Hirgen at 15:22, 18 September 2008

2008-09-18T15:22:14Z

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	any leader, whether they know him or not; and this last is the		any leader, whether they know him or not; and this last is the
	fruit of perfect discipline.		fruit of perfect discipline.
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Hirgen at 19:41, 7 September 2008

2008-09-07T19:41:03Z

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<CENTER>III 

DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP</center>

 I ONCE met, in an obscure corner of the world, a young priest
of the Roman Church who confessed to me quite openly that he was
a complete skeptic. He thought, it seemed, that, though the Church
had played a necessary and useful part in the development of mankind,
the time was very near when its function in history would have
been fulfilled, and that it would then share the fate of all obsolete
institutions. It was obviously a great relief to him to say this
to anyone who mattered as little as myself, and whom he was never
likely to meet again; but my reception of his confession astonished
him almost as much as his confession had startled me. Of course
what shocked me was that, holding the opinions that he did, he
should remain a priest. I felt that his position must be an intolerable
and humiliating one, and I immediately offered to help him to
make a fresh start in some other profession, where he could regain
his self-respect. He thanked me, but coolly informed me that the
training which a clergyman received in the Roman Church and the
mechanism which he had to use were so perfect that the individual
views of the priest did not matter in the least. He himself was
perfectly able and content to carry on his work without believing
in it, and in many ways it was work that suited him. He understood
my amazement. He agreed that in the Reformed Churches such a course
would be impossible. There the training of the clergy was so inadequate,
and the science of souls so little systematized, that every thing
depended on the sincerity of the individual minister; but he assured
me that in the Roman Church it was not so.

 I do not for one moment suggest that this young priest was
in the smallest degree typical of the Roman priesthood; but I
can see his point---that where the discipline is strong and procedure
stereotyped the strain on the individual leader is very greatly
reduced. I have often thought of this point since I enlisted in
"Kitchener's Army." Indeed, the difference between the
old and new Armies is not at all unlike the difference between
the Roman and Reformed Churches.

 In the old Regular Army it has always been recognized that
all officers and N.C.O.'s could not be expected to be born leaders
of men. The whole system of military discipline has been built
up with a view to relieving the strain on the individual. The
officer's authority is carefully guarded by an elaborate system
designed to give him prestige. He is a man apart. He does not
mix with the men under his command.

 They may not even approach him directly, but only through the
medium of an N.C.O. He is always something of an unknown quantity
to them, and omne ignotum pro magnifico. The N.C.O. is
protected by the machinery of discipline. His authority is made
to depend as little as possible on his own force of character.
He exercises an authority which is vested in the whole body of
officers and N.C.O.'s throughout the Army. The smallest piece
of impertinence offered to the most junior lancecorporal is, if
he likes to make it so, an offense against the discipline of the
whole battalion, even of the whole Army, and is punishable as
such. He too has to be as far as possible a man apart. He must
not have friends among the private soldiers, nor be seen in their
company. When he receives his promotion first, he is generally
transferred from one company to another. In fact the Regular Army
is a magnificent example of the efficiency of discipline.

 Theoretically the "New Army" is under the same law
as the old, the standard of discipline as high, and the method
of enforcing it identical. But as a matter of fact it is quite
impossible to enforce such a system in practice. In a Regular
battalion the tradition, when once established and accepted, is
handed down automatically. The recruits arrive in small batches,
and have to adapt themselves to the conditions which they find
to be already in existence. If a recruit fails to adapt himself,
he is heavily punished, and his life made a burden to him. He
has sold himself to his country for a term of years, and his feelings
do not have to be considered. He is either "made or broken"---and
that is the very phrase which my priest used to describe his training
at the seminary. Discipline can be enforced because there is always
a majority which has already been inured to it, and an executive
of N.C.O.'s who have it bred in the bone. But in a battalion of
the New Army the conditions are wholly different. The vast majority
both of the N.C.O.'s and men are, at the time of formation, recruits.
They are quite new to discipline, and full of pernicious civilian
ideas about "liberty" and "the rights of man."
Even if it were possible to enforce discipline by rigorous punishment,
such a course would be inadvisable. Recruiting depends for its
success very largely on the reports of men newly enlisted as to
how they are treated. As long as we have to obtain the largest
possible number of recruits in the shortest possible time, the
good-will of the men already enlisted is a primary consideration,
and discipline must be tempered with tact.

