The "Marshall Brief"
Cross-posted from Blog Them Out of the Stone Age
In my graduate readings course this quarter, the main writing assignment requires students to compose a 3,000-word response to a question relevant to their PhD general examination (aka"preliminary examination" or"prelims"). General exam questions usually demand cogent analyses of very broad issues -- the academic equivalent of the"Marshall brief," named for George C. Marshall, U.S. Army chief of staff during World War II.
Forrest C. Pogue describes the Marshall brief in his multi-volume biography of the general:
For some time before Marshall arrived [at Fort Benning, Ga., where during the early 1930s he served as assistant commandant of the Infantry School,] officer students had been required to write a monograph on some aspect of military history. That had always been a time-consuming and nerve-racking exercise, and Marshall made it harder. He required that the monograph be delivered orally in a class lecture limited to twenty minutes. Once when a class insisted that the time was much too short to allow the subject to be covered properly, Marshall, on the spot, delivered a lecture outlining the Civil War in five minutes. He set great store by the monograph as a device to force officers in training to come directly to grips with a problem and outline it clearly and briefly. (vol. 1, 254-255)
In his classic novel Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer has an officer gleefully recount the origins of the Marshall brief:
"Well, Swanson gets on his feet and hems and haws around for a quarter of an hour, and then finally he pulls a long face and says, 'If the Colonel will permit me to say so, it is my contention that the subject is too complex to be covered adequately in the time allotted.' Or some such dunderfunk. And Colonel Marshall's eyes got that curious pale gleam in them . . . and he says, 'You genuinely feel that, do you, Swanson?' 'Yes, sir,' Swanny says, 'in point of fact, I do.' 'Captain,' old Marshall says in his crisp way, 'there is no military subject that cannot be covered adequately in five minutes, let alone twenty. It is simply a matter of compression -- and a knowledge of what is important and what is extraneous.'
"Well, Swanson's mouth gave that funny smirking twitch, and a couple of muffinheads at the back of the room shifted their feet. And the Colonel, who doesn't miss one hell of a lot, gets a twinkle in his eye and says: 'I see we have some skeptics in our midst. All right. I will now demonstrate that any topic, no matter what scope, can be successfully outlined in five minutes. Give me a subject, Captain.' Old Swanny blinks at him. 'Any subject at all, Colonel?' 'Any one at all.' There is a pause, and then Swanny says, 'The Civil War,' and the whole class roars with laughter. 'Very well,' says the Old Man with a grin. He nods at Sam and says, 'Time me, Damon, if you will please.' And Sam [Damon, the novel's protagonist] looks at his watch as if we're getting ready to jump off at Montfaucon and says, 'Go.'"
Ben slapped his hands on his britches."And he did it! The whole works -- early southern victories, inadequacies of command and discipline in the Army of the Potomac, then Shiloh and the Mississippi strategy of Grant and Sherman, the turning points at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the breakthrough into Georgia and the Carolinas and the threatened encirclement of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. I've forgotten half of it. And he stops and turns to Sam and says, 'Time?' and Sam says: 'Four minutes, fifty-two seconds, Colonel.'" (485-486)