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long-range radio, and yell, “Go, Army, go!” So passionate was MacArthur that he had cabled the coach after Army won the 1944 game 24–7: “We have stopped the war to celebrate your magnificent success.” The reason Army was now a football powerhouse was Eichelberger, who—after two disastrous seasons and a 48–0 drubbing in one game—decreed that the Army cadets “deserved a team that would teach them to be good warriors.” Eichelberger recruited the legendary Earl “Red” Blaik, a West Point graduate then coaching at Dartmouth. More important, he single-handedly eliminated the rule stating no cadet could weigh more than 175 pounds. The regulation had been instituted by the U.S. surgeon general on the theory that life expectancy is greater for a slender man. While this may have been true from an actuarial viewpoint, it was one hell of a way to run a football team. Eichelberger won the argument by going down to Washington and pointing out that life expectancy in battle is just about the same for big or little men.
    MacArthur hated bureaucratic thinking. Rules had their place, but adding more and more rules for the sake of convenience was a cowardly and lazy way to run an organization. His experience had taught him several precepts:
    1.  There is no substitute for adequate preparation. “Had there been a trained and well equipped army of some 20,000 men at Bull Run, the Civil War never would have been fought,” he had told a 1933 congressional committee. A keen student of history, he was absolutely right: Had the Union won its first major battle, the Civil War would have been over in a day. “To build an army to be defeated by some other fellow’s army is my idea of wasting a great deal of money,” he had told the committee, “and if you are defeated you will pay a billion dollars for every million you save in inadequate preparation.” MacArthur had won the post of Supreme Commander of the Pacific over Admiral Nimitz because he had been better prepared and made a better presentation to President Roosevelt, and he had won his campaign by studying every map thoroughly and figuring out how to surprise the enemy.
    2.  In battle the greatest enemy is personal fear, those awful moments when stomach butterflies nervously flap their wings. The most important job of a leader in life-and-death situations is to communicate with his men and provide reassurance. In civilian jobs, obviously, such reassurance is not so germane, but in Japan, amid some seventy-eight million hostile people, it would be essential. He must use all means available to communicate, pronounce, and strengthen his command. He would do this by conducting his office in a forceful manner and using his powerful mastery of rhetoric.
    3.  Speed and decisiveness are more important than mass. MacArthur’s stunning conquest of the Philippines was due primarily to his speed and use of highly mobile forces to proceed from one island to the next. MacArthur always had to keep moving forward before bad weather set in or the enemy counterattacked with reinforcements. In civilian contexts the need for such urgency is rare, and managers generally value prudence over recklessness. In Japan he would be in a race against time before the inevitable resentment against military occupation set in. He would have only two years at best. His organization, a peacetime one, would have to run at a wartime pace.
    4.  Put as little as possible in writing, especially rules and regulations. In war, for reasons of security, where possible he always issued his directives in person. The same for peacetime: He would eschew bureaucracy and especially its love of cover-your-butt written reports. One of his dicta as superintendent of West Point had read: “To take up a painful matter by letter or other written communication is not only the rankest cowardice but the ruination of morale.” The