From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [198]
“Ha,” Jake Delbert said aloud, and to hell with them, what are they anyway? “Tell me, Dynamite,” Jake said. “How are you makin’ out with that new man, whats his name, Prewitt. Have you convinced him he should go out yet?”
“Who?” Holmes said. He looked up startled, jerked from the clarity of the abstract back into the turbid concrete, where the application always has to take place. “Oh,” he said. “Prewitt. No, not yet. But my boys are working on him.”
“Giving him The Treatment?” Sam Slater interjected.
“Yes,” Holmes said reluctantly.
“Thats a good example of my theory. How long do you think we could run an army without noncoms who fear our class so much they will tyrannize their own?”
“Not very long, I guess,” Holmes said.
“The secret,” Sam Slater said, “is to cause every caste to fear its superiors and be contemptuous of its inferiors. You are wise to have your noncoms do it instead of doing it yourself. That makes even the noncoms more aware of the gulf between EM and officers.”
“But has it done any good yet?” Jake insisted, swinging it back again to the concrete, away from that infernal theory of young Slater’s. “Your Smoker season is in June this year, instead of August. You haven’t as much time to pull him into line as you would have had last year, and he hasnt given in yet, has he?”
“I told you no,” Holmes said violently, finding he was suddenly just a Captain again. “But I’ve taken all that other into account. I know what I’m doing. Truly, Sir.”
“I ’m sure you do, m’ boy,” Jake said sympathetically. He was back on familiar ground now. He could risk a pointed glance at Slater. “But dont forget, son, that this man is apparently a bolshevik, a true fuckup. They’re diff’r’nt from the average run, you know. I firmly believe in leading men, myself, but with bolsheviks you have to drive them. Its the only way to handle them. And you cant ever let them best you or you lose prestige with the men and they ’ll all be tryin’ to take advantage of you.”
“That’s true,” Sam Slater interjected. “If you’ve made an open issue of the thing, you must follow it through. Not that the issue itself is important, but because of the overall effect it has on the men.”
“I haven’t made an open issue of it yet,” Holmes said, feeling badgered. “The men are doing it practically by themselves, without my help.” Immediately he realized he had trapped himself. “What I mean,” he said.
“Oh,” Jake grinned. He was not missing any tricks now. These young flibertygibets who were always sucking in with the rank; it was all very well to talk theory, but it was the application of it that counted. “But dont you think that’ll look to the men as if you’re tryin’ to evade the responsibility?”
“No,” Holmes said, seeing what he was doing. “Not at all. I was trying to accomplish it with the noncoms, without coming into it myself, as the General said.” He nodded at Sam Slater.
“I wouldnt depend on that completely,” Jake said. “If he doesnt come around soon, so that he gets full benefit of the trainin’ season, he wont be any good to you anyway, will he?”
“Oh, yes,” Holmes said. “What I want him for is the Bowl season next winter, not the Company Smokers.” He smiled a little condescendingly, feeling he had won that round.
“Yes,” Jake pressed him, “but if he gets out of going out for Smokers, he’s still made you back down and lose face. And thats no good. Eh?” he said to Slater. “Am I right?”
Sam Slater looked at him some time before he answered. He had been sitting back, watching both of them, knowing they were playing for his approbation now. It warmed him. Jake of course had all the rank, but Jake was a coward and a member of the old Paternalism school that inevitably someday he and his generation would have to fight. And he liked young Holmes.
“Yes,” he said, finally. “Thats right. The important thing,” he said to Holmes, “is that you as an officer must not allow even a suspicion that an EM has made you back down. The boxing thing itself is unimportant,