Germany in some ways resembles a son who has been educated at home, and has taken up the responsibilities of the adult, and become bound by them without ever tasting the free intercourse of the school and university. She has never tasted the heady liquor of political liberty, she has had no revolution, and the blood of no political martyrs calls to her disturbingly from the ground. To such innocent and premature gravity the reasonable claims of what, after all, had to her the appearance of no more than an anxiously paternal Government could not fail to appeal.
Explain it how we may, there can be no doubt that to the German peoples the theoretical aspects of life have long had a very special appeal. Generalizations about national characteristics are notoriously fallacious, but it seems that with a certain reserve one may fairly say that there is a definite contrast in this particular between the Germans and, let us say, the English.
To minds of a theoretical bias the appeal of a {165} closely regulative type of Government, with all the advantages of organization which it possesses, must be very strong, and there is reason to believe that this fact has had influence in reconciling the people to the imposition upon it of the will of the Government.
Between a docile and intelligent people and a strong, autocratic, and intelligent Government the possibilities of conscious national direction could scarcely fail to become increasingly obvious and to be increasingly developed. A further and enormously potent factor in the progress of the idea was an immense accession of national feeling, derived from three almost bewilderingly successful wars, accomplished at surprisingly small cost, and culminating in a grandiose and no less successful scheme of unification. Before rulers and people an imperial destiny of unlimited scope, and allowing of unbounded dreams, now inevitably opened itself up. Alone, amongst the peoples of Europe, Germany saw herself a nation with a career. No longer disunited and denationalized, she had come into her inheritance. The circumstances of her rebirth were so splendid, the moral exaltation of her new unity was so great that she could scarcely but suppose that her state was the beginning of a career of further and unimagined glories and triumphs. There were not lacking enthusiastic and prophetic voices to tell her she was right.
The decade that followed the foundation of the Empire was, perhaps, more pregnant with destiny than that which preceded it, for it saw the final determination of the path which Germany was to follow. She had made the immense stride in the biological scale of submitting herself to conscious direction; would she also follow the path which alone leads to a perfect concentration of national life and a permanent moral stability? {166}
To a nation with a purpose and a consciously realized destiny some principle of national unity is indispensable. Some strand of feeling which all can share, and in sharing which all can come into communion with one another, will be the framework on which is built up the structure of national energy and effort.
The reactions in which the social instinct manifests itself are not all equally developed in the different social species. It is true that there is a certain group of characteristics common to all social animals; but it is also found that in one example there is a special development of one aspect of the instinct, while another example will show a characteristic development of a different aspect. Taking a broad survey of all gregarious types, we are able to distinguish three fairly distinct trends of evolution. We have the aggressive gregariousness of the wolf and dog, the protective gregariousness of the sheep and the ox, and, differing from both these, we have the more complex social structure of the bee and the ant, which we may call socialized gregariousness. The last-named is characterized by the complete absorption of the individual in the major unit, and the fact that the function of the social habit seems no longer to be the simple one of mere attack or defence, but rather the establishment of a State which shall be, as a matter of course, strong in defence and attack, but a great deal more than this as well. The hive is no mere herd or pack, but an elaborate mechanism for making use by co-ordinate and unified action of the utmost powers of the individual members. It is something which appears to be a complete substitute for individual existence, and as we have already said, seems like a new creature rather than a congeries united for some comparatively few and simple purposes. The hive and the ant’s nest stand to the flock and the {167} pack as the fully organized multicellular animal stands to the primitive zooglœa which is its forerunner. The wolf is united for attack, the sheep is united for defence, but the bee is united for all the activities and feelings of its life.
Socialized gregariousness is the goal of man’s development. A transcendental union with his fellows is the destiny of the human individual, and it is the attainment of this towards which the constantly growing altruism of man is directed. Poets and prophets have, at times, dimly seen this inevitable trend of Nature, biology detects unmistakable evidence of it, and explains the slowness of advance, which has been the despair of those others, by the variety and power of man’s mind, and consoles us for the delay these qualities still cause by the knowledge that they are guarantees of the exactitude and completeness that the ultimate union will attain.
When a nation takes to itself the idea of conscious direction, as by a fortunate combination of circumstances Germany has been induced to do, it is plain that some choice of a principle of national unity will be its first and most important task. It is plain, also, from the considerations we have just laid down, that such a principle of national unity must necessarily be a manifestation of the social instinct, and that the choice is necessarily limited to one of three types of social habit which alone Nature has fitted gregarious animals to follow. No nation has ever made a conscious choice amongst these three types, but circumstances have led to the adoption of one or another of them often enough for history to furnish many suggestive instances.
The more or less purely aggressive or protective form has been adopted for the most part by primitive peoples. The history of the natives of North America and Australia furnishes examples of {168} almost pure types of both. The aggressive type was illustrated very fully by the peoples who profited by the disintegration of the Roman Empire. These northern barbarians showed in the most perfect form the lupine type of society in action. The ideals and feelings exemplified by their sagas are comprehensible only when one understands the biological significance of them. It was a society of wolves marvellously indomitable in aggression but fitted for no other activity in any corresponding degree, and always liable to absorption by the peoples they had conquered. They were physically brave beyond belief, and made a religion of violence and brutality. To fight was for them man’s supreme activity. They were restless travellers and explorers, less out of curiosity than in search of prey, and they irresistibly overran Europe in the missionary zeal of the sword and torch, each man asking nothing of Fate but, after a career of unlimited outrage and destruction, to die gloriously fighting. It is impossible not to recognize the psychological identity of these ideals with those which we might suppose a highly developed breed of wolves to entertain.
