Chapter Two—
The Quaker and Military Moral Traditions Compared

Similarities:
The Call to Selfless Service

A comparison of the histories of Quakers and military professionals^[1] in America reveals that both went through periods of ostracism from mainstream society, and both groups responded to this hostility by becoming consciously and outspokenly service-oriented. Quakers adopted what historian Sydney James calls a policy of benevolence in part as a response to the attacks made upon them because of their pacifism during the Revolutionary War.^[2] The military emphasized their role as servants of the state to assuage public fears that the growth of a peacetime army meant a threat to democracy.^[3] Both groups came to see themselves as serving the American people not only by their actions—social reform in one case and defense of the nation in the other—but also by the moral example they set.^[4] Today, partially as a result of their emphasis on service, American Quakers and military professionals share at least four other important similarities.^[5]

A Full-time Moral Identity

Social psychologist Ralph Turner has identified a phenomenon that he has called a "role-person merger," which occurs when "the attitudes

and behaviors developed in an expression of one role carry over into other situations."^[6] This is a good description of what many Quakers and military professionals experience. Being a Friend or an army officer does not just involve performing certain actions at certain times of the day or week; it involves being a certain kind of person. Committed Quakers and officers find that they cannot be that special person part-time. Instead, they incorporate Quaker or military values into everything they do, in order to maintain a coherent sense of themselves. As one Quaker explained it, "I find that if I compartmentalize any part of my life apart from Quakerism, I can't function. I have to have a sense of consistency." A military officer expressed a similar feeling when he said that the army was "a separate ethic" by which he felt compelled to live at all times. As a result of this shared need to live in a way that is consistent with their religious or professional tradition, both Quakers and soldiers exhibit a high degree of self-control and even austerity. They also value truthfulness and straightforwardness in speech and action.

Self-Sacrifice As a Way of Life

The Quaker who answers a concern to work in a prison or a mental institution and the soldier who guards a wounded buddy for hours until help can arrive have in common an impulse to subjugate the self for the sake of others. The devout Quaker experiences his or her own will as subsumed in the greater will of God and is thereby enabled to shoulder great burdens or suffer persecution. The soldier's will is swallowed up by the enormity of war, lost in an ecstatic mixture of comradeship, dutifulness, fear, rage, exhaustion, and detached incredulity that can sometimes lead to acts of great bravery. A Vietnam veteran who has searched for the quality of self-sacrifice in both traditions explained that before Vietnam he had "felt a strong calling for the army" and considered making it his career. His service in Vietnam showed him that what he was looking for—"an unambiguous feeling about the importance of what you are doing, and a certain ascetic quality"—was not to be found in the military. He then sought it among Quakers:

In the traditional military view of itself, an officer would lead . . . a life of devotion . . . a life of selflessness. . . . I think some of those same reasons are

what attract people to Quakerism . . . the selflessness of a lot of Quakers. Following your Inner Light. I guess . . . the thing that attracted me to them was that they were not afraid to do what had to be done.

Perhaps the best statement about the importance of sacrifice and suffering to Friends and fighting men alike comes from the head of the Friends Relief Service in England during World War II. Shortly after the war he wrote that, although he was a pacifist, he had felt a great "spiritual unity" with many soldiers who, "detesting war as deeply as I did, yet felt that there was no other way in which they could share in the agony of the world":

We [Friends] could not engage in warlike activity in the hope of relieving the suffering of the Jews or of other oppressed peoples in Europe and Asia. We had, somehow, to try to participate in their suffering and to express the conviction that it is ultimately the power of suffering in love that redeems men from the power of evil.^[7]

A final demonstration of the importance of self-sacrifice to both groups is their abhorrence of egotism—what soldiers call careerism and Friends see as a self-righteousness that excludes all viewpoints other than one's own. An army captain expressed his contempt for one of his commanding officers, who "gave a great deal of lip service to such things as honor . . . [but] would sell you down the river in a heartbeat if he thought it would save his career." A Friend described a co-religionist who "has such a strong sense of God speaking through her that she can't see that possibility in others." Such people are seen as threats to the integrity of the moral community.

The Sacredness of the Calling

The Vietnam veteran referred to an army career as a "calling," and, being a Quaker, he does not use the word lightly. "Mind the call; it's all in all" is a Quaker saying that expresses the sacredness and urgency of God's message experienced from within. For centuries, politicians and generals have declaimed the sacredness of military service, but even rhetorical exploitation cannot devalue the genuine devotion that many soldiers feel toward their country. Recognizing the presence of something holy in the military tradition, scholars compare the army to a religious order, see the hazing experienced by cadets and recruits as

a rite of initiation into a religious cult, and describe the battlefield as a world "wholly other" and therefore sacred, imbued with an awesome religious power.^[8] Both the Quaker moral tradition and that of the military have developed around a core concept of sacred service that calls for willing sacrifice—if not of life, then of luxury, leisure, and the self-centered pursuit of one's own goals. The good Friend or soldier seeks to devote his or her life to goals set by God or country, tempered by the Meeting or the military hierarchy, and experienced from within as a profound personal obligation—duty transformed into choice.

At each of the six boarding schools there is at least one adult who seems to view his or her job as a calling in this sacred sense. These are men and women whose lives are permeated with Quaker or military values, people who have in common a deep integrity and a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of school and students. But the vision of goodness that inspires their sacrifices is different in the two environments.

Differences:
Internal and External Sources of Morality

The central difference between the two traditions' visions of goodness lies in their images of the root of virtue. The Quaker tradition stresses the internal origin of moral conviction, while the military tradition emphasizes its external origin. For Quakers, virtue is obedience to the Inner Light: an inner sense of what is right and good that comes from God. However fallible, the individual Quaker's conscience is the best guide he or she has to whatever measure of Light has been revealed to him or her.^[9] Members of the military, by contrast, see virtue as obedience to an external set of values, a code or standard of behavior that is clearly understood by all. Loyalty to this code and to the people with whom it is shared is the essential military quality.

A Quaker convert who had served six years in the National Guard compared the two types of commitment, one based on an individual interpretation of duty and the other on shared obedience to a set of standards:

[T]here's something we [Friends] sort of have to live up to. It's not necessarily a tradition, but[, rather,] the idea that you as Quaker are supposed to

identify with your calling and make a commitment. . . . [It's] something like a military idea of honor and duty, providing standards. But it comes from my own discernment of what my calling is.

