A team keeps one foot out the door and wonders why it can't commit.

The psychology chapter, and the book is clinical about it. Soldiers with an exit use it; soldiers with no exit become, in the book's cold phrase, capable of "striking a blow for victory" precisely because they have fallen into harm's way. On desperate ground the troops "lose the sense of fear," stand firm without orders, and fight hard because there is no help for it. The general is even told to keep his own men ignorant of the design: "Confront your soldiers with the deed itself; never let them know your design," and to "mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance." It is manipulation as a technology of courage. Disturbing, deliberate, and presented as the difference between an army that dissolves and one that holds.