Mr. Dubois Character Analysis

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

Suddenly, he pointed his stump at me. “You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?”

“The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”

“The exact words of the book,” he said scornfully. “But do you understand it? Do you believe it?”

“Uh, I don’t know, sir.”

“Of course you don’t! I doubt if any of you here would recognize ‘civic virtue’ if it came up and barked in your face!”

“I,” we each echoed, “being of legal age, of my own free will—”

“—without coercion, promise, or inducement of any sort, after having been duly advised and warned of the meaning and consequences of this oath—

“—do now enroll in the Federal Service of the Terran Federation of not less than two years and as much longer as may be required by the needs of the Service—

[…]

“I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Federation against all its enemies on or off Terra […]

“—and to obey all lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Terran Service and of all officers or delegated persons placed over me—

“—and to require such obedience from all members of the Service or other persons or non-human beings lawfully placed under my orders—

“—and, on being honorably discharged at the completion of my full term of service […] to carry out all duties and obligations and to enjoy full privileges of Federation citizenship including but not limited to the duty, obligation, and privilege of exercising sovereign franchise for the rest of my natural life.”

You are now going through the hardest part of your service—not the hardest part physically (though physical hardship will never trouble you again; you now have its measure), but the hardest spiritually … the deep, soul-turning readjustments and re-evaluations necessary to metamorphose a potential citizen into one in being. Or, rather I should say: you have already gone through the hardest part, despite all the tribulations you still have ahead of you and all the hurdles, each higher than the last, which you still must clear. But it is that “hump” that counts—and, knowing you, lad, I know that I have waited long enough to be sure that you are past your “hump”—or you would be home now.

When you reached that spiritual mountaintop you felt something, a new something. Perhaps you haven’t a word for it (I know I didn’t, when I was a boot). So perhaps you will permit an older comrade to lend you the words, since it often helps to have discrete words. Simply this: The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.

Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, already valuable, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value—the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives—and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.

This very personal relationship, ‘value,’ has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him … and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted … and get it, without turmoil, without sweat, without tears.

“Law-abiding people,” Dubois had told us, “hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons … to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably—or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places—these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark.”

I didn’t then know what a sadist was—but I knew pups. “Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he’s in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again—and you have to do it right away! It doesn’t do a bit of good to punish him later; you’ll just confuse him. Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him.”

Nevertheless, I had signed up in order to win a vote.

Or had I?

Had I ever cared about voting? No, it was the prestige, the pride, the status…of being a citizen.

Or was it?

I couldn’t remember to save my life why I had signed up.

Anyhow, it wasn’t the process of voting that made a citizen—the Lieutenant had been a citizen in the truest sense of the word, even though he had not lived long enough ever to cast a ballot. He had “voted” every time he made a drop.

And so had I!

I could hear Colonel Dubois in my mind: “Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

Suddenly, he pointed his stump at me. “You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?”

“The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”

“The exact words of the book,” he said scornfully. “But do you understand it? Do you believe it?”

“Uh, I don’t know, sir.”

“Of course you don’t! I doubt if any of you here would recognize ‘civic virtue’ if it came up and barked in your face!”

“I,” we each echoed, “being of legal age, of my own free will—”

“—without coercion, promise, or inducement of any sort, after having been duly advised and warned of the meaning and consequences of this oath—

“—do now enroll in the Federal Service of the Terran Federation of not less than two years and as much longer as may be required by the needs of the Service—

[…]

“I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Federation against all its enemies on or off Terra […]

“—and to obey all lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Terran Service and of all officers or delegated persons placed over me—

“—and to require such obedience from all members of the Service or other persons or non-human beings lawfully placed under my orders—

“—and, on being honorably discharged at the completion of my full term of service […] to carry out all duties and obligations and to enjoy full privileges of Federation citizenship including but not limited to the duty, obligation, and privilege of exercising sovereign franchise for the rest of my natural life.”

You are now going through the hardest part of your service—not the hardest part physically (though physical hardship will never trouble you again; you now have its measure), but the hardest spiritually … the deep, soul-turning readjustments and re-evaluations necessary to metamorphose a potential citizen into one in being. Or, rather I should say: you have already gone through the hardest part, despite all the tribulations you still have ahead of you and all the hurdles, each higher than the last, which you still must clear. But it is that “hump” that counts—and, knowing you, lad, I know that I have waited long enough to be sure that you are past your “hump”—or you would be home now.

When you reached that spiritual mountaintop you felt something, a new something. Perhaps you haven’t a word for it (I know I didn’t, when I was a boot). So perhaps you will permit an older comrade to lend you the words, since it often helps to have discrete words. Simply this: The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.

Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, already valuable, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value—the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives—and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.

This very personal relationship, ‘value,’ has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him … and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted … and get it, without turmoil, without sweat, without tears.

“Law-abiding people,” Dubois had told us, “hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons … to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably—or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places—these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark.”

I didn’t then know what a sadist was—but I knew pups. “Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he’s in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again—and you have to do it right away! It doesn’t do a bit of good to punish him later; you’ll just confuse him. Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him.”

Nevertheless, I had signed up in order to win a vote.

Or had I?

Had I ever cared about voting? No, it was the prestige, the pride, the status…of being a citizen.

Or was it?

I couldn’t remember to save my life why I had signed up.

Anyhow, it wasn’t the process of voting that made a citizen—the Lieutenant had been a citizen in the truest sense of the word, even though he had not lived long enough ever to cast a ballot. He had “voted” every time he made a drop.

And so had I!

I could hear Colonel Dubois in my mind: “Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”