CHAPTER I

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF

NATIONS

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

BY

G.E. PARTRIDGE

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, November, 1919

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PREFACE

This book contains two closely related studies of the consciousness of

nations. It has been written during the closing months of the war and

in the days that have followed, and is completed while the Peace

Conference is still in session, holding in the balance, as many

believe, the fate of many hopes, and perhaps the whole future of the

world. We see focussed there in Paris all the motives that have ever

entered into human history and all the ideals that have influenced

human affairs. The question must have arisen in all minds in, some

form as to what the place of these motives and ideals and dramatic

moments is in the progress of the world. Is the world governed after

all by the laws of nature in all its progress? Do ideals and motives

govern the world, but only as these ideals and motives are themselves

produced according to biological or psychological principles? Or,

again, does progress depend upon historical moments, upon conscious

purposes which may divert the course of nature and in a real sense

create the future? It is with the whole problem of history that we are

confronted in these practical hours. At heart our problem is that of

the place of man in nature as a conscious factor of progress. This is

a problem, finally, of the philosophy of history, but it is rather in

a more concrete way and upon a different level that it is to be

considered here,--and somewhat incidentally to other more specific

questions. But this is the problem that is always before us, and the

one to which this study aims to make some contribution, however small.

The first part of the book is a study of the motives of war. It is an

analysis of the motives of war in the light of the general principles

of the development of society. We wish to see what the causes of past

wars have been, but we wish also to know what these motives are as

they may exist as forces in the present state of society. In such a

study, practical questions can never be far away. We can no longer

study war as an abstract psychological problem, since war has brought

us to a horrifying and humiliating situation. We have discovered that

our modern world, with all its boasted morality and civilization, is

actuated, at least in its relations among nations, by very unsocial

motives. We live in a world in which nations thus far have been for

the most part dominated by a theory of States as absolutely sovereign

and independent of one another. Now it becomes evident that a logical

consequence of that theory of States is absolute war. A prospect of a

future of absolute war in a world in which industrial advances have

placed in the hands of men such terrible forces of destruction, an

absolute warfare that can now be carried into the air and under the

sea is what makes any investigation of the motives of war now a very

practical problem.

If the urgency of our situation drives us to such studies and makes us

hasten to apply even an immature sociology and psychology, it ought

not to prejudice our minds and make us, for example, fall into the

error of wanting peace at any price--an ideal which, as a practical

national philosophy, might be even worse than a spirit of militarism.

What we need to know, finally, in order to avoid these errors which at

least we may imagine, is what, in the most fundamental way, progress

may be conceived to be. If we could discover that, and set our minds

to the task of making the social life progressive, we might be willing

to let wars take care of themselves, so to speak, without any radical

philosophy of good and evil. We ought at least to examine war fairly,

and to see what, in the waging of war, man has really desired. A study

of war ought to help us to decide whether we must accept our future,

with its possibility of wars, as a kind of fate, or whether we must

now begin, with a new idea of conscious evolution, to apply our

science and our philosophy and our practical wisdom seriously for the

first time to the work of creating history, and no longer be content

merely to live it.

As to the details of the study of war--we first of all consider the

origin and the biological aspects of war; then war as related to the

development, in the social life and in the life of the individual, of

the motive of power. The instincts that are most concerned in the

development of this motive of power are then considered, and also the

relations of war to the æsthetic impulses and to art. Nationalism,

national honor and patriotism are studied as causes of war. The

various "causes" that are brought forward as the principles fought for

are examined; also the philosophical influences, the moral and

religious motives and the institutional factors among the motives of

war. Finally the economic and political motives and the historical

causes are considered. The conclusion is reached that the motive of

power, as the fundamental principle of behavior at the higher levels,

is the principle of war, but that in so general a form it goes but a

little way toward being an explanation of war. We find the real causes

of war by tracing out the development of this motive of power as it

appears in what we call the "intoxication impulse," and in the idea of

national honor and in the political motives of war. It is in these

aspects of national life that we find the motives of war as they may

be considered as a practical problem. But we find no separate causes,

and we do not find a chain of causes that might be broken somewhere

and thus war be once for all eliminated. Wars are products of the

whole character of nations, so to speak, and it is national character

that must be considered in any practical study of war. It is by the

development of the character of nations in a natural process, or by

the education of national character, that war will be made to give

way to perpetual peace, if such a state ever comes, rather than by a

political readjustment or by legal enactments, however necessary as

beginnings or makeshifts these legal and political changes may be.

The second part of the book is a study of our present situation as an

educational problem, in which we have for the first time a problem of

educating national consciousness as a whole, or the individuals of a

nation with reference to a world-consciousness. The study has

reference especially to the conditions in our own country, but it also

has general significance. The war has brought many changes, and in

every phase of life we see new problems. These may seem at the moment

to be separate and detached conditions which must be dealt with, each

by itself, but this is not so; they are all aspects of fundamental

changes and new conditions, the main feature of which is the new

world-consciousness of which we speak. Whatever one's occupation, one

cannot remain unaffected by these changes, or escape entirely the

stress that the need of adjustment to new ideas and new conditions

compels. What we may think about the future--about what can be done

and what ought to be done, is in part, and perhaps largely, a matter

of temperament. At least we see men, presumably having access to the

same facts, drawing from them very different conclusions. Some are

keyed to high expectations; they look for revolutions, mutations, a

new era in politics and everywhere in the social life. For them, after

the war, the world is to be a new world. Fate will make a new deal.

Others appear to believe that after the flurry is over we shall settle

down to something very much like the old order. These are conservative

people, who neither desire nor expect great changes. Others take a

more moderate course. While improvement is their great word, they are

inclined to believe that the new order will grow step by step out of

the old, and that good will come out of the evil only in so far as we

strive to make it. We shall advance along the old lines of progress,

but faster, perhaps, and with life attuned to a higher note.

The writer of this book must confess that he belongs in a general way

to the third species of these prophets. There is a natural order of

progress, but the good must, we may suppose, also be worked for step

by step. The war will have placed in our hands no golden gift of a new

society; both the ways and the direction of progress must be sought

and determined by ideals. The point of view in regard to progress, at

least as a working hypothesis, becomes an educational one, in a broad

sense. Our future we must make. We shall not make it by politics. The

institutions with which politics deals are dangerous cards to play.

There is too much convention clinging to them, and they are too

closely related to all the supports of the social order. The

industrial system, the laws, the institutions of property and rights,

the form of government, we change at our own risk. Naturally many

radical minds look to the abrupt alteration of these fundamental

institutions for the cure of existing evils, and others look there

furtively for the signs of coming revolution, and the destruction of

all we have gained thus far by civilization. But at a different level,

where life is more plastic--in the lives of the young, and in the vast

unshaped forms of the common life everywhere, all this is different.

We do not expect abrupt changes here nor quick and visible results.

Experimentation is still possible and comparatively safe. There is no

one institution of this common and unformed life, not even the school

itself, that supports the existing structures, so that if we move it

in the wrong way, everything else will fall. When we see we are wrong,

there is still time to correct our mistakes.

Our task, then, is to see what the forces are that have brought us to

where we stand now, and to what influences they are to be subjected,

if they are to carry us onward and upward in our course. Precisely

what the changes in government or anywhere in the social order should

be is not the chief interest, from this point of view. The details of

the constitution of an international league, the practical adjustments

to be made in the fields of labor, and in the commerce of nations,

belong to a different order of problems. We wish rather to see what

the main currents of life, especially in our own national life, are,

and what in the most general way we are to think and do, if the

present generation is to make the most of its opportunities as a

factor in the work of conscious evolution.

