Community preventive psychiatry is advocated in our American millitary organization, often to the exclusion of individual psychotherapy. The alleged effectiveness of primary and secondary prevention in a military setting is incompatible with the evidence that many soldiers with limited ego skills cannot adjust to the army. The present military community has not been willing to make the necessary changes in treatment of individual psychopathological disturbance or leadership training to allow preventive programs to work. It is suggested that real, as opposed to statistical, psychiatric casualties will not significantly diminish until commanding officers are willing to accept and cooperate with psychiatric recommendations.