THE
STATISTICAL SOLDIER
855
the poll in order to bring it into line with common sense. The individual
human experience is supposed to vanish away in the whirl of punch
cards and IBM machines. Yet an indissoluble residue of subjectivity
remains. "There is no escape," even
The American Soldier
concedes,
"from the need for using 'good judgment' in interpretations." So, be–
neath the disguise of Superman, we gradually discern the "insightful
observer" whom we had previously consigned to an unimportant place
on the library shelf.
What does "good judgment" (or even "'good judgment''') mean
to the social psychologist? One cannot escape the impression that their
whole system of interpretation is inherently deficient in two crucial as–
pects: in a sense of individual psychology and in a sense of history. A
comparison of the chapter in
The American Soldier
on "Morale At–
titudes of Combat Flying Personnel in the Air Corps" with the studies
of such Air Force psychiatrists as Grinker, Hastings and Bond shows how
incomparably richer and more illuminating the depth method of the
psychiatrist is than the polls of the social psychologist. As for history,
the authors of
The American Soldier
have almost achieved the tour-de–
force of writing about the American in World War II with practically
no reference to the historical context from which he came. Nor do the
few random sallies in this direction inspire confidence. When someone
writes that "the intellectual history of the period between the two world
wars was one of a developing climate of opinion distrustful of committing
oneself
to
causes," it can only be concluded that he has never heard of
communism, fascism or the New Deal. One comes to feel, indeed, that
the American soldier existed, neither in life nor in history, but in some
dreary statistical vacuum. One ends by wondering whether the whole
theory of social quantification does not involve so systematic an abstrac–
tion from the total experience of man as to squeeze out the more mean–
ingful factors in individual behavior in the sleight-of-hand which pretends
to eliminate-but cannot-the insight of the observer.
The American Soldier
is an entirely harmless book. The Army
certainly wasted no money in maintaining the Research Branch, even
if
the Social Science Research Council might have done better to sub–
sidize the same number of individual scholars. "Social science" as a
whole
is
perhaps doing no present harm, except as it engrosses money and
energy which might be put more wisely to other uses. But it might even–
tually do great harm in obscuring from ourselves the ancient truths
concerning the vanity of human wishes, and the distortions worked by
that vanity upon the human performance.
If
The American Soldier
represents the highest achievement of the
