The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [88]
Annoyed. The General had used that word once before. An odd word at this time. Was he in the driver's seat now? It was a little eerie to feel that the General was coming to him, a little uncomfortable. And instinctively his mind clamped down, became grudging and aware as if soon he would be asked for something he did not want to grant. The General would never put a handle to their relationship. At times they had the easy tacit friendship that many generals had with their aides, field officers with their orderlies. And there were all the other moments when they were much closer -- the discussions, the occasional bits of gossip. There was also the antagonism between them. And he couldn't find the bone on which all this was grafted.
"I suppose I am annoyed," Hearn said at last. "The rooking the enlisted men got on their meat isn't going to make them love you any."
"They'll blame Hobart or Mantelli or the mess sergeant. That's hardly to the point anyway. You don't really care, you know that."
Damn if he'd give anything away free. "If I did, you certainly couldn't understand it."
"I imagine I could. I probably have a normal allotment of decent impulses."
"Hah."
"You don't think, Robert. The root of all the liberals' ineffectiveness comes right spang out of the desperate suspension in which they have to hold their minds."
Right spang out of it! It was almost pleasant to find a bit of mid-western earth in all the polished and refracted facets of the General's speech. "Name calling is always easy," Hearn muttered.
"Oh, think, man, will you? If you ever followed anything through to the end, not one of your ideas would last for an instant. You think it's important to win this war, don't you?"
"Yes, but I still don't get the tie-up with the meat."
"Well, then, follow me out in this. And you're going to have to take my word, for I've made a study. When I was your age, a little older, the type of thing that preoccupied me was what makes a nation fight well."
"I imagine it would be a kind of identity between the people and the country whether it's for good reasons or bad."
The General shook his head. "That's a liberal historian's attitude. You'd be surprised what a tiny factor that is." The lamp was beginning to sputter and he reached over to adjust the valve, his face lit rather dramatically for a moment by the light source beneath his chin. "There are just two main elements. A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past."
"That's the whole works, huh?"
"There's one other big factor I've played with for a time. If you're fighting in defense of your own soil, then perhaps you're a little more effective."
"Then you come back to my point."
"I wonder if you know how complicated that is. If a man fights on his own soil, it's also a great deal easier for him to desert. That's one problem I never have to consider on Anopopei. It's true the other thing overweighs it, but stop and think about it. Fondness for a country is all very lovely, it even is a morale factor at the beginning of a war. But fighting emotions are very undependable, and the longer a war lasts the less value they have. After a couple of years of war, there are only two considerations that make a good army: a superior material force and a poor standard of living. Why do you think a regiment of Southerners is worth two regiments of Easterners?"
"I don't think they are."
"Well, it happens to be true." The General placed his fingertips together judiciously and looked at Hearn. "I'm not peddling theories. This is observation. And the conclusions leave me, as a general officer, in a poor position. We have the highest standard of living in the world and, as one would expect, the worst individual fighting soldiers of any big power. Or at least