hearts of it, but managing by picking really good people who could handle the job. >> can watch this and other programs on line at tb.org. >> next on -- amanda smith recounts the life of cissy patterson of 20 centuries first female publisher and editor-in-chief of the metropolitan daily newspaper. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you harry much. if it is all right with you i thought it would read from a few passages from the book antics lain to you a little bit more about who cissy patterson was and then i would be happy to take questions. this is from the prologue which will be an overview of her, and it opens with the medill family

motto, when your grandmother gets raped, put it on the front page. it was an editorial standard. .. having long suspected to be, quote, in sane and particularly despicable president of the united states promoting the work

of hatred and warmongering throughout the world, recently presented before he took to be irrefutable proof that his interests were justified. he was not alone questioning the sincerity of the president's unwillingness of the united states abroad. week before the german declaration of war to galvanize isolationist sentiment worldwide two of the most strident administration members of the american express -- press jointly published in jakarta and washington d.c. newspapers what appeared to be confirmation of their own fears that president roosevelt was as they put it lying the united states into war with germany. this monumental scoop not only consisted of excerpts of top-secret rainbow five plan, army and navy estimates of the united states would be ready to launch an assault on germany by july of 1943 but even more damning the idea that the president's own letter ordering the assessment.

the german embassy wasted no time table and a copy of these revelations to berlin on the publication in washington. on december 4th, 1941. week later, despite many peacemaking efforts the recently published proof of roosevelt's belligerence toward germany left no alternative but to declare war on the united states. on december 14th, 1941, the german high command would present the viewer with a radical assessment based upon the anglo-saxon war crimes which became known through publication in the washington times herald. in november of 1946, half a decade after the washington times herald rainbow 5 revelation cabled to berlin collier's weekly magazine, the movies will get around to filling the fabulous life of paterson. he was elected to replace her

brother, joseph medill pettersson. after launching the daily news in 1919, joe paterson made viable tabloids and the newspaper was the largest daily circulation of any tabloid in the nation and the larger sunday circulation of any in the world. the choice of the late publisher's sister was not a sentimental one. eleanor patterson was the owner and publisher of the most widely read daily in the nation's capital, "washington herald". it was called the damnedest newspaper ever to hit the streets. according to popular journalistic axiom the pattersons like their first cousin robert rutherford mccormack had printers in his blood. their grandfather, abolitionist joseph medill was editor in chief and owner of the chicago tribune until his death.

in the 1940s under three decades of colonel mccormick's and roosevelt and i isolationist direction the tribune grew into the widely read newspaper in the midwest and the most widely circulated in the nation. eleanor patterson, the only girl of her generation among fractious boys was grandfather's darling. as such she inherited a disproportionate share of company stock and considerable fortune. bypassing eleanor roosevelt, beth truman, board the shift, emily post and every other prominent american woman of the 1940s collier sweetly contended her patrimony and attainments and latest accolades, cissy patterson is the most powerful woman in america. it added perhaps the most hated.

cissy patterson with a daughter of chicago born in 1881 and as a woman born in the nineteenth century she had no expectation of getting a job or going into a family business at be true be in. so she did what young women typically did at the turn of the century. she made one of those fashionable international matches. in her case with a very handsome but dubious count called joseph gigiski who grew up in indiana his ancestral states where it in the ukraine. she was warned by her family that he was as one of her mother's friends put it an infamous bad a. he turned out to be much worse. she went to live with him in his so-called castle in the ukraine which were in need of repair and

mary ann american heiress she would provide funds to do that and to allow him to buy a pound to create an english style fox hunt at his place among other things. finally her parents cut them off and refuse to give them any more money. that is when he became violent and started beating cissy patterson. she finally left him just shy of their fourth anniversary and took their 2-1/2-year-old daughter but the count followed and kidnapped the little girl and held her for ransom for two years. in the meantime the pattersons's cousins the mccormicks were so connected that her uncle was the american ambassador in st. petersburg and the and and had connections to russian ports. so the family was able to prevail on president taft and republican friends and these are of russia to put pressure to

