What great statesmen have to teach us.

• Author: Johnson, Paul
• Position: The World Yesterday

"... From the heroes of the past we learn ... and what they teach, by the example of their lives and words, has the special quality of truth by personal example. Thus, the good hero lives on, in our minds, if we are imaginative, and in our actions, if we are wise."

IF WE LOOK at what heroic statesmen can teach us, the sartorial dimension--what they wear--is indicative. Prince Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian who created Germany in its modern form, always put on uniforms when he addressed the Reichstag on an important constitutional issue. His successor as chancellor, Theobald von Betthman-Hollweg, had himself specially promoted from major to colonel so that, when declaring war in 1914, he could speak to the Reichstag from a suitable rank.

The English and American traditions and instincts are quite different. Pres. George Washington might wear a uniform when the Republic was in danger, to indicate his willingness and ability to defend it. As a rule, however, he deliberately stressed his civilian status by his dress. He was anxious to show that, unlike Oliver Cromwell 150 years before, he would not use his military victories to become a Julius Caesar. His self-restraint fascinated contemporaries. After U.S. independence was secured, King George III asked an American, "What will George Washington do now?" He was told: "I expect he will go back to his farm." The King commented, in frank admiration: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth." That is exactly what he did. When he finally--and reluctantly--accepted political office, he waited to be summoned by election. The importance of Washington's behavior never should be underrated, contrasting, as it did, so markedly with the behavior of France's Napoleon Bonaparte a few years later. It illustrated all the difference between a civil and a military culture. In statesmanship, personal self-restraint in the search for--and exercise of--power is a key lesson to teach.

The Duke of Wellington, for instance, though known as the Iron Duke and the victor in some 50 battles, never would have dreamed of appearing in Parliament in military attire. On the contrary: he fought the Battle of Waterloo in dark blue civilian dress. Winston Churchill, too, never set foot in the House of Commons as a soldier. He loved uniforms and often wore them on non-Parliamentary occasions, including his semi-nautical rig as an Elder Brother of Trinity House. He had a right, too, to dress up--for he had taken part in active campaigns in Asia and Africa and, in 1899, at the Battle of Omdurman, had taken part in one of the last successful cavalry charges in the history of warfare. At the Potsdam Conference in 1945 he appeared in Royal Air Force uniform, one of his favorites. Marshall Stalin, as Communist leader Joseph Stalin liked to call himself, appeared in the white full dress uniform of a Marshall of the Soviet Red Army.

However, my award for statesmanship goes to the third member of the Big Three, Pres. Harry S Truman, who wore a neat blue civilian suit. No one had a better right to military rig. He was, ex officio, commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. He had seen action in World War I as an Army major, and took an active part in the Reserve throughout the interwar period, probably knowing more about the military state of the world--and periodically issuing well-argued warnings--than any other member of Congress. Yet, he rightly followed Washington's example and stuck to the constitutional proprieties. How sensible he was became clear later when he had to deal with the popular--but difficult--Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

It is worth noting that one of the greatest victories of the 20th century, the defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War at the end of the 1980s, was achieved by three eminently civilian heroes: Pope John Paul II, Pres. Ronald Reagan, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The popes always wear white, the symbol of peace. Reagan, quite capable of acting heroic roles on-screen, never succumbed to the temptation of wearing uniform in office. Thatcher was a war leader as well as a great leader in peace. She showed considerable courage during the Falklands War, a hazardous business for Britain with its limited military resources, but she never once stepped outside her strictly civilian role, even sartorially--though, as I often have noted, she could snap her handbag with a military ring.

War is the most serious business that statesmen-heroes have to undertake, and a proper understanding of the precise frontier between civilian and military decision-making is one of the most...