The bibliography shows the main sources of the facts and the theories

that have been drawn upon in writing the book. Some of the chapters

have been read in a little different form as lectures before President

G. Stanley Hall's seminar at Clark University. More or less of

repetition, made necessary in order to make these papers, which were

read at considerable intervals, independent of one another, has been

allowed to remain. Perhaps in the printed form this reiteration will

help to emphasize the general psychological basis of the study.

CONTENTS

Preface v

PART I

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MOTIVES OF WAR

CHAPTER

I ORIGINS AND BIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 3

II UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVES, THE REVERSION THEORIES OF WAR,

AND THE INTOXICATION MOTIVE 17

III INSTINCTS IN WAR: FEAR, HATE, THE AGGRESSIVE IMPULSE,

MOTIVES OF COMBAT AND DESTRUCTION, THE SOCIAL INSTINCT 38

IV AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE MOODS AND IMPULSES OF WAR 70

V PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL HONOR 78

VI "CAUSES" AS PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES IN WAR 97

VII PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES 110

VIII RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INFLUENCES 117

IX ECONOMIC FACTORS AND MOTIVES 128

X POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL FACTORS 142

XI THE SYNTHESIS OF CAUSES 153

PART II

THE EDUCATIONAL FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONS

I EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE DAY 161

II INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL 168

III INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL _Continued_ 184

IV PEACE AND MILITARISM 197

V THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 211

VI THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM _Continued_ 226

VII POLITICAL EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 242

VIII INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION 269

IX NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS 290

X RELIGION AND EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR 305

XI HUMANISM 309

XII AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION 315

XIII MOODS AND EDUCATION: A REVIEW 319

BIBLIOGRAPHY 327

INDEX 331

PART I

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MOTIVES OF WAR

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONS

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

CHAPTER I

ORIGINS AND BIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The simplest possible interpretation of the causes of war that might

be offered is that war is a natural relation between original herds or

groups of men, inspired by the predatory instinct or by some other

instinct of the herd. To explain war, then, one need only refer to

this instinct as final, or at most account for the origin and genesis

of the instinct in question in the animal world. Some writers express

this very view, calling war an expression of an instinct or of several

instincts; others find different or more complex beginnings of war.

Nusbaum (86) says that both offense and defense are based upon an

_expansion impulse_. Nicolai (79) sees the beginning of war in

individual predatory acts, involving violence and the need of defense.

Again we find the migratory instinct, the instinct that has led groups

of men to move and thus to interfere with one another, regarded as the

cause of war, or as an important factor in the causes. Sometimes a

purely physiological or growth impulse is invoked, or vaguely the

inability of primitive groups to adapt themselves to conditions, or to

gain access to the necessities of life. Le Bon (42) speaks of the

hunger and the desire that led Germanic forces as ancient hordes to

turn themselves loose upon the world.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of the nature of the

impulses or instincts which actuated the conduct of men originally and

brought them into opposition, as groups, to one another, we do find at

least some suggestion of a working hypothesis in these simple

explanations of war. Granted the existence of groups formed by the

accident of birth and based upon the most primitive protective and

economic associations, and assuming the presence of the emotions of

anger and fear or any instinct which is expressed as an impulse or

habit of the group, we might say that the conditions and factors for

the beginning of warfare are all present. When groups have desires

that can best and most simply be satisfied by the exertion of force

upon other groups, something equivalent to war has begun.

If we take the group (as herd or pack) and the instinct as the

original factors or data of society, however, we probably simplify the

situation too much. The question arises whether the motives are not

more complex, even from the beginning, and whether both the tendencies

or impulses by which the group was formed or held together and the

motives behind aggressive conduct against other groups have not been

produced or developed in the course of social relations, rather than

have been brought up from animal life, or at any point introduced as

instincts. We notice at least that animals living in groups do not in

general become aggressive within the species. Possibly it was by some

peculiarity of man's social existence, or his superior endowment of

intelligence or some unusual quality of his instincts, perhaps very

far back in animal life, that has in the end made him a warlike

creature. Man does seem to be a creature of _feelings_ rather than of

instincts as far back as we find much account of him, and to be

characterized rather by the weakness and variability of his instincts

than by their definiteness. It is quite likely, too, that man never

was at any stage a herd animal; in fact it seems certain that he was

not, and that his instincts were formed long before he began to live

in large groups at all. So he never acquired the mechanisms either for

aggression or defense that some creatures have. Apparently he

inherited neither the physical powers nor the warlike spirit nor the

aggressive and predatory instincts that would have been necessary to

make of him a natural fighting animal; but rather, perhaps, he has

acquired his warlike habits, so to speak, since arriving at man's

estate. Endowed with certain tendencies which express themselves with

considerable variability in the processes by which the functions of

sex and nutrition are carried out, man never acquired the definiteness

of character and conduct that some animals have. He learned more from

animals, it may be, than he inherited from them, and it is quite

likely that far back in his animal ancestry he had greater flexibility

or adaptability than other animals. The aggressive instinct, the herd

instinct, the predatory instinct, the social instinct, the migratory

instinct, may never have been carried very far in the stock from which

man came. All this, however, at this point is only a suggestion of two

somewhat divergent points of view in regarding the primitive

activities of man from which his long history of war-making has taken

rise.

The view is widely held and continually referred to by many writers on

war and politics, that the most fundamental of all causes of war, or

the most general principle of it, is the principle of selection--that

war is a natural struggle between groups, especially between races,

the fittest in this struggle tending to survive. This view needs to be

examined sharply, as indeed it has been by several writers, in

connection with the present war. This biological theory or apology of

war appears in several forms, as applied to-day. They say that racial

stocks contend with one another for existence, and with this goes the

belief that nations fight for life, and that defeat in war tends

towards the extermination of nations. The Germans, we often hear, were

fighting for national existence, and the issue was to be a judgment

upon the fitness of their race to survive. This view is very often

expressed. O'Ryan and Anderson (5), military writers, for example, say

that the same aggressive motives prevail as always in warfare: nations

struggle for survival, and this struggle for survival must now and

again break out into war. Powers (75) says that nations seldom fight

for anything less than existence. Again (15) we read that conflicts

have their roots in history, in the lives of peoples, and the sounder,

and better, emerge as victors. There is a selective process on the

part of nature that applies to nations; they say that especially

increase of population forces upon groups an endless conflict, so that

absolute hostility is a law of nature in the world.

These views contain at least two very doubtful assumptions. One is

that nations do actually fight for existence,--that warfare is thus

selective to the point of eliminating races. The other is that in

warlike conflicts the victors are the superior peoples, the better

fitted for survival. Confusion arises and the discussion is

complicated by the fact that conflicts of men as groups of individuals

within the same species are somewhat anomalous among biological forms

of struggle. Commonly, struggle takes place among individuals,

organisms having definite characteristics and but slightly variable

each from its own kind contending with one another, by direct

competition or through adaptation, in the first case individuals

striving to obtain actually the same objects. Or, again, species

having the same relations to one another that individuals have,

contend in a similar manner.

Primitive groups of men, however, are not so definite; they are not

biological entities in any such sense as individuals and species are.

They are not definitely brought into conflict with one another, in

general, as contending for the same objects, and it is difficult to

see how, in the beginning, at least, economic pressure has been a

factor at all in their relations. Whatever may have been the motive

that for the most part was at work in primitive warfare, it is not at

all evident that _superior_ groups had any survival value. The groups

that contended with one another presumably differed most conspicuously

in the size of the group, and this was determined largely by chance

conditions. Other differences must have been quite subordinate to

this, and have had little selective value. The conclusion is that the

struggle of these groups with one another is not essentially a

_biological_ phenomenon.