return the child eventually. she came home with her daughter and after going through a lot of trouble and enduring a lot of anxiety and spending money to get the little girl back she ignored her and she grew up neglected and cared for by nannies one of you who abused her. cissy patterson had become notorious and tried her hand at acting in lake forest where they went to live and gave that up for writing novels and wrote two successful novels, one of them about an american girl, a russian prince but cissy patterson gave up writing novels because she really wanted to be in the newspaper business. so her family hadn't given her much of a chance to do that but

her brother joe paterson who founded the new york daily news and her cousin burt mccormick came to the floor of the chicago tribune. i don't imagine i could tell chicagoans anything they haven't heard about colonel mccormick but joe paterson may be a less familiar figure to you. volvo--although he seemed to be the heir to a newspaper fortune he was at the turn of the century and avowed socialist and member of the socialist executive although he was still an avid polo player. he had been estranged from his family but came back to the tribune fold. when he and his cousin ran the tribune take made a lot of innovations that hadn't previously been seen in american journalistic history. i will read about their

collaboration. in the year 1909 i was accustomed to block illegal and will chicago athletic plunge and swimming tanks bert mccormick recall. friend told me there was a man in the hot room obviously intoxicated signing tribune checks. this proved to be none other than the newspaper's treasurer, one of the former editors of the tribune shortly replaced with his nephew. in february of 1909, as the republican party began its commemoration of the centennial of lincoln's birth crowned the world's latest -- greatest newspaper joke pettersson outgrowing his extreme views was welcomed back to the tribune fold as secretary. in march of 1911 the competition between local papers evolve into bloody skirmishes on the streets of chicago. the board of directors named joe paterson as chairman and burt mccormick recently voted out of his district presidency by

democratic landslide as chief executive officer. in 1914 the president became the paper's joined publishers codifying shared responsibility with the written ironbound agreement. their diametrically opposed outlooks notwithstanding this personal and journalistic collaboration between a person and a mccormick would prove to be harmonious for a decade and a half. the inventive genius is a hereditary, bert mccormick later said with characteristic humility. i got it from the mccormick side. the ascendancy of the tribune the cousins played their respective strengths. want to understand why people behave as they do. why they laugh and cry and hate and love and why they buy some newspapers and ignore others as his daughter lisa who went on to publish long island news put it. joe paterson revolutionize the

content of his father after the and wild bird mccormick launched a technical and mechanical metamorphosis and initiated the process of vertical integration. to defend he began acquiring tracts of land in eastern canada. constructed paper mills in quebec and ontario and assemble a fleet of vessels to transport the newsprint through the great lakes to the trivia and press in chicago. under joe's tenure the tribune's future could live in crime and the force reporting and color comic strips expanded and flourished. he demonstrated a particular affinity for the comics and contributed to the creation of a number of the most popular sunday offerings. nellie patterson jones was his mother. don't be such a dumb would lend the named to the strip that sidney smith created and his advent japan if had overseen. the back alley automotive during

his on going wandering grew up working-class chicago prompted him to suggest gasoline alley strips to cartoonist frank king the. and gasoline alley's main character found on his doorstep would grow to adulthood in old age over the decades almost in real time before readers guys. the serialized escapades of patterson's other grandchildren, and later the and assembling the working girl, detective dick tracy and little orphan alley held a loyal following. patterson attempted to transform the sunday tribune into a comprehensive magazine composed of such an absorbing variety of reading material that eventually its readership would be no other publication. the tribune began paying the highest journalistic salaries and offering the unprecedented benefit of medical insurance, sick leave, credit, death benefit, pension and dental care

to to police. to streamline decision making and operations they split their editorial duties with tempered socialist alternating the role of publisher on a monthly basis with his conservative cousin. only love and war would threaten their success. so with bird and joe in the newspaper business they eventually decided -- cissy patterson decided to go into publishing but there is no outlet for it. one of the tribune's great rivals was william randolph hearst. when he made his first incursions into the midwest the result was people actually died in the circulation wars. in a gesture that cissy patterson sa as gallant and irritating to her brother and cousin, offered cissy patterson