The emphasis here is on choice, on the Quaker's obligation to determine his or her own moral commitments, with God's help. Friends are "very reluctant . . . to try to lay responsibilities on people." An army captain, a West Point graduate, considers choice less important than uniformly high standards. "People can be taught a higher code. . . . [They] can change if they want to . . . [and can] at least be forced to meet a set of standards if they do not embrace it for themselves."

This dichotomy between internal and external sources of morality is at the root of three clear-cut differences between the Quaker and the military attitude: their contrasting positions on violence, ceremony, and authority.

Violence

Since the modern American military regards itself as a peace-keeping force,^[10] it would be incorrect to draw too absolute a contrast between Quakers' and soldiers' desire for world peace. The two differ markedly, however, in their perspective on violence. Quakers regard violence of any kind—whether warfare, first-fighting, or hurtful speech—as counter to the teachings of Jesus. Since there is "that of God" in everyone, human life and the human spirit are sacred. Professional soldiers, by contrast, accept angry conflict as endemic to the human condition; their job is to become its master—in Huntington's muchquoted phrase, to be a "manager of violence." While the military tradition of self-control precludes displays of temper, it recognizes violence—whether occurring as part of warfare or between individuals—as a problem-solving technique. To be acceptable, however, violence must be sanctioned by the proper military authority. Private vendettas and Rambo-like rampages are anathema to the military professional.

The internal/external dichotomy offers insight into these different attitudes toward violence. Because every individual, in Quaker eyes, carries his or her potential goodness or Light within, no enemy can be distinguished: there are no external signs that establish one person as more deserving of hatred and violence than another. At their core, no matter what they have done, all people are good, because, as one

Friend said, "their essence is good"—that is a basic Quaker tenet. But to a military professional, goodness is demonstrated by adherence to certain standards of behavior. Those who break the code or do not accept it in the first place will be easy to identify, because they will act differently. In the military tradition, it is through their actions that people—or countries—make themselves targets for punishment. If a private disobeys a sergeant or an officer lies to a fellow officer, if a country breaks a treaty or invades a neighboring nation, then the rules of correct behavior have been broken, and retaliation should be expected.

Ceremony

The internal/external distinction also explains why Quakers have traditionally rejected all forms of ceremony, while the military promotes ceremonies as a matter of principle. In the Friends tradition, the outer show is sham; simplicity means "no facade," as one Quaker put it. The fewer trappings one surrounds oneself with, the more one's Inner Light can shine through. To swear an elaborate oath or receive an award for bravery is therefore superfluous: honesty and courage should be simply a part of daily life and are in any case God-given, rather than personal, qualities. But in the military tradition, appearance provides crucial evidence of standards. The officer with a dignified military bearing, the private with a positive attitude, the company with plenty of spit-and-polish are showing their loyalty to the army and its values. Parades and oath-taking ceremonies are important rituals that reinforce this loyalty by making it visible and public: if in front of your comrades-in-arms you swear to defend your country and the Constitution of the United States, you will be bound to that oath by pride as well as honesty.

Authority

Authority in the Friends tradition is vested neither in a person nor in a document but in a process, that of consensus. At its best, Quaker consensus represents a way of distilling "the Truth"—which to a religious Quaker means the will of God—from the various inner convictions and "leadings" felt by those Friends who attend what is called a Meeting for Business. "Out of this sharing of light may come

a greater light."^[11] This search for truth should be facilitated—but never dominated—by the "clerk" of the Meeting and certain "weighty Friends" whose leadings are especially valued. A decision to act that arises from the long, slow process of reaching consensus is a communal decision. It is, in a sense, the product of the combined contributions of the individual, the community, and God, and its source is profoundly internal.

Authority in the military tradition is distributed in more complex ways, as befits a much larger and more complicated institution. Its official source is the United States Constitution, from which the hierarchically distributed authority of the military, the Constitution's sworn defenders, is derived.^[12] Also derived from the Constitution is the set of laws, regulations, and minor rules that governs the activities of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen of all ranks. In daily practice, however, military authority is vested in "the order," a concrete demand for action. Before an order is issued, loyalty demands that subordinates express their opinions; after it is issued, loyalty demands obedience. Whether an order must be obeyed depends not on the character of the one who gives the order but on the legality (or, more rarely, the feasibility or intelligence) of the order. The Constitution, laws, orders, and standard operating procedures: these are all external authorities.

Everyday life at the six boarding schools is deeply influenced either by the Quaker vision of morality as something felt from within or the military vision of it as something acquired from an outside source. At Quaker schools, the emphasis on self-expression and informality in classes, dress, and dormitory decor; the teachers' willingness to "go out on a limb" for students; and the friendly, nonauthoritarian relationships between older and younger students all stem from the Quaker belief that the inner self is more important than appearance, behavior, or differences in age. In military academies the neatly pressed uniforms and austere dorms; the well-regulated classes intended to strengthen and discipline; the inspections, parades, oaths, and honor codes; the heavy responsibilities that adults expect cadet officers to shoulder; and the sometimes harsh treatment of younger students by older ones all stem from determination to mold the visible self and impose high standards from without.

The neatness of this internal/external dichotomy should not be permitted to overwhelm discussion of the two traditions, however,

since the distinction is far from absolute. Quakers recognize the importance of concrete communal standards as well as the demands of conscience (if they did not, they would not long survive as a group), and members of the military know that personal conviction, not just obedience to orders, leads to the kind of loyalty and integrity that make a good soldier. At times, too, individuals in both groups are confronted with moral crises, brought on by the clash between internal demands and external demands. Then Quakers and soldiers alike find themselves turning to their moral traditions for help in balancing the conflicting pressures of conscience and community.

The Individual and the Group:
Sources of Reconciliation

The conventional image of morality suggests that it is a social straitjacket constraining individual thought and behavior in order to ensure that communal obligations are met. In fact, morality is by no means so unambiguous in its demands on the psyche. It does not simply reproduce the rules of collective life, but instead attempts to reconcile the individual's desire for self-determination with the society's need for order. Far from being a simple set of requirements, morality offers individuals the means to understand and the chance to choose freely what is right. It cannot eliminate the clashes between individual choice and social duty to which daily life gives rise, but it can provide guidelines for handling these tensions in a productive way.

