mers and to drop out the intervening training altogether."

IV. ALLOW NO EXCEPTIONS

In speaking of the formation of habit, Professor James says:—

"Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.

"The Hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the Hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habit, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its ever so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the

less. Down among his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific, spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work."

In the growth of moral character we begin by imposing upon ourselves certain actions to gratify the expectations of parents and teachers; we do this for the sole purpose of appearing good. Repeated actions create ideas and feelings, and we end by regulating our conduct to meet the demands of our own ideals. We begin by acting as if we were good; we end by being good. This represents the military process. The recruit is made to act and look like a soldier. The conduct imposed from without becomes in the end second

nature.

The imposition of conduct from without involves the element of compulsion. There must be behind any efficient system the means of control which overawes. This has always been a basic principle in military instruction, and it is always necessary to lodge, somewhere behind train

ing, a power which can compel obedience and prevent exceptions. All derelictions noticed should be punished.

The system of punishment which is the basis of training should be automatic and impersonal: impersonal from the standpoint of the punishing authority. In the Training School you have an example of such a system in your so-called "skin list." A long catalogue of possible faults is tabulated and demerits assigned to each default. The tactical officers are supposed to be men keen in detecting these faults, and in reporting them to the disadvantage of each offender. You realize that the officer is doing this, not from any personal ill-will or dislike, but as a part of a system which is intended to be of assistance to you in forming correct military habits. You feel that you are submitting to a government of law and not of men. The "skin list" is intended to be automatic and impersonal, and represents a system by which men are trained into a state where obedience becomes habitual. Obedience of this sort is established and maintained by a system of intensive training, which allows no dereliction of duty, however small, to escape notice and punish

ment.

To control an army great power must be vested somewhere and used when occasion demands.

VIII

S

INSTINCTS

OME time ago a woodsman told me of see

ing from some vantage-point a contest between a herd of some kind of deer and a pack of wolves. At the first note of alarm the does and fawns huddled and the bucks formed a ring about them presenting a gallant front. Each took his place in the fighting line automatically and in response to a law of his nature. We also respond to such law. In time of public danger an imperative impulse, which cannot be denied, places us, like the bucks, in the outer ring, facing the enemies of the Republic. Prepared or unprepared, you will find your places in the fighting line.

To instruct men you must understand them. When a man acts, what makes him do one thing rather than another? No one of us is exactly like another, yet all conform more or less to a common type. We recognize that we have tendencies to respond in similar ways to the same situations: to eat when hungry, to sleep when

tired, to fight when mad, to run when frightened, etc., etc. These impulses to act alike are obviously connected with some common material fact in human anatomy.

I shall assume in these talks that men are born like animals with certain instincts, and that they acquire other tendencies by developing these instincts, and that these inherited and acquired dispositions are the causes of feeling and acting. A good part of our motives in acting is the satisfaction of these dispositions. When we attempt to control or stir others to action, we appeal by reason or other means to these impulses, dispositions, and tendencies. Among the instincts commonly appealed to in military life are:

Instinct is defined as "An innate disposition which determines its possessor to perceive and pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to