With all its startling energy, and all its magnificent enterprise, the lupine type of society has not proved capable of prolonged survival. Probably its inherent weakness is the very limited scope of interest it provides for active and progressive minds, and the fact that it tends to engender a steadily accumulating hostility in weaker but more mentally progressive peoples to which it has no correspondingly steady resistiveness to oppose.
The history of the world has shown a gradual elimination of the lupine type. It has recurred sporadically at intervals, but has always been suppressed. Modern civilization has shown a constantly increasing manifestation of the socialized type of gregariousness in spite of the complexities {169} and disorders which the slowness of its development towards completeness has involved. It may be regarded now as the standard type which has been established by countless experiments, as that which alone can satisfy and absorb the moral as well as the intellectual desires of modern man.
From the point of view of the statesman desiring to enforce an immediate and energetic national unity, combined with an ideal of the State as destined to expand into a larger and larger sphere, the socialized type of gregarious evolution is extremely unsatisfactory. Its course towards the production of a truly organized State is slow, and perplexed by a multitudinous confusion of voices and ideals; its necessary development of altruism gives the society it produces an aspect of sentimentality and flabbiness; its tendency slowly to evolve towards the moral equality of its members gives the State an appearance of structural insecurity.
If Germany was to be capable of a consistent aggressive external policy as a primary aim, the peculiarity of her circumstances rendered her unable to seek national inspiration by any development of the socialized type of instinctive response, because that method can produce the necessary moral power only through a true unity of its members, such as implies a moral, if not a material, equality among them. That the type is capable of yielding a passion of aggressive nationalism is shown by the early enterprise and conquests of the first French Republic. But that outburst of power was attained only because it was based on a true, though doubtless imperfect, moral equality. Such a method was necessarily forbidden to the German Empire by the intense rigidity of its social segregation, with its absolute differentiation between the aristocracy and the common people. In such a society there could {170} be no thought of permitting the faintest hint of even moral equality.
This is the reason, therefore, why the rulers of Germany, of course in complete ignorance of how significant was their choice, were compelled to abandon the ideals of standard civilization, to relapse upon the ideals of a more primitive type of gregariousness, and to throw back their people into the anachronism of a lupine society. In this connection it is interesting to notice how persistently the political philosophers of Germany have sought their chief inspiration in the remote past, and in times when the wolf society and the wolf ideals were widespread and successful.
It is not intended to imply that there was here any conscious choice. It is remarkable enough that the rulers of Germany recognized the need for conscious direction of all the activities of a nation which proposes for itself a career; it would have been a miracle if they had understood the biological significance of the differentiation of themselves from other European peoples that they were to bring about. To them it doubtless appeared merely that they were discarding the effete and enfeebling ideals which made other nations the fit victims of their conquests. They may be supposed to have determined to eradicate such germs of degeneracy from themselves, to have seen that an ambitious people must be strong and proud and hard, enterprising, relentless, brave, and fierce, prepared to believe in the glory of combat and conquest, in the supreme moral greatness of the warrior, in force as the touchstone of right, honour, justice, and truth. Such changes in moral orientation seem harmless enough, and it can scarcely be suspected that their significance was patent to those who adopted them. They were impressed upon the nation with all the immense power of suggestion at the disposal of {171} an organized State. The readiness with which they were received and assimilated was more than could be accounted for by even the power of the immense machine of officials, historians, theologians, professors, teachers, and newspapers by which they were, in season and out of season, enforced. The immense success that was attained owed much to the fact that suggestion was following a natural, instinctive path. The wolf in man, against which civilization has been fighting for so long, is still within call and ready to respond to incantations much feebler than those the German State could employ. The people were intoxicated with the glory of their conquests and their imposing new confederation; if we are to trust the reputation the Prussian soldier has had for a hundred years, they were perhaps already less advanced in humanity than the other European peoples. The fact is unquestionable that they followed their teachers with enthusiasm.
It may be well for us, before proceeding farther, to define precisely the psychological hypothesis we are advancing in explanation of the peculiarities of the German national character as now manifested.
Herd instinct is manifested in three distinct types, the aggressive, the protective, and the socialized, which are exemplified in Nature by the wolf, the sheep, and the bee respectively. Either type can confer the advantages of the social habit, but the socialized is that upon which modern civilized man has developed. It is maintained here that the ambitious career consciously planned for Germany by those who had taken command of her destinies, and the maintenance at the same time of her social system, were inconsistent with the further development of gregariousness of the socialized type. New ideals, new motives, and new sources of moral power had therefore to be sought. They were found in a {172} recrudescence of the aggressive type of gregariousness—in a reappearance of the society of the wolf. It is conceivable that those who provided Germany with her new ideals thought themselves to be exercising a free choice. The choice, however, was forced upon them by Nature. They wanted some of the characters of the wolf; they got them all. One may imagine that those who have so industriously inculcated the national gospel have wondered at times that while it has been easy to implant certain of the desired ideals, it has not been possible to prevent the appearance of others which, though not so desirable, belong to the same legacy and must be taken up with it.
Before examining the actual mental features of Germany to-day, it may be desirable to consider a priori what would be the mental characteristics of an aggressive gregarious animal were he to be self-conscious in the sense that man is.