The fact is that peace rather than war, taking the history of the

human race as a whole, is the condition in which selection of the

fittest is most active, for it is the power of adaptation to the

conditions of stable life, which are fairly uniform for different

groups over wide areas, that tests vitality and survival values, so

far as these values are biological. It may be claimed that war is very

often, if not generally, a means of interrupting favorable selective

processes, the unfit tending to prevail temporarily by force of

numbers, or even because of qualities that antagonize biological

progress. Viewing war in its later aspects, we can see that it is

often when nations are failing in natural competition that they resort

to the expedient of war to compensate for this loss, although they do

not usually succeed thereby in improving their economic condition as

they hope, or increase their chance of survival, or even demonstrate

their survival value. It is notorious that nations that conquer tend

to spend their vitality in conquest and introduce various factors of

deterioration into their lives. The inference is that a much more

complex relation exists among groups than the biological hypothesis

allows. Survival value indeed, as applied to men in groups, is not a

very clear concept. There may be several different criteria of

survival value, not comparable in any quantitative way among

themselves.

Scheler (77) says that we cannot account for war as a purely

biological phenomenon. Its roots lie deep in organic life, but there

is no direct development or exclusive development from animal behavior

to human. War is peculiarly human. That, in a way, may be accepted as

the truth. Warfare as we know it among human groups, as conflict

within the species is due in some way to, or is made possible by, the

secondary differentiations within species which give to groups, so to

speak, a pseudo-specific character. And these differences depend

largely upon the conditions that enter into the formation of

groups,--upon desires, impulses and needs arising in the social life

rather than in instinct as such. These characteristic differences are

not variations having selective value, but are traits that merely

differentiate the groups as _historical entities_. These secondary

variations have not resulted in the elimination of those having

inferior qualities, but have shared the fortunes of the groups that

possessed them,--the fortunes both of war and of peace. _War, from

this point of view, belongs to history rather than to biology._ It

belongs to the realm of the particular rather than to the general in

human life. War has favored the survival of this or that group in a

particular place, but has probably not been instrumental in producing

any particular type of character in the world, either physical or

mental.

Very early in the history of mankind, in fact as far back as we can

trace history, we find these psychic differentiations, as factors in

the production of war. There are significant extensions and also

restrictions of the consciousness of kind pertaining to the life of

man, as distinguished from animals. Animals have not sufficient

intelligence to establish such perfect group identities as man does,

and they lack the affective motives for carrying on hostilities among

groups. They remain more clearly subjected to the simple laws of

biological selection, and are guided by instincts which do not impel

them to act aggressively as groups toward their own kind. Man proceeds

almost from the beginning to antagonize these laws, so that it is very

likely that the best, in the biological sense, has always had some

disadvantage, in human life, and may still have. The real value that

has thus been conserved by this human mode of life consists in

preserving a relatively large number of secondary types or individual

groups, rather than in insuring the predominance of any one

biologically superior type. _Man's work in the world is to make

history._ Even though war were a means of making a biologically

superior type of man prevail we should not be justified in saying that

it is thus vindicated as a method of selection.

Many writers whom we do not need to review in great detail have

contributed to the objections to the biological principle as an

explanation of war. Trotter (82) examines the doctrine that war is a

biological necessity, and says that there is no parallel in biology

for progress being accomplished as a result of a racial impoverishment

so extreme as is caused by war, that among gregarious animals other

than man direct conflict between major groups such as can lead to the

suppression of the less powerful is an inconspicuous phenomenon, and

that there is very little fighting within species, for species have

usually been too busy fighting their external enemies. Mitchell (10)

says that war is not an aspect of the natural struggle for existence,

among individuals; that there is nothing in Darwinism that explains or

justifies wars; that the argument from race is worthless since there

are no pure races. M'Cabe (76) maintains that war is not a struggle

between inferior and superior national types. Dide (20) also discusses

the question of differences of race as causes of war, and the use that

has been made of this dogma. Chapman (39) says that no race question

is involved in the present war as has been supposed. There is no

conflict of economic forces, no nations compelled to seek expansion.

Precisely how warfare originated (assuming that it arose in one way)

we shall probably never know, since we cannot now reconstruct the

actual history of man. We think of men as living at first in groups

containing a few individuals, and presumably for a long time these

small and isolated groups of men prevailed as the type of human

society. We can already detect the elements of conflict in these

groups, but whether warfare in the sense of deadly conflict originated

there we cannot know; or whether it was only in the experience of men

as large migrating hordes which had been formed by the amalgamation of

smaller groups under the influence of hunger or climatic change, that

warfare in any real sense came into the world. We do not know to what

extent the small groups of men we find in conditions of savagery now

represent primitive conditions. Fortunately, however, some of these

problems of origin are of but little practical importance and their

interest is chiefly antiquarian or historical.

The assumption that in the behavior of original groups of men war

arose as a natural result of the life of the group seems to be an

allowable hypothesis. Whether warlike conduct came by some

modification of the habits brought up from animal life as instinctive

reactions, or whether man invented warfare from some strong motive

peculiar to human life, and produced it intelligently, so to speak,

under stress of circumstances may have to remain an open question so

far as conclusive evidence is concerned. What we lack is a knowledge

of the type and form of the instincts of man in his first stages, and

the degree and kind of intelligence he had. But the reconstructed

pre-human history of man so far as we can make it seems to show, as we

have already suggested, that early man could have had no definite herd

instincts or pack instincts such as some of the animals have, that his

habits were plastic and guided by intelligence rather than by impulse.

His social life, his predaceous habits, the habit of killing large

game, his warfare must have been a gradual acquisition, and from the

beginning have been very different as regards motive and development

from animal behavior which judged externally may seem to be like it in

character and to have the same ends.

There are already inherent in any group of human individuals that fits

into such knowledge of man past and present as we have, all the

necessary motives of warfare in some form. There are the reactions of

anger made to any threat or injury, fear, the predaceous impulse and

habit, originating in hunger, the motives arising in sexual rivalry.

These motives are the source of behavior toward both members of the

group and outsiders. There is no absolute distinction between these

objects. It is of the nature of man to be both aggressive and social.

One instinct or motive did not come from the other, since there are

emotions and desires at every stage that tend, some of them to unite

and some to disrupt, the group. The sense of difference of kind and

the fear of the strange on the one hand, and the effect of propinquity

and practical necessity in the conduct in regard to the familiar on

the other make the reactions different in degree in the two spheres

but not different in kind. There is no aggressive instinct or war

motive that is directed exclusively toward the outsider. Certain

tendencies toward violence and strife, modified and controlled within

the group, become unrestrained when directed toward the stranger.

Among these motives are those of sexual rivalry, fear, anger, desire,

and the play motive as an expression of any instinctive habits of

aggression that may have been phyletically established.

Since every individual creature has his needs that can be satisfied

only by preying in some way upon other animals of his own species or

others, the motives for strife are original in organic life. Every

animal lives in a world of which he is suspicious, and rightly so. He

is suspicious toward the members of his own kind and group, and toward

all strangers he shows watchfulness and fear. There are two motives,

therefore, of a highly practical nature that contribute to a general

state of unfriendliness in animal life. Both the motives of conflict

within the group, the habit of aggression and its complement, fear,

and the jealousy and display motive (the display itself probably

having originated as a show of ferocity on the part of males) must

have been transferred to relations between groups as a natural result

of the proximity of groups to one another, although this process is

not quite so simple as this would imply, since in part the outside

groups are produced by these very same antagonistic motives in the

group, for example the driving out of young males because of sexual

jealousy. The presence of other groups must have excited all the

motives of warfare at a very early stage, and this contrast had the

effect of stimulating the social feeling of the group and developing

control of impulses on the part of individuals within the group toward

one another. So the motives of combat, as shown within the group and

toward outsiders, developed, so to speak, by a dialectic process.

