The army has a first rate college of social science at Carlisle Barracks devoted to the study of everything but war. Boy was I wrong. Finally, the navy which has the most impressive war college in the world, particularly as far as the study of strategy goes, refuses to send the majority of its best officers to senior service school. But it is more than attendance at staff colleges or war colleges that creates the intellectual climate for modernization and innovation. At present the services are actively discouraging debate and intellectual vitality within their ranks.
Policy review dominates the air force.
Army general parade through staff and war colleges suggesting to the students that they take their packs off and not take the academic work seriously. Of all the services only the marines have developed a reading list that their officers buy and read . The army's reading lists receive neither publicity nor attention from that service. To my knowledge the navy has no reading list at all for its officers, while the air force's list could best be described by the word parochial. The British paid a terrible price for that lack of serious study on the battlefields of France, the Middle East, and Malaysia between 1939 and 1942.