Psychology and the Soldier

The Art of Leadership

Norman Copeland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032102368
• eBook ISBN: 9781000459586
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book, first published in 1944, stresses the point that there is no shortcut to successful wartime leadership, and pays a close analysis to the attributes that contribute to being a sound leader of soldiers. Written in the middle of the Second World War, this book gives us valuable insights into the values and training of the British Army in the second half of the war.

chapter thirteen THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISCIPLINE

The newly-appointed leader is likely to regard discipline as keeping a group of people in order. “Is he a good disciplinarian?” is a question that is often asked about officers and non-commissioned officers. What is discipline? How is it applied? What kind of person is the ideal disciplinarian?

Reference to a good dictionary will show that discipline is made up of discipline and ine. A disciple is a learner. Discipline is: (a) Systematic training, exercise, development and control of the mental, moral and physical faculties; and (b) System of instruction and control, inculcating submission to established authority; self-control, orderly behaviour.

When we say, then, that a disciplinarian is one who can keep a group of people in order we speak the truth. But that truth is after all only half the truth. A good disciplinarian is one who can influence a group of people to keep themselves in order.

Discipline is generally confused with compulsion, for compulsion is an instrument which established authority naturally turns to: the parent, the teacher, the State, the Church—each of these finds it easy and convenient to say in effect, “Do so-and-so, or else—!” Established authority is able to wield a club—sometimes physical and sometimes moral—that lends support to its commands. But the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

A good leader should aim at nothing less than the highest; and the highest type of discipline is the capacity for self-control. It is not sufficient to receive a man into the army and convert him into a good fighting machine. There are other and higher objects than that. The good leader will naturally regard the army as a noble profession, and make it his consistent aim to raise the whole tone of the men who form it, to draw out their best qualities, and to give them every opportunity of earning for themselves that self-respect out of which spring all other qualities worth possessing. Discipline is more necessary to a soldier than to anyone else in the world; but there is a vast difference between the discipline which restricts and irritates, and the discipline which exists as a useful incentive.

When Lord Roberts was appointed Commander-in-Chief in India nearly sixty years ago there was one pressing matter to which he turned his immediate attention. As a newly-joined subaltern he had watched with horror the public flogging of some men belonging to his battery, and it had not taken long for his sharp wits to realize that constant punishment hardened a soldier and made him indifferent to the character he bore in the regiment. Immediately he found himself in the position of a supreme commander he issued stern orders to all concerned on the whole subject of discipline and punishment, and insisted that leniency should take the place of cut-and-dried sentences.

“I urged,” he says, “that in the first two or three years of a soldier’s service every allowance should be made for youth and inexperience.” More than that, he gave his troops an incentive to good behaviour: he insisted on many inducements being held out to those men who kept their names clear of the defaulters’ roll, and granted them privileges such as passes and more freedom generally. These wise concessions led to such revolutionary results that the list was extended. What thousands of “stern disciplinarians” had been unable to do with all their shootings, floggings and imprisonments over a period of centuries Roberts accomplished in four years by the exercise of common sense.

History seems not to have appreciated that in addition to being an outstanding soldier Roberts was a pioneer in social reform. Half a century ago drunkenness was still the worst of all social evils, and all that legislators and magistrates could do was without any lasting effect. Ninety per cent of all crime in the army was due directly or indirectly to drink. Roberts was no crank: he was fully alive to the fact that a man is none the worse because he likes a glass of beer; but he set himself to break his troops of the habit of hard drinking, and his plan was the wise one of checking an evil by putting something good in its place. It was he who started in every regiment a Soldiers’ Institute where the men could read their newspapers, play their games, eat their suppers, and buy all the little extras which the soldier now takes for granted. Beer was there, too, for those who wanted it; but as the Commander-in-Chief had anticipated the men began to spend a large proportion of their pay on other things when these were placed within their reach. It is no exaggeration to say that Roberts must have saved the national exchequer some millions of pounds by his social reforms in the army, for these have done more than anything else to abolish crime, and have had a no less salutary effect in regard to disease.

Nor have such methods succeeded only in the army. Half a century ago the birch, or cane, was a prominent feature in every school in England. In those days a boy was likely to receive at the hands of his schoolmaster a far greater flogging for inattention during a lesson period than he receives nowadays from his father for shop-breaking. Every male teacher spent a considerable part of his working hours in belabouring the rising generation, not from any ill-feeling, but because it was commonly and seriously believed that flogging drove out the devil, and permitted virtue—in the form of knowledge—to enter in. Needless to say, truancy was taken for granted.