 The net result is that a greatly increased strain is thrown
on the individual leader. To some extent this applies to all ranks;
but it is more especially true of the section leader. The commissioned
officer, even in the citizen Army, has a good deal of prestige
as long as he does not give it away. He appears, by virtue of
his immunity from manual work and competition, his superior dress
and standard of living, to be a higher sort of being altogether.
The senior N.C.O. also has a prestige of his own, due to the fact
that he is usually an ex-Regular, and has an intimate knowledge
of his job, and the manner of one who is accustomed to be obeyed.
But the young lance-corporal who is put in charge of a section
has absolutely no prestige. A few weeks since he was a recruit
himself. Of the work he knows little more than the men. He lives
and sleeps and messes with them. They know all his faults and
weaknesses a great deal better than he does himself. They are
inclined to be jealous of him, and have no respect for him except
what he can inspire by his inherent force of character. To a great
extent he is dependent on their good-will. They can cover his
deficiencies or emphasize them as they like. If he tries to establish
his authority by reporting them, he can by no means count on the
sure support of his superiors. Unless they have a very high opinion
of him, they will be quite likely to conclude that he is more
bother than he is worth., and reduce him to the ranks. In fact,
if one wants to study the conditions of sheer natural leadership,
one can hardly choose a better subject than the average section
leader in a "service battalion."

 Of course the types vary enormously. At first it is generally
the men who want promotion that obtain the stripe, and they mostly
belong to one of two classes. They are either ambitious youngsters
or blustering bullies. The youngster who wants promotion has probably
been a clerk and lived in a suburb. He is better educated and
has a smarter appearance than the general run of the men. He covets
the stripe because he wants to get out of the many menial and
dirty jobs incidental to barrack life; because he thinks himself
"a cut above" his fellows and wants the fact to be recognized;
because, in short, he thinks that as a lance-corporal he will
find life easier and more flattering to his self-esteem. He soon
finds his mistake. He annoys the sergeant-major by his incompetence
and the men by his superior airs. Soon he gets into a panic and
begins to nag at the men. That is just what they hate. The whole
situation reminds one of nothing so much as of a terrier barking
at a herd of cows. As soon as the cows turn on him the terrier
begins to waver, and, after trying to maintain his dignity by
continuing to bark, ends by fleeing for dear life with his tail
between his legs. So the young lancecorporal begins by hectoring
the men, and, having roused them to a fury of irritation, ends
by abject entreaty. Finally he is reduced to the ranks. The career
of the bully is different. He is generally a vulgar, pushing fellow,
who likes boasting and threatening, likes to feel that men are
afraid of him, likes to be flattered by toadies, and likes getting
men punished. The men hate him; but he sometimes manages to bluff
the officers and sergeants into thinking that he is a "smart
N.C.O." Usually he comes to a bad end, either through drink
or gambling. When he is reduced to the ranks his lot is not an
enviable one.

 A deplorable number of those who are first promoted finish
by forfeiting their stripe. Then comes the turn of the man who
does not covet rank for its own sake, but accepts it because he
thinks that it is "up to him" to do so. Generally he
is a man of few words and much character. He gives an order. The
man who receives it begins to argue: it is not his turn, he has
only just finished another job, and so on. The N.C.O. looks at
him., and repeats "Git on and do it." The man "curls
up," and does as he is told. An N.C.O. of this sort is popular.
He saves any amount of wear and tear, and this is appreciated
by the men. He gets things done, and that is appreciated by the
sergeants and officers.

