It is a very general opinion, especially in aristocratic countries,
that the great social equality which prevails in democracies ultimately
renders the private soldier independent of the officer, and thus
destroys the bond of discipline. This is a mistake, for there are two
kinds of discipline, which it is important not to confound. When the
officer is noble and the soldier a serf--one rich, the other poor--the
former educated and strong, the latter ignorant and weak--the strictest
bond of obedience may easily be established between the two men. The
soldier is broken in to military discipline, as it were, before he
enters the army; or rather, military discipline is nothing but an
enhancement of social servitude. In aristocratic armies the soldier
will soon become insensible to everything but the orders of his superior
officers; he acts without reflection, triumphs without enthusiasm, and
dies without complaint: in this state he is no longer a man, but he is
still a most formidable animal trained for war.
A democratic people must despair of ever obtaining from soldiers
that blind, minute, submissive, and invariable obedience which an
aristocratic people may impose on them without difficulty. The state of
society does not prepare them for it, and the nation might be in danger
of losing its natural advantages if it sought artificially to acquire
advantages of this particular kind. Amongst democratic communities,
military discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate the free spring
of the faculties; all that can be done by discipline is to direct it;
the obedience thus inculcated is less exact, but it is more eager and
more intelligent. It has its root in the will of him who obeys: it rests
not only on his instinct, but on his reason; and consequently it will
often spontaneously become more strict as danger requires it. The
discipline of an aristocratic army is apt to be relaxed in war, because
that discipline is founded upon habits, and war disturbs those habits.
The discipline of a democratic army on the contrary is strengthened in
sight of the enemy, because every soldier then clearly perceives that he
must be silent and obedient in order to conquer.
The nations which have performed the greatest warlike achievements knew
no other discipline than that which I speak of. Amongst the ancients
none were admitted into the armies but freemen and citizens, who
differed but little from one another, and were accustomed to treat
each other as equals. In this respect it may be said that the armies
of antiquity were democratic, although they came out of the bosom
of aristocracy; the consequence was that in those armies a sort of
fraternal familiarity prevailed between the officers and the men.
Plutarch's lives of great commanders furnish convincing instances of the
fact: the soldiers were in the constant habit of freely addressing their
general, and the general listened to and answered whatever the soldiers
had to say: they were kept in order by language and by example, far
more than by constraint or punishment; the general was as much their
companion as their chief. I know not whether the soldiers of Greece and
Rome ever carried the minutiae of military discipline to the same
degree of perfection as the Russians have done; but this did not prevent
Alexander from conquering Asia--and Rome, the world.