Human Relations in Military Government

Abstract

THE face-to-face relations of the Occupier and the Occupied, though treated in field manuals, can never be rigidly circumscribed. Human relations are compounded of too many subtle ingredients for even the most prescient manualmakers. As Orstkommandant of a small Rhineland city during the American Occupation of i9I8I9I9, the author, then a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, saw the problems of human relations at first hand. In this article he discusses some of them-incorporating in the discussion the reactions of a man who as a boy was a resident of the Rhineland city during occupation. Dr. Boas, making his first appearance in these pages, is Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and a contributor to Harper's, The New Republic, and other magazines.