day no. 15,571: an officer and a gentleman

"The military officer is considered a gentleman, not because Congress wills it, nor because it has been the custom of people in all times to afford him that courtesy, but specifically because nothing less than a gentleman is truly suited for his particular set of responsibilities." -- The Armed Forces Officer, U.S. Department of Defense (1950)

A man must be a knight if he is to battle dragons.

If he is not stern, he cannot defeat the beast, nor will he likely even try to. If he is not meek, he cannot be trusted to defeat the beast when he may just as well join it or be the very beast from which the people need defending.

"The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise of happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth... If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections—those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be 'meek in hall,' and those who are 'meek in hall' but useless in battle" -- C.S. Lewis, The Necessity of Chivalry

A military officer must be the kind of man you want in the midst of a battle and the kind of man you want to invite to the victory celebration that follows. If he's only good at minding his manners, there will never be a victory to celebrate. If he's only good at battling, no one will dare throw a party lest they be pillaged by his brutality.

He must, as Spurgeon notes, "practice 'suaviter in modo' as well as the 'fortiter in re.'" (Lectures to My Students, The Need of Decision for the Truth)

In other words, he must be 'gentle in manner' and 'resolute in deed.'