ABSTRACT
The armed forces have three massive political advantages over civilian organizations: a marked superiority in organization, a highly emotionalized symbolic status, and a monopoly of arms. Modern armies are cohesive and hierarchical. Some armies of the past have not been cohesive but have consisted of a mere multitude of men independent of one another and maintaining little contact between themselves. Others have not been hierarchical, but almost republican in their relations to their chiefs. The army is a purposive instrument. The highly peculiar features of its organization flow from this central purpose, not from the secondary one, and find in it their supreme justification. These features are: centralized command, hierarchy, discipline, intercommunication, esprit de corps and a corresponding isolation and self-sufficiency. Military command is centralized. In practice, much is delegated to units in the field, but always within the supreme command's general directives and always subject to be resumed by it should occasion arise.