the chance to start writing for him. then he gave her the chance to edit his "washington herald" which was running fifth in the washington market in the 1920s. cissy patterson had a number of boyfriend after her second marriage several of whom were legendary newspaper men. walter howie was a colorful character who is the model for the main character in the play the front page. and others. one of them a lieutenant famous for creating huge circulation. with the help of her brother and cousin and william randolph hearst and arthur brisbane who is credited or faulted with creating yellow journalism, she

took the washington herald in august of 1930. during her tenure -- when she first arrived in the city room it was filled with old curmudgeons who were skeptical to say the least about the arrival of a woman at the helm. i think william randolph hearst's attitude is maybe it will work. if nothing else a publicity stunt to have a woman at a major metropolitan newspaper. it was sometimes said at a press that cissy patterson was the first woman editor of a major metropolitan newspaper in american history. that was not the case although there had been any women in american newspapers for so blonde they had been forgotten at that point and cissy patterson was reported to be the

first one. cissy patterson started up and be immediately started making some changes to the formula one of which was to try to focus on local news which she gradually did. one focus of her life in washington was she had been a very social and she knew a lot about this though she initiated a lot -- somebody like and that the other day to in 1930s equivalent of blogging but she would use the front page editorial box to attack somebody she was angry at. one of whom was her old girl would friend, alice roosevelt longworth, teddy roosevelt's daughter. the effect of these editorials and general changes to the paper was within six years she doubled

the paper's circulation and made it the leading morning paper in d.c.. at the same time william randolph hearst was going into bankruptcy. he overextended himself. cissy patterson had a lot of cash on hand and with marion david they loaned william randolph hearst pavilion dollars to meet payroll the next week. that indebted him to her. when his financial advisers were trying to unload his newspapers which was understandably very upsetting to him, he didn't want to part with them and decided they are not for sale in any sense. his economic reality forced him to sell and so next week cissy patterson bought not only the "washington herald" but also his evening paper, washington times and merged them in 1939.

one reporter described the merger as an electric and washington went for the product like trout for a fly. one of the interesting things about the herald was it was described as the damnedest paper to hit the streets. she had the bright idea to make a locally focused paper but also to use the irresistible elements of the trivia and new york daily news in the alongside the william randolph hearst syndicates item. she took two elements that usually at odds if not at war and put them side by side and created her own irresistible makes -- mix. it was a guilty pleasure. people might not admit they read it but circulation statistics don't lie.

it was by far the leading paper through the end of the new deal and right through the war until her death in 1948. this is a small description of what she did. although cissy patterson's times harold share the isolationism of the other papers prompting charges of the mccormick patterson access from rival press outlets in the roosevelt administration it did not share their ownership structure. where the tribune company of the chicago tribune and the new york daily news, cissy patterson alone around the times herald. this was the success of the corporate structure or lack of it. as sole proprietor, the tempestuous president who supported a red pedicure and temper to match had no board of directors or trustees or stockholders to scrabble with or

hold her accountable. as her editor put it she owned the times herald in the same way and the legal sense as she rode her clothes and houses. she wore it and ran it that way too and everywhere we risked her entire property and very suffering a neck. as publisher she enjoyed none of the protections corporations would have afforded. the times herald led the capital newspaper market not only in circulation and revenue but also the number of assessments and rendered against it. cheese cissy patterson paid out for pocket and she supported liability to pay for the staff in the course of doing business. the civil docket in the district of columbia in 1940s are a testament to her devil may care attitude toward defamation as much as her burly truck driver and circulation hustlers in completing their appointed rounds whatever or whoever might stand in their way. their vehicle for pets or elderly pedestrians or children. in her constant effort to keep

the paper entertaining and improve circulation she devised beauty contests, give aways and publicity stunts. at her insistence several members of her personal staff began writing for the paper. a culinary column in a southern dialect appeared under the name rebecca. to the renewed astonishment of the hearst crew, prince george's county neighbor and foreign manager proved to be extremely popular in the capital situated as it was between the maryland and a virginia horse countries. was cissy patterson's journalistic contribution that gave the paper it's notorious bite. she indulged in attacking old friends who had fallen away. her patience with the new deal and franklin roosevelt particularly as american intervention in the european war appeared increasingly likely few members of the administration gave the times herald