The Quaker and military moral traditions are complicated structures that address the conflicts between choice and duty. The Quaker's struggle to communicate the urgency of a religious conviction in the face of opposition from other members of the Meeting has something in common with the soldier's internal debate over how to respond to an order that seems stupid, unethical, or unnecessarily dangerous. In both cases, private conscience clashes with institutional demands, and in both cases, too, the tradition offers guidance to the person who is trying to do what is right. Within the Quaker tradition, with its emphasis on the internal, obedience to conscience must take priority over social constraints; within the military tradition, with its focus on external standards, loyalty to the group and its codes predominates. But both moral traditions do recognize a middle course between independence and control. In real life such dilemmas are not

always resolved, but at least the two traditions provide a language in which to discuss them. Some of the apparent vagueness and ambiguity of this moral language is in fact a deliberate vehicle for compromise, opening up a middle way between the extremes of rebellion and submission.

The key concept of the Quaker moral tradition, from which all else is derived, is the Inner Light. It is the idea of "that of God within" that gives Quakerism its internal moral orientation, or, in the terms of the inevitable clash between the choice and duty, a distinct tilt toward choice. How, then, does the Friends tradition reconcile conscience and community? Here the keyword is concern . The Quaker concept of concern is deliberately ambiguous: it encompasses both the deep conviction of an individual and the sharing of that conviction with the Meeting:

A Quaker is never sure that [his concern] is divine until his meeting is in unity with him. He therefore shares his feelings with his meeting as urgently as possible. . . . This translation of individual sensitivity into group concern is one of the secrets of quaker strength in the field of social action.^[13]

The process of consensual decision-making, which is central to Quakerism, is dependent not only on the open expression of concerns in Meeting but also on the acknowledgment of those concerns by others. By subjecting the worth of private convictions to the scrutiny of the Meeting, the Quaker tradition, for all its emphasis on the individual, maintains the authority of the group.

The key concept of the military moral tradition is the mission. It is the ultimate importance of the job—which must be done according to "standard operating procedures" if it is to be done well—that gives the military its external moral orientation, its emphasis on duty over choice. Individual freedom is not abandoned, however; it is reconciled with group pressure by means of the ambiguous keyword leadership . The leader has the mission at heart, but he also has the right and the responsibility to make his own choices: to consider the safety of his men, the morality of his orders, and the dictates of his conscience in the context of the group's goals, and then to decide what steps to take. Where the Quaker emphasis on sharing a concern acts to check the impetuousness of the individual, the military emphasis on leadership acts to check the impersonality of the group.

In Chapter One, concern was already introduced as a force at the three Quaker schools, where it provides both a shared sense of purpose and a reason for trying to understand individual needs. The first chapter also explained how the teaching and learning of leadership underpin the activities of members of the military-school communities. Powerful as they are, however, these two concepts are insufficient as guidelines to moral practice, whether at the schools or among Quakers and military professionals in less defined communities. More detailed information about leading a moral life is needed. How does a person go about trying to live as a Quaker or a military professional? What guidelines exist to help someone know what it means to act in a Quakerly or soldierly way? If they are to survive from generation to generation, all moral traditions must answer questions like these. To show members how they should behave, the Quaker and military moral traditions provide a set of virtues (or, in Quaker parlance, "testimonies") that define a good life. These virtues are prominent in the lives of Friends and military officers, and, as is shown in the following chapters, they are also prominent in the lives of administrators, teachers, and students at Quaker and military boarding schools. The Quaker virtues—equality, community, simplicity, and peace—are prerequisites for a true experience of concern; Friends try to promote these virtues among themselves and, through service in the world, among others. The military virtues—loyalty, competence, selflessness, integrity, and pride—are the prerequisites of leadership. Only men and women who demonstrate these qualities will have the capacity to inspire them in others and so to forge that crucial bond between leader and subordinate upon which military success depends.

The Key Quaker Virtues

Equality

Equality was the first virtue to be practiced by the seventeenth-century followers of George Fox, who came to be called Quakers. Even before Fox began to preach pacifism, Quakers were dismissed from Oliver Cromwell's army because they refused to treat their officers as superiors.^[14] The outer signs of this belief in the equality of all people

were Friends' refusal to bow, use titles of honor and flattering greetings, or doff their hats to anyone, and their insistence on addressing people of all ranks using the informal thou . These behaviors, shocking at the time, rapidly became Quaker trademarks in England and, later, in America. Unlike their proto-socialist contemporaries the Diggers, the early Friends advocated an equality of respect, not of economic resources. They believed that each person, whether servant or master, had an obligation to follow his calling; they argued, however, that the servant was not the inferior of the master, since both were equal "in the Light." This is a classic Christian principle; Quakers simply put it to practice more frequently than did many Christians of their time. Friends also called for equality between the sexes, and Quaker women preached in Meetings for Worship all over England and abroad and ran their own Meetings for Business.

The primary fruits of the equality testimony in the United States came in American Friends' work to protect and educate Indians and in their efforts to abolish slavery. The American fight for women's rights was also inspired and partially led by Quaker women. Today, through their local Meetings for Worship or Yearly Meetings, and through the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and other organizations, many Quakers continue to support volunteer projects and government programs that, in the words of a Friends Service Committee publication, are intended to express a "belief in this infinite worth and equality of each human being."^[15] As one woman said, "Quakers believe that there is that of God in everyone: that if it is there in anyone, it is there in everyone." This is the root of the equality testimony.

Community

Friends' relationship to God is bound up with their relationship to one another. A statement frequently cited by Quakers to explain the spiritual value of community was made by the seventeenth-century Quaker Robert Barclay:

As many candles lighted and put in one place do greatly augment the light, and make it more to shine forth, so when many are gathered together into the same life there is more of the glory of God, and His power appears to the

refreshment of each individual, for each partakes not only of the light and life raised in himself, but in all the rest.^[16]

In the traditional Quaker Meeting for Worship, Friends sit together in silence, waiting and praying for the Spirit of God to be among them. If a worshiper feels compelled to speak by the voice of God within, he or she rises and delivers God's message to the assembled Friends. When "the presence of God is experienced by each person as part of a group experience,"^[17] then the Meeting is described as "covered" or "gathered":

In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a new Life and Power has entered our midst. . . . We are in communication with one another because we are being communicated to, and through, by the Divine Presence. . . . He has broken down the middle wall of partition between our separate personalities and has flooded us with a sense of fellowship .^[18]

The primary experience community sought by Friends is a religious one: a feeling of being "joined in the Light." But community among Quakers also means a sharing of resources. During the first hundred years in America, Quakers limited their generosity to the members of their own Meetings, but the policy of benevolence that Friends adopted in the late eighteenth century meant extending care to those outside the Quaker circle.^[19] Many modern Quakers take seriously this call to care.^[20] One Friend is still haunted by her failure to respond to a woman who walked in front of her car at a crosswalk near a hospital many years ago:

She was holding a tiny baby and looked absolutely distracted. . . . The next day I read in the paper that a dead baby had been found nearby . . . and I was sure that it was the mother and baby I saw. It had flashed through my mind that the woman needed help, and I hadn't helped her. . . . This person in the crowd, begging with her eyes for understanding, with so much urgency that I couldn't help but see it . . . : the lesson is there.