The functional value of herd instinct in the wolf is to make the pack irresistible in attacking and perpetually aggressive in spirit. The individual must, therefore, be especially sensitive to the leadership of the herd. The herd must be to him, not merely as it is to the protectively gregarious animal, a source of comfort, and stimulus, and general guidance, but must be able to make him do things however difficult, however dangerous, even however senseless, and must make him yield an absolute, immediate, and slavish obedience. The carrying out of the commands of the herd must be in itself an absolute satisfaction in which there can be no consideration of self. Towards anything outside the herd he will necessarily be arrogant, confident, and inaccessible to the appeals of reason or feeling. This tense bond of instinct, constantly keyed up to the pitch of action, will give him a certain simplicity of character and even ingenuousness, a {173} coarseness and brutality in his dealings with others, and a complete failure to understand any motive unsanctioned by the pack. He will believe the pack to be impregnable and irresistible, just and good, and will readily ascribe to it any other attribute which may take his fancy however ludicrously inappropriate.
The strength of the wolf pack as a gregarious unit is undoubtedly, in suitable circumstances, enormous. This strength would seem to depend on a continuous possibility of attack and action. How far it can be maintained in inactivity and mere defence is another matter. . . .
Since the beginning of this war attracted a really concentrated attention to the psychology of the German people, it has been very obvious that one of the most striking feelings amongst Englishmen has been bewilderment. They have found an indescribable strangeness in the utterances of almost all German personages and newspapers, in their diplomacy, in their friendliness to such as they wished to propitiate, in their enmity to those they wished to alarm and intimidate. This strange quality is very difficult to define or even to attempt to describe, and has very evidently perplexed almost all writers on the war. The only thing one can be sure of is that it is there. It shows itself at times as a simplicity or even childishness, as a boorish cunning, as an incredible ant-like activity, as a sudden blast of maniacal boasting, a reckless savagery of gloating in blood, a simple-minded sentimentality, as outbursts of idolatry, not of the pallid, metaphorical, modern type, but the full-blooded African kind, with all the apparatus of idol and fetish and tom-tom, and with it all a steady confidence that these are the principles of civilization, of truth, of justice, and of Christ. {174}
I have tried to put down at random some of the factors in this curious impression as they occur to the memory, but the mere enumeration of them is not possible without risking the objective composure of one’s attitude—an excellent incidental evidence that the strangeness is a reality.
The incomprehensibility to the English of the whole trend of German feeling and expression suggests that there is some deeply rooted instinctive conflict of attitude between them. One may risk the speculation that this conflict is between socialized gregariousness and aggressive gregariousness. As the result of the inculcation of national arrogance and aggression, Germany has lapsed into a special type of social instinct which has opened a gulf of separation in feeling between her and other civilized peoples. Such an effect is natural enough. Nothing produces the sense of strangeness so much as differences of instinctive reaction. A similar though wider gap in instinctive reaction gives to us the appearance of strangeness and queerness in the behaviour of the cat as contrasted with the dog, which is so much more nearly allied in feeling to ourselves.
If, then, we desire to get any insight into the mind and moral power of Germany, we must begin with the realization that the two peoples are separated by a profound difference in instinctive feeling. Nature has provided but few roads for gregarious species to follow. Between the path England finds herself in and that which Germany has chosen there is a divergence which almost amounts to a specific difference in the biological scale. In this, perhaps, lies the cause of the desperate and unparalleled ferocity of this war. It is a war not so much of contending nations as of contending species. We are not taking part in a mere war, but in one of Nature’s august experiments. It is as if she had {175} set herself to try out in her workshop the strength of the socialized and the aggressive types. To the socialized peoples she has entrusted the task of proving that her old faith in cruelty and blood is at last an anachronism. To try them, she has given substance to the creation of a nightmare, and they must destroy this werewolf or die.16
16 It may be noted that the members of the small group of so-called “pro-German” writers and propagandists for the most part make it a fundamental doctrine, either explicit or implicit, that there is no psychological difference between the English and the Germans. They seem to maintain that the latter are moved and are to be influenced by exactly the same series of feelings and ideals as the former, and show in reality no observable “strangeness” in their expressions and emotions. By arguments based on this assumption very striking conclusions are reached. All moral advancement has been the work of unpopular minorities, the members of which have been branded as cranks or criminals until time has justified their doctrine. Even the greatest of such pioneers have not, however, been invariably right. Their genius has usually been shown most clearly in matters with which they have been most familiar, while in matters less intimately part of their experience their judgments have often not stood the test of time any better than those of smaller men. If therefore our “pro-Germans” include amongst them men of moral genius, we may expect that such of their psychological intuitions as deal with England are more likely to prove true than those that deal with Germany. The importance of this reservation lies in the probability that the chief psychological problems connected with the origin and prosecution of this war relate to the Germans rather than to the English.
In attempting to estimate the actual phenomena of the German mind at the present time, we must remember that our sources of knowledge are subject to a rigid selection. Those of us who are unable to give time to the regular reading of German publications must depend on extracts which owe their appearance in our papers to some striking characteristic which may be supposed to be pleasing to the prejudices or hopes of the English reader. The main facts, however, are clear enough to yield {176} valuable conclusions, if such are made on broad lines without undue insistence on minor points.
An intense but often ingenuous and even childish national arrogance is a character that strikes one at once. It seems to be a serious and often a solemn emotion impregnably armoured against the comic sense, and expressed with a childlike confidence in its justness. It is usually associated with a language of metaphor, which is almost always florid and banal, and usually grandiose and strident. This fondness for metaphor and inability to refer to common things by plain names affects all classes, from Emperor to journalist, and gives an impression of peculiar childishness. It reminds one of the primitive belief in the transcendental reality and value of names.