excoriation. up until the war cissy patterson had been enthusiastic about the new deal and her brother had gone to the extreme of pledging that roosevelt was inaugurated not to write any criticism about the administration for a year and the new york daily news renewed that year later and continued it for another year. the rationale being that roosevelt faced unprecedented difficulty coming in to office. over the course of the 1930s cissy patterson grew suspicious of the new deal and both pattersons began to fear that roosevelt was less neutral with regard to american intervention abroad than he claimed to be publicly. they became very vocal and very

opposed to the administration in late 1941. and after pearl harbor neither paper backed down and continued to attack the administration through the war. at the same time cissy patterson was undergoing some personal struggles. her daughter who had been kidnapped as a child had become estranged from her. at the same time cissy patterson was under attack all over the country particularly on the floor of congress where various congressmen and senators she felt could attack her with impunity because you cannot be sued for libel or slander on the floor of the congress. at the same time cissy patterson's former sunni and law, her daughter's ex-husband was a famous political columnist, poultry person who

supported roosevelt through the war who she fell out with. he and his new wife formed the only family cissy patterson managed to hold on to say she was very much alone at that point. seems to have begun to drink more according to reports that her friends made or gave. the paper reflected this and at the same time cissy patterson seems to have fallen in with a colorful and peculiar character in washington during the war. a white russian immigrant doctor. the dr. savage. his credentials were not quite right to practice in the united states but he had a practice anyway that seemed to revolve around giving ladies lounge in washington, injections for weight-loss or to feel better or

sleep and he became friendly with cissy patterson and came to her party's and one night she had heart trouble throughout her life, sheet -- her staff didn't know who to call. her doctors were too old to serve and they were out of town and it was summer. dr. savage who moved into her house and declared she had a heart attack, and wouldn't let anyone else see her. he began giving her large doses of various narcotics and kept her in a twilight state for most of the summer of 1943. when cissy patterson came to she managed to scramble letters for friends to come and save her but they were always thrown out by dr. savage. her complaint is he drank alcohol and champagne when she emerged from her stupor.

one friend got the message and got her out. she had something of a nervous breakdown in the meantime but she recuperated and went on. she became increasingly paranoid and frightened and rightly so in many regards because a bomb was thrown through the front door of the times herald at one point. she was a lady marksman in her early life. she was an avid dude rancher in the 20s. it was said that she was probably the best woman shot in the entire united states and a very avid big game hunter and she had given all that up but was a very good marksman so she started keeping loaded firearms in her purses and her car and her night table and she hired armed guards to said outside her bedroom door when she slept. at the same time she began to worry about her mortality.

and started -- somebody she had taken a liking to and would say keep remaking my will and don't know what to do with my newspaper. i fought with my daughter. i don't know that i will give it to her because we don't speak any more but she might say i like you and maybe i will give you my paper. she told this to enough people and told people she had decided to leave the paper in what was really radical and unprecedented request in the course of american history, she wanted to leave the paper not to any member of her family which was traditionally the case but wanted to leave it instead to her executive staff who had run the paper with her and allow them to divide it equally among themselves. as time wore on she began to grow suspicious of her executive staff too and started announcing that parties that she intended to not give it to them. and she said she would change her will and make appointments

with her lawyers for the night of july 24th, 1948, or july 25th. of the night of july 24th, she was at her country house outside washington in the maryland countryside and everything -- she had a large pack of poodles who by all accounts were ferocious and badly trained. they protected her but they were completely unruly. at 1:00 in the morning she handed the poodles off to the armed guard outside the door and said i'm going to bed. don't put the dogs back and after you put them out. her lady's made remembered all through that night the poodles started howling and didn't stop until the morning and the next morning one of her editors began calling and said i need her comments on the story. can you have her get back to me?

the staff was too afraid to go into her bedroom and wake her up. she was famous partly for her off with their heads attitude toward human resources. nobody wanted to wake her up if it wasn't necessary. the hours went by and finally the butler went in and discovered that she had died during the night. cissy patterson was one of those people who created controversy and upset wherever she went. that was the case when she was incapacitated when dr. savage came to her house but also after her death. ..

