Disciplined Wildness

I dreamed an old-fashioned general of the French type and his intelligent friend were seated at an outdoor cafe, talking.

“Young officers who are wild are better than young officers who are spiritless,” the general said  [I think I read this somewhere recently].  “The wild ones you can sometimes teach self-discipline too.  The spiritless ones cannot be taught spirit.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if you could teach them spirit?  That would be wonderful.”

The general is shocked.  “Why?  You don’t like the wild officers?”

“No, no, that part is fine.  But if you could have *all* your officers have both spirit and self-discipline, what a fantastic force you would be.”

The general is deeply shocked by the suggestion.  “Absolutely not.  It would never do.  The great mass of bland officers, we rely on them to keep the spirited ones checked.  A whole force full of self-disciplined officers with vigor and dash and self-purpose, it staggers my imagination.  It would be chaos, sir.  Chaos.  The Army would dissolve.  The nation would dissolve.  The world, sir, the world would dissolve.”

The friend is deeply disappointed in what this reveals about his old friend the general.  “Yes,” he said, and then certain words of remonstrance that I do not now recall.