Commentary & Reply - Saving Private Ryan - Sir Halford Mackinder - Letter to the Editor

Parameters, Winter, 2000 by Reed R. Bonadonna, William J. Prior, Michael P. Noonan

MORALITY AND PRIVATE RYAN

To the Editor:

I first want to thank Professor William J. Prior for his thoughtful and erudite review essay of Saving Private Ryan ("'We aren't here to do the decent thing': Saving Private Ryan and the Morality of War," Parameters, Autumn 2000). Like him, I believe that this film is a rich source of discussion of military ethics, and I would like to take up some of the points he introduces.

Professor Prior nicely parses out the different and conflicting ethical viewpoints expressed in the film: of the individual, of the member of a unit, of the member of a nation state, and of the moral agent. He also tries to reconcile these viewpoints, finding them ultimately incompatible. In his account, the gulf between "ordinary decency" and the moral demands of service in war can never quite be bridged, so that the soldier will often experience guilt for his actions in wartime, however necessary, however consistent with the special moral requirements of service in war.

Such contradictions, or paradoxes, certainly exist in ethics. As philosopher Martha Nussbaum has pointed out, the heroes of Greek tragedy as often suffer for their virtues as for their vices, but I do want to suggest a formulation that may bring the disparity of ethical perspectives closer to agreement.

Professor Prior is correct to say that Captain Miller acts out of a sense of decency when he releases the German prisoner. In so doing, Miller implicitly reminds his men of the standards of ordinary decency by speaking, for the first time, about his civilian background, but Captain Miller is also acting, in this instance and throughout the movie, out of a sense of professional obligation. Although he is not a professional soldier, Captain Miller takes his obligations as an officer very seriously. It is obvious throughout the film that he has studied the military art, and that he feels an unlimited and unremitting requirement to care for his men. These are traits of military professionalism, but so too is the enlightened and moral sense that Miller takes to the business. He is a professional officer by virtue of his superior education and sensibility as much as because of his excellence as a soldier.

When Captain Miller prevents his men from killing the German prisoner, he knows that the laws of war, the regulations of the US Army, and the best traditions of his adopted profession militate against the killing of prisoners. Although he tolerated some questionable conduct in the heat of action at the bunkers on D-day, he draws the line at this cold-blooded killing of an enemy soldier who has been disarmed and taken into custody, perhaps out of a sense that such conduct could have a demoralizing effect on his own men, even undermining his own authority in that he will have tolerated a breach of military law. Miller's actions assert his authority (I might say, his moral authority) by forcing an important issue under conditions that allow him to make and win his point. His men will act as soldiers, not as murderers.

Unlike Carpazo in the village, who unrealistically (if understandably) wants to have a reminder of his niece with him in combat, Miller is acting as a soldier as well as a decent man in that situation. This is also the moment at which Miller reveals that in civilian life he had been a teacher of English composition. Miller's right to command is upheld by his education and mastery of the chief language of the allies (he also understands French). He is a fit representative of the culture for which he fights.

In contrast, Upham, the translator, knows the language of the enemy, and in the film this perhaps causes him to have too much empathy with them. He is ineffective in combat in part because he is estranged from the us-and-them attitude which the combat soldier is bound to have. Upham is also conversant in the language of femininity: he does a very convincing imitation of the singer Edith Piaf. This may be another suggestion of why he is Out of place in the masculine world of the combat unit.

I believe that the character of Private Ryan may also be discussed in such a way as to show a reconciliation or continuity between what Professor Prior calls ordinary decency and the morality of war. The young Private Ryan is a somewhat ambiguous figure morally. He may be said to be up for grabs in terms of the moral quality of his future life. Although he is surely brave and high-spirited, with a large capacity for comradeship, he is also callous, with a streak of meanness or misogyny. He tells with obvious relish the rather brutal story of his intrusion on a brother's efforts to seduce a girl.

If, by the time he is an old man, Ryan is a good man, compassionate and responsible, I would argue that this is in part because of, rather than spite of, his military service. He has benefited from examples of courage and self-sacrifice in his comrades, and of responsibility and maturity in Captain Miller, who has told him explicitly that he must make his life worthy of the sacrifices laid down to preserve it. Although this point is surely sharpened in the special circumstances of Private Ryan's salvation, it mirrors the feelings of many veterans, and not only those of this war, who have put their survival to good use.