Fear and the predatory impulse, the sexual and display motive, play or

the hunting activity as a pleasure for its own sake, with a desire

perhaps to practice deception and to exercise intelligence, presumably

introduced some kind and degree of definite warfare among primitive

groups of men at a very early stage of human life, although of course

such a conclusion can be only speculative. Increasing intelligence,

the power of discriminating and of reacting to secondary likenesses

and differences, and especially the recognition of the nature of

death, and the advantages of killing rather than merely overcoming an

enemy, the discovery of the use of weapons, introduced warfare into

the world. Warfare is, then, not simply the negation of some original

principle of mutual aid, nor yet an expression of instinctive

aggressiveness or cruelty, but it is a product of original endowment,

of conditions of life, and of intelligence all together. It is

practical, but at no stage can it be said to be _wholly_ practical.

Changes must have taken place in warfare as in other social reactions

as men passed through a number of stages from primitive wandering or a

relatively unstable life to a stable life, but the motives of conflict

cannot have been added to in any essential way. Through all the course

of history all the motives that originally made individuals of a group

or the groups as wholes antagonistic have remained, although the

mental processes have become generalized, fused and transformed. If

Gumplowicz is right we can still detect in any great society to-day

all the primitive individual and group animosities, tempered down and

held in check by laws and customs, but still existent and by no means

overcome and made innocuous.

These motives of warfare might best be traced out in four more or less

definite principles of conduct, or four purposes of war that appear

throughout primitive life. These are: 1) thievery, including wife

capture; 2) the fear motive; 3) cannibalism; 4) the display motive,

with the desire to intimidate and to display power (more or less

closely associated with the play motive, the love of hunting, gaming

and the dramatic motive).

Cannibalism, of course, is a special expression of the predatory

motive in general, or it is mainly that. Cannibalism was certainly

established early in primitive life, at least early enough to antedate

all religion, and although its origin and history are shrouded in

mystery, the motive was quite certainly practical. Evidently it was

widespread if not universal. Whether it was introduced as a result of

a failure of animal food, as some think, or has a still more simple

explanation as a part of the original impulse which led men at a

certain stage of their development to become hunters, cannot be

determined. We know, however, that the alien human being was to some

extent included under the same concepts as the animal enemy and prey,

and presumably some of the strongest motives that led men to attack

animals also included man as an object, since the alien group was

regarded as in some degree different in kind from the in-group. It

may have been in the great migrations when all the aggressive motives

were increased that cannibalism became fixed as a habit.

Cannibalism may well have been the primitive motive of warfare as

serious deadly combat, but all predatory habits must have contributed

to establishing a more or less habitual state of warfare among all

groups of men. The predatory raid, with the reaction of defense, when

carried on as a group activity in any form, is in fact war, so far as

attack and defense were serious and deadly, and intelligence and

weapons were sufficiently developed to make man a dangerous opponent.

This predatory motive, of course, extended to all desired objects, and

these objects must have included all objects that could most simply be

acquired by stealing. They included food, women, and all other

possessions. The custom of driving out young males from the group, by

the jealousy of the old males, and of preventing males from obtaining

females within the group must have been one of the earliest and one of

the strongest incentives to predatory warfare. At first all property

of the group, for so long as groups were wandering, was to some extent

common, and attack and defense must have been common. The objects of

predatory raids which produced group combat must have changed with the

social life. When habitation became fixed and property therefore more

individual, probably the predatory impulse itself became relatively a

less important factor in combat.

Two motives grow out of the practical motives of combat, which we may

assume to have been the original motives. These are both emotional

rather than instinctive. Fear and anger, that is to say, become more

or less detached motives for attack. Fear is increased with the

increase of intelligence up to a certain point at least--with the

increase of the capacity for understanding danger, and of the powers

of man to become dangerous. All the experience of combat engenders

anger and hatred, and these moods of hatred toward enemies are

cumulative, absorb all the detached motives and feelings of antagonism

between groups, preserve and give continuity to the memories of

conflict, and so produce among groups the fear and hate motive. The

feeling of fear arouses the motive of aggression, and the feeling of

anger; and these in turn generate more fear, until both the moods of

anger and fear and a perpetual state of animosity and warfare are

induced among contending groups. Thus out of primitive motives of

combat the feud as a more generalized and psychical antagonism is

produced, and these states are possible because of the powers of

generalization in man which extend to the emotions and make possible

the formation of deep moods.

In another direction, also, the practical motives tend to be

superseded by more abstract and more subjective motives. Both in the

fear and anger reactions and in the motive that originates in the

sexual impulse--display of males, and combat with reference to

females--consciousness of prowess for its own sake, and the display of

it in order to intimidate the enemy, arise. Into this motive of war

there enter all the antagonisms that come from self-consciousness, the

whole force of the diathesis of developing sexuality, with its

jealousy and cruelty, and tendencies to perversion. The force of this

motive of prowess must at some period of development have become very

great. It extends out into a love of combat for its own sake,

reënforces other motives, and issues in the more abstract motives of

honor and power that we see playing such a great part in modern

warfare.

These primitive motives of war are not merely numerous. They fuse,

reënforce one another, and almost from the beginning, we must suppose,

create complex states of consciousness, and form moods. War very

early, we say, must contain all the motives that ever enter into it.

The predatory impulse, the love of deception, of conquest, the love of

combat for its own sake, the hunting impulse, the motive of power, of

fear and anger, the impulse of display and the more primitive sexual

motives, the motives of courage and jealousy, even a beginning of the

aesthetic motive, are all there. They become the warlike mood or

produce war, in the sense in which we now understand it, only when the

intelligence gives to the relations between groups definite intentions

and directions, and out of the many impulses that lead to combat, a

distinctive motive and mood are derived. So we may say with all

certainty that the making of war is not a mere perpetuation of some

alleged instinct of murder, surreptitiously retained by man in his

rise from an animal state, but it is quite as much a product of his

whole social nature. It becomes established as life grows more

complex, as specific desires increase in number. Man is not, as thus

seen in these genetic views of him, a self-tamed animal. He has not

arrived at a precarious and unstable social condition out of a

primitive individualism which is the essence of his warlike nature. On

the other hand, he has not degenerated from some ideal pacific state.

Ages ago he was already divinely human, and possessed those capacities

both for coöperation and antagonism out of which war is created.

CHAPTER II

UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVES, THE REVERSION THEORIES OF WAR, AND THE

INTOXICATION MOTIVE

There are several interesting theories of the causes of war, now in

the field, most of them inspired by our recent great conflict, all of

which (but no one perhaps completely or quite justly) may be described

as based upon the view that war is an outbreak of, or reversion to,

instincts and modes of activity which as primitive tendencies remain

in the individual or in the social life and which, from time to time,

with or without social cause, may break loose, so to speak, and hurl

man back into savagery. These theories of war show us, in some cases,

human character in the form of double personality, or liken

civilization to a thin and insecure incrustation upon the surface of

life, beneath which all that is animal-like and barbaric still remains

smoldering. Some of these theories we need to review briefly here.

Bertrand Russell, in answer to the question, "Why do men fight?" which

is the title of his book dealing with the causes of war, says, in

substance, that men fight because they are controlled by instinct (and

also by authority), rather than by reason. Men will cease fighting

when reason controls instinct, and men think for themselves rather

than allow their thinking to be done for them. This view does not

explicitly state that war is a reversion, for man may be at no point

better or more advanced than a creature of instinct, but it lays the

blame for war upon the original nature of man. Man has instincts which

presumably he has brought with him from his pre-human stage, and some

of these instincts are, on their motor side, the reactions of

fighting.

Le Bon (42) speaks of a conscious and an unconscious will in nations,

and says that the motives behind great national movements may be

beneath all conscious intentions, and may anticipate them. The

Englishman in particular lives, in a sense, a divided life, since

there is a manifest inconsistency between what he really is and what

he thinks. What these instincts are, Le Bon does not specify;

presumably they may be either better or worse than the conscious

motives.