she also began saying, if i died under strange circumstances, my cousin colonel mccormick he wants the newspaper and colonel maccormack had been conveniently absent impairs of the time she died that there is an amazing story told actually by mccormick's wife at the time that when she got the call, that cissy had died, he sang a little song and said, i'm the last leaf left on the tree. and, so the daughter challenged and it is a long story so i won't go into great detail here but she did manage to secure, or

to get the agreements to testify from one of cissy's armor secretaries and her former treasurer that cissy had been the victim of coercion and fraud and that she had been there at the time she made the probate. and, as felicia put it, very aptly and succinctly i think, she said on the day that i actually officially brought suit suits both of my witnesses committed suicide under peculiar circumstances. and, in both instances, the suicides whether they were suicides are not, has never been clear, but for those instances, the suicides belongings and papers had been rifled through and it seems that documents had been taken. what happened to those documents are what was in them nobody knows at this point. but, in any sense says he was a

very amazing life but a very troubled one in many ways, and it made for great newspaper reporting. there was a sort of summation that "time" magazine gave after her death saying it was the kind of story that cissy would have loved to tell and someone else. and i'm not sure that assessment in the end was a very fair one because after all, the family senatorial motto was if your grandmother gets rave to put it on the front page, and that lots of her old reporting staff had said when they covered the story of her death and of the will fight, they really played it up just the way she would have wanted. and, anyway thank you for coming tonight and if i can answer any questions, please let me know. [applause] >> what made you choose her as a subject? i don't think she is as

well-known these days eshoo probably was 40 or 50 years ago. so, what compelled you to pick her as your subject for your book? >> well, the question is why did i pick cissy as my subject? my last book was the letters of joseph kennedy and in the course of doing the work for that, i got really interested in the better-known isolationist, joe kennedy, colonel maccormack, william randolph hearst, lindbergh and there are many others better with less well-known now but that is a very colorful kind of outlandish group of people, and of that group, says he was by far the most colorful and outlandish. and so, i often felt that i came to her because all roads lead to cissy and on the other side of that was two of my mothers sisters had worked for cissy, and so i had always heard about this lady publisher in d.c. and

i always had the impression that she was a sort of veiny socialite who got her newspaper and had a lark but when i started digging deeper i looked at the circulation statistics and one thing that people don't tend to mention is that the times herald and before that, the herald when she ran it for hearst, had by far the widest readership of any paper in d.c., and it struck me that was a really interesting thing. whatever else you said about her, the paper -- those papers were doing very badly before, fourth and fifth in the sixth paper market and she made them by far the leading paper. that struck me as interesting. and then, if you look at this history of the ownership of those papers, some of the most important, some of the most successful american publishers of the 20th century own those papers at one point, william randolph hearst for example had

it before cissy. after she died, cissy i think would have been horrified to discover colonel maccormack bought the paper from her executive. but the executive sold it does even though they were sticking to her formulas, circulation just seem to drop very quickly and she had been running it in the black. but her executives couldn't maintain that some maccormack bought it and try to squeeze it in to the tribunal which didn't go over in washington very well. and then finally it was sold to the post in 1954 and actually through the watergate act, "the washington post" published "the washington post" in large type and in much smaller type, and diminishing type over the course of time the herald. and it just sort of wasted away like that but anyway she struck me as a really interesting woman who, to go from being called probably the most powerful woman in the united states in 1946 to

being forgotten by the beginning of the next century struck me as amazing, so that is how i got interested in her. >> that's right, have allowed boys. i have read the works of martin and alice haag and so i am familiar with cissy's life and what really most intrigued me about her is the similarities between her and her daughter, louisa. >> alicia or felicia? >> i meant to say felecia. alicia is joe's daughter. i meant to say felecia. they're both very rebellious, independent and stubborn. no one could push them around. they both had great wanderlust. traveled all over the country and europe. they both married very

impoverished european aristocrats and then soon divorced, both marriages made in hell basically. and you know they both became novelist. they both had very strange relationships with their daughters, and they were both alcoholics and very promiscuous. i'm just wondering to what extent both of them having grown up in a very, an environment where they were deprived of any kind of motherly affection, predispose them to have that same kind of faith in their lives and may be made them and then they both try to over compensate for you know, maybe the way they were emotionally crippled in that respect. >> i think that is -- you make some really good points. felicia was an amazing woman, and i don't know how well-known it is, but one avenue that her story, the book took me down was

