THE IMPORTANT "WHY'S"
Now we know, and many of the soldiers who came back said to us, - well, first of
all, we know that no simple education in American History or in Civics can defend an
individual against a good communist dialectician, and experts. We know that simply
knowing about how this country developed and the dates the battles were fought, and
that the Supreme Court and the Congress and the President have these different
functions which check on each other - this by itself isn't going to defend anybody.
But knowing the whys behind those institutions, a meaningful version of
American economic and political history which must be taught primarily in schools, I
think, often with the help of private industry if they're interested in helping - this kind of
thing can defend the man because this system is actually based ultimately on these
very individualistic character traits, these principles that we put into military terms in the
Code of Conduct. Loyalty to other individuals, being personally responsible, as Dr.
Benson was saying about the business that's done in America on the telephone.
I think there's hardly one out of twenty people who could buy a refrigerator or a
washing machine without this presumption on the part of American business: that he's
probably going to pay for it, even though it's going to take him thirty-six months. But an
awful lot of kids don't know that. They just don't understand that at all. They think that
whole system is just a reflection of a new philosophy which says "Get anything you
want, get it right away, deny yourself nothing, discipline yourself not at all. Enjoy our wonderful materialistic comforts and rest secure in the knowledge that our country
MUST be better than every other country and MUST be invulnerable because we've got
the best things."
BASIC PRINCIPLES COUNT
We've never been better than anybody else because we had better things. We've
been better because we have for the first time in the history of man attempted to take
basic Judeo-Christian principles and codify them and run an entire country on these
basic principles.
So in the services we're trying to build discipline, we're trying to build it in the only
way it can possibly be built, on the basis of a system of values, on the basis of a set of
principles, something that individuals believe in, ideas that are meaningful to them, that
are inside them - not imposed by some nasty old sergeant with his fist or some
crotchety old colonel - but a set of value systems that were taught, learned by that
individual, and which have become meaningful enough to guide his behavior whether
there's a policeman standing there or not. Unless enough people have such principles
the policeman sooner or later is going to have to stand there.
Well, I'd like to sum up by quoting a soldier who had some thoughts about this
whole subject, General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. who was the commandant of the
Marine Corps at the time of the Korean War. He, with a number of civilian educators and
other military people, drew up the Code of Conduct, this remarkably obvious,
unnecessary document. And I say that sarcastically.
General Shepherd said this: "in the struggle against Communism war is no
longer over when men are forced to give up. The prisoner of war camp is only another
kind of battlefield. For they must be taught years before to carry on with the only
weapons remaining to them: courage and faith and a sense of personal responsibility."
The problem won't be solved by magic formula or just by a Code of Conduct. The
only approach lies in an awakening of the consciousness of the nation and of the
individual, you, and me, to the need for a sense of conviction and dedication to our
principles and our cause, which exceeds that shown by our very dedicated enemy
toward his own.
I thank you.
Questions and Answers:
QUESTION: Did you notice any difference in the boy who was brought up in the
country or the city or with higher education or less education?
MAJOR MAYER: Every conceivable correlation, including those, was attempted
on the mechanical marvels of electronics that we use now. No such correlations came
out at a significantly statistical level, surprisingly enough. We found there were not significant differences between urban and rural background, that there were good and
bad among both groups.
As far as education level goes; where people in many educational levels were
held together, there seemed to be a salutary effect of a more prolonged education; and
in fact, the Communists paid great tribute to this, first of all by segregating out those
who had a post-secondary-school education. They told those of our prisoners who
became collaborators to such a degree that they were allowed to take part in policy
discussions within the camp, and they in turn told us when they came home, that
Communists said that a man who was a college graduate or had a managerial position
in a business or had had his own business, or was over 30 to 35, they felt was a
hopeless reactionary.
And they felt that unless they could hold them for five or six years they would
have no real luck with them: and so they didn't.
QUESTION: Did you carry your thinking to affiliation with the Church?
MAYER: In a general way only. Among people who actively resisted we found
men who stated that their resistance was based upon their conviction in strictly religious
terms. We found no such men among those who collaborated.
A word of caution: In this we did no statistical correlation because it became
impossible to set standards. You simply cannot assign degrees of being a good
Lutheran or degrees of being a good Jew. And therefore to do this would be a ridiculous
piece of research.
And also we were largely dependent upon the voluntary statements of men to the
effect that they had resisted on the basis of their religious convictions. But it was
noticeable that among the collaborators, I know of no case of a man who had anything
that I could discern as a meaningful religious experience in his life.
Also among those in the resistor group there was no man who espoused a
religious philosophy who had gotten it in Korea!
QUESTION: Would you compare the differences or compare some American
soldiers to other national groups, such as that of the Turks?
MAYER: I've been answering in less than two minutes because I was hoping this
question would come up. You obviously can't answer it in two minutes.
There were 229 Turks captured. They were captured in the first year, the first
winter of the war; half just before and half just after Christmas. Almost every Turk
captured was sick or wounded; I personally think because it is impossible to capture a
Turk who is not sick or wounded.
They were mostly volunteer soldiers. They were not tough old professionals of a
Foreign Legionaire variety. In Turkey they have a long historical tradition of aggressive
militarism as you know. The average Turk has the, to us, very unsophisticated
philosophy that unless he spends some time in the service of his country he isn't really a
man. So these people volunteered mostly at age 18 or 19 because they had missed
World War II.
They went to fight in Korea; they were captured almost all in groups; and they were subjected to exactly the same conditions of captivity as the Americans. There was
a slightly lower percentage ratio of instructors; but the instructors used on them were not
Chinese; they were Turks, Turks from the Soviet Republics which are ethnologically
Turkish. They spoke Turkish, they looked like Turks, they lived with the Turks.
At the end of almost three years of captivity, the 229 Turks captured - exactly 229
Turks marched back through Panmujon. The survival rate was 100 per cent. Now how
did they do this?
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