Simplicity

The simplicity testimony is more complex than it appears, since it has as much to do with a state of mind as with shunning luxurious possessions. Friends are encouraged to exercise moderation in their lives and

households so that they will be free to "answer a concern"—to go wherever they feel their services are needed.^[21] More important, however, than this physical simplicity is a mental simplicity: "a right ordering of priorities" that facilitates one's openness to the Light, a "clearness" of thought, a congruence between one's inner and outer life.^[22] Simplicity is a result as well as a prerequisite of a life of concern:

Quaker simplicity needs to be expressed [in] . . . a relatively simplified and coordinated life-program of social responsibilities. I am persuaded that concerns introduce that simplification, and along with it that intensification which we need in opposition to the hurried, superficial tendencies of our age.^[23]

In an interview a Quaker expressed another aspect of simplicity: "basic honesty in human relationships." He felt that Friends' "lives and the things about them [should] be really what they seem to be. . . . They [shouldn't] need a facade on their houses or on themselves."

Peace

This fourth testimony is probably the one for which Quakers are best known. The majority of Friends are pacifists, and have been since the time of George Fox. In 1661 Fox wrote to Charles II, "We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. . . . The Spirit of Christ, which leads us unto all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons."^[24] Since the 1650s, when they first began to arrive in the American colonies, most American Quakers have refused to serve in the army or militia or to fight in wars. As conscientious objectors in the twentieth century, Friends have performed a variety of alternative services during wartime, in the United States and abroad. The American Friends Service Committee was founded in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors to World War I with the opportunity to do relief work in Europe or what the founders called a "service of love in wartime."

Many of today's Quakers are passionately opposed to war and violence. One man, who was drafted at age seventeen during World War II and later became a Quaker, thought that his pacifism began during basic training:

They told us that when you put that bayonet in a body, the involuntary reaction of the muscles is to clamp around the bayonet, so you have to put your foot on [the person] to get it out. And . . . everything inside me just screamed that this is so radically wrong, wrong, wrong. . . . I remember vividly.

Being opposed to violence, however, doesn't mean being passive. In his letter to Charles II, Fox emphasized Friends' refusal to fight "with outward weapons"; he himself and many of his followers for over 300 years have shown a great willingness to fight in other ways, chiefly through civil disobedience. As early as 1661, Edward Burroughs counseled his fellow Quakers: "If anything be commanded of us by the present authority which is not according to equity, justice, and a good conscience toward God . . . we must in such cases obey God only and deny active obedience for conscience's sake, and patiently suffer what is inflicted upon us for our disobedience to men."^[25] Quakers argue that peace is not simply a lack of conflict but a way of life, an activity in itself, a process of peace-making in private and public life using the tools of consensus and guided by the Inner Light.^[26] Friends who are truly able to follow this way of life are deeply respected by their fellow Quakers, as is evident in the following description of one woman Friend by another: "I think the thing about her that makes her most obviously Quakerly is the way she approaches conflict and deals with decision making, the way she listens and weighs and asks questions. . . . There's something in [her decision making] that makes room for other people's values. You are never run roughshod over." Another Quaker, describing how the clerk of his Meeting helped the members to reach consensus, attributed this skill to "nonviolence," which he called "paying attention to the Light within each person, reaching . . . for the best human qualities of that person."

The doctrine of the Inner Light, the process of waiting for the Light in Meetings for Worship and Business, and the practice of the four virtues constitute the essence of the Quaker moral tradition, supplemented by an insistence upon honesty and a distaste for ceremony. Friends' key virtues describe the kind of loving, egalitarian society that they would like to see made real on earth. The military virtues serve a more practical purpose: they represent the key qualities an individual must possess in order to meet the highest standards of the military

profession. Like their Quaker counterparts, however, the military virtues also define a particular way of life.

The Key Military Virtues

Loyalty

Loyalty is the quintessential military virtue: loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the president as commander-in-chief of the army; to the army itself and its standards and traditions; to the unit in which a soldier serves, and to peers, superiors, and subordinates. In theory the most important of these loyalties is to the United States Constitution; in practice the most important—to a solider's morale and to his or her willingness to obey orders and assume responsibility—is to comrades. A study of American enlisted men during World War II found that soldiers fought not for ideological reasons but to defend their immediate companions, and forty years later a veteran of that war was still able to put this feeling into words: "The only thing that kept you going was your faith in your buddies. . . . You couldn't let them down. It was stronger than flag and country."^[27]

Reflecting on his own World War II experiences, a philosopher tried to explain the extraordinary power of group loyalties in war:

Many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit, I believe, that the experience of communal effort in battle, even under the altered conditions of modern war, has been a high point in their lives. Despite the horror, the weariness, the grime, and the hatred, participation with others in the chances of battle has its unforgettable side, which they would not want to have missed.^[28]

Another veteran recalled those emotions: "For the first time in our lives, we were in a tribal sort of situation, where we could help each other without fear. . . . It was the absence of competition and boundaries and all those phony standards that created the thing I loved about the army."^[29] A darker side to this intense small-group loyalty is the fear of rejection: "Men will fight and die neither for ideologies nor for economics. They will stand and fight for one very simple reason: fear that their peers will hold them in contempt. There is no place to hide from such ostracism."^[30]

In a good unit, loyalty to comrades includes loyalty up and down the chain of command—to superiors and subordinates, as well as peers. Essays on leadership emphasize the importance of an officer's or NCO's loyalty down, the obligation to "take care of the men." A Military Review article described a commanding officer as outstanding because "loyalty was the key to [his] style of command. He gave before he demanded anything in return. He demonstrated his loyalty and confidence in [his men] first, and only then demanded it back."^[31] An army captain, when asked what he had done in his career that he was particularly proud of, answered, "Being able to stand up and do the right thing for the soldiers. . . . It gave me the greatest satisfaction I've ever had to be able to do right by another human being that was getting crapped on by the system." For another captain, one of the most important measures of his success at a particular post was "when . . . they call . . . two or three years later to find out how I'm doing—not my superiors or peers but my subordinates, the NCOs and soldiers. That means . . . I've done a good job."

