American commanders often strike the British as curiously costive and
suspicious in their attitude not only to their allies but to each other. General MacArthur and—even more con- spicuously—the late General Stilwell exemplified this trait in an extreme form. In all armies, at all levels, there is a strong natural desire for autarchy. Units and formations like doing things on their own, partly from motives of pride and partly because they do not like relying on strangers whose methods they do not know and whose capacities they doubt. The Americans sometimes seem to carry this sort of thing to extreme lengths, and I often wonder whether the almost morbid reluctance of their " high brass" to trust each other may not be, in a curious vestigial way, a heritage of the Civil War. Perhaps, too, Civil War precedents are indirectly res- ponsible for the custom, which was fairly widely followed during the last war, of American generals employing their sons as A.D.C.s.
Previous page