bad enough she was a little girl who was kidnapped and then her mother ignored her more or less when she came home to america. but, not surprisingly felecia one on two have some issues with drinking and actually becoming the sixth woman to ever join aa in the 1940s and i hadn't realized that aa went that far back. you know, felecia's life was an extraordinary one. i mean it was very comfortable and luxurious at times, but then as she put it, she divorced itself from her mother and pronounced any claim to any money. her mother had been giving her kind of a gigantic allowance, although she was in her 30s by then. she cut her off and she picked herself up and earned her own living as a writer and kept -- stayed sober basically until the end of her life in 1999.

but, i mean, to me one of very interesting things about felecia's childhood is in a way, it is possible even more emotionally impoverished in the 50s and sick -- cissy's mother was a very ambitious socialite who didn't have much time for small children, and in felecia's case, not that i'm a child psychologist or anything like that but certainly from the book i read a lot of modern theory about children and emotional development in children. i don't think anyone could argue that it is not emotionally devastating to be taken away from everybody you know at the age of two and a half and then be returned to them at the age of four. and so, i think felecia started life with a particular deficit and i came to really like her in the course of writing the book.

and i know that you know, maybe it is not all that objective of me to say but she was a really extraordinary woman and it is an amazing thing to pick yourself up and start afresh and you know turnover a new leaf like that. but, to do it at a time when people just didn't it knowledge of allism period let alone as a disease or something you can't control that you might have inherited from their ancestors was a really amazing thing. i think in some ways, yes, she had a difficult relationship with her daughter and but she did manage to get herself out of that rut to some degree and i think that is really extraordinary. >> no, felecia's daughter who just died a year ago, did she leave any errors? do you know? >> i don't know about felecia, and mean about ellen's situation. >> did she ever mary? >> oh yes, she did.

she married a couple of times and she has let see, two sons and a daughter, all of whom are still living. >> you so she does have heirs than. >> she does, yeah. do you know them? >> oh no. >> you know a lot about than. >> i do have a family connection but that is another story. >> yes, she does have heirs and i can give you whatever contact information i have for them if that is any help. anybody else? is there any ties to the capone story? >> the question she asked me to comment on the capone story, which is a story that cissy wrote early on in her publishing venture for hearse. she was on her way up to send them in, and maybe 1932 so shortly after she took control

of the herald, and she stopped. i don't know why miami was on the way from washington to california, but anyway, she wanted to drive by capone's house and so she did and lo and behold there was capone standing right outside. so she jumped out and wanted to be the dig reporter reporter and said mr. capone my brother owns the new york daily news. he wasn't impressed with that but it turned out the was very proud of the house so he offered to show her around. so when she went and she wrote very provocatively but she wrote about how she went into capone's house and was anxious and the heavy iron gates close behind her, and locked. and then, he showed her around the pool and i guess he had sort of a little compound and in the middle of that was the pool and

there were colonnades and arches and there were the sort of unobtrusive but still menacing e columns to protect capone. they had sort of an extraordinary conversation, where you know, cissy had been a socialite before she took up the bushings so she said the butler came running into in to offer them a drink, and cissy added something like, i wish i could get that sort of service from my staff. and then, she talked to capone about his tax woes because he was -- that is how they finally got him was on tax evasion and about his recent arrest and cissy, who had married this horrible, crazy person early in her life closed her account. saying why is it that bad boys have such an appeal? and anyway, it was a big seller

for her and her reporting career. anybody else? thank you very much for coming. [applause] >> i think that probably everybody in this room that is wearing uniform and people that are not wearing a uniform are here because of the warrior ethos in one way or another. if you think back to when you joined and he first made the decision it probably had something to do with that. either you were, you felt like he really had the warrior ethos. you were a high school athlete or competitor and you are looking for a venue where you could use it and he said i want

