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.
Let us now consider what guidance in the solution of the problem can be
got from a consideration of the peculiarities of the social type which
the Germans of the present day so characteristically present.
Regarded from this point of view, the war is seen to be directed
against a social type which, when endowed with the technical resources
of modern civilization, is, and must continue to be, a dangerous
anachronism. A people of the aggressive social habit can never be in a
state of stable equilibrium with its neighbours. The constitution of
its society presents a rigid barrier to smooth and continuous internal
integration; its energy, therefore, must be occupied upon essentially,
though not always superficially, external objects, and its history
will necessarily be made up of alternating periods of aggression
and periods of preparation. Such a people has no conception of the
benign use of power. It must regard war as an end in itself, as the
summit of its national activities, as the recurring apogee {197} of
its secular orbit; it must regard peace as a necessary and somewhat
irksome preparation for war in which it may savour reminiscently the
joys of conquest by dragooning its new territories and drastically
imposing upon them its national type. This instinctive insistence upon
uniformity makes every conquest by such a people an impoverishment
of the human race, and makes the resistance of such aggression an
elementary human duty.
In every particular Germany has proved true to her social type, and
every detail of her history for the last fifty years betrays the lupine
quality of her ideals and her morals.
We have seen that in all gregarious animals the social instinct must
follow one of three principal types, each of which will produce a
herd having special activities and reactions. The major units of the
human species appear limited to a similar number of categories, but it
is probable that the perpetuation of a given type in a given herd is
not chiefly a matter of heredity in the individual. The individual is
gregarious by inheritance; the type according to which his gregarious
reactions are manifested is not inherited, but will depend upon the
form current in the herd to which he belongs, and handed down in it
from generation to generation. Thus it has happened that nations have
been able in the course of their history to pass from the aggressive
to the socialized type. The change has perhaps been rendered possible
by the existence of class segregation of a not too rigid kind, and
has doubtless depended upon a progressive intercommunication and the
consequently developing altruism. The extremely rigid Prussian social
system seems clearly to be associated with the persistence of the
aggressive form of society.
In considering the permanent deliverance of Europe from the elements
in Germany for which {198} there can be no possible toleration, we
therefore have not to deal with characters which must be regarded as
inherited in the biological sense. We have to deal rather with a group
of reactions which, while owing their unity, coherence, and power to
the inherited qualities of the gregarious mind, owe their perpetuation
to organized State suggestion, to tradition, and to their past success
as a national method.
There can be no doubt that the success of the German Empire has
consolidated the hold of the aggressive social type upon its people,
and has guarded it from the eroding effects of increasing communication
with other peoples and knowledge of the world. As I have already tried
to show, the moral power of such peoples is intimately associated with
the continuance of aggression and of success. The German Empire has had
no experience of failure, and for this reason has been able to maintain
its ideals and aspirations untouched by modern influences. It needs no
psychological insight to foretell that if the result of this war can
be in any way regarded as a success for Germany, she will be thereby
confirmed in her present ideals, however great her sufferings may have
been, and however complete her exhaustion. It must be remembered that
this type of people is capable of interpreting facts in accordance with
its prejudices to an almost incredible extent, as we have seen time and
again in the course of the war. The proof that the aggressive national
type is intolerable in modern Europe, if it can be afforded by force
of arms, must therefore be made very plain, or it will have no value
as a lesson. Proof of failure adequate to convince a people of the
socialized type might be quite inadequate to convince a people of the
lupine type in whom, from the nature of the case, mental resistiveness
is so much more {199} impenetrable. This is the psychological fact of
which the statesmen of Europe will have to be, above all things, aware
when questions of peace come seriously to be discussed, for otherwise
they will risk the loss of all the blood and treasure which have been
expended without any corresponding gain for civilization.
* * * * *
We have been warned that to “humiliate” Germany will merely be to set
her upon the preparation of vengeance, and to confirm her belief in
the supreme value of military strength. This opinion affects to be
based on a knowledge of human nature, but its pretensions are not very
well founded. The passion of revenge is habitually over-estimated as a
motive—possibly through the influence of the novelists and playwrights
to whom it is so useful. When we examine man’s behaviour objectively
we find that revenge, however deathless a passion it is vowed to be at
emotional moments, is in actual life constantly having to give way to
more urgent and more recent needs and feelings. Between nations there
is no reason to suppose that it has any more reality as a motive of
policy, though it perhaps has slightly more value as a consolatory pose.
It is curious that the naïve over-estimation of the revenge ideal
should have been uninfluenced by so obvious an example as the relations
of France and Germany. In 1870 the former was “humiliated” with brutal
completeness and every element of insult. She talked of revenge, as
she could scarcely fail to do, but she soon showed that her grasp on
reality was too firm to allow her policy to be moved by that childish
passion. Characteristically, it was the victorious aggressor who
believed in her longing for revenge, and who at length attacked her
again. {200}
A psychological hint of great value may be obtained from our knowledge
of those animals whose gregariousness, like that of the Germans, is
of the aggressive type. When it is thought necessary to correct a dog
by corporal measures, it is found that the best effect is got by what
is rather callously called a “sound” thrashing. The animal must be
left in no doubt as to who is the master, and his punishment must not
be diluted by hesitation, nervousness, or compunction on the part of
the punisher. The experience then becomes one from which the dog is
capable of learning, and if the sense of mastery conveyed to him is
unmistakable, he can assimilate the lesson without reservation or the
desire for revenge. However repulsive the idea may be to creatures of
the socialized type, no sentimentalism and no pacifist theorizing can
conceal the fact that the respect of a dog can be won by violence.
If there is any truth in the view I have expressed that the moral
reactions of Germany follow the gregarious type which is illustrated
by the wolf and the dog, it follows that her respect is to be won by a
thorough and drastic beating, and it is just that elementary respect
for other nations, of which she is now entirely free, which it is
the duty of Europe to teach her. If she is allowed to escape under
conditions which in any way can be sophisticated into a victory, or, at
any rate, not a defeat, she will continue to hate us as she continued
to hate her victim France.
To the politician, devoted as he necessarily is to the exclusively
human point of view, it may seem fantastic and scandalous to look for
help in international policy to the conduct of dogs. The gulf between
the two fields is not perhaps so impassably profound as he would
like to think, but, however that may be, the analogy I have drawn is
not unsupported by evidence of a more respectable kind. {201} The
susceptibility of the individual German to a harsh and even brutally
enforced discipline is well known. The common soldier submits to be
beaten by his sergeant, and is the better soldier for it; both submit
to the bullying of their officer apparently also with profit; the
common student is scarcely less completely subject to his professor,
and becomes thereby a model of scientific excellence; the common
citizen submits to the commands of his superiors, however unreasonably
conceived and insultingly conveyed, and becomes a model of disciplined
behaviour; finally the head of the State, combining the most drastic
methods of the sergeant, the professor, and the official, wins not
merely a slavish respect, but a veritable apotheosis.
Germany has shown unmistakably the way to her heart; it is for Europe
to take it.
ENGLAND AGAINST GERMANY—ENGLAND.