Psychology and the Soldier: By F. C. Bartlett, M.A. (Cambridge: The University Press. Pp. viii + 224. Price 7 s. 6 d. net.)

That the reluctance to admit psychology into the upper hierarchy of the sciences is not entirely unjustifiable may be illustrated by comparing the attitude of a Cambridge psychologist towards the soldier and warfare with that of a Cambridge physiologist. Mr. Haldane, in his Defence of Chemical Warfare, envisages the future soldier as an alert chemist, bacteriologist, engineer, with the entire suppression of what he calls Bayardism with its uniforms, salutes, Field Marshals and Corporals; in short, Mr. Haldane presumes that if a nation goes to war it will use all the resources of modern science in order to win. Mr. Bartlett, on the other hand, is all for Bayardism; he lectures to young officers on discipline and punishment, leaders and leadership, morale and games with drills and uniforms, pips, and all the rest of it. The soldier is presumably to be drilled into the kind of irresponsible and suggestible creature that the Bayard higher command wants—the soldier satirized in Kipling's Soldiers Three, whose only outlet from drills and discipline was in those childish escapades and whose worth as time-expired men was probably estimated at 'fourpence a day'.

Mr. Bartlett, who can on occasion make use of the technical terms of modern psychology, betrays little understanding of its content—that would be too modern a touch—or possibly he considered that his hearers (the book is a selection from lectures given to military students at Cambridge) lacked the intelligence to follow psychological problems. To regale military students with the banalities in the second part of the book is, however, unfairly underrating the intelligence of his listeners. Almost any senior officer with some knowledge of the world would give his junior officers more strenuous and more valuable lessons in applied psychology (minus the technical terms) than Mr. Bartlett offers.

It is significant that the author makes no reference to the repressed instincts of cruelty, lust and destruction which play