Integrity

Lieutenant Commander Richard Adams, RAN

Integrity is being committed to always doing what is right, no matter what the consequences.

Navy Values: Serving Australia with Pride[1]

The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) demands strength of character from its members because the business of war is fundamentally about right and wrong. When discussing armed conflict, language is laced with moral meaning. Words like faithfulness, devotion, betrayal, atrocity, honour and shame, impose value judgements and expose the centuries of moral argument, which have been an intrinsic accompaniment to war.^[2] Accordingly, military service is defined by firm expectations of personal integrity. British Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, spoke of the need for ‘true heartedness’ among those who serve at sea.^[3] Resonant with the sense of integrity, this expression points to the truth that unless the Navy is distinguished by fair and principled men and women, the RAN’s ships amount to nothing. Our integrity defines a moral purpose to which others look for inspiration, and leadership. Our integrity defines the moral power of our Service and ultimately of our nation.

Integrity is not complicated – if it’s not right, then don’t do it; if it’s not true, don’t say it – but it is unforgiving. Far more than sheer pretence, integrity is hard and uncompromising; a concept of pitiless perfection at the heart of the stoic ideal. The Stoics, an ancient Greek school which sought virtue as the greatest good, coined the phrase vivere militare – life is being a soldier. Taking this point in his 1993 essay ‘Courage under fire’, Vice Admiral James Stockdale, USN, repeated the words of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, (circa 50- 135 CE); ‘if you neglect your [moral] responsibilities, when some severe order is placed upon you, to what pitiful state do you bring the army?’^[4]

Stockdale had been shot down in an A4 Skyhawk over North Vietnam in September 1965, and then spent seven and a half years as a prisoner of war; enduring torture, long periods of solitary confinement and leg irons. Recalling his captivity he explained that ‘good and evil are not just abstractions you kick around and give lectures about … The only good and evil that means anything is right in your own heart, within your will and within your power’.^[5] Stockdale affords an astoundingly real perspective on what integrity entails. There is nothing worse than the destruction of our self respect. We can endure pain, we can endure public degradation and humiliation, but we cannot live with shame – the private knowledge that we have compromised our standards. Our integrity embodies who we are and how we act; total responsibility and accountability for every emotion, every judgement, and every decision. Thus, writes Stockdale: ‘It is within you that your destruction and deliverance lie’.^[6]

Integrity, which can in consequence be seen to articulate the real meaning of ‘leadership by example,’ is explained by another famous US Navy admiral, Arleigh Burke, as ‘an unimpaired adherence to a code of moral values’.^[7] A recent RAN handbook underlines the same point:

Leadership … is a trust sustained by the personal example of the leader. For subordinates to be committed to the goals and values of the Service, the leader must be a living example of those same goals and values. When once the leader sermonises, ‘do as I say, and not as I do,’ trust starts to deteriorate and along with trust is lost morale and military effectiveness.[8]

A person of integrity can be counted upon to give precedence to moral considerations, indifferent to personal desire or inducement to self-interest, even where such a betrayal of moral principle might pass undetected. This was the sense of integrity understood by Admiral Burke to be at the very heart of the profession of arms:

A military professional is someone who holds to the highest standards and serves the country with unquestioning loyalty; the professional is not motivated by personal gain … a careerist [on the other hand] is someone who serves the country in the best way fit to further his own career.

The Fleet Commander after World War I, Rear Admiral John Dumaresq, RN, affords just such an example of professional integrity. A man of exceptional ability and imagination, in 1904 he invented a mechanism that calculated predicted changes in range and deflection that improved the accuracy of heavy naval guns. Although readily adopted by the Royal Navy, and becoming a key gunnery instrument, Dumaresq’s device attracted no personal reward other than a small one-off payment from the Admiralty. In 1906, however, the instrument’s manufacturer wrote to him, admitting that ‘you have helped us to make some money and even though one is a contractor some shreds of conscience remain …’^[9] The firm had enclosed the gift of a barometer, hoping that it ‘may always send fair and prosperous weather’. Insulted, Dumaresq returned the box unopened and demanded an apology from its sender. The high personal standards he set would allow nothing which might be misconstrued as corrupt, and thus bring discredit upon himself or his Service. Fundamental to Service ideals, virtue of this sort becomes its own reward.

