JOHN W. WARNER, Secretary of the Navy, recently said that military "race relations have been elevated to the same top priority as combat readiness." If so, American military officers are approaching another undeclared war and from the wrong angle. Events of late indicate that theirs is a frustrating, losing cause.

In the course of one month this past fall, racial tension came to a head on three warships in the Pacific. In the first two, military police were called upon to break up widespread brawls, eventually arresting dozens of blacks. The dramatic third incident, the most significant though least violent, took place on the flight deck of the carrier Constellation. Charging "calculated racism," 120 black sailors and 12 white shipmates staged a sit-down strike in an effort to confront ship commander J.D. Ward. Ward, a member of the old school of navy discipline, refused even to speak with them. Instead, he called a general muster of all hands, surrounding the demonstrators with thousands of white sailors.

The strike ended and the dissidents were taken to port. On the docks there they demonstrated once again, and the ship sailed leaving the protestors for military justice. And officers began to grumble about the new permissiveness ushered in by "the Big Z."

THE BIG Z is Chief of Naval Operations Elmo R. Zumwalt. When he was appointed to his four-year post in 1970, it was over the heads of 34 senior officers. At 49, he also became the youngest man to hold the highest military job in the navy.

Noting that men were more important than hardware, Zumwalt issued a series of broad commands, know to the sailors as "Z-grams." Zumwalt himself called them "people programs," his personal attempt to humanize a service soured by the war in Vietnam. Z-gram number 57 stated that "Mickey Mouse" regulations that are "demeaning and debasing" must go. Another announced a back-room deal Zumwalt made with the Pentagon diverting $40 million from the equipment budget for the construction of homes for servicemen. Zumwalt also ordered that no sailor should ever wait in line more than 15 minutes for anything. Other revisions permitted longer hair, beards, beer in barracks, and ultimately even women aboard warships.

The result has been a tremendous boost in morale and the endearment of Zumwalt to the enlisted men. (Some wives briefly protested the last reform, but were pacified by commands giving married men more time with their families.) It seemed that an era of reason was about to dawn.

Zumwalt devoted many of his Z-grams to ending what he called a "lily-white racist navy." He issued blunt directives ordering "nothing less than total equality" and stopped up recruitment of black enlisted men. In 1971, he appointed the first black admiral. Nevertheless, a low 5.8 per cent of the enlisted men today and a lower 1 per cent of the 73,000-men officer corps are black.

THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE of the Pacific outbreaks was the war, compounded by the resident racism of the Navy middle management. All three ships involved had served off Vietnam, maintaining the rate of destruction as Nixon wound down the war. Men worked 18 and 20 hour days, going weeks without shore leaves. And despite their distance from the destruction they wrought, Vietnam took its toll, and the crews were soon immersed in the same racial tension that has gripped the Army and Marines. Officers critical of Zumwalt are presently calling for his removal, citing a general breakdown of discipline, and Congressman Edward Hebert (D-La.) has opened hearings on the subject. In turn, Zumwalt has accused his officers of failing to carry out his commands.

What these naval officers, Hebert, and even Zumwalt fail to understand is that a ship at sea is not isolated, not immune to conflicts originated in Newark or Baton Rouge. Instead, human relations are intensified, conflicts blown out of proportion. Discipline may repress the discussion, official commands may alter the symptoms, but the underlying problems remain.

Zumwalt's reforms have gone a long way toward letting sailors be human beings again. Perhaps he didn't expect that the weaknesses of human society would accompany the newly-granted humanity. The military has found that it is difficult to order men to hate: now they are learning that it is also impossible to order them not to, Racism infects even those aspects of American life thought colorblind. Incidents will continue to flare up until some far-reaching explosion is invited.

What is immediately at stake in Washington is the entire military reform movement to humanize the services, and perhaps even the volunteer army. But the problems at sea belong only indirectly to the navy Americans, both in and out of uniform, would be naive to blame Admiral Zumwalt or his officers. The roots of racism, we all know by now, run deeper.