For some officers, this responsibility for subordinates is simply part of a loyalty to the army itself. "When I've encountered bad officers," said a third captain, "I've sometimes taken their nonprofessionalism almost personally, because I thought they were messing up my army and my profession, . . . affecting the soldiers that dealt with them . . . and really [taking] a toll on their subordinates." And a major, after describing something he had done to help his men, vehemently denied that any kindness was involved: "I care about the army; I don't give a shit about people. . . . If I were to look back from the year 2000 and ask, 'What did I do with my time, and would I agree now with what I did?' the standard I would use would be, 'Did it benefit the army?'"

In this list of a military professional's loyalties, the most abstract is the loyalty to standards: to the duty-honor-country motto and to other, more subtle codes of right and wrong. A young West Point graduate explained that the U.S. Military Academy gave him "an absolute standard, an ideal of absolute honor through the Cadet Honor Code.^[32]  . . . The West Point idea of what's honorable and what's ethical is a very, very short statement of what you don't do. That's the letter, and you have to decide on your own what the spirit is." For many military professionals, it is the adherence to the letter and the spirit of the

military code that constitutes what they identify as honor. Another officer explained:

Honor is kind of like a religion. It's a belief in the standards, values, morals of an organization and an adherence to them, [but] . . . it's not a mindless adherence. . . . Duty, honor, country: You have a duty, and by properly executing your duty you cause an honor to be associated with yourself and your profession and therefore, doing those two things, you serve your country.

Competence

Competence is the second crucial military value. In the words of an army colonel, it "undergirds all the other values of the battlefield."^[33] There is a simple reason for this emphasis: an incompetent soldier is dangerous to his or her companions and a threat to their victory in battle. One captain, when asked to describe the best officer he had encountered in his military career, explained that the highest compliment he could ever pay an officer was that "if we had to fight a war, he wouldn't kill any of us through his own stupidity." Thus, the man he respected most was someone he hadn't liked, "but he was an in-charge guy, and he knew what he was doing." For a military professional, as for a doctor, competence is "an ethical imperative. . . . The willingness to serve . . . implies a companion factor, the competence to do so effectively."^[34] Competence is related to trustworthiness: "You don't mind people depending on you," said a captain. "You don't mind people saying, "We'll go to him because we know he'll do it.'"

But competence in the military tradition can sometimes mean a stoic willingness to accept the consequences of failure, for whatever reason, as this description of West Point training illustrates:

If . . . you should foul up a particular assignment, a sense of duty meant that your only reply to a superior who wanted to know why the task had not been accomplished to his satisfaction would be, "No excuse, sir." . . . For the military professional there should be no alibi—no "puny b-ache" [belly ache], as cadets would say.^[35]

Selflessness

The cadets' stoic acceptance of blame illustrates the link between competence and the third key military virtue, selflessness. The self-

lessness expected of the military professional takes several forms. First, there is putting the common good before one's own. The soldier serves his or her country, and "all who serve the nation must resist the temptation to pursue . . . personal advantage . . . ahead of the collective good. What is best for the nation comes before personal interests."^[36] A veteran remembers World War II as a time when he was trying "to do something that affected the lives of other people . . . to do something useful with my life."^[37] The West Point graduate quoted above said he believed "that by being a member of this society, everyone has an obligation to contribute to . . . [its] maintenance. . . . That's why I'm where I am [i.e., in the army]."

Second, selfless service obliges the leader to take care of subordinates. This ideal is preached in countless training manuals and articles on military leadership, and contemporary officers look for it in their senior officers as well. "He will risk his career in order to protect his people," said a major in praise of a superior; similarly, a captain reminisced about an outstanding commander who "would draw a line and say, 'Look, I will take a chance of sacrificing my career if I feel that one of my subordinates is being unfairly penalized for something.'"

The third and ultimate selfless service expected of a military professional is courage in battle in the face of possible loss of life. At the very least, a member of the military should be proud to suffer whatever is necessary to accomplish the mission. "For the professional, . . . courage in performance of his duty is a shining ideal. Death will not be shunned if the interests of duty and honor require it, however unpleasant dying may be."^[38] Patton called soldiers "privileged" to die for their country; MacArthur called their sacrifice "the noblest of human faiths."^[39] Even setting aside inspirational speeches by famous generals, it is hard to overestimate the extent to which military training for enlisted men and officers emphasizes the importance of the capacity to suffer, particularly for the sake of helping others. A special army pamphlet on values, distributed to all members of the army, includes a collection of twenty-four true stories about soldiers who exemplify military values. The common theme in all these tales is an acceptance—even an embracing—of risk and suffering: the captain who turns a problem company around while fighting a losing battle with cancer; the private who, unable to swim, nevertheless dives into a rain-swollen, icy river and saves a man from drowning; the sergeant

who takes command of a company when the officers in charge are critically wounded and organizes it to hold off the enemy until relief can arrive.^[40]

In addition to selflessness expressed as service and sacrifice, soldiers experience another kind of selflessness that has to do with intense group membership. This is not so much the conscious performance of duty as it is the unconscious loss of individuality. J. Glenn Gray described the selflessness of soldiers in battle as an "ecstacy": "At such moments . . . we are liberated from our individual impotence and are drunk with the power that union with our fellows brings. . . . 'I' passes insensibly into a 'we,' 'my' becomes 'our,' and individual fate loses its central importance."^[41]

Integrity

Army literature speaks more or less interchangeably of integrity, honesty, and candor as crucial military values involving absolute truthfulness and "steadfast adherence to standards of behavior."^[42] In the words of former Secretary of War Newton Baker, "the inexact or untruthful soldier trifles with the lives of his fellow men and with the honor of his government, and it is therefore no matter of pride but rather a stern necessity that makes West Point require of her students a character for trustworthiness that knows no evasions."^[43] Today, integrity for both officers and enlisted men has come to mean (at least on paper) not just truthfulness but standing up for what is right, even to the extent of defying commanding officers. "This does not mean that every order or policy is to be questioned, but if soldiers . . . truly believe that something is not right, they have the responsibility to make their views known. . . . We must achieve a balance between unswerving loyalty to our institution and healthy criticism."^[44] One captain called the honesty of the military professional "the willingness to comply with the spirit of what is right, rather than constantly looking for a loophole."

