He paused, choking, and the tears of impotent rage filled his eyes.  “You shouldn’t treat me that way, sir,” he complained presently.  “I’ve been trained not to question orders, even when they seem utterly foolish to me; I’ve been trained to obey them—­on time, if possible, but if impossible, to obey them anyhow.  I’ve been taught loyalty to my chief—­and I’m sorry my chief found it necessary to make a buffoon of me.  I haven’t had a very good time the past three years and—­and—­you can—­pa-pa-pass your skunk spruce and larch rustic and short odd length stock to some slacker like Skinner—­and you’d better—­arrange—­to replace—­Skinner, because he’s young—­enough to—­take a beating—­and I’m going to—­give it to him—­and it’ll be a hospital—­job—­sir—­”

Cappy Ricks ruffled Bill Peck’s aching head with a paternal hand.

“Bill, old boy, it was cruel—­damnably cruel, but I had a big job for you and I had to find out a lot of things about you before I entrusted you with that job.  So I arranged to give you the Degree of the Blue Vase, which is the supreme test of a go-getter.  You thought you carried into this stateroom a two thousand dollar vase, but between ourselves, what you really carried in was a ten thousand dollar job as our Shanghai manager.”

“Wha—­what!”

“Every time I have to pick out a permanent holder of a job worth ten thousand dollars, or more, I give the candidate the Degree of the Blue Vase,” Cappy explained.  “I’ve had two men out of a field of fifteen deliver the vase, Bill.”

Bill Peck had forgotten his rage, but the tears of his recent fury still glistened in his bold blue eyes.  “Thank you, sir.  I forgive you—­and I’ll make good in Shanghai.”

“I know you will, Bill.  Now, tell me, son, weren’t you tempted to quit when you discovered the almost insuperable obstacles I’d placed in your way?”

“Yes, sir, I was.  I wanted to commit suicide before I’d finished telephoning all the C-o-h-e-n-s in the world.  And when I started on the C-o-h-n-s—­well, it’s this way, sir.  I just couldn’t quit because that would have been disloyal to a man I once knew.”

“Who was he?” Cappy demanded, and there was awe in his voice.

“He was my brigadier, and he had a brigade motto:  It shall be done.  When the divisional commander called him up and told him to move forward with his brigade and occupy certain territory, our brigadier would say:  ’Very well, sir.  It shall be done.’  If any officer in his brigade showed signs of flunking his job because it appeared impossible, the brigadier would just look at him once—­and then that officer would remember the motto and go and do his job or die trying.

“In the army, sir, the esprit de corps doesn’t bubble up from the bottom.  It filters down from the top.  An organization is what its commanding officer is—­neither better nor worse.  In my company, when the top sergeant handed out a week of kitchen police to a buck, that buck was out of luck if he couldn’t muster a grin and say:  ’All right, sergeant.  It shall be done.’