24
The General’s Virtue
IF HE REGARDS THE TROOPS LIKE AN INFANT, loves them like a handsome boy, respects them like a severe teacher, and employs them like clumps of earth, the general excels.
If despite adverse circumstances the battle is not lost, it is the general’s wisdom. If he does not slight the few nor suffer incursions from the enemy, if he is as cautious about the end as about the beginning, the general is perspicacious.
His orders not being interfered with and the ruler’s commands not entering the army’s gate, these are the general’s constants. When he enters the army the commanding general forgets his family and assumes sole authority.
In combat the two commanding generals will not both live, the two armies will not both survive. The general of the army’s fate hinges upon his troops.
The granting of additional rations and bestowing of irregular rewards, these are the commanding general’s beneficence. When the bestowing of rewards does not extend past the day; the imposition of punishments is as quick as turning the face; and they are not affected by the man nor subject to external threats, this is the general of the army’s Virtue.
COMMENTARY
This chapter is badly fragmented and the reconstruction is questionable because there are virtually no clues to strip sequence or justifications for even including them all. However, the content of each strip taken in isolation remains reasonably clear and can be contextually illuminated by similar passages in the other early military writings. The first passage focuses upon questions of discipline, understood as the overall treatment of troops and the means to bind them to the commander. Several measures, such as sharing hardship, have previously been discussed. The crux is balancing the soldiers’ fear of the general’s power and awesomeness with a devotion forged through ties of emotional allegiance, thereby precluding the danger of simple desertion. Sun-tzu’s chapter entitled “Configurations of Terrain” contains a passage which may well underlie this one: “When the general regards his troops as young children, they will advance into the deepest valleys with him. When he regards the troops as his beloved children, they will be willing to die with him. If they are well treated but cannot be employed, if they are loved but cannot be commanded, or when in chaos they cannot be governed, they may be compared to arrogant children and cannot be used.” The final sentence in the fragment indicates the new, realistic attitude that pervaded Sun Pin’s era: the troops, however much loved, are to be used like “clumps of earth.” Any other approach, while temporarily saving lives, would result in greater losses and possibly the state’s own demise.
Commentators generally cite a passage from the Tao Te Ching in conjunction with the second fragment: “In their management of affairs people constantly defeat them just as they are about to be completed. If one is as cautious about the end as the beginning, then there will not be any defeated states.” The rise of the professional commander and the assertion of his necessary independence from the ruler are reflected in the third fragment. Sun-tzu said: “One whose general is capable and not interfered with by the ruler will be victorious.” The Three Strategies and the Six Secret Teachings also emphasize these themes and would even have the general-designate, upon accepting his mandate, stress his necessary independence, by saying: “I have heard that a country cannot follow the commands of another state’s government, while an army can not follow central government control. Someone of two minds cannot properly serve his ruler; someone in doubt cannot respond to the enemy.”
Of course the Warring States trend away from civilian or political control starkly contrasts with present thinking and practices, at least as seen in the middle 1990s in the United States. (Naturally the communications revolution will radically affect the dimensions and possibilities of real-time battlefield control. Whenever new potentials appear for authorities to exercise power, inappropriately or not, they tend to be exploited. In contrast, in antiquity the fastest message or prearranged signaling system could require hours or days—far too slow to match the pace of battle.) Furthermore, there are two issues here: one is interference with the commander’s exercise of authority by directing him to implement externally generated orders. The second is undermining command authority by issuing orders to the army itself or allowing senior officers to insubordinately presume upon their relationship with the ruler.
Combat in Sun Pin’s era increasingly developed into battles of annihilation, and actual clashes generally entailed the defeat of one side or the other and the subsequent death of the commander—whether on the battlefield or as punishment for losing. Of course Sun-tzu, Wu Ch’i, and many other strategists felt it necessary to warn against foolishly engaging an enemy force out of blind courage or the fear of being accused of cowardice.
Rewards and punishments were understood by all the military writers as providing the foundation for troop control. Generally the Legalists provide the most extensive analyses of their systematization and psychology, but the military theorists also embraced fundamental insights and psychological principles in common with them. Two of the most basic, already seen in earlier chapters, are that the implementation of rewards and punishments must be immediate, and that they should be effected without regard to rank or position. (In fact, many of them emphasized that punishments should be visibly imposed especially on the noble and powerful in order to cause the entire army to quake, to show that no one may presume upon position to escape punishment nor should fear being ignored because of low rank.) The Ssu-ma Fa is cited for its parallels with this chapter: “Rewards should not be delayed beyond the appropriate time for you want the people to quickly profit from doing good. When you punish someone do not change his position for you want the people to quickly see the harm of doing what is not good.”