Pride

Soldiers who are loyal, competent, selfless, and honest will take pride in themselves and their units: pride is a product of following the military moral tradition, as well as one of its requirements. Military

pride is disciplined, not ostentatious; nevertheless, a certain amount of show is necessary. Members of the military are well aware of the importance of image, since the projected image can become reality. As one captain put it, "I like to project the image of someone who has the ability to face a crisis. . . . I guess ultimately . . . that's what they pay us for. . . . In a crisis environment, if I cannot control myself . . . then I could kill someone, and I don't want to have to live with that." The higher an officer's rank, the more important it is that he or she live the military moral tradition for all to see, since army studies have shown that junior officers look to their commanders to set standards of behavior.^[45] Generals Patton and MacArthur were extremely conscious of the examples they set for their men; Patton in particular considered it his responsibility to project a warrior image for the soldiers and was so often to be found at the front that he was accused by his superiors of being too reckless for an officer.^[46]

One crucial element of military pride is expressed in the much-used military phrase "a positive attitude," which means showing enthusiasm and self-confidence under almost any circumstances. "Forcing people is inefficient. . . . Conformity is not enough in combat. In order to win, there must be enthusiasm and initiative that can only come from 'willing and cheerful obedience.'"^[47] This is a lesson cadets learn at West Point: as one graduate put it, "There is no worse crime than indifference."^[48] The troops show a positive attitude "by smartness of appearance and action; by proper maintenance of dress, equipment, and quarters; by mutual respect between senior and subordinate; and by the prompt and cheerful execution of both the letter and the spirit of lawful orders to the fullest of one's comprehension."^[49]

Traditionally, one way the military has instilled this pride in its professionals is through rituals of group suffering: the indignities of boot camp for enlisted recruits and of hazing for first-year cadets (plebes) at the military academies. The plebe systems serve "not only as a means of indoctrinating new members but also as a test of their worthiness and desire to join an elite community." Unfortunately, "the line between legitimized actions which serve to 'put a plebe through his paces' and unauthorized hazing has remained difficult to draw."^[50] One of the best descriptions of hazing can be found in Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline , a fictionalized account of his experiences at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, South Carolina. He

shows that some young men are "violated" and "broken" by the plebe system, while others come through it "with a feeling of transformation and achievement" that is like nothing they have ever felt before or will ever feel again.^[51] This experience of being transformed through suffering was put into words by a retired marine, describing the humiliations of his basic training during World War II:

It made me feel like a nothin'. But on the other hand, they did so many things that made me feel like I was a person, that I could tolerate that. . . . They humiliate ya, they make ya do things that you don't think are physically possible. At the same time, they're makin' you feel you're something. That you're part of something. When you're there and you need somebody, you got somebody. It was the high point of my life. . . . I was somebody.^[52]

An army major echoed this perspective from the point of view of a commanding officer for whom discipline meant "thinking about the group rather than the self":

The bulk of our time [as commanders] is spent . . . trying to promote spirit and cohesion. . . . And some of the ways we do that [are] shaving their hair off . . . and dehumanizing them and making them identityless, so they can more relate to the group. If you strip the macho identity away, the evil away, and all the me-ism away, then they can start performing as a group. A lot of people think that's beating people down to gain control of them. I really don't think that's it at all. That's one of the great things American soldiers have over the bad guys: we instill, in the end, the feeling that each individual is special.

Conflicts Inherent in the Two Moral Traditions

The Quaker virtues have religious roots and are perceived to be generated from within, whereas the military virtues are based on the demands of a profession and are perceived to be learned. Nevertheless, both provide guidelines for living a life of service to a calling. Attempts to practice the virtues have shown, however, that they are not easy to follow. Indeed, they are not always easy to understand, since a quality like simplicity or loyalty can lend itself to many interpretations. Within the two traditions, most problems with the practice of the virtues lie in conflicts between personal and communal interpretations of what is right. In traditional Quakerism, both the individ-

ual and the Meeting as a whole are struggling to do God's will, but they do not always agree on what it is. In the military profession, service to the country should be of paramount importance to all, but individual soldiers may not agree that official army policy is in the country's best interest.^[53] The concepts of concern and leadership can help members of the two groups steer their way between private conscience and the will of the group, but many dilemmas are still difficult to resolve. It is not only at boarding schools that the practice of Quaker and military virtues gives rise to conflict. Rather, many of these conflicts are rooted in controversies that have plagued the two traditions for years.

The Quaker Tradition:
Conflict over the Inner Light

Traditional Quaker doubts and conflicts grow out of trying to determine what actions are truly prompted by the Inner Light. One of the most common dilemmas among devout Friends has been whether to speak out in Meeting for Worship. For a Friend to break the silence of Meeting, he or she should have a "leading." To speak because one has thought of something interesting to say or wants to be noticed is frivolous or even sacrilegious—it is called "going before one's Guide" or indulging in "creaturely activity." Friends' journals from the 1600s to the present record indecision about speaking in Meeting. If they were to speak, would they be outrunning their Guide? If they felt a call to speak but didn't, out of fear that the call was only imagined, might they actually be turning their backs on Divine Will?^[54] These fears were heightened by the presence, in most eighteenth-century Meetings, of "elders," respected men and women appointed by the Meeting to support and encourage those who "spoke in the Light" and to discourage those whose messages seemed to be without Spirit. Even today, a person who speaks often in Meeting without having anything spiritual to say may be taken aside and "eldered" by a "weighty Friend." The risk of failure to respond to a "leading" also continues to worry Quakers today, although modern Friends focus more on their responsibility to speak in public than in Meeting. One Quaker told of her boss's cruelty to a fellow employee. She longed to confront the boss, but "I never did anything, I just sat there and

listened to him humiliate this man. . . . Fear stopped me. God—a good leading—was pushing me to speak. . . . I have more strength now: I failed the test that time, but I will do better next time."

This Friend seemed to feel it was her duty to speak out in defense of her fellow employee, to do God's will. But duty is not a word that comes easily to modern Quakers. In the nineteenth century it seemed natural to a Quaker like John Greenleaf Whittier to hope that he might be able to do God's will "as if it were my own."^[55] But many Friends have trouble reconciling this idea of being led with the Quakerly injunction not to "sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your consciences or the intellectual freedom of your judgments."^[56] To someone who is completely confident of the Inner Light, duty and freedom of conscience are not contradictory concepts. However, this kind of religious assurance is less common today than it was two or three centuries ago. Modern Quakers struggle with the idea of duty, and many seem to have difficulty equating it with the will of God at all. A fifth-generation Friend, for example, said he was comfortable with the idea of having obligations only "as long as I realize that I'm the one making the choice, and I'm making it out of love rather than out of some rigid societal sense of [what I should do]."

