DISCIPLINE is a marvellous thing. It lay behind the invincibility of

the Roman legion. Napoleon's legendary Guards made Waterloo a close-run

thing. Even Captain Blackadder went over the top when he was ordered to

do so. In peacetime, alas, the circumstances are difficult to contrive.

It is hard to persuade intelligent people that if only they are

subjected to hardship and self-sacrifice, they will emerge finer

characters, hardened by adversity. It is for this reason that there

exist such centres as the John Ridgway Adventure School, founded by the

Atlantic oarsman at Ardmore on the north-west coast of Scotland, and the

subject of last night's Channel 4 documentary.

It is to institutions like this that hundreds of British companies

send their employees on survival courses to strengthen their leadership

skills and teamwork. At Ardmore conditions are particularly tough.

Twenty men and four women were reported last weekend to have been

ordered to strip to their underwear and dive into icy sea, regardless of

whether or not they could swim. The following day they were climbing a

2500ft rockface in 90mph winds. Such experiences will bring a smile of

tolerant memory to ex-servicemen. It is in the white-hot fire of

suffering, they say, that tradition is forged. Unfortunately, civilians

are sometimes harder to convince. On the final day of one course an

entire group of executives from the Rockwater underwater engineering

company, based at Aberdeen, refused to swim ashore from a ''sinking''

boat. Their mass disobedience, they claimed, was an excellent example of

the team spirit Mr Ridgway was trying to instil.

Ah, where would Britain be today, we ask, if such actions were allowed

to spread? The incident will, it is to be hoped, be hushed up. The

problem remains: How can Rockwater redress the situation? There is only

one answer, in our experience. Put the mutinous dogs in uniform.