Abstract
Morale is central to warfighting; high morale sustains and binds fighting soldiers and civilian populations in a way that they can endure difficulties and hardships that would otherwise lead to disintegration and collapse and fight better than soldiers with poor morale. Instances abound in history where a force with high morale overcame a militarily stronger force. A recent example is the Vietnamese conflicts, in which successively poorly equipped and fed Viet Minh and Viet Cong outfought materially better and even more numerous western forces. The former had mostly high morale; the latter, steadily diminishing.
It is therefore curious that very little has been written specifically about morale, and almost nothing about morale at sea. Writers of memoirs, and even historians, usually confine themselves to anodyne observations that morale was good, poor, improving etc., and offer very little detail; in particular as to cause and effect. In truth, understanding of morale did not progress for a long time since Clausewitz in the nineteenth century made the distinction between mood and morale (which he termed ‘spirit’) making the very valid distinction that the former tends to short lived and affects small groups, whereas the latter is slow to change and affects entire formations. There has been very little further study despite the major wars since Clausewitz wrote; much of the writing after the Second World War such as by SLA Marshal studied small groups, and while they would have picked up on morale, inevitably concentrated on mood and its management.
Looking at the Royal Navy in World War One, Corbett/Newbolt’s Naval Operations do not index morale across five volumes, and nor does Marder in his five-volume From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. Indeed as the author of this book says that after reading both ‘one can be left with no idea about how th[e Royal Navy] interacted with civilian society, or of what the experience of was like for those who fought it’ (p.14).
Two recent books have taken matters forward. Alexander Watson’s Enduring the Great War: Combat Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2008) and Jonathan Fennell’s Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the path to El Alamein (Cambridge, 2011) look in detail at morale in the land environment, one across a war, the other a specific campaign. Fennell (whose every chapter title includes the word ‘morale’!), attempts to identify ways to measure it, but in a land environment, and unfortunately much is not applicable to service at sea. He is strongly of the opinion that morale is so important that war should be viewed ‘through the lens of morale.’ While his study is not readily transferable to the naval setting; for example, rates of desertion on active service – not likely to occur at sea – he lists what he describes as ‘other factors’:
‘… discipline/coercion, ideology, training, confidence in weapons, management of the impact of the environment and provisions, welfare and education, success in battle, and leadership and command … theory should take account of the many factors that are influences on or correlates of morale. Morale is multidimensional…’ (reviewer’s emphasis)
In this book, Doctor Rowe looks first at the basic structure of the Royal Navy ‘which was a deeply paternalistic hierarchical society’ (p.20). While admitting that paternalism was ‘not wholly negative’ she feels that it was the cause of much unrest. The rise of democratism [sic] evidenced by service friendly and benevolent societies is examined in some detail as is the influence of Lionel Yexley and his mouthpiece The Fleet as well as other contemporary publications such as The Bluejacket and the Soldier. Then, after looking at the personnel structure of the Royal Navy before and during the First World War, Dr Rowe reviews the historiography of military morale (in particular the two monographs cited above), noting its inapplicability to a naval environment. She then contends, notwithstanding Fennell, that ‘[b]y utilising the contemporary language used by the RN – the language of discipline – it is possible to explore the concept of naval morale… by exploring how the RN’s morale, as conceived of in terms of discipline, withstood the challenges of war, we can clarify the factors that informed the morale of the navy’ (pp. 62–3). There is no doubt that discipline, its practices and outcomes are a major component of morale; ships had to render (submit) punishment returns (reports) regularly up through the chain of command, and they were closely watched. The breakdown of discipline in the Hochseeflotte in 1918 was part of the collapse of German naval morale. However, whether naval discipline can be used in isolation to assess morale must be contentious.
Nonetheless, Dr Rowe spends most of the rest of the book looking at Royal Naval discipline and its implementation during the war. There are some odd errors. The Naval Discipline Act was not ‘also known as the Articles of War’. While the latter had originally been the totality of naval law, long before the First World War it was reduced to being a small part of the former. She goes into considerable detail, what offences, who committed them, and from which ships. The ‘who’ are in turn broken down by rank or rate and into regular service, reserve, marine, and merchant (merchant seamen on T124 articles – not T128 as given at footnote p. 204 – and thus subject to the Naval Discipline Act). These figures are looked at both in what might described as absolute terms but also from what was perceived as the Admiralty’s viewpoint, and in particular it’s unreferenced concern that HO (Hostilities Only) and reservist ratings ‘were firebrand trade unionists or revolutionary socialists’ (p.205). Similarly there is unreferenced mention made that the Admiralty (and the lower-deck) feared that there was poorer discipline among senior ratings. There are suggestions that statistical analysis has been carried out as the increase in the number of prosecutions in 1917 is described as ‘not statistically significant’. It would have been helpful if that important specific conclusion was accompanied by the calculated probability value (e.g. P < 0.10).
Extensive use is also made of the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. Unfortunately many were recorded after a further world war, during which many of the subjects served, that is to say, many years later. These are used not only to illustrate disciplinary matters directly, but to explore the influences of lower deck societies and organisations out with the navy such as trades unions as well as benevolent organisations such as Aggie Weston’s (the latter decried as evidence of service paternalism). Such records while useful, must be used with some care. On the basis of an examination of indiscipline, Dr Rowe concludes that the morale of the Royal Navy was ‘good’ throughout the war. Compared with Fennell’s examination of the Eighth Army, regrettably it is a very superficial assessment. Morale is far more than discipline, and it is arguable that discipline is a reliable single measure. The fact that morale in the Royal Navy remained good was due to a multiplicity of factors, most of which this book hardly addresses.