Shackleton's Way of Keeping Up Morale

Physicist Reginald James on Shackleton's strategies for keeping up morale...

He probably never made any deliberately planned steps to this end.  His methods were much more subtle & persuasive than this.  He was constantly on the watch for any break in morale, or any discontent, so that he could deal with it at once.  He realized fully the enormous and almost instantaneous effect of food on the morale, and took all kinds of trouble to vary the ration or try some new way of cooking things, to issue a little tit-bit to commemorate something, a birthday for example, or some other anniversary.  I spent 6 months in the same tent with him, and I know better than most how ceaseless was his thought for this kind of thing.  His method was really the constant application of small corrections, unnoticed by nearly everyone, yet very potent in their cumulative effect.

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