 Finally, there is the gentleman, who is the most interesting
of all from our point of view. He is generally a thoroughly bad
disciplinarian in the official sense, and at the same time he
is often a magnificent leader of men. He is fair and disinterested.
He has a certain prestige through being rather incomprehensible
to the average private. He does not care a scrap for his rank.
He is impervious to the fear of losing it. He takes it from a
sense of duty, and his one idea is to get things done with as
little friction as possible. He often succeeds in gaining the
confidence of his men, so that they will work for him as for no
one else. But, on the other hand, his methods are apt to be quite
unorthodox and highly prejudicial to the cause of discipline as
a whole. His authority is so personal that it is very hard for
an ordinary N.C.O. to take his place.

 A man of this sort was given the strip while his battalion
was in a rest camp in Flanders, and was put in charge of a section
which was quite new to him. It was a very uncomfortable camp,
and there were endless tiresome fatigues to be done. The men,
who had just come out of the trenches, and had been looking forward
to a comparatively easy and luxurious time, were in the worst
of tempers. The lance-corporal did his best. He tried to be scrupulously
fair, and to put each man on fatigue in his turn; but the men
were "out for a row." In the afternoon he entered the
hut, and detailed one of the worst grumblers for a fatigue. The
man started to grumble, and made no sign of moving. The corporal
took out his watch and announced that if he did not go in two
minutes he would "put him on the peg," which means report
him to the captain for refusing to obey an order. The man was
defiant, and remarked that that was all "lancejacks"
were for, to get men into trouble, and that they could not stand
up to a fellow as man to man. This was a peculiarly subtle taunt,
because of course it would mean instant reduction if an N.C.O.
were found fighting with a man. In the interests of discipline,
the offender ought to have been made a prisoner at once. This
course, however, did not commend itself to the corporal. He was
the sort of man who, if he could only maintain his authority by
such means, would rather resign it. He put back his watch; explained
for the benefit of the audience that it was this man's turn, that
he was not an N.C.O. for his own amusement, and that it gave him
no pleasure to get men into trouble; and finally ended up by inviting
the man to step outside there and then and see whether or no he
would stand up to him. The man collapsed and did as he was ordered,
and the lance-corporal was well on his way to winning the respect
of his section; but of course he had committed a dire offense
against military discipline.

 If I am not mistaken, it was the same N.C.O. who, a few days
later, was guilty of a similar neglect of duty in the trenches.
It was at night, and the trench had been badly damaged by shell-fire
during the afternoon. It was necessary to build up the parapet,
and owing to the sodden nature of the ground it was not possible
to take any more earth from the floor of the trench. In order
to fill the sandbags required, someone had to get out of the trench
at the back and dig in the open field. The corporal detailed a
man for the job, and the man flatly refused to go. He had not
been out long; his nerves had been shaken by the shell-fire that
afternoon; he did not like the idea of going out into the open;
he was afraid that when the flares went up the Germans would see
him; he was, afraid of the rain of random bullets which always
falls at night. Of course he ought to have been put under arrest,
and tried for (1) cowardice in the face of the enemy, and (2)
refusing to obey an order. His punishment might have been "death"
or "any less penalty." The corporal knew that there
was very little real danger. He looked at the man contemptuously,
and went and did the job himself. He had not been at it more than
two minutes when the boy---for he was little more---came and joined
him.

 This N.C.O. certainly gained the respect and confidence of
his men, and there is no possession better worth having from the
point of view of the individual; but his authority was purely
personal, and on the whole bad for discipline. He was to realize
it a little later. An officer, who was in charge of a big working
party, called for two volunteers to accompany a corporal in stalking
a German sniper. Not a man volunteered. After some minutes, during
which the officer appealed and rated in vain, a boy came up to
this N.C.O. and asked: "Who's the corporal that's going?"
The N.C.O. replied that he didn't know. "Oh.," said
the boy, with obvious disappointment, "if it had been you
I would have volunteered." For the corporal it was at once
his reward and his condemnation. He realized then that though
it is a fine thing when men trust their leader and will follow
him anywhere, it is a still finer thing when they will stand by
any leader, whether they know him or not; and this last is the
fruit of perfect discipline.

III DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP - Revision history

Hirgen at 15:22, 18 September 2008

Hirgen at 19:41, 7 September 2008