The national arrogance of the German is at the same time peculiarly sensitive and peculiarly obtuse. It is readily moved by praise or blame, though that be the most perfunctory and this the most mild, but it has no sense of a public opinion outside the pack. It is easily aroused to rage by external criticism, and when it finds its paroxysms make it ridiculous to the spectator it cannot profit by the information but becomes, if possible, more angry. It is quite unable to understand that to be moved to rage by an enemy is as much a proof of slavish automatism as to be moved to fear by him. The really extraordinary hatred for England is, quite apart from the obvious association of its emotional basis with fear, a most interesting phenomenon. The fact that it was possible to organize so unanimous a howl shows very clearly how fully the psychological mechanisms of the wolf were in action. It is most instructive to find eminent men of science and philosophers bristling and baring their teeth with the rest, and would be another proof, if such were needed, of the infinite insecurity of the hold of {177} reason in the most carefully cultivated minds when it is opposed by strong herd feeling.17
17 I have not included in these pages actual quotations from German authors illustrative of the national characteristics they so richly display. Such material may be found in abundance in the many books upon Germany which have appeared since the beginning of the war. The inclusion of it here would therefore have been superfluous, and would have tended perhaps to distract attention from the more general aspects of the subject which are the main objects of this study. During the process of final revision I am, however, tempted to add a single illustration which happens just to have caught my eye as being a representative and not at all an extreme example of the national arrogance I refer to above.
In an article on “The German Mind” by Mr. John Buchan I find the following quotations from a Professor Werner Sombart, of Berlin:―
“When the German stands leaning on his mighty sword, clad in steel from his sole to his head, whatsoever will may, down below, dance around his feet, and the intellectuals and the learned men of England, France, Russia, and Italy may rail at him and throw mud. But in his lofty repose he will not allow himself to be disturbed, and he will reflect in the sense of his old ancestors in Europe: Oderint dum metuant.”
“We must purge from our soul the last fragments of the old ideal of a progressive development of humanity. . . . The ideal of humanity can only be understood in its highest sense when it attains its highest and richest development in particular noble nations. These for the time being are the representatives of God’s thought on earth. Such were the Jews. Such were the Greeks. And the chosen people of these centuries is the German people. . . . Now we understand why other peoples pursue us with their hatred. They do not understand us, but they are sensible of our enormous spiritual superiority. So the Jews were hated in antiquity because they were the representatives of God on earth” (“The German Mind,” Land and Water, November 6, 1915).
These passages are almost too good to be true, and give one some of the pleasure of the collector who finds a perfect specimen. Here we have the gusto in childish and banal metaphor, the conception of the brutal conqueror’s state as permanently blissful—the colonizing principle of Prussia—the naïve generalizations from history, the confident assumption of any characteristic which appears desirable in morals or religion, the impenetrable self-esteem, and I think we should add the intense and honest conviction.
If we judge from the standpoint of our own feelings and ideals such utterances as these, we cannot ignore the maniacal note in them, and we seem forced to assume some actually lunatic condition in the German people. Indeed, this is a conclusion which Mr. Buchan in the article from which I quote does not hesitate definitely and persuasively to draw.
When we remember, however, that the definition of insanity is necessarily a statistical one, that in the last analysis we can but say that a madman is a man who behaves differently from the great bulk of his neighbours, we find that to describe a nation as mad—true as it may be in a certain sense—leaves us without much addition to our knowledge. In so far, however, as it impresses upon us the fact that some of that nation’s mental processes are fundamentally different from our own it is a useful conception. The statesman will do well to carry the analysis a stage farther. The ravings of a maniac do not help us much in forecasting his behaviour, the howlings of a pack of wolves, equally irrational, equally harsh, even, in the original sense, equally lunatic, betray to us with whom we have to deal, betray their indispensable needs, their uncontrollable passions, the narrow path of instinct in which they are held, enable us to foresee, and, foreseeing, to lay our plans.
It is important, however, not to judge the functional value of these phenomena of herd arrogance and herd irritability and convulsive rage from the point of view of nations of the socialized gregarious type such as ourselves. To us they would be disturbants of judgment, and have no corresponding emotional recompense. In the wolf pack, however, they are indigenous, and represent a normal mechanism for inciting national enthusiasm and unity. The wolf, whose existence depends on the daily exercise of pursuit and slaughter, cannot afford {178} to be open to external appeals and criticisms, must be supremely convinced of his superiority and that whoever dies he must live, and must be easily stimulated to the murderous rages by which he wins his food.
Another difficulty in the understanding of the German mind is its behaviour with regard to influencing non-German opinion. There can be no doubt that it desires intensely to create impressions {179} favourable to itself, not merely for the sake of practical advantages in conducting the war, but also because of the desire for sympathy. In considering the latter motive it is important that one’s attention should not be too much attracted by the comic aspects of the searchings of heart, publicly indulged by Germans, as to why they are not regarded with a more general and sincere affection, and of the answers which they themselves have furnished to this portentous problem. That they are too modest, too true, too self-obliterating, too noble, too brave, and too kind are answers the psychological significance of which should not be altogether lost in laughter. That they are honest expressions of belief cannot be doubted; indeed, there is strong theoretical reason to accept them as such, when we remember the fabulous18 impenetrability of lupine herd suggestion. In default of such an explanation they seem to be utterly incomprehensible.
18 The use of this adjective may perhaps call to mind how often the wolf has appeared in fable in just this mood. Usually, however, the fabulist—being of the unsympathetic socialized type—has ascribed the poor creature’s yearnings to hypocrisy.
In her negotiations with other peoples, and her estimates of national character, Germany shows the characteristic features of her psychological type in a remarkable way. It appears to be a principal thesis of hers that altruism is, for the purposes of the statesman, non-existent, or if it exists is an evidence of degeneracy and a source of weakness. The motives upon which a nation acts are, according to her, self-interest and fear, and in no particular has her “strangeness” been more fully shown than in the frank way in which she appeals to both, either alternately or together.
