uote: "He
wore the same clothes and ate the same food as the meanest of his
soldiers, refused to have either a horse to ride or a mat to
sleep on, carried his own surplus rations wrapped in a parcel,
and shared every hardship with his men. One of his soldiers was
suffering from an abscess, and Wu Ch`i himself sucked out the
virus. The soldier's mother, hearing this, began wailing and
lamenting. Somebody asked her, saying: 'Why do you cry? Your
son is only a common soldier, and yet the commander-in-chief
himself has sucked the poison from his sore.' The woman replied,
'Many years ago, Lord Wu performed a similar service for my
husband, who never left him afterwards, and finally met his death
at the hands of the enemy. And now that he has done the same for
my son, he too will fall fighting I know not where.'" Li Ch`uan
mentions the Viscount of Ch`u, who invaded the small state of
Hsiao during the winter. The Duke of Shen said to him: "Many of
the soldiers are suffering severely from the cold." So he made a
round of the whole army, comforting and encouraging the men; and
straightway they felt as if they were clothed in garments lined
with floss silk.]

26. If, however, you are indulgent, but unable to make your
authority felt; kind-hearted, but unable to enforce your
commands; and incapable, moreover, of quelling disorder: then
your soldiers must be likened to spoilt children; they are
useless for any practical purpose.

[Li Ching once said that if you could make your soldiers
afraid of you, they would not be afraid of the enemy. Tu Mu
recalls an instance of stern military discipline which occurred
in 219 A.D., when Lu Meng was occupying the town of Chiang-ling.
He had given stringent orders to his army not to molest the
inhabitants nor take anything from them by force. Nevertheless,
a certain officer serving under his banner, who happened to be a
fellow-townsman, ventured to appropriate a bamboo hat belonging
to one of the people, in order to wear it over his regulation
helmet as a protection against the rain. Lu Meng considered that
the fact of his being also a native of Ju-nan should not be
allowed to palliate a clear breach of discipline, and accordingly
he ordered his summary execution, the tears rolling down his
face, however, as he did so. This act of severity filled the
army with wholesome awe, and from that time forth even articles
dropped in the highway were not p