Let me make one flat - footed prediction of the science - fiction type. Like all scenarios this one has assumptions - variables treated as constants. The primary assumption is that World War Three will hold off long enough - ten, twenty, thirty years - for this prediction to work out... plus a secondary assumption that the human race will not find some other way to blunder into ultimate disaster.
Prediction: In the immediate future - by that I mean in the course of the naval careers of the class of '73 - there will be nuclear - powered, constant - boost spaceships - ships capable of going to Mars and back in a couple of weeks - and these ships will be armed with Buck - Rogersish death rays. Despite all treaties now existing or still to be signed concerning the peaceful use of space, these spaceships will be used in warfare. Space navies will change beyond recognition our present methods of warfare and will control the political shape of the world for the foreseeable future. Furthermore - and still more important - these new spaceships will open the Solar System to colonization and will eventually open the rest of this Galaxy.
I did not say that the United States will have these ships. The present sorry state of our country does not permit me to make such a prediction. In the words of one of our most distinguished graduates in his The Influence of Sea Power on History: "Popular governments are not generally favorable to military expenditures, however necessary - "
Every military officer has had his nose rubbed in the wry truth of Admiral Mahan's observation. I first found myself dismayed by it some forty years ago when I learned that I was expected to maintain the ship's battery of USS ROPER in a state of combat readiness on an allowance of less than a dollar a day - with World War Two staring down our throats.
The United States is capable of developing such spaceships. But the mood today does not favor it. So I am unable to predict that we will be the nation to spend the necessary R&D money to build such ships.
(Addressed to a plebe midshipman:)
Mister, how long is it to graduation?
Sixty - two days? Let's make it closer than that. I have ... 7.59, just short of eight bells. Assuming graduation for ten in the morning that gives.. . 5,320,860 seconds to graduation.. . and I have less than 960 seconds in which to say what I want to say.
(To the Brigade at large:) Why are you here?
(To a second plebe:)
Mister, why are you here?
Never mind, son; that's a rhetorical question. You are here to become a naval officer. That's why this Academy was founded. That is why all of you are here: to become naval officers. If that is not why you are here, you've made a bad mistake. But I speak to the overwhelming majority who understood the oath they took on becoming midshipmen and look forward to the day when they will renew that oath as commissioned officers.
But why would anyone want to become a naval officer?
In the present dismal state of our culture there is little prestige attached to serving your country; recent public opinion polls place military service far down the list.
It can't be the pay. No one gets rich on Navy pay. Even a 4 - star admiral is paid much less than top executives in other lines. As for lower ranks the typical naval officer finds himself throughout his career just catching up from the unexpected expenses connected with the last change of duty when another change of duty causes a new financial crisis. Then, when he is about fifty, he is passed over and retires... but he can't really retire because he has two kids in college and one still to go. So he has to find a job ... and discovers that jobs for men his age are scarce and usually don't pay well.
Working conditions? You'll spend half your life away from your family. Your working hours? "Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able; the seventh the same, and pound on the cable." A forty - hour week is standard for civilians - but not for naval officers. You'll work that forty - hour week but that's just a starter. You'll stand a night watch as well, and duty weekends. Then with every increase in grade your hours get longer - until at last you get a ship of your own and no longer stand watches. Instead you are on duty twenty - four hours a day.. . and you'll sign your night order book with: "In case of doubt, do not hesitate to call me."
I don't know the average week's work for a naval officer but it is closer to sixty than to forty. I'm speaking of peacetime, of course. Under war conditions it is whatever hours are necessary - and sleep you grab when you can.
Why would anyone elect a career which is unappreciated, overworked, and underpaid? It can't be just to wear a pretty uniform. There has to be a better reason.
As one drives through the bush veldt of East Africa it is easy to spot herds of baboons grazing on the ground. But not by looking at the ground. Instead you look up and spot the lookout, an adult male posted on a limb of a tree where he has a clear view all around him - which is why you can spot him; he has to be where he can see a leopard in time to give the alarm. On the ground a leopard can catch a baboon ... but if a baboon is warned in time to reach the trees, he can out climb a leopard.
The lookout is a young male assigned to that duty and there he will stay, until the bull of the herd sends up another male to relieve him.
Keep your eye on that baboon; we'll be back to him. Today, in the United States, it is popular among self-styled "intellectuals" to sneer at patriotism. They seem to think that it is axiomatic that any civilized man is a pacifist, and they treat the military profession with contempt. "Warmongers" - " Imperialists" - "Hired killers in uniform" - you have all heard such sneers and you will hear them again. One of their favorite quotations is: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
What they never mention is that the man who made that sneering wisecrack was a fat, gluttonous slob who was pursued all his life by a pathological fear of death.
I propose to prove that that baboon on watch is morally superior to that fat poltroon who made that wisecrack.
Patriotism is the most practical of all human characteristics.
But in the present decadent atmosphere patriots are often too shy to talk about it - as if it were something shameful or an irrational weakness.
But patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.
A man who is not patriotic is an evolutionary dead end. This is not sentiment but the hardest sort of logic.
To prove that patriotism is a necessity we must go back to fundamentals. Take any breed of animal - for example, tyrannosaurus rex. What is the most basic thing about him? The answer is that tyrannosaurus rex is dead, gone, extinct.
Now take homo sapiens. The first fact about him is that he is not extinct, he is alive.
Which brings us to the second fundamental question: Will homo sapiens stay alive? Will he survive?
We can answer part of that at once: Individually h. sapiens will not survive. It is unlikely that anyone here tonight will be alive eighty years from now; it approaches mathematical certainty that we will all be dead a hundred years from now as even the youngest plebe here would be 118 years old then - if still alive.
Some men do live that long but the percentage is so microscopic as not to matter. Recent advances in biology suggest that human life may be extended to a century and a quarter, even a century and a half - but this will create more problems than it solves. When a man reaches my age or thereabouts, the last great service he can perform is to die and get out of the way of younger people.