This disbelief in altruism, and over-valuation of fear and self-interest, seem to be regarded by her {180} as evidence of a fearless and thorough grasp of biological truth, and are often fondly referred to as “true German objectivity” or the German “sense for reality.” How grossly, in fact, they conflict with the biological theory of gregariousness is clear enough. It is interesting that the German negotiators have been almost uniformly unsuccessful in imposing their wishes on States in which the socialized type of gregariousness is highly developed—Italy, the United States—and have succeeded with barbarous peoples of the lupine type, with the Turk, whose “objectivity” and appetite for massacre remain ever fresh, patriarch among wolves as he is, with Bulgaria, the wolf of the second Balkan War.
There is strong reason to believe that defective insight into the minds of others is one of the chief disadvantages of the aggressive as compared with the socialized type of gregariousness. This disadvantage is so great, and yet so deeply inherent, as to justify the belief that the type is the most primitive of those now surviving, and that its present resuscitation in man is a phenomenon which will prove to be no more than transient.
It would be of little value to enumerate the well-known instances in which failure of insight, and ignorance of the psychology of the herd, has been misleading or disadvantageous to Germany. It is relevant, however, to note the superb illustration of psychological principle which is afforded by the relations of Germany to England during the last fifteen years. That England was the great obstacle to indefinite expansion was clearly understood by those whom the conception of a consciously directed and overwhelmingly powerful German Empire had inspired. I have tried to show how great a conception this was, how truly in the line of natural evolution, how it marks an epoch even on the biological scale. Unfortunately for Germany, her social {181} type was already fixed, with such advantages and defects as it possessed, and amongst them the immense defect of the lupine attitude towards an enemy—the over-mastering temptation to intimidate him rather than to understand, and to accept the easy and dangerous suggestions of hostility in estimating his strength.
There is in the whole of human history perhaps no more impressive example of the omnipotence of instinct than that which is afforded by the reactions of Germany towards England. An intelligent, educated, organized people, directed consciously towards a definite ambition, finds its path blocked by an enemy in chief. Surely there are two principles of action which should at once be adopted: first, to estimate with complete objectivity the true strength of the enemy, and to allow no national prejudice, no liking for pleasant prophesying to distort the truth, and secondly, to guard against exasperating the enemy, lest the inevitable conflict should ultimately be precipitated by her at her moment.
Both these principles the instinctive impulsions to which Germany was liable compelled her to violate. She allowed herself to accept opinions of England’s strength, moral and physical, which were pleasant rather than true. She listened eagerly to political philosophers and historians—the most celebrated of whom was, by an ominous coincidence, deaf—who told her that the Empire of England was founded in fraud and perpetuated in feebleness, that it consisted of a mere loose congeries of disloyal peoples who would fly asunder at the first touch of “reality,” that it was rotten with insurgency, senile decay and satiety, and would not and could not fight. Even if these things had been a full statement of the case, they must have been dangerous doctrines. They were defective because the {182} observers were unaware that they were studying different instinctive reactions from their own, and were, therefore, deaf to the notes which might have put them on their guard.
At the same time, Germany allowed herself to indulge the equally pleasant expression of her hostility with a freedom apparently unrestrained by any knowledge that such indulgences cannot be enjoyed for nothing. She produced in this country a great deal of alarm, and a great deal of irritation, an effect she no doubt regarded as gratifying, but which made it quite certain that sooner or later England would recognize her implacable enemy, though, inarticulate as usual, she might not say much about it. . . .
Another feature of Germany’s social type, which has an important bearing on her moral strength, is the relation of the individual citizens to one another. The individual of the wolf pack is of necessity fierce, aggressive, and irritable, otherwise he cannot adequately fulfil his part in the major unit. Apparently it is beyond the power of Nature to confine the ferocity of the wolf solely to the external activities of the pack, as would obviously be in many ways advantageous, and to a certain extent therefore it affects the relations of members of the pack to one another. This is seen very well even in the habits of domesticated dogs, who are apt to show more or less suppressed suspicion and irritability towards one another even when well acquainted, an irritability moreover which is apt to blaze out into hostility on very slight provocation.
Most external commentators on modern German life have called attention to the harshness which is apt to pervade social relations. They tell us of an atmosphere of fierce competition, of ruthless {183} scandalmongering and espionage, of insistence upon minute distinctions of rank and title, of a rigid ceremonious politeness which obviously has little relation to courtesy, of a deliberate cultivation by superiors of a domineering harshness towards their inferiors, of habitual cruelty to animals, and indeed of the conscious, deliberate encouragement of harshness and hardness of manner and feeling as laudable evidences of virility. The statistics of crime, the manners of officials, the tone of newspapers, the ferocious discipline of the Army, and the general belief that personal honour is stained by endurance and purified by brutality are similar phenomena.
Nothing in this category, however, is more illuminating than the treatment by Germany of colonies and conquered territories. To the English the normal method of treating a conquered country is to obliterate, as soon as possible, every trace of conquest, and to assimilate the inhabitants to the other citizens of the empire by every possible indulgence of liberty and self-government. It is, therefore, difficult for him to believe that the German actually likes to be reminded that a given province has been conquered, and is not unwilling that a certain amount of discontent and restiveness in the inhabitants should give him opportunities of forcibly exercising his dominion and resuscitating the glories of conquest. Although this fact has no doubt been demonstrated countless times, it was first displayed unmistakably to the world in the famous Zabern incident. Those who have studied the store of psychological material furnished by that affair, the trial and judgments which followed it, and the ultimate verdict of the people thereon, cannot fail to have reached the conclusion that here is exposed in a crucial experiment a people which is either totally incomprehensible, or is responding to the calls of herd instinct by a series of reactions almost {184} totally different from those we regard as normal. When the biological key to the situation is discovered the series of events otherwise bizarre to the pitch of incredibility becomes not only intelligible and consistent, but also inevitable.