Trotter (82) and also Murray (90) consider war from a biological

standpoint, regarding it as a herd phenomenon. Trotter's view,

especially his interpretation of Germany, which we are not to consider

here, is original and important. War is a result of the action of a

_herd instinct_, a specific instinct which is peculiar in one respect,

in that it acts upon other instincts but has no definite motor

reactions of its own. War is the result of the action of the herd

instinct in man upon the old instinct of aggression. At least

aggressive war is. Men in all their social relations show the play of

these instincts; in war it is the old aggressive instinct, the old

passion of the pack, that dominates them; and it is the ancestral

herd-fears that overcome them in their panics. It is the herd instinct

that makes men in groups so highly sensitive to the leader, whose

relations to the herd or pack are always dependent upon their

recognizing him as one of the group; that is, as acting in accordance

with the desires of the herd.

It is by the union of the herd, Murray says, or through the herd

instinct, that suppressed unconscious impulses are given an

opportunity to operate; when the human herd is excited by any external

stimulus, the old types of reaction are brought into play. Curiously,

in such times, leadership may be assumed by eccentric and even

abnormal members of the group--by those who are governed by perverted

instincts; by men who are touched with the mania of suspicion, or who

even suffer from homicidal mania.

The essential point of these biological views is that, when the human

herd is subjected to any influences that tend to arouse the herd

instinct--that is, to unite the herd in any common emotion or action,

the old instinctive forms of response are likely to be brought to the

front. Whatever the stimulus, the tendency is for the herd to fixate

its attention upon some external object, which at once is reacted to

with deep emotion. Plainly, if this be true, if herd instinct does

throw human society from time to time and from various causes into

attitudes of defense and offense with the appropriate emotional

reactions, and if in such times leaders are likely to appear, having

exaggerated instinctive tendencies, there is always close at hand and

ready a mechanism by which war can be produced, war being precisely of

the type of mass action, under strong emotion, of a group closely

united under spectacular leadership, with attention cramped upon some

external object hated or feared.

Nicolai (79), who believes strongly that war is wholly useless,

compares it to the play we turn to when the actions performed in the

play are no longer in themselves practical. War is a great debauch,

perhaps now the last the race will experience. War is like wine: in it

nations renew their youth. It is not the war itself, but the mood it

produces that we crave, and this mood is longed for because in it old

and sacred feelings of patriotism are aroused, and these feelings are

themselves survivals, something romantic, archaic, no longer needed in

the present stage of social life.

Novicow (83) says something very similar to this. War is a survival,

like the classical languages, for example. Men begin to find beauty

and glory in these things only after the activities they represent are

useless. The principle of their survival is nothing more or less than

that of habit. It is habit that keeps war alive; wars are a concession

to our forebears, a following in the footsteps of a dead past.

We are presenting these views in a somewhat loose and illogical order,

but let us look at still a few more of them. Patrick thinks of war as

precisely a plunge into the primeval. War is a reaction, a regression,

but still it is something more than a mere slipping of the machinery

of life. It is _craved_; and it is craved because it offers relief

from the tension of modern life. It is not quite clear whether it is

because we are tired and want rest for our over-worked functions, or

are merely dull and need renewed life, but in any case, when the

desire has accumulated enough, back we fall into the primeval. Then

all the tensions and inhibitions of civilized society disappear.

Society, relieved of its cross-tensions, is resolved and organized

into an harmonious and freely acting whole, seeking a definite object.

Life is simplified, and becomes again primitive. Old and vigorous

movements take the place of the cramped thinking of our civilized

life. All that keeps us modern and evolved is relaxed.

Naturally the Freudians have their own explanation of war in terms of

subconscious wishes, repressed feelings and instincts. Freud (78)

himself says that war is a recrudescence (and a mastery over us) of a

more primitive life than our own. The child and the primitive man, as

we have long known them in the Freudian theories, live still in us and

are indestructible. We have supposed ourselves to have overcome these

primitive impulses, but we are far from being so civilized as we

thought. The evil impulses, as we call them, which we supposed had at

least been transformed are changed only in the sense that they have

been influenced by the erotic motive, or have been repressed by an

outer restraint, an educational factor, the demands of what we call

civilized environment. But let us not deceive ourselves; the old

impulses are still alive; the number of people who have been

transformed by civilization is less than we supposed. All society is

at heart barbaric. Judged by our unconscious wishes, we are a band of

murderers, for the primitive wish is to kill all who oppose our

self-interests, and war is precisely a reversion to the method of free

expression of our desires in action. Society and the authority of

government have suppressed these primitive reactions in the

individual, but instead of eliminating them altogether from human

nature (which, of course, no legislation can do in any case),

government and society as a whole have appropriated all these

primitive actions to their own use.

Jones (37), the Freudian, distinguishes two quite different groups of

causes of war: the conscious causes, all expressed in the feeling of

patriotism; and the unconscious causes, which grow out of the desire

to release certain original passions--the passions of cruelty,

destruction, loot and lust.

The central thought of all these views, it is plain, is that war

belongs to the past. It is a return to something that, in a

significant sense, is the natural man--is his instinctive and

unguarded self. It is also plainly implied in these views, here and

there, that modern man, by thus lapsing into war, is renewing his

stock of primitive nature. The modern man is in unstable equilibrium,

and whatever upsets that equilibrium sends him back through the ages.

MacCurdy (37), having Jones and Freud in mind, protests against these

views to this extent: he says that the present state of man, rather

than the past, is the natural state, and that at least in reverting to

the primitive state man becomes unnatural.

The question upon which our discussion of this aspect of war is going

to hinge is whether, or in what sense, the activities and the feelings

aroused in war are reversions. Wars, beyond a doubt, do involve to a

greater extent than peaceful life certain instinctive reactions. Wars

are so impulsive and so persistent that we must suppose very deep

motives to be engaged in war; and the fact that in all wars, and on

both sides of every war, the feelings and the reactions are

fundamentally the same, indicates that war is something less

differentiated than the peaceful life. But that war can be explained

in terms of instinct as such, or that war can be disposed of as a mere

recrudescence of old impulses and types of conduct buried beneath

civilization, is very much to be doubted. War, in the first place, in

its moods and passions, appears to be too complex, too synthetic a

process to be quite what this view would imply. It is too intimately

related to everything that occurs and exists in present day society.

It means too much, concretely and with reference to objects

specifically desired for the future. War is related to the past, but

to a great extent, it may be, wars represent and contain the present

and look toward the future. The distinctions and differences in the

interpretation of war thus implied, and the conflicting understanding

of facts about society and individual life cannot be very clear at

this point, but that there are involved fundamental problems of

psychology, and perhaps divergent ways of thinking of history and

society, and of such principles of philosophy at least as are

implicated in æsthetics, and finally of the practical questions that

are of most interest in these fields to-day, may begin to be evident.

There is one aspect of war, or one question about war, that seems to

suggest that its problems are more subtle and less simple than the

instinct-theories imply. War has been, and still is, the great story

of the world, the center of all that is dramatic and heroic in life.

Its mood--and that is the essential thing in it, whatever else war may

have been, and in spite of all its horrors--is _ecstatic_. War

produces, or is produced by, states of mind that affiliate it with all

the other ecstasies--of love, religion, intoxication, art. We may well

doubt whether any explanation of war can ever be satisfactory that

does not take this quality of it fully into account. One may say, of

course, that war is ecstatic just because it does satisfy instincts,

that the satisfaction of all instincts is pleasant, or that pleasure

_is_ the satisfaction of instincts. But there is more in the problem

than that. Love, the source of the other great romance of the world,

is not exhausted by calling it a gratification of the sexual instinct,

or a primitive tendency of all organic life. It is at the other end of

the process of development of it, so to speak, its place as a present

motive in life, that it is most significant, and it is by no means

explained by calling it a product of sexuality.

