject in itself would automatically interest this audience in the same way that motherhood would interest an audience of pregnant ladies. I do not know whether General Davis thought the subject would be appropriate for me because I am the biographer of a general who vividly illustrated certain qualities of generalship, both in their presence and their absence, or whether he had something of larger scope in mind.
In any event, as I considered the subject I became intrigued for several reasons: because it is important, because it is elusive, and because it is undergoing, I think, as a result of developments of the past twenty-five years, a radical transformation which may make irrelevant much of what we now know about it. I will come to that aspect later.
I should begin by saying that I have no greater qualification in this matter than if you had asked Tennyson to lecture on generalship because he wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” I did not write the biography of Stilwell in his capacity as soldier, but rather in his capacity as a focal figure and extraordinarily apt representative of the American relation to China. I did not write The Guns of August as a study of how war plans go wrong—at least I did not know I was doing that until it was all over. I am not primarily a military historian, and to the degree that I am one at all, it is more or less by accident. However, since life is only fun when you attempt something a little beyond your reach, I will proceed with the assignment.
In Colonel Heinl’s Dictionary of Military Quotations, the subject headings “Generals” and “Generalship” together take up more space than any other entry. If the closely related headings “Command” and “Leadership” are added, the subject as a whole takes up twice as many pages as any other. Why is it so important? The answer is, I suppose, because the qualities that enter into the exercise of generalship in action have the power, in a very condensed period of time, to determine the life or death of thousands, and sometimes the fate of nations. The general’s qualities become, then, of absorbing interest not only to the military but to citizens at large, and it is obviously vital to the state to determine what the qualities are, to locate them in the candidates for generalship, and to ensure that the possessors and the positions meet.
I have also seen it said that senior command in battle is the only total human activity because it requires equal exercise of the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties at the same time. I tried to take this dictum apart (being by nature, or perhaps by profession, given to challenging all generalizations) and to think of rivals for the claim, but in fact no others will do. Generalship in combat does uniquely possess that distinction.
The qualities it requires divide themselves into two categories as I see it: those of character, that is, personal leadership, and those of professional capacity. When it