Today the cane has all but vanished and truancy is no more. The die-hards will go on maintaining that because floggings are not of such frequent performance as in their young days modern youth is going to the dogs. But juvenile crime today is only a fraction of what it was a generation ago. And never was the standard of education so high as now. Those octogenarian magistrates and other smart-alicks who profess to bewail the educational degeneracy of the times have only to compare the examination papers of their own youth with those of today in order to realize the sweeping progress that has been made.

Why has the cane disappeared from so many schools? In Modern Education, Dr. Raymont supplies the answer. It is because “slavery has been replaced by discipleship: plays, concerts, games, camps, and all that makes school a great piece of team work.”

That statement is so very important that it must be repeated. Truancy has been abolished, juvenile crime has decreased out of all recognition, child life is a thousand times happier than it was because “slavery has been replaced by discipleship: plays, concerts, games, camps, and all that makes school a great piece of team work.”

Teachers and pupils are now brought into contact in places other than the class-room. They have a joint interest in games, concerts and other social activities. They know each other as human beings and not only as teachers and pupils. And because they know each other, and are members of the same team, they trust each other and have an affection for each other, so that the old system of discipline by compulsion is resorted to only by those who lack the initiative to study and exploit new methods.

When the members of a group are inspired by the team spirit, and feel they are at one with each other, they have a personal reason for not offending against the rules, for no man wishes to offend against himself. Nor will any man willingly offend against a leader whom he knows and respects, and whose good opinion he values. More than that, it is not easy for the most churlish of leaders to be harsh and unreasonable with a man whom he knows, and for whose welfare he is genuinely concerned.

It ought now to be obvious that the best type of discipline will evolve from the following conditions:

1. When the leader knows the individuals who make up his group.
2. When the individuals who make up the group know the leader.
3. When the leader identifies himself with the group in every possible way.
4. When the whole group is a team inspired by the enthusiasm of the leader.
5. When the team has a high standard of esprit de corps.
6. When the team is well-instructed, keen and efficient.

If these conditions can be fulfilled, and they are by no means impossible of fulfilment, crime will disappear, training will progress by leaps and bounds, men will be fighting keen, and detention barracks will be forced out of business. Proof? The best type of educationist under infinitely worse conditions—he has his team only six hours a day for five days a week, and loses it completely for long periods at a stretch—has performed far greater miracles in the slums of our great cities.

A generation ago it was common for boys to slink around the nearest corner when they saw their teachers coming along the street. Today it is a common thing for boys to lie in wait for their teachers and escort them to school. Which is the healthier attitude?

Which is the more efficient method: Slavery or discipleship?

* * *

Discipline is best developed by methods that are expressive rather than repressive. When discipline is merely repressive men become lazy and shifty immediately they find themselves beyond the reach of detection or punishment. They lose all power of personal initiative and honesty. They require constant supervision, and have to be driven instead of being led. Such a system is uneconomical, for it has to be supported by a vast and expensive organization that contributes nothing to an army’s fighting strength and efficiency: military prisons, detention barracks, prison staff, military police, extra medical staff, extra regimental guards, extra equipment, etc.

To be efficient and powerful an army must be well-disciplined, and discipline in the group had far better evolve from discipline in the individual. Discipline is not really gained by punishing something wrong, but by influencing individuals to do what is right.

A man who is forced to disobey a command to do something impossible will soon fall into the way of disobeying a command that is within his powers. The soldier must be taught thoroughly how to do a thing before he is ordered to do it. And it must be recognized that some men are slower than others in grasping what is required of them. A drill movement must be shown repeatedly step by step. All the details which go to the making up of a tidy kit must be gone through again and again. If a machine gun has to be assembled by a recruit under instruction an instructor has no right to put some unfortunate individual in the wrong, and give him a false sense of inferiority, because he is not as mechanically-minded as others. Every instructor must keep the word patience constantly in mind. Human beings make the most rapid progress when they are not flustered.

It is true that ignorance of orders is no excuse for their not being obeyed: but at the same time it is absolutely unreasonable to expect a newly-joined soldier, for instance, to discover things for himself, and when he fails to discover them to punish him so that he will be more zealous in the future. The better and more efficient way is to give him habits of finding out what he is supposed to know. So long as a soldier has a clean conduct sheet he will move heaven and earth to keep it clean; but once it records a crime—no matter how trivial—his incentive to keep himself out of trouble has been destroyed. Therefore no officer ought to assume to himself the grave responsibility of destroying that incentive without a cast-iron reason.