So with war. Made out of instincts, it may be, but it is not explained

as the sum of instinctive reactions. _That, at least, is our thesis._

It is the fact that war is a great ecstasy of the social life, that it

holds a high place in art, that history--our selective way of reacting

upon human experience--is in a large measure the story of war, that

its representations in dramatic forms are almost endless in variety;

it is such facts that give us our clew to the nature of the problems

of war, and also to the practical questions of its future.

Hirschfeld (98), in a short study of war, has enumerated and briefly

described some of the forms in which the ecstasy of war appears, or

some of the ecstasies that appear in war. He speaks of the ecstasy of

heroism, and the ecstatic sense that accompanies the taking part in

great events, the consciousness of making history. On a little lower

plane there is the excitement of adventure and of travel that gives

allurement to the idea of war in the mind of the soldier, and which

also glorifies the soldier; the sensation hunger; the _cupidus rerum

novarum_; the ecstasies of nature and freedom, suggested by the very

term "in the field." Add to these the ecstasies of battle and of

victory, the _Kampfsrausch_ and the _Siegestrunkenheit_, and the mood

of war in which acts unlawful for the individual become not only

lawful but highly honorable when done collectively. There is also in

the mood of war the social intoxication, the feeling on the part of

the individual of being a part of a body and the sense of being lost

in a greater whole. The lusts of conquest, and of looting, and of

combat, all contribute to this spirit of war. And finally, summing up

all the other ecstasies, the strong inner movement of the soul

expressing itself in strong external movements, and in the sense of

living and dying in the midst of vivid and real life.

Hirschfeld's analysis of the ecstasy of war discloses deep and

powerful motives in the individual mind and the social life. We can

find this ecstasy everywhere in the history of war, sometimes as a

national exaltation, sometimes as a more restricted phenomenon.

Villard (54), speaking of the first days of the war, says that in

Germany then one could see "the psychology of the crowd at its noblest

height." The exaltation of a people, whatever its content, or its

purpose, is an awe-inspiring spectacle. There can be no greater

display of the sources of human power. In this particular time of

exaltation we can see in action religious ecstasy, the cult of valor,

and the stirring of more fundamental and more primitive feelings. This

exaltation has its imaginative side. There is a dream of empire in it.

There is an exhibition of the forms of royalty, its display, its color

and its dramatic moments. There is the spirit of militarism and of

great adventure, the excitement of chance, of throwing all into the

hands of fate, the æsthetic and the play motives which are never

separated from the practical passions in times of great exaltation.

This mood of war differs, of course, at different times under

different circumstances. The French people certainly went into the

great war with no such exaltation. We should have to look elsewhere in

French history for the ecstatic war spirit, when the French are moved

by the motives of glory and prestige, or by the vanity and eroticism

which Reuthe thinks are the essential qualities of the spirit of

France. But taking history as a whole there is no lack of ecstasy in

the spirit of war. We find in this ecstasy exalted social feeling, joy

of overcoming the pain of death, the exultation of sacrifice, love of

display, feeling of tragedy, the ecstasy of exerting the utmost of

power, love of danger, the gambling motive, the love of battle, love

of all the dramatic elements of military life. These separate

ecstasies, taken all together, make up the exalted mood of war. They

represent war in its most significant moments.

In this mood of war instincts are exhibited, but they seem to be in

some way transformed, so that the whole has a meaning different from

the parts. The mood of war is not a mere effect, a reaction to events.

It is a longing--plastic and indefinite it may be--but looking toward

the future. It is a craving, not for the release of definite

instincts, but is rather a force or a desire which, however misguided

the expression of this mood or this energy may be, is the essence of

what individuals and society to-day _are_. We may find in this mood,

upon superficial examination, mere emotions, but in a final and deeper

analysis, we may suppose, its content and its meaning will be found to

be specific--purposes which constitute what is deepest and most

continuous in the individual and in society, but which at the same

time give to this mood its generality of direction and of form.

It is the war-mood, then, that must be explained, if we wish to

understand the motives and causes of war. And this war mood, so it

appears, is related to all the other great ecstasies--of art,

religion, intoxication, love. It is, of course, then, a psychological

problem, and one having many radiations and deep roots. The view that

we are going to take is that in the mood of war we have to do

essentially with what, relying upon previous studies of the principles

of art and of the motives that are at work in society that produce the

phenomena of intemperance we may call the _intoxication motive_. That

this intoxication motive is a plastic force, a mood containing desires

and impulses that may be satisfied in a variety of ways, since as a

sum of desires it is no longer specific and instinctive, is the main

implication of this view. It is this generic quality and compositeness

of the purpose of the individual and of the spirit of society that

obscures the meaning of history and often makes individual lives so

enigmatical, and which also makes these purposes of individuals and

nations so persistent, sometimes so terribly forceful and insatiable.

As contrasted with instincts, the motive of intoxication we say, is

plastic, and its object--and this is one of its most significant

characteristics--is to produce exalted states of consciousness mainly

for their own sake. At least this experience of exaltation is the main

or central thing sought. It is a tendency to seek exalted states, but

at the same time, we should say, specific instincts gain some kind of

satisfaction, although not at all necessarily by the performance of

the external movements appropriate to them. They may obtain a certain

vicarious satisfaction. The mood gives conduct a general direction, it

provides a motive and the power, it is the source of interest and of

desire, but its objects may be indefinite and variable.

Some general aspects of the moods that we have to consider have

already come to light, and these may prove to be valuable clews to a

psychological analysis of their content. There is the ecstatic state,

and the craving to experience it, the love of excitement, the desire

to have a sense of reality, the impulse to seek an abundant life, the

love of power and of the feeling of power. These are all related, and

at least they have something in common, but it is the last mentioned,

the motive of power, that seems to be the most definite and to have

the clearest biological meaning and implications. Indeed this motive

of power (and we must here again depend upon previous studies of the

æsthetic motives and other aspects of ecstasy), appears to be

fundamental in art, in religion, and in history. It is a concept that

gives us a vantage ground for the interpretation of some of the most

significant parts of life. The idea of power and the craving for power

as a general motive, but also containing and exploiting specific

purposes and desires, runs through all the history of art and religion

and also through history itself. Religion is based upon the desire to

exert and to feel power, and it is the manifest and indeed the

expressly acknowledged purpose of all primitive art, and is concealed

and implied in all later art. Art is practical, an effort to realize a

sense of power, to become a god (just as in his motive of play the

child desires more than anything else to realize himself as a man), to

influence people, or objects, or gods, to exert magic somewhere in the

world. In the feeling of power which the ecstatic state produces, the

belief in the power of art is established, and at the same time deep

and hidden impulses are exploited. On the feeling side, and indeed in

every way, this ought to explain how art, religion, and all states of

intoxication have a common element, if they are not primitively the

same.

A psychology of the war moods must undertake to trace the history of

the motive of power, considering its beginnings as the desire and

sense of satisfaction connected with the performance of definite

instinctive acts, and with their physiological results, with the

exertion of power and the production of effects upon objects. It is in

the performance of instinctive acts, in which superiority is inborn,

that animal and man obtain their original sense of power or

superiority. As capacities are differentiated and multiplied, the

experiences of achievement generate a mood and a more general impulse,

a desire to exert power for its own sake. The sensory or organic

elements tend to predominate in this generalized motive, simply

because the specific actions in which the sense of power is obtained

cannot so readily, or cannot at all, be generalized. Such an

organization of actions and states in consciousness demands nothing

new in principle, implies nothing different from that found on the

intellectual side when concepts are formed from concrete experiences.

