From a 2002 study of discipline in the British Army From a "real" historian who sells his books in a "real " Bookshop
Jim Carroll

In a recent study of military discipline during the First World War David Englander rightly asserted that 'British and Belgian soldiers were more at risk [from capital punishment] than either their French or German counterparts'2. This contradicts existing ideas about both Prussian militarism and popular notions of French military justice – or more accurately injustice – such as conveyed by Stanley Kubrick in his film Paths of Glory. A comparison of statistics for discipline in the British, French and German armies, the three main combatants on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, supports Dr. Englander : the British condemned more than 3000 men compared with 2000 in the French army and only 150 in the German army3. Indeed, the comparative harshness of the British was especially marked in the case of deserters on the Western Front4. Whilst it should be noted that the number of French soldiers executed (perhaps as many as 700) exceeded that of the British army (officially 346, but probably many more5) the two remain comparable given the relative size of the armies. Only 48 of the 150 German soldiers condemned by military courts were shot. On the face of it the British army was not beset by disciplinary problems any more than were the other major armies, yet no historian has adequately explained this striking differential. This is even more surprising given pervasive British attitudes of the time : Germany was castigated as authoritarian and militaristic and France was viewed from across the Channel as decadent. The French army, so it appeared, was not immune from this and its collapse at Sedan was regarded by many in Britain as evidence of the moral degeneration of the French, a view seemingly confirmed by the chaos of the Commune. Accordingly, when discipline in the French army collapsed in 1917, the British commander, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, emphasised what he considered the lack of 'moral qualities' in the French army as its major cause6. Paradoxically, German authoritarianism and militarism had, according to some, been a major factor in securing the Prussian victory in 1871 : British generals had a high regard for the discipline of the Prussian army if not their tactics7. Yet these continental armies exhibited more tolerance of their soldiers than the supposedly more progressive British. Paradoxically, therefore, it was in the country that believed it most espoused liberal values that military discipline appears to have taken on its harshest form.
The harsh nature of military discipline in Britain owed much to tradition. The earliest armies were regulated by Articles of War issued on the prerogative of the Crown and valid only during the duration of any given conflict. This power, introduced by William I, was not superseded until the nineteenth-century. But if military law seemingly became more the concern of parliament than of the Sovereign, the Crown was still able to exert considerable influence in this area, playing the 'apolitical' card to great effect – the army shared with the Crown a (mythical) status that supposedly transcended politics. The nature of these earlier Articles was pejoratively described in a military manual of 1914 as being 'of excessive severity, inflicting death or loss of limb for almost every crime'12. Ironically, a certain amount of this severity was to return in the years that followed.
8The peacetime army, thanks to the British aversion to a standing army, did not exist in a modern sense and no regulations were thought necessary beyond what was covered by criminal and civil law. This changed, however, after the so-called Glorious Revolution whereupon the Mutiny Act was passed in 1689. The object of this annually renewable act, which made mutiny and desertion a capital offence, remained largely unchanged until 1878. It did, however, undergo a series of refinements each reflecting the circumstances of the time. The Act, often allowed to lapse during times of peace, was frequently re-introduced, usually with an extension of its jurisdiction to include overseas territories as the army's garrison duties expanded around the globe. The Mutiny Act finally superseded the prerogative power to make Articles of War towards the end of the Peninsular War in 1813 and remained in force, largely unaltered until our period.