Dumaresq’s sense of integrity regularly brought him into conflict with Australian politicians, not least when he sought to protect the RAN’s interests in the face of apathy and interference. Not wishing to be ‘crowned with a halo of popularity’, he instead chose to speak plainly and publicly. During one press conference he expressed his fears that resource cutbacks threatened the Navy’s soul, morale and spirit. Asked who was responsible, the Government or the people?, Dumaresq’s response was emphatic, ‘I blame them both. People get the Government they deserve’. On another occasion, Dumaresq submitted his resignation after political pressure saw the early release of five sailors found guilty of mutiny. He did not so much object to the release, as to the impression certain politicians fed to the media that the original sentences were unduly severe and that Australians were not amenable to naval discipline. Believing that both efficiency and discipline had been compromised in the Fleet, Dumaresq only withdrew his resignation after obtaining the general distribution of a Government statement acknowledging that remission for the mutineers was an act of clemency, extended to all offenders following the proclamation of peace.

Expressed in terms such as these, integrity defines our greatest opportunity for service to our country, because it requires a willingness to pursue the truth, act with honesty and accept the consequences. It was a trait Dumaresq shared with Admiral Sir Anthony Synnot, RAN, one of the most highly respected officers ever to serve in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). As Chief of Defence Force Staff between 1979 and 1982, Synnot approached the task with strategic foresight and determination. Aware that Australia needed to play a leading military role in the Asia-Pacific region, he began a comprehensive program to improve the ADF’s capabilities. Among other initiatives, Synnot persuaded the Fraser Government that replacement of the aging aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (II) was a high priority, and was involved in the decision to buy HMS Invincible. He did not shirk, however, from criticising the Government’s later plans to reschedule several of these re-equipment programs, including the carrier purchase.

Synnot exposed ‘rescheduling’ as a euphemism to disguise economic cut-backs and hide the loss of defence capability, without directly over-ruling the individual Service chiefs. Bearing the moral responsibility to represent the ADF in the face of an unreceptive government, Synnot was always courteous, patient and resolute. His approach was not adversarial, he rather sought consensus through uncomplaining effort.

Lieutenant Commander (later Commodore) David Farthing, RAN, was another who faced up to the task of saying what was right, not simply what others might wish to hear. In 1969-70 he commanded the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam which operated as an Experimental Military Unit (EMU), integrated with the US Army’s 135th Assault Helicopter Company:

On one occasion a young Regular [US] Army Captain was posted to the Company as our Flying Instructor, a vital position in any aviation unit, but, doubly so when so many of your aviators are straight out of flying school. Inquiries revealed that our new Instructor had only 125 hours in total. This situation caused the only real argument in my time with the EMUs – I said that he did not have sufficient experience to instruct (observing that none of the Australian pilots had less than 1000 hours) and my American CO [commanding officer] did not agree. Sadly, the new Instructor managed to kill his first student the next day and the CO was sacked for something which was really the fault of the system.

Integrity is the backbone of character; it is cheapened by insinuations of mere display, or the maintenance of different sets of values depending on context. In an armed service integrity must be protected at all costs. In effect, military character must be morally unimpeachable, in order to ensure those who serve:

Given a mandate by their society to take lives, take only certain lives, in certain ways, at certain times and for certain reasons, otherwise servicemen become indistinguishable from murderers and will find themselves condemned by the very societies they serve.[10]

It is thus integrity, and not military law, which characterises the military ideal and distinguishes worthy from discreditable acts.^[11]

This is the hard edge of integrity which, above and beyond the edicts of the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982, defines the moral responsibility and character of the RAN. Integrity is of the utmost importance. No one can live well without it, no one can lead without it and no one can serve without it.

References

1. ↑ Royal Australian Navy, Navy Values: Serving Australia with Pride, Canberra, September 2009.
2. ↑ M Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p. 3.
3. ↑ HW Richmond, Naval Training, Oxford University Press, London, 1933, p. 24.
4. ↑ J Stockdale, Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’ Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, 1993, pp. 5-6, 7-8, & 13-15.
5. ↑ J Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1995, p. 227.
6. ↑ Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, p. 195.
7. ↑ A Burke, ‘Integrity’, Proceedings, US Naval Institute, October 1985.
8. ↑ Royal Australian Navy, Warfare Officers’ Career Handbook, Canberra, 2006, p. 122.
9. ↑ Letter, 16 June 1906, Dumaresq Papers, held at Sea Power Centre - Australia.
10. ↑ S French, The Code of the Warrior, Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland, 2003, p. 3.
11. ↑ MJ Osiel, Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline and the Law of War, Transaction, New Jersey, 2002, pp. 32-3.