The associative processes and the selective principles everywhere

present in mental action are all that are necessary to be assumed

here. We may take advantage, however, of the special investigations of

affective logic, and the like, as giving evidence in support of such

a conception of the formation of moods as is here being worked out. We

are likely to make the mistake of thinking the specific instincts and

the impulses and pleasure states that we find in human experiences,

such as ecstasy, as the whole of these experiences, and to overlook

the constant process of generalization that goes on in all the mental

activity of the individual. For example, we may think of various plays

which involve instinctive actions as being wholly explained by, or to

be made up of, these instinctive acts alone, whereas in most plays

that take the form of excitement, abandon or ecstasy, there are being

employed processes which are general in the sense of reënforcing all

the specific acts alike, and are yet specific in the sense that they

are themselves, or have been, practical: that is, they are in reality

processes that belong to the fundamental strata of consciousness--to

the nutritional and reproductive tendencies. Out of these tendencies

the more complex processes of which we speak are made, but they are no

mere repetition of old forms. That, at least, is the way these

ecstatic moods appear from our point of view.

It is precisely because ecstatic moods are presumably thus general and

composite, and involve fundamental instincts (but in such a way that

they are transformed, and no longer present in body, so to speak, but

are represented by their organic processes rather than appearing as

specific concatenated chains of motor events), with their purposes

changed and their whole meaning determined by the present states to

which they belong, that we should be inclined to say that to explain

any great and powerful movement in the lives of individuals or nations

as merely reversions is very inadequate and indeed wrong. They are

emotional forces that are at work, composite feelings and moods rather

than instincts. They are aspects of the continuity of the life of the

present, rather than of the fragmentary past that lives in the

individual. These forces are plastic, complex and organized, rather

than haphazard and suppressed. They are directive, creative, but

incidentally they make amends for and satisfy and exploit the past.

If these principles be valid, their application to the psychology of

war seems plain. The central purpose or motive of war to-day is a

craving for the realization of the sense of power. This is the

subjective side of it, the unconscious, instinctive, mystical motive

so often observed. The question of the actual power exerted or

displayed is not the most essential point of this war mood. It is the

manipulation and the satisfaction of inner factors that make the most

significant aspect of these moods. History, we should hold, is in

great part an unfoldment of this motive. Nations crave, as collective

or group consciousness, the feeling of power. Just as we say the child

in his plays wants to be a man, and the individual in his art feels

himself a god, so nations in their wars and in their thoughts of wars,

feel themselves more real, realize themselves as world powers, and as

supreme and divine. To be first and all is indeed the purpose that

runs in these moods, and this we believe is true, in its way, of the

most insignificant and hopelessly decrepit of peoples. This must be

taken account of in the interpretation of history, and in that larger

pedagogy, the pedagogy of nations to which we just now look forward.

These moods which, slumbering, become the ecstasies of war are vague,

even secretive. They contain aggressive thoughts that are disavowed,

vanities that are concealed, fears that present a quiet front. But we

must not think that the war mood always intends war. Nations have

their subjective lives and inner history, and their vicarious

satisfactions. A nation in arms already feels itself victor by reason

of its sense of power. Otherwise few wars would be entered upon.

Dreams and talk of war may incite to war, but they may also satisfy

the desire and need of war. There is a certain narcissism in nations,

and this is due precisely to the fact that patriotism as a feeling and

impulse necessarily lacks in the group consciousness the mechanisms

for externalization, except indeed in war. War is an escape, for a

people, from a kind of subjectivism, from the evils of a self-love to

perhaps the greater evils of self-assertion.

Nations in war, and even in the thought of war realize their own

potentiality, take account of stock of their powers, and create an

ideal, romantic and dream world. They make castles-in-air, and these

castles-in-air always take the form of empires. War, precisely like

art, is at first more and then less practical, and sought for

practical purposes. More and more there is a craving for glory, for

prestige, for subjective satisfaction and symbols of power. Nations

take lands that they cannot use for any good purpose, inflict

indemnities that may ruin themselves rather than their enemies,

exploit economic relations that are dangerous to the nations' very

existence. It is power that they seek, and it is power they thus

create, but it is often different in form and in value from what the

conscious purpose holds. They are really seeking general and

subjective states in part for their own sake. Psychologically it is

all one and the same whether we realize this power by actually killing

an enemy, or believe we overpower him by the performance of some

mystic and ecstatic act, or in some more modern way become confident

in our own power and prestige. National life, in order to maintain its

integrity, must move upon a plane of intense feeling. It must have

objectives, but these objectives are not necessarily of value in

themselves. This is the delusion and enigma of history. Peoples enact

dramas in their own subjective lives, and these things they do have

reference to the desires for inner experiences. We may say that

nations, like individuals, crave for luxuries of the emotional life,

but to think of these experiences as merely static pleasure-states,

after the fashion of a certain conception of the emotions, would be

wholly to misunderstand this view which we have been trying to

present. These subjective states are full of meaning and of purpose.

They are not reactions, but rather, in so far as these collective

lives are normal and progressive, these moods and ecstasies are more

of the nature of crucibles in which old reactions and feelings are

fused, given new direction, new forms and in a certain way a new

nature. History is made in these moods of war. They are subjective

forces, but they are also objectively creative.

What is it that nations really desire? What is it, we might ask, that

an individual desires? On the side of experience it is an _abundant

life_, a life full of the feeling of power. This craving for an

abundant life is a craving for the satisfaction of many desires,

instinctive and acquired, but it is also a craving, in some sense, for

more desire. It is not merely to satisfy desires, but to realize more

life by creating more desires that experience is sought. That is the

philosophy of the life of the superior individual; it is also the

principle of the larger individual--the nation. The creation and the

satisfaction of desire are the motives of art. They are also the

motives of life.

In history, it is the intangible value, the unconscious purpose, the

desire to realize empires that are only in part material, the desire

for glory and prestige and opportunity that seem to be the guiding

motives. There is a general and plastic purpose beneath all the

special tendencies and desires directing interest toward specific

objects, and also sometimes making the objectives sought indefinite

and the purposes in seeking them seem mystical. It is the desire to be

a power in the world, or rather to have power over the world, and to

experience all the inner exaltation these desires inspire that appears

to be the creative force in history. These things, moreover, are not

the desires and impulses of the geniuses among nations alone; they

seem to be inherent in all national life.

Study of the _intoxication motive_ in the individual and as a social

phenomenon shows that it is not an expression of the need of

relaxation from strain, or a reversion, or something that occurs by a

mere release of primitive instincts. It occurs in the great periods of

history, and in the strong years of the life of the individual, rather

than in times of weakness. It is always a spirit of the times rather

than of some past reverted to. It may occur in times of disorder or of

repression, but it is an experience in which energy and power are

expressed. We see it most dominant when life is most abundant, when

there is also a craving to make life more abundant still, when there

is already power and more power is longed for. It is true, however,

that two opposite conditions may produce the strongest manifestations

of this intoxication motive. Something analogous to these conditions

we see in the lives of individuals, in the phenomena of intemperance,

which belong in general to the virile years. Social ecstasy is

produced in times when there is already a free expression of energy,

but also under conditions that cause pain, disorder and repression.

Under the latter conditions we think of it not as desire for relief

from strain but desire to be released from obstacles that impede the

expression of the growth force. If all this be true, we see war in a

somewhat different light from that in which it is ordinarily regarded.

