Officers and men working together as a compact team, in any type of military operation where success, and coordinated action in the face of danger, depend mainly upon the moral resources within one small group, develop a closer camaraderie and become less formal than is normal elsewhere throughout the services. The close confinement in which tank forces, airplane crews and submarine crews must operate would stifle morale and torture nerves otherwise. Whatever the patience of men under such conditions, sooner or later they get on each other's nerves. Therefore that system of relationships is best which is least artificial and most relaxing to the spirit of the natural man. But to construe this as a deviation from the standards of discipline is to mistake the shadow for the substance. CHAPTER SIXTEEN MORALE To grow in knowledge of how to win a loyal and willing response from military forces, there must first be understanding of the springs of human action, what they are, and how they may be directed toward constructive ends. This done, the course which makes for the perfecting of forces during peacetime training need only be extended to harden them for the risk and stress of war. The mainspring is morale. The meaning of the word is already known in a general way to every man who has qualified for officership, so it is hardly necessary to redefine it. A World War II bluejacket said it this way: "Morale is when your hands and feet keep working when your head says it can't be done." That says it just as well as anything written by du Picq or Baron von Steuben. Nothing new need be added. The handiest beginning is to consider morale in conjunction with discipline, since in military service they are opposite sides of the same coin. When one is present, the other will be also. But the instilling of these things in military forces depends upon leadership understanding the nature of the relationship. As to discipline, until recent years, military forces tended to stress the pattern rather than the ideal. The elder Moltke, one of the great masters of the military art, taught his troops that it was of supreme importance that they form accurately in training, since the perfection of their formations would determine their efficiency in battle. Yet in the Franco-Prussian War, these formations proved utterly unsuited to the heavily wooded terrain of the theater, and new ones had to be devised on the spur of the moment.