When in 1948 the American ambassador to Egypt, Stanton Griffis, asked for an estimate of army strength in a nearby Southwest Asian country*, his attache replied “five thousand men under arms, half…usually absent without leave, and other half looking for them. When they find them they change places.” This seems an eminently sensible strategy to me, applicable to service in many non-military institutions as well.
Sources: Stanton Griffis, Lying in State (1952), p. 215; Douglas Dixon, Beyond Truman: Robert Ferrell and Crafting the Past (Lanham, MD, 2020), 135.
* The ambassador did not identify the country in question, but I suspect it was Lebanon, whose army was then new, small, and underfunded.
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