to join the most elite unit i can join, or i think that is one. maybe you felt that there was the absence of that in your life. it might've been a drift wondering, am i going the right way? am i heading for jail jail rmi heading for some kind of the life that is not going to really bring out all that is in me? so you said yourself, well i want to go somewhere where this kind of code of honor exists and where it can be you know, talk to me so i think that that's, i think, i am putting myself into your mind. i think that is the reason and that is certainly why i joined it i think that is, i hope that is what you guys are too. here is the other thing that i think is is really honorable about making that choice. in america today, it really is a choice. i mean if we were born in ancient sparta or ancient macedonia there would be no choice. the war ethos would be the only thing there was at here is general mulholland and i were

talking yesterday, you got 100% of the armed forces these days coming out of 1% of the population, and so that is a real choice that everybody made here particularly if you think about it, the values of civilian society and i am not knocking anything here, but are quite opposite to the warrior ethos values. so, the conscious choice to choose the warrior ethos for yourself is a pretty amazing thing. let me just talk about values for just one second. if you think about it in civilian life, probably the paramount value is freedom, individual autonomy that a person can be whatever they want to be. they can be a rock star. they can be donald trump. they can be president of the united states, whatever they want to be and that is kind of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. that is held out as, and rightly so, that is what kind of what makes america great. but when you choose the warrior

ethos, duty becomes the value and service, so that you can't wear your hair in a ponytail if you choose to and you can't decide hey i don't feel like deploying for another couple of months or don't feel like deploying at all. that is one value. the second value that the greater culture at large holds up really high is money, wealth, the pursuit of you know affluence and celebrity. so somebody like donald trump -- trump or somebody like that is lionized throughout the culture wears nobody's going to get rich in this room from what you are doing instead of money. what the warrior culture offers is on her and in fact there is a great story about when an ancient story. i'm going to tell you a few ancient stories today and i hope i won't put you to sleep. when this era cues and queue cues and sin sicily were under siege by the opinions and i know general holland is up on this, the spartans came to their aid

and the way that the spartans whenever they help another country, they never sent money and they never sent an army. they just sent one man, the general and he would kick them all into shape. this gentleman was named to live this. when he came to syracuse, syracuse was a very wealthy city in sicily, and they had really virtually no army, so he had to somehow form an army out of these you know kind of crazy civilians, and so when he went to pick his officer corps, he gave these instructions. he said, search for men who care not about wealth or power but who crave on her. and i would guess that is pretty much what is filling this room here. another difference between the civilian war ethos value is in civilian life, people want the creature comforts. they want air-conditioning and

they want an easy life. if you can take a pill and lose 20 pounds you will do that whereas in a warrior culture, diversity, the willing embrace of adversity is a huge part of it. in fact, the rougher the better in people, when people tell stories and a warrior culture, it is always the most hellish stories possible, right? and i know, you know i am a marine, and when marines talk about their history, they don't really talk about the great victories, but they talk about the worst casualty scenarios like iwo jima, chosin reservoir and that kind of thing so adversity, the adversity is one of the great warrior virtues. i am trying to think of one other but it is slipping my mind. oh, want to say one other thing about special forces troopers in particular. in my opinion, think that you

guys are the pinnacle of the warrior ethos, because not only our special forces, soldiers have -- possess the military skills, which you know we all know how difficult that is an possess the character skills but particularly working with indigenous forces, indigenous insurgencies or something like that. that is really to me the highest level, because a small group of men have to go into a completely foreign culture and exercise influence without authority, not able to make people do what you want to do by money or power anything that only really by personal magnetism and personal honor and personal integrity and personal warrior hood. so that is about as high as it gets. and, i salute everybody for that. so, let me get into a little bit about what the warrior ethos is, and i'm going to start with some

stories from this book. for quick little one minute stories about ancient sparta. i'm going to talk about the warrior ethos today. i'm really talking about the classic all-time ancient warrior ethos, was one of the things i hope we will get into some questions, i really would love to hear what you guys have to say about rules engagement and some of the dubious gray areas where people -- but this is old-school we are talking about now. these are for quick four quick stories about the spartan women. somehow it always starts with women, and the stories come from plutarch, a book called morelia and a part of that book called sayings of the spartan women. and if you have not ever read this or sayings of the spartans, highly recommended. they're all these little nuggets. here are four stories. a messenger returns to sparta from the battle, and the women all gather around and find out what happens. what is happened to their men