In his useful and delightful book, Running a Big Ship on Ten Commandments, the late Captain Rory O’Conor, R.N., wrote: “The dignity of a great service like ours requires that every officer and man shall be given credit in the first place for doing his best, and when he sins, of sinning in ignorance or forgetfulness. Then, if he still fails, those in authority can afford to act calmly, seeing they are backed by the authority of the whole Service and the Naval Discipline Act, with the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and all the Commons in support.”

Those noble words ought to be copied out and taken to heart by every officer who is called upon to administer military law.

It is not being suggested that discipline must never be repressive. Indeed, if a leader finds himself appointed to a group which he has reason to suspect is somewhat out of hand, he would be well advised to put on a bold front and take the offensive at once. No great harm will be done if for a time he is thought to be severe. Once he has been sized up as a man who knows his business it is simple enough to let out the reins. If need be they can be pulled in again later, but this necessity is not likely to arise.

The important thing to be remembered is that it is impossible to pull in reins that have been handed over to the horse. For that reason not one single mistake must ever be allowed to pass unchecked. Not one solitary misdemeanour must be passed over in silence. Not one single liberty must be taken without its being instantly rebuked. If these things are permitted or winked at the group will be completely out of hand within a few days. Small signs must be watched for and rigorously dealt with, and the large ones will never occur.

This, indeed, is the most important lesson a disciplinarian has to learn. The general temptation is to overlook the small things in the fond belief that the group will acknowledge the friendly gesture and avoid giving offence in more serious matters. But this is a disastrous fallacy. If a unit has an outbreak of serious crime then it is fairly safe to assume that one of the reasons is that small offences are not being checked: slovenliness in turn-out, unpunctuality, etc.

Here is the disciplinarian’s golden rule:

Take care of the small things and the big things will take care of themselves.

In regard to the subject of punishment it must be remembered that the individuals who are being dealt with are grown men, and not undeveloped children. To punish is the most serious act one man can commit against another, and the subject deserves to be approached in a serious manner.

Beccaria, the great eighteenth-century reformer who laid the foundation of all modern criminal codes, has these precepts on crime and punishment which are as true now as when they were written.

1. Crimes are more surely prevented by the certainty than by the severity of punishments.
2. The countries most noted for the severity of punishments are always those in which the most bloody and inhuman actions are committed, for the hand of the assassin and of the legislator are directed by the same spirit of ferocity.
3. An immediate punishment is always the more useful.
4. Crime is often caused by the laws themselves.
5. One method of preventing crime is to reward virtue.

It must be emphasized that punishment ought never to be cut and dried lest it become a soulless formality. Each case must be adjudicated both on its own merits and in the light of what is good for the whole group. One question must be kept constantly in mind: How can the morale of the unit be best served? Sometimes indeed it can be best served by the infliction Qf exemplary punishment; and more often by the exercise of exceptional clemency.

There is the well-known story of Napoleon visiting his outposts alone, and finding one of his sentries asleep in the snow at his post on the edge of a wood. A study of the appropriate text books and manuals will prove conclusively that he ought to have called the non-commissioned officer in command of the guard, had the offender placed in close arrest, court-martialled and publicly shot. At home or abroad the one crime that admits of no excuse and which is visited with the severest retribution is this one. There can be no mercy for the soldier who shamefully imperils the lives of his comrades by sleeping at the post of duty. The most recently-appointed lance-corporal knows very well what Napoleon ought to have done.

But Napoleon was a man of genius, and geniuses are often inspired to do things that do not occur to ordinary men. He picked up the sleeping sentry’s musket, placed it upon his own shoulder, and paced up and down the beat. And thus the two were found when the non-commissioned officer arrived with the relief: the sentry who had been posted still sleeping in the snow, and the Emperor guarding the post.

Who would be presumptuous enough to suggest that Napoleon’s conduct was wrong—that he connived at the sentry’s grave dereliction of duty? Shrewd psychologist that he was, it was marvellously right. General Sir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• Epigraph
• I. The Attributes of a Leader
• II. Character and Personality
• III. Prestige
• IV. Personality and Speech
• V. The Psychology of Instruction
• VI. Example
• VII. What’s in a Name?
• VIII. The Psychology of Leadership
• IX. Care of Men
• X. Team Spirit
• XI. Morale: The Secret Weapon
• XII. Fear
• XIII. The Psychology of Discipline
• XIV. Ideals