One of the hardest decisions modern Quakers have to make is not when to act, but when not to act. Although Friends have a reputation as social activists who seek to "mend the world," their actions are constrained by the conviction that they should proceed only "as way opens": "We run ahead of our Guide and risk a calamitous outcome when we endeavor to force action on a concern by bowling over everything that stands in the way."^[57] The fact that a group of Quakers should proceed to action only after consensus has been reached makes the prompt, decisive achievement of clear-cut ends unlikely. In relief work, for example,

the administrator with a wide range of information and experience before him may not have much difficulty in thinking out a line of action. . . . But if he lays it before the group he may very well find that . . . intellectual apprehension of ascertainable factors must give way before the sense that the Lord has not spoken, for without a sense of being encompassed by a cloud of witnesses, the Quaker relief worker or group cannot feel that the concerns of the Society are being truly followed.^[58]

Although Friends may pursue specific political goals, they should not make the achievement of these ends all-important to their identity as Quakers. Often the fact that one bears witness—"an activity in which both ends and means are emergent"—is enough.^[59] But for the Quaker living in our results-oriented Western society, and particularly for the activist, the need for concrete goals and achievements becomes a problem, which some Friends have been accused of trying to solve by putting peace-making activities—participating in demonstrations, organizing committees, lobbying, and so on—before "living in the Spirit." This problem is intensified by the fact that a growing number of people are becoming Quakers mainly because they are attracted to Friends' liberal political positions. Since the days of George Fox, Quakers have identified the Inner Light with Christ, yet today many Friends are not Christians or at least do not express themselves in Christian language. Instead, they talk about the Divine Presence or the universal force, and some do not mention God at all. These Friends are more comfortable discussing Quaker stands on political issues than Quaker religious beliefs.

For an eighteenth-century Friend like Thomas Shillitoe, religious faith and political action were inextricably linked. "If I remained willing to become like a cork on the mighty ocean of service . . .," he wrote, "willing to be wafted hither and thither, as the Spirit of the Lord my God should blow upon me, he would care for me every day and every way; so that there should be no lack of strength to encounter all my difficulties."^[60] Following his leadings, Shillitoe had audiences with George III and John Quincy Adams; he traveled to Germany to pray with prisoners and to America to preach to slaveholders. Throughout his travels, he allowed his faith in God to lead him to service. Many twentieth-century Quakers, by contrast, have become Friends in the hope that service will lead them to God. As one Friend put it:

We have gotten lots of new members, especially in recent years, who are attracted by our testimonies—peace, racial harmony, women's rights, and the like. But it seems to me that most of these people will eventually leave us unless they become turned on by our worship. . . . After all, we try to base our actions on divine leadings. And that means we're more interested in finding the divine than in any given cause taken by itself.^[61]

In his study of the consensus decision-making process among Friends, Michael Sheeran finds that this tension over religious belief hinges on the capacity to experience the sacred. It is not the name one gives to "the Spirit" but one's ability to feel its presence that is all-important to the Quaker religion:

Quakerism has always been a community without creed precisely because it did not need a creed. Unlike other faiths, Quakerism builds on the experience of the gathered meeting. Together Friends experience something beyond themselves, superior to the human pettiness that marks ordinary life. . . . In the experience, [a Quaker] finds guidance, motivation to reconsider preferences, a sense of obligation to the decision reached by this special atmosphere.^[62]

These experiences are denied to the person who does not feel a sacred presence in the gathered Meeting. No matter how devoted the person is to Quaker causes, he or she cannot act "in the Light" if the Light has not been felt. This problem gives rise to the question: What is the worth of action without spiritual inspiration? More disturbingly, members of the Meeting are forced to ask themselves: Can one be a Friend if one does not experience the Light? Many answer, Yes—but only if one is open to the idea of the sacred and willing to search for a spiritual capacity within oneself. Mere dedication to Quaker causes and testimonies is not enough.

These conflicts over silence versus speaking, duty versus choice, waiting versus acting, and faith versus politics come to a head when a Friend brings a concern before his or her Meeting. In an ideal situation, the members of the Meeting are fired by the concern, and the Meeting makes a consensual decision to offer it their full spiritual and sometimes financial support. In reality, unity over a concern may fail. The members of the Meeting may question the validity of the concern or doubt the wisdom of carrying it out. Or, despite the support of many members, the Meeting may fail to unite behind a proposed plan. Although anyone is still free to act on the concern without the Meeting's support, such community disapproval may lead the individual to doubt his or her own conviction.

The tension between private conscience and communal judgment is perceived by many Quakers to be healthy, since it limits both the excesses of the individual and the conservatism of the group:

Quakerism has always had within it a strong centrifugal force of individualism, but likewise there has always been a centripetal force of corporate life in tension with it; and from the fruitful interaction of these two have come the decisions of the Society. The visions and concerns of individuals prevent the Society from being over-traditional and static; the insights of the gathered group prevent it from moving over-hastily in unconsidered enthusiasm.^[63]

Yet, a healthy balance between the individual and the group is easier to prescribe than to achieve. In the early 1800s, for example, the Meeting, with its "elders" and "overseers," was frequently dominant, and discipline rather than enthusiasm prevailed, giving rise to the stereotype of Quakers as strict and joyless. In recent years, by contrast, the emphasis on the primacy of private conscience caused a "weighty Friend" and educator to remind his fellow Quakers that "to heed the voice of Truth, 'the still small voice within,' . . . does not mean to accentuate and glorify a self-centered individualism . . . [because for] Friends, to live in Truth is to overcome the impetuous claims of self."^[64]

The Military Tradition:
Conflict over Duty

In 1960, Military Review printed an essay stating that "the only categorical imperative of military conduct is: A military body and every member therein must perform the duty assigned, whatever it may be."^[65] Today, duty no longer carries the same implication of absolute and uncritical obedience to orders. Training materials for officers emphasize initiative, imagination, reflection, flexibility, and creativity instead of obedience, and enlisted men are taught that they are required to follow only legal orders. An army major is proud of this fact:

It's not just the Hitlers and the Eichmanns, it's the guys who lock the doors, it's the guys who turn on the gas: how did that happen? And we're not going to let that happen in this country—it's not going to happen! We're going to have lawful orders and unlawful orders. And if Captain Medina . . . gives an order to Lieutenant Calley to "take care of them," then that's an unlawful order and a guy like Calley has got to buck that order.^[66]

In spite of the increased emphasis on initiative and questioning in today's army, however, obedience—the "can-do" attitude—is still the safest response to an order, or even a request, from a superior.

