Conner told his protégé: “In all military history, only one thing never changes—human nature. Terrain may change, weather may change, weapons may change … but never human nature.”

“Division, corps, and army commanders must be capable of sitting in front of a map and dictating a complete field order,” Conner proclaimed.

“From the beginning,” Eisenhower recalled in his 1967 memoirs, he and Patton “got along famously.” The two officers shared similar views concerning the potential of armored warfare. Although prevailing Army doctrine limited the tank’s role—and speed—to the support of advancing foot soldiers, Patton and Eisenhower each foresaw the tank’s potential

Leavenworth’s “applicatory method” drew heavily upon military history to analyze the quandaries faced by an army’s high command and to devise solutions under rapidly changing conditions. Students learned, through map exercises, to plan and control the movement of troops from afar.

Conner also addressed the inadequacy of military spending in a 1928 article titled “The National Defense.” True to form, Conner grounded his thesis in history, beginning with the War of 1812 and proceeding through the Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish–American War, and the recently concluded Great War. Conner quoted each era’s leading lawmakers, who

Fox Conner soon learned that he, as a high-ranking military officer during the 1930s, was almost as removed from the American mainstream as were his monastic neighbors. As noted in historian Russell Weigley’s History of the United States Army, a “gloomy, negative kind of pacifism, automatically hostile to any measure which might improve the Army”

Believing that Conner was “exceptionally well qualified” to carry out the critical planning functions required of the Operations Section, Palmer resolved to “pry him loose” from the Inspector General. Palmer took his request to Chief of Staff Harbord, who warned Palmer of a potential problem with Conner’s transfer to the Operations Section: Conner

Fox Conner also viewed Woodrow Wilson’s concept that the nation had actually fought a “war to end all wars” as a “mere slogan of propaganda.” In contrast to the isolationist sentiment then prevalent in the United States, Conner repeatedly told Eisenhower that American participation in another large-scale European war was “almost a certainty.” Again

To begin lifting French morale, Pershing ordered his staff officers to display a sense of optimism at all times; a positive attitude became “a matter of duty,” as Conner put it.