The differences in instinctive social type between Germany and England are betrayed in many minor peculiarities of behaviour that cannot be examined or even enumerated here. Some of them are of little importance in themselves, though all of them are significant when the whole bulk of evidence to which they contribute a share is considered. Indeed, some of the less obviously important characteristics, by the very nicety with which they fulfil the conditions demanded by the biological necessities of the case, have a very special value as evidence in favour of the generalizations which I have suggested. I permit myself an illustration of this point. The use of war cries and shibboleths doubtless seems in itself an insignificant subject enough, yet I think an examination of it can be shown to lead directly to the very central facts of the international situation.
Few phenomena have been more striking throughout the war than the way in which the German people have been able to take up certain cries—directed mostly against England—and bring them into hourly familiar and unanimous use. The phrase “God punish England!” seems actually to have attained a real and genuine currency, and to have been used by all classes and all ages as a greeting with a solemnity and gusto which are in no way the less genuine for being, to our unsympathetic eyes, so ludicrous. The famous “Hymn of Hate” had, no doubt, a popularity equally wide, and was used with a fervour which showed the same evidence of a mystic satisfaction.
Attempts have been made to impose upon England {185} similar watchwords with the object of keeping some of the direst events of the war before our eyes, and fortifying the intensity and scope of our horror. We have been adjured to “remember” Belgium, Louvain, the Lusitania, and latterly the name of an heroic and savagely murdered nurse. Horrible as has been the crime to which we have been recalled by each of these phrases, there has never been the slightest sign that the memory of it could acquire a general currency of quotation, and by that mechanism become a stronger factor in unity determination or endurance.
An allied phenomenon which may perhaps be mentioned here is the difference in attitude of the German and the English soldier towards war songs. To the German the war song is a serious matter; it is for the most part a grave composition, exalted in feeling, and thrilling with the love of country; he is taught to sing it, and he sings it well, with obvious and touching sincerity and with equally obvious advantage to his morale.
The attempt to introduce similar songs and a similar attitude towards them to the use of the English soldier has often been made, and exactly as often lamentably failed. On the whole it has been, perhaps, the most purely comic effort of the impulse to mimic Germany which has been in favour until of late with certain people of excellent aims but inadequate biological knowledge. The English soldier, consistently preferring the voice of Nature to that of the most eminent doctrinaire, has, to the scandal of his lyrical enemies, steadily drawn his inspiration from the music-hall and the gutter, or from his own rich store of flippant and ironic realism.
The biological meaning of these peculiarities renders them intelligible and consistent with one another. The predaceous social animals in attack {186} or pursuit are particularly sensitive to the encouragement afforded by one another’s voices. The pack gives tongue because of the functional value of the exercise, which is clearly of importance in keeping individuals in contact with one another, and in stimulating in each the due degree of aggressive rage. That serious and narrow passion tends naturally to concentrate itself upon some external object or quarry, which becomes by the very fact an object of hate to the exclusion of any other feeling, whether of sympathy, self-possession, or a sense of the ludicrous. The curious spectacle of Germans greeting one another with “God punish England!” and the appropriate response is therefore no accidental or meaningless phenomenon, but a manifestation of an instinctive necessity; and this explanation is confirmed by the immensely wide currency of the performance, and the almost simian gravity with which it could be carried out. It succeeded because it had a functional value, just as similar movements in England have failed because they have had no functional value, and could have none in a people of the socialized type, with whom unity depends on a different kind of bond.
The wolf, then, is the father of the war song, and it is among peoples of the lupine type alone that the war song is used with real seriousness. Animals of the socialized type are not dependent for their morale upon the narrow intensities of aggressive rage. Towards such manifestations of it as concerted cries and war songs they feel no strong instinctive impulsion, and are therefore able to preserve a relatively objective attitude. Such cryings of the pack, seeming thus to be mere functionless automatisms, naturally enough come to be regarded as patently absurd.
Examples of behaviour illustrating these deep differences of reaction are often to be met with in the {187} stories of those who have described incidents of the war. It is recorded that German soldiers in trenches within hearing of the English, seeking to exasperate and appal the latter, have sung in an English version their fondly valued “Hymn of Hate.” Whereupon the English, eagerly listening and learning the words of the dreadful challenge, have petrified their enemies by repeating it with equal energy and gusto, dwelling no doubt with the appreciation of experts upon the curses of their native land.
It would scarcely be possible to imagine a more significant demonstration of the psychological differences of the two social types.
