When General Erskine arrived in Kenya he genuinely wanted to improve the security forces’ treatment of Kikuyu civilians. Throughout his first six months in the country he struggled to comprehend the extent of the war's brutality, and then to control it. Receiving scant support from the Governor, direct opposition from the settlers and mixed signals from his own troops, he compromised. By January 1954 General Erskine appeared to accept his inability to impose tight discipline on all the forces under his command. There were two fundamental reasons for this. By the time Erskine arrived in the country, the pattern of violence was set. All the major players in the conflict had already decided how to conduct themselves in this bitter fight. They were damned if a British general was going to change that. So Erskine entered into an implicit bargain with the security forces: he would only punish the very worst offenders against his moral code.

General Erskine entered this deal because his strategy for defeating the Mau Mau left him no other option. Although military strategy evolved in several respects, such as the growing use of special forces, the core tenet remained in place from start to finish. The army in Kenya aimed to defeat the rebellion by repressing those elements of the Kikuyu population perceived to be disloyal. Policies such as collective punishment, villagisation and mass detention, and coercive interrogations were considered strategically vital. When soldiers abused and killed civilians in efforts to enact those policies, their commanding officers could hardly punish them for doing so. Soldiers warned their officers that if discipline became too tight, they would effectively stop fighting. In other words, the army negotiated flexible discipline in order to wage a punitive war against a whole people.