RETOOLING THE BRASS HATS
Coleman, Mcalister
Retooling The Brass Hats By McALISTER COLEMAN ??QUGGESTIONS to executives for re-tooling em-^ employees." That's the way the leaflet was headed. Though neither an executive nor an employee,...
...Later on the brighter students might be asked to recite that passage from Lincoln which says: "What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence...
...It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant army...
...It is how to re-tool our Brass Hats...
...Destroy his spirit and* you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors...
...Otherwise all these plans for international cooperation, new leagues of de-sovereignized states, a world police for the enforcement of peace, etc., signify nothing, and I would hate to think that the time I have spent reviewing books about them for The Progressive has done nothing more than added a few extra spots to those already before my eyes...
...Italics Lincoln's...
...Assemble some hot tea, will you, like an old dear...
...We recall that after Grant took Richmond, Fiske took him, and we shudder historically...
...Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms...
...I have to reconvert a manic...
...This project ought to provide anyone with full time and a half employment for the coming year...
...7,1941, we surely ought to provide for their future...
...They are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our land...
...Of course we are going to lead the way in universal disarmament...
...John Barleycorn who accepted no terms except unconditional surrender...
...Right now I need some help from such of you readers as have survived, on a project I have assigned myself for 1946...
...There we could give them a course consisting of elementary education, combined with occupational therapy and a little psychiatry on the side...
...The Scientific age is certainly doing revolutionary things to our vocabulary...
...Me, I am going to jet-propel myself over to the publishers...
...equals, not masters, not slaves...
...And, by the way, in spite of all the headaches and heartaches too, that are ahead, in spite of the man-made sufferings, the contrived cruelties, the aforethought malice, and the premeditated meanness which you will inevitably encounter as long as this system continues, may I wish you all a Happy New Year...
...Though I never got beyond top sergeant, having worked up to that from latrine guard, the good and welfare of my superior officers were always close to my heart...
...Good morning Ruth, you look a bit fissionized today...
...Our defence is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere...
...OUR problem, then, is one of re-tooling...
...The former Intelligence tops could divide up and one side try to crack the code of the other...
...All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle...
...Though neither an executive nor an employee, following the dictum of Mr...
...Most of them, however, got snarled up with Gen...
...What are you going to do...
...So when we have beaten the Brass Hats into Stetsons, and whittled down the armed forces to sensible atomic size, what do we do with the ex-generals and the former admirals...
...I suggested that we send all of the retired Brass to some nice place like the Virgin Islands or that part of Alaska which Brother Neuberger tells about where they get sunstroke in December...
...AFTER four or five years of this mental and moral retooling, we could bring the gentlemen back home, with some confidence that they would not interfere with the serious business of a democracy, which of course, is the making of men, peace, not war...
...Lincoln concerning slaves and masters, that word "retooling" fascinated me, and I read the thing straight through...
...Every sergeant in the war before last, and I suppose this last one too, just doted on captains and majors and generals...
...always keeping the answers secret, like the gentlemen they are...
...Roger...
...But with the exception of Washington and Jackson, that idea didn't turn out as well...
...We always have to keep an eye out that they don't go getting up outfits like the Cincinnati, the collection of officers after the Revolution who were all set to take the country over until the people got onto them and put up such a howl that Washington had to step in and soften the thing up...
...No doubt, gobs are that way about Commanders and admirals and what all...
...They could have a parade ground where they could do close order drill to their hearts' content, with one half of them yelling orders at the other on alternate days...
...Then I have to get the bug out of the axial flow of my royalties...
...There would be recreational facilities...
...We would give the admirals dummy battleships to command with as many bridges on them as they wanted...
...But he forgot to say where they departed to...
...SO I feel that the least we humble folk can do is to see to it that the Brass in both arms of the service is ¦well polished off...
...Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them...
...Kipling wrote, "the captains and the kings depart...
...They could play war games, with the Army versus the Navy, provided they didn't get too rough, and then all hands would be ready for classes...
...We would teach them about how this country got under way on a strictly revolutionary basis, with the idea of equality as a weapon more deadly to our enemies than all our cannons-combined...
...There was another buneh called the Forty and Eight in the inner circles of the American Legion, some of whose members had about the same idea and started a lot of strike-breaking...
...As a veteran of World War I, miner and sapper in U. S. Engineers, Camp Humphreys, Va., and boy, did we mine and sap!, I am naturally interested in anything concerning the armed forces...
...What can I service you with...
...After we have thrown torn-up telephone books at the returned generals and admirals, and thanked them for all that they did for us, and interrogated them thoroughly on what they were doing on the morning of Dec...
...Okay, hon, be sure to streamline yourself back to supper...
...Huba, huba...
...In the old days we used to elect our military heroes to the Presidency...
...I have to condition him a bit about being late with my manuscript...
...There would be required readings in the works of Sam and John Adams, Tom Paine, and Tom Jefferson...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