The peculiarities of a state of the wolfish type are admirably suited to conditions of aggression and conquest, and readily yield for those purposes a maximal output of moral strength. As long as such a nation is active and victorious in war, its moral resources cannot fail, and it will be capable of an indefinite amount of self-sacrifice, courage, and energy. Take away from it, however, the opportunities of continued aggression, interrupt the succession of victories by a few heavy defeats, and it must inevitably lose the perfection of its working as an engine of moral power. The ultimate and singular source of inexhaustible moral power in a gregarious unit is the perfection of communion amongst its individual members. As we have seen, this source is undeveloped in units of the aggressive type, and has been deliberately ignored by Germany. As soon, if ever, as she has to submit to a few unmistakable defeats in the field, as soon as, if it should happen, all outlets for fresh aggression are closed, she will become aware of how far she has staked her moral resources on continuous success, and will not be able for long to conceal her knowledge from the world. {188}
That she herself has always been dimly aware of the nature of her strength—though not perhaps of her potential weakness—is shown by her steady insistence upon the necessity of aggression, upon maintaining the attack at whatever cost of life. This is a principle she has steadily acted upon throughout the war. It is exemplified by the whole series of terrible lunges at her enemies she has made. The strategic significance of these has, perhaps, become less as the moral necessity for them has become greater. France, Flanders, Russia, and the Balkans have in turn had to supply the moral food of victory and attack without which she would soon have starved. There is a quality at which the imagination cannot but be appalled in this fate of a great and wonderful nation, however much her alienation of herself from the instincts of mankind may have frozen the natural currents of pity. Panting with the exhaustion of her frightful blow at Russia, she must yet turn with who knows what weariness to yet another enterprise, in which to find the moral necessities which the Russian campaign was already ceasing to supply. It is to a similar mechanism that we must look to trace the ultimate source of the submarine and aircraft campaigns against England. Strategically, these proceedings may or may not have been regarded hopefully; possibly they were based on a definite military plan, though they do not to us have that appearance. Very probably they were expected to disorganize English morale. Behind them both, however, whether consciously or not, was the moral necessity to do something against England. This is indicated by the circumstances and the periods of the war at which they were seriously taken up. As both the submarine and the Zeppelin campaigns involve no great expenditure or dissipation of power, the fact that their value is moral rather than military, and concerned {189} with the morale of their inventors rather than that of their victims, is chiefly of academic interest as throwing further light on the nature of Germany’s strength and weakness.
Its attitude towards discipline displays the German mind in a relation sufficiently instructive to merit some comment here. When Germany has been reproached with being contented to remain in what is, by comparison with other peoples, a condition of political infantilism, with allowing the personal liberty of her citizens to be restricted on all hands, and their political responsibility to be kept within the narrowest limits, the answer of the political theorists has generally contained two distinct and contradictory apologetic theses. It has been said that the German, recognizing the value of State organization, and that strict discipline is a necessary preliminary to it, consciously resigns the illusory privileges of the democrat in order to gain power, and submits to a kind of social contract which is unquestionably advantageous in the long run. The mere statement of such a proposition is enough to refute it, and we need give no further attention to an intellectualist fallacy so venerable and so completely inconsistent with experience. It is also said, however, that the German has a natural aptitude for discipline amounting to genius. In a sense a little less flattering than it is intended to have, this proposition is as true as that of the social contract is false. The aggressive social type lends itself naturally to discipline, and shows it in its grossest forms. The socialized type is, of course, capable of discipline, otherwise a State would be impossible, but the discipline that prevails in it is apt to become indirect, less harshly compulsory and more dependent on goodwill.
It is perhaps natural that units within which {190} ferocity and hardness are tolerated and encouraged should depend on a correspondingly savage method of enforcing their will. The flock of sheep has its shepherd, but the pack of hounds has its Whips. In human societies of the same type we should expect to find, therefore, a general acquiescence in the value of discipline, and a toleration of its enforcement, because, rather than in spite of, its being harsh. This seems to be the mechanism which underlies what is to the Englishman the mystery of German submission to direction and discipline. That an able-bodied soldier should submit to being lashed across the face by his officer for some trivial breach of etiquette—a type of incident common and well witnessed to—is evidence of a state of mind in both parties utterly incomprehensible to our feelings. The hypothesis I am suggesting would explain it by comparison with the only available similar phenomenon—the submission of a dog to a thrashing administered by his master. The dog illustrates very well that in a predaceous social animal the enforcement of a harsh and even brutal discipline is not only a possible but also a perfectly satisfactory procedure in the psychological sense. That other common victim of man’s brutality—the horse—provides an interesting complement to the proposition by showing that in a protectively social animal a savage enforcement of discipline is psychologically unsatisfactory. It seems justifiable, therefore, to conclude that the aggressive gregariousness of the Germans is the instinctive source of the marvellous discipline of their soldiers, and the contribution it makes to their amazing bravery. It must not be taken as any disrespect for that wonderful quality, but as a desire to penetrate as far as possible into its meaning, that compels one to point out that the theoretical considerations I have advanced are confirmed by the generally admitted dependence of {191} the German soldier on his officers and the at least respectably attested liability he shows to the indulgence of an inhuman savagery towards any one who is not his master by suggestion or by force of arms.
In the attempt I have made to get some insight into the German mind, and to define the meaning of its ideals, and needs, and impulses in biological terms, I have had to contend with the constant bias one has naturally been influenced by in discussing a people not only intensely hostile, but also animated by what I have tried to show is an alien type of the social habit. Nevertheless, there seem to be certain broad conclusions which may be usefully recalled in summary here as constituting reasonable probabilities. My purpose will have been effected if these are sufficiently consistent to afford a point of view slightly different from the customary one, and yielding some practical insight into the facts.
Germany presents to the biological psychologist the remarkable paradox of being in the first place a State consciously directed towards a definite series of ideals and ambitions, and deliberately organized to obtain them, and in the second place a State in which prevails a primitive type of the gregarious instinct—the aggressive—a type which shows the closest resemblance in its needs, its ideals, and its reactions to the society of the wolf pack. Thus she displays, in one respect, what I have shown to be the summit of gregarious evolution, and in another its very antithesis—a type of society which has always been transient, and has failed to satisfy the needs of modern civilized man.