Officers' careers depend on regular performance evaluations from their superiors, called Officer Efficiency Reports, or OERs. "One bad OER and you're dead," explained the major. Many officers are afraid of discussing problems with their superiors, for fear of being branded "negative," so they answer "Yes, sir," to all orders and then either attempt the impossible, pass the buck to their subordinates, or, worst of all, engage in a cover-up to hide their failure.^[67] This focus on results can also lead to an obsessive quantification of data to "prove" success or to "the energetic accomplishment of meaningless things."^[68]

Officers think a great deal about the possibility of disobeying orders; the military has come up with a number of slang phrases for this behavior, such as "being hung," "going to the wall," or "falling on your sword." It is significant that all these phrases have to do with death: disobedience is still regarded as a probable deathblow to a military career. Nevertheless, wrote one officer:

there are things, should always be things, for which we must be willing to be hung. To forget it is to risk slipping into the unthinking obedience, false loyalty, and phony honor of "my country, right or wrong," or "my boss, right or wrong." And, of course, the tempting "me, right or wrong."^[69]

One major felt strongly that "you don't do something because someone told you to; you do something because someone told you to and it's correct." He had made a point in his career of refusing bad orders and had been relieved of command four times as a result. So far he has always been reinstated, because "the higher authority would say, 'No, you can't relieve him for that, because you shouldn't have been telling him to do that in the first place.'" He argued that one should not carry disobedience to an extreme and "become known as a guy who goes to the wall daily. . . . What you should go to the wall over is something that is hurting the army: the organization or the people."

Another officer, who approved of soldiers' disobedience under certain circumstances, admitted that he himself found it extremely difficult to imagine saying, "Damn it, I don't want to do this, this is dumb. I've got a good mind to go into the general's office and just fall on my sword." He dreaded the "bad report card" that would result from being so "disrespectful and blatantly disloyal." The problem with this fear, he said, is that "you give up your integrity an inch at a time . . . and after a few years you look back and there's a whole football field behind you. And that's from having put off falling on your sword."

Few issues are more likely to raise questions about orders than mission-versus-men dilemmas. In the military, the mission is the goal that must be achieved, and the men are the primary means for accomplishing that goal. General Maxwell Taylor wrote, "The measure of the quality of the officer is his success in carrying out his mission, despite all obstacles. . . . He is a good officer professionally to the extent that he succeeds, a bad one to the extent that he fails."^[70] Yet, in the words of an air force general, "Overemphasis on mission can lead to the age-old ethical problem of subordination of means to ends."^[71] In wartime, this can refer to an unnecessary sacrifice of men's lives; in peacetime, to overworking subordinates or asking them to behave unethically or unsafely, by lying on reports or using faulty equipment, for example. A primary criticism of OERs is that "the standards of evaluation being applied have failed to penalize those who exploit their units to advance their own interests."^[72] Still, many officers and NCOs believe that "taking care of the men" is their primary responsibility, and they will put their own career in jeopardy to defend subordinates or protect them from unreasonable demands. Indeed, the officer who described his fear of falling on his sword had in fact done so once for the sake of his men, refusing an order that he felt made frivolous and unreasonable demands on the troops.

This kind of loyalty within a squad, platoon, or company, either between superior and subordinate or among peers, is crucial to the cohesion of the army. It is also what makes men fight in war. "I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war," wrote S. L. A. Marshall, "that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade."^[73] In theory, loyalty to the members of one's military unit should be compatible with loyalty to the army as an institution and to its values. But in fact the two loyalties frequently clash. To counteract this tendency to put the subgroup before the organization, cadets at West Point, Colorado Springs, and Annapolis, who take an oath not to lie, cheat, or steal, must also swear not to "tolerate those who do." This nontoleration clause means that cadets or midshipmen who fail to report their classmates' dishonesty may be punished as severely as the actual offenders.

Loyalty to peers or subordinates is one of the most common reasons for putting conscience before command and defying an order. But the most difficult situation for a military professional is when conscience

urges him or her to go against both subgroup and organization, to do what he or she thinks is right even when it seems to work against the profession. In spite of the army's recent policy of "sensitiz[ing] individuals to ethical issues" and moral dilemmas,^[74] the prevailing norm is that professional standards are more important than private conscience. "It is not acceptable for a person to act in ways contrary to ethical norms simply because he or she 'feels' it is right to do so. We must divorce ourselves from emotional responses to human behavior, and we must emphasize the role of standards in evaluating such behavior."^[75]

These tensions between acting independently and acting with the group, between following one's "leadings" and accepting common norms, are inherent in both the Quaker and the military tradition. The two sets of virtues provide guidelines for handling some dilemmas, but they also raise dilemmas of their own. Concern and leadership are helpful as reconciling concepts that acknowledge the simultaneous validity of individual judgment and community standards, but they cannot be applied to every situation. Ultimately, these tensions are part of life as a Quaker or a military professional. They are part of life at the boarding schools. They are also part of modern society, perhaps especially among Americans, whom Hewitt describes as "torn between individualism and communitarianism."^[76] He identifies several themes in our culture that involve "dilemmas of choice," one of which is conforming versus rebelling: "Should one go along with the constraints and demands imposed by others, or should one rebel against them, marching to the beat of one's own drummer?"^[77] The liberal Quaker tradition favors the drum solo; the conservative military tradition, the marching band. But neither tradition is single-mindedly individualistic or communitarian. There is room for compromise in both.

At the boarding schools, where the traditions are taught and practiced, the virtues play a crucial role as guidelines for a good life and as centerpieces in the "dilemmas of choice" that arise during the school year. Concern and leadership are important forces in boarding-school life, but they need the virtues to make them intelligible. For Quakers or military professionals, the virtues represent the "specific skills" they need in order to live a life that is "faithful to [their] tradition's understanding of the moral project in which its adherents participate."^[78] In

their different ways, the Quaker and military moral traditions share a strong ethic of service; the virtues are simultaneously prerequisites, building blocks, and goals in each tradition's quest to serve. At the six schools, where the Quaker and military moral projects have been adapted to fit the requirements of classroom and dormitory, the conscious espousal and pursuit of each virtue by teachers and students impose order on the everyday. Chapter Three describes in detail how the virtues shape school life.