come into one mother, and a messenger says mother, your oldest son i'm sorry to tell you, your oldest son was killed facing the enemy. and the mother said, he i your n is alive and unhurt. he ran away from the enemy. she says, he is not my son. one story. the second story, another messenger returns from another battle and the mother approaches him and says harold, how fair is our country? harold bersin to tears and he says mother i'm so sorry to tell you all five of your sons were killed facing the enemy. and she says, you fool, did not ask you about my sons. i asked about our country. and he says mother, we were victorious. she says, then i'm happy and turns around and goes home. been the third story, somehow, i don't know how this happened to spartan but to spartan brothers were fleeing from the enemy back towards the city, and they -- their mother happened to be

coming down the road. this may be slightly impossible but in any event she sees him coming, lifts her skirt up over her head and says where do you think you two are running to? back here from whence he came? [laughter] and we don't know the end of that story but hopefully the two brothers turned around and went back the other way. been the final spartan brother story is the shortest one of all, one of the spartan mother, excuse me to hand her son a shield and as she is sending them off to battle, says come back with this. so, that to me is a really hard-core culture. you know when the women, when your own mother is kicking him, you know that there is something to that. so, i will refer back to the story and there is a reason why told it. not just because i love those stories. the warrior ethos probably

evolved out of the primitive virtues that were needed. and i think that it was really designed originally i think to accomplish two things. one to overcome fear, the god of the battlefield and to make people work together, and so, since fear and -- is probably the most primal emotion, self-preservation, other emotions and other things have to be brought into counter that in a cultural way and i think that is why my feeling of what the warrior ethos comes from. honor, shame and love. now let's start with shame for second. i think a lot of times people don't think of shame as a positive, but certainly almost

every great warrior culture is a shame-based culture, whether it is the samurai culture where if someone suffers dishonor, they have to kill themselves, and certainly pashtunwali is a shame-based code of honor. i would certainly save them are in course a shame-based culture, and certainly sparta was a shame-based culture. for instance going back to those stories, and you think about the mother whose son was alive but had run away from the enemy and she says, he is not my son. that is kind of a real -- that is the application of shame to make people go forward into the face of fear. there is a great story about alexander the great. excuse me a second. when his -- he and his army were in india and they had been on, fighting for 10 years almost. the army was ready to revolt.

they were tired and they wanted to go home. they had enough of this stuff you know so alexander was a serious moment. alexander called the whole army together. i don't know if you've heard this story. he stripped make it in front of them. and you could see across his whole body were just one wound after another. he had been wounded with arrows, javelins and rocks in big boulders that crashed into him and burned everything possible. so he said to is man, look at these wounds on my body. all for you and in your service. you will notice that they are all in the front. there's nothing in the back. he says i will make you a deal. if anyone of you can stand forth from the army, peer and strip naked beside me and if you -- if your ones are greater than mine i will turn the army around right now and we will walk home. not a man came forward. instead the whole army burst into a cheer and they begged his forgiveness for their want of spirit, and begged him only to

lead them further forward. so, that is kind of great leadership at what that really is the application of shame to make the men go forward into kind of summon their spirit. in sparta, they used to have the pretty young girls, have these little anthems of shame that they used if someone failed in action and came back to the city. there were a number of things that happened to them, but the pretty young gals used to gather around them and sing these kinds of songs of ridicule, and that would, the next time the guy went out you could be sure that he didn't -- another word shame is a technique to make the application of shame worse than fear of the enemy. okay, let's talk about armor for second which is sort of the flip side of shame, the opposite of shame. honor as we know from tribal cultures and i'm sure you guys know this a lot better than i

do, and a pashtun culture let's say, on her is the most prized possession of a man and much more important than money, land, women and a thing. as long as the man has honor, he is okay but if he doesn't have honor life is not worth living. so, honor is a bat high level, which a person internal label not let himself fall from. there is a famous gunnery sergeant sergeant in the marine corps named gunny featherstone, and he tells his young marines when they complain about their salaries, he says in the marine corps you get to salaries. you get a financial salary and you get a psychological salary. he says the financial salary but the psychological salary is absolutely applies to everyone in this room i miss knowing that you are part of a core, you know i don't need to repeat it. you know what it