Civilian Morale, Kurt Lewin Tavistock Mass Programming

Excerpt from Civilian Morale Second Yearbook: Of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Goodwin Watson Editor

Morale has been an abused word. The eager desire of citizens to be of more service to their country, in this hour of great danger, tends to concentrate on something supposedly having to do with morale. Baseball, sermons, night clubs, red white-and-blue posters, uniforms, vitamin pills, martial music, V symbols, boys' clubs, morning calisthenics, news reels of enemy atrocities, and hundreds of other activities have been defended as building morale. Some thoughtful people have come to wonder whether it might not be better to drop the word entirely.