When I compare German society with the wolf pack, and the feelings, desires, and impulses of the individual German with those of the wolf or dog, I am not intending to use a vague analogy, but {192} to call attention to a real and gross identity. The aggressive social animal has a complete and consistent series of psychical reactions, which will necessarily be traceable in his feelings and his behaviour, whether he is a biped or a quadruped, a man or an insect. The psychical necessity that makes the wolf brave in a massed attack is the same as that which makes the German brave in a massed attack; the psychical necessity which makes the dog submit to the whip of his master and profit by it makes the German soldier submit to the lash of his officer and profit by it. The instinctive process which makes the dog among his fellows irritable, suspicious, ceremonious, sensitive about his honour, and immediately ready to fight for it is identical in the German and produces identical effects.
The number and minuteness of the coincidences of behaviour between the German and other aggressive social species, the number and precision of the differences between the German and the other types of social animals make up together a body of evidence which is difficult to ignore.
Moreover, we see Germany compelled to submit to disadvantages, consequent upon her social type, which, we may suppose, she would have avoided had they not been too deeply ingrained for even her thoroughness to remove. Thus she is unable to make or keep friends amongst nations of the socialized type; her instinctive valuation of fear as a compelling influence has allowed her to indulge the threatenings and warlike gestures which have alienated all the strong nations, and intimidated successfully only the weak—England, for example, is an enemy entirely of her own making; she has been forced to conduct the war on a plan of ceaseless and frightfully costly aggression, because her morale could have survived no other method. {193}
The ultimate object of science is foresight. It may fairly be asked, therefore, supposing these speculations to have any scientific justification, what light do they throw on the future? It would be foolish to suppose that speculations so general can yield, in forecasting the future, a precision which they do not pretend to possess. Keeping, however, to the level of very general inference, two observations may be hazarded.
First, the ultimate destiny of Germany cannot be regarded as very much in doubt. If we are content to look beyond this war, however it may issue, and take in a longer stretch of time, we can say with quite a reasonable degree of assurance that Germanic power, of the type we know and fear to-day, is impermanent. Germany has left the path of natural evolution, or rather, perhaps, has never found it. Unless, therefore, her civilization undergoes a radical change, and comes to be founded on a different series of instinctive impulses, it will disappear from the earth. All the advantages she has derived from conscious direction and organization will not avail to change her fate, because conscious direction is potent only when it works hand in hand with Nature, and its first task—which the directors of Germany have neglected—is to find out the path which man must follow.
Secondly, a word may be ventured about the war in so far as the consideration of Germany alone can guide us. As I have tried to show, her morale is more rigidly conditioned than that of her opponents. They have merely to maintain their resistance, to do which they have certain psychological advantages, and they must win. She must continue aggressive efforts, and if these can be held by her enemies—not more—she must go on galvanizing her weary nerves until they fail to respond. I am not for a moment venturing to suppose myself {194} competent to give the slightest hint upon the conduct of the war; I am merely pointing out what I regard as a psychological fact. Whether it has any practical military value is not in my province to decide.
If one claimed the liberty of all free men, to have over and above considered judgment a real guess, one would be inclined to venture the opinion that, however well things go with the enemies of Germany, there will not be much fighting on German soil.
The proposition that the strength and weakness of Germany are rigidly conditioned by definite and ascertainable psychological necessities is, if it is valid, chiefly of interest to the strategist and those who are responsible for the general lines of the campaign against her. We may well, however, ask whether psychological principle yields any hint of guidance in the solution of the further and equally important problem of how her enemies are to secure and render permanent the fruits of the victory upon which they are resolved.
This problem has already been the subject of a good deal of controversy, which is likely to increase as the matter comes more and more into the field of practical affairs.
Two types of solution have been expounded which, apart from what inessential agreement they may show in demanding the resurrection of such small nations as Germany has been able to assassinate, differ profoundly in the treatment they propose for the actual enemy herself. Both profess to be based upon the desire for a really permanent peace, and the establishment of a truly stable equilibrium between the antagonists. It is upon the means by which this result is to be secured that differences arise.
The official solution, and that almost universally accepted by the bulk of the people, insists that the {195} “military domination of Prussia,” “German militarism,” or the “German military system” as it is variously phrased, must be wholly and finally destroyed. This doctrine has received many interpretations. In spite, however, of criticism by moderates on the one hand and by unpractically ferocious root-and-branch men on the other, it seems to remain—significantly enough—an expression of policy which the common man feels for the time to be adequate.
The most considerable criticism has come from the small class of accomplished and intellectual writers who from their pacifist and “international” tendencies have to some extent been accused, no doubt falsely, of being pro-German in the sense of anti-English. The complaint of this school against the official declaration of policy is, that it does not disclose a sufficiently definite object or the means by which this object is to be attained. We are told that as a nation we do not know what we are fighting for, and, what amounts to the same thing, that we cannot attain the object we profess to pursue by the exercise of military force however drastically it may be applied. We are warned that we should seek a “reasonable” peace and one which by its moderation would have an educative effect upon the German people, that to crush and especially in any way to dismember the German Empire would confirm its people in their belief that this war is a war of aggression by envious neighbours, and make revenge a national aspiration.
Such criticism has not always been very effectually answered, and the generally current feeling has proved disconcertingly inarticulate in the presence of its agile and well-equipped opponents. Indeed, upon the ordinary assumptions of political debate, it is doubtful whether any quite satisfactory answer {196} can be produced. It is just, however, these very assumptions which must be abandoned and replaced by more appropriate psychological principles when we are trying to obtain light upon the relations of two peoples of profoundly different social type and instinctive reaction. The common man seems to be dimly aware of this difference though he cannot define it; the intellectual of what, for want of a better term, I may call the pacifist type in all its various grades, proceeds upon the assumption that no such difference exists. Much as one must respect the courage and capacity of many of these latter, one cannot but recognize that their conceptions, however logical and however ingenious, lack the invigorating contact with reality which the instinctive feelings of the common man have not altogether failed to attain.