Word: tested
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...wars are red with tales of unfit officers whose incompetence cost other men their lives, and their country, battles. Such tales there are bound to be after the next U.S. war, and many of them will be true. For, in the last analysis, war is the only sure test of an Army. This is a fact that every soldier knows, even if he does not speak...
Last week, with a foresight rare in U.S. military history, the army prepared to apply the awful test of war to U.S. officers before they actually go to battle. Said Under Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson (in a letter to House Speaker Sam Rayburn): "It is imperative that during the emergency the Secretary of War have authority to vitalize the active list of the Army, removing therefrom those officers who are unable to stand up under the strain to which they must be subjected if we are to build up a modern Army capable of meeting the demands...
Although Mr. Patterson wrote his letter on behalf of Secretary of War Stimson, the man behind this intelligent ruthlessness was the Army's kindly Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. Since the U.S. technically was still short of war, his test had to be short of war, too. But its application could be as remorseless and effective as he and his assistants chose to make...
...This test is given under the honor system-no peeking...
Hoover got the idea for his library while he was crossing the North Sea in 1914. Instead of worrying about drifting mines, he read the autobiography of Cornell University's Andrew White. The spark that fired Hoover's high-test historical sense was President White's observation that most of the records of the French Revolution are lost. Hoover is a firm believer that social and political records tell more about an age than military records. He also knew that the French Revolution was a minor engagement compared with the period in which he was playing...