What did entering the army include?
Contract of unlimited liability: Someone who becomes a soldier is crossing a legally defined boundary, giving up some of the individual rights he hitherto enjoyed (such as the right to withdraw his labour), accepting collective standards which contribute to the common good, and undertaking, in the last analysis, to kill or be killed for a purpose in which he may have no personal interest. General Sir John Hackett called this “the contract of unlimited liability”. However closely the army may come to resemble society, and however rarely it is called upon to apply lethal force, this essential characteristic still remains. The process of turning a man into a soldier and the discipline that underpins it has changed over time, and is complicated by the fact that society, too, is never static, and what was acceptable this year may not be so next. An age in which men were deferential, inured to hardship and had low expectations produced raw material quite different from that in an age where t