It is not, in its typical forms, a reversion to barbarism, and it is

not a political mishap. It is rather a readjustment of tendencies or

forces and an expression and product of the living and progressive

forces of society--not necessarily a good or even a normal expression

of them, but an awakening and a realization of such desires as are

to-day at work in everything we do--forces which for the moment are

raised to a white heat, so to speak, in which purposes are for the

moment fused and it may be confused--but still an expression of what,

for better or for worse we _are_, not of what in some remote past time

we _were_. We cannot explain war or excuse ourselves for waging wars

by saying that we lapse for a time into barbarism, but on the other

hand the heroism we suddenly find in ourselves as nations or as

individuals, is not so different from that of ordinary life as we may

have supposed. We have perhaps no right to say that all war is thus to

be characterized. War is a very complex and a widely variable

phenomenon, but this is the explanation of that aspect of the motive

of history which in general produces war. War may have its

abnormalities, if we may speak of a worse in that which is already bad

enough. War may satisfy the desperate mind; it may, on occasion, be a

narcotic to cover up worse pain, or an evidence of decadence; or even

be what those who think of it as a reversion believe. But all these

aspects of war, if our view be sound, are the eccentricities rather

than the essence of war.

The conditions preceding our recent great war will doubtless in the

course of future historical and sociological research, be minutely

scrutinized, in the effort to find the causes of the war--factors

deeper than and different from the political and economic causes and

the personal intrigues that are now most emphasized. If we believe

that the war was made in Germany rather than elsewhere, we might look

there, especially for these psychological factors of war--for our

intoxication motives and unconscious impulses and our causes of

reversion, but we should probably not find anything different in kind

there from what we should discover in other great countries. Those who

have seen in modern industrialism dangers of coming disaster, or who

now look back upon it as a genuine cause of the war were probably not

mistaken. Industrialism has been producing rapidly, and in an intense

form, what we may call the mood of the city, and this mood of the city

contains all the conditions and all the emotions that tend to bring to

the surface the deep-lying motives of the social life that we are

trying to point out. There are both the joy of the abundant life, the

craving for new experiences, and the sense of reality, and also the

disorganization of interests and motives, the stress and fatigue and

monotony which prepare the mind for culmination in dramatic events.

There is, in a word, a deep stirring of all the forces that make for

progress and expansion, and also conditions that disorganize the

individual and the social life. Lamprecht (59) of all German writers

seems to have appreciated this. He has written before the war,

describing a condition in Germany which he says began in the seventies

of the preceding century--a change of German life in which there is a

great increase of the activities of the cities, with haste and

anxiety, unscrupulous individual energy, general nervous excitement, a

condition of neuro-muscular weakness (and he might have added as

another sign, over-stimulation of the mind by a great flood of morbid

literature).

In Lamprecht's opinion, this period of excitement, this strong tendency

to the enjoyment of excitation in general, is a form of socio-psychic

dissociation. It is a period of relative disorganization, when the

individual is subjected to a great variety of new experiences, when

outside influences prevail over the inner impulses of the individual,

in which the individual is unsettled and there is a tendency toward

pessimism and melancholia. Lamprecht thinks of this state as something

transitory, and already as he writes (in 1905) nearing an end. This

state of continuous excitement, with its shallow pathos of the

individual and its constant and superficial happiness, its worship of

the novel and the extraordinary, the suggestibility and the receptivity

of the masses, automatic action of the will and the emotions--all this

Lamprecht thinks will pass. It is a stage in the process of a new

formation. The very elements of dissociation are positively charged, so

to speak, and contain creative power. A new system of morals, a new

philosophy, new religion begin to emerge. There is a strong effort to

reach a new dominant.

This is Lamprecht's psychological interpretation of recent German

history. This view and the various aspects of the condition which

Lamprecht describes, the relation of the materialism, the pessimism

and the melancholy of such a time to the optimistic trends and the

deep forward movement need a closer study than we can here give it,

but may we not see in it the truth that such conditions as these are

prone to cause wars as a phase of the process of the inner adjustment

of national life? Wars occur as forms of expression of those impulses

which appear in the individual life in times of rapid growth and

relative dissociation as outbreaks of intemperance and passion--a

culmination, according to our view and terminology, of the

intoxication motive. Industrialism itself is perhaps but one

manifestation of deep impulses in the life of nations; it is at once

an intensification and a formalizing of life. Hence perhaps its

paradoxical appearance as an increase of both joy and distress. There

is nothing in it that is wholly satisfying.

Germany, says Lamprecht, was seeking, in this transition period, a new

dominant, a new religion and a new philosophy. But Germany, let us

help Lamprecht to say, since he does not himself draw this conclusion,

has failed to emerge upon the level of an exalted ecstasy, failed to

produce the philosophical, the moral and religious fruit of its new

impulses, _failed, in a word, to find its dominant on a high level_,

precisely as often the promising individual fails and has expressed

his truly great nature in low forms of activity. So Germany, and the

world, dominated by industrialism and all the desires and forces that

the rapid development of industrialism has brought into action, has

come to a culmination of its efforts in an outbreak unparalleled in

history. On the side of Germany we see a nation governed by a mood of

war in which the chief modes of thought and action represented are the

pseudo-mystical and religious longings for new empire, romantic love

of the past, militarism, and all the motives of the new industrialism

and the new science. The best motives of the old feudalism and the new

industrialism tried to unite, as we might say, into a new and very

great civilization--_and they failed_. What has happened is that the

material powers and the cynical moods of industrialism have combined

with the mystical elements and the superficial æstheticism of the old

feudalistic régime to create a philosophy of life, a temporary stage

it may be, in which force and fanaticism and the uncompromising ideals

of national honor and brute strength prevail over those of a wider

efficiency and a broader devotion which might have inspired a greater

and a better Germany. Convention and political motives have done the

rest.

Bergson says that in the war spirit of Germany one sees matter arrayed

against spirit. One can see some truth in this, but spirit and matter

are not two armies pitted against one another. In Germany, as we may

believe elsewhere, the spiritual in the sense of creative forces in

the subconscious life of nations does try to organize the practical

life, with its routine and convention, into an onward moving progress,

in which, necessarily, exalted moods (if energies are to get

themselves expressed at all) must prevail, and must be full of

possibilities, both of great good and of great evil. Life in its

collective form will be abundant, because that is its most fundamental

craving. It may be terribly and destructively abundant, or benignly,

but progress, as history seems to show us--if reason and psychology do

not--can never be orderly and complacent. Order and convention must

break down to introduce new spirit and new desires which are

continually being created in the inner life. These forces may be old

instincts which are continually upsetting civilized life, but the

desires they produce and the mechanism of their operation seem to be

different from what our customary psychology and interpretation of

history imply. Just as these moods make the child play and be wholly

unpractical when one might suppose he could be useful, and the

individual, as man, live a certain life of adventure rather than in

security and routine, so this spirit or mood that dominates nations

makes them imperialistic, and causes them to crave those things which

lead toward war, if they do not crave war itself, when we might think

they ought to be most concerned about the economic welfare of the

world as a whole.

Whether this spirit of nations be an evil to be overcome, and to

suppress, or an untamed force to direct to right objects, or a good

that by some logic of events which we do not understand works out the

right course of history, we do not know. But here, of course, we come

to problems, which, if they are problems at all in any real sense, are

philosophical and ultimate.

CHAPTER III

INSTINCTS IN WAR: FEAR, HATE, THE AGGRESSIVE IMPULSE, MOTIVES OF

COMBAT AND DESTRUCTION, THE SOCIAL INSTINCT

We have found that the essential, and we might say, primary

psychological datum of war is a war-mood, that the central motive of

this war-mood is a general impulse which we called the intoxication

motive, and that this intoxication motive, considered generically, and

in regard to its specific meaning is a craving for power and for the

experience of exerting and feeling power. The war-mood is not a mere

collection of instincts; it is a new product, in which instincts and

emotions have a place. There are several reasons, practical and

theoretical, for regarding it as a highly important problem to

discover what the actual content of this war-mood is. This mood, being

one of the greatest of all powers of good and evil, and one most in

need to-day of education and re-direction, it may be, it will probably

be controlled, if ever, upon the basis of a knowledge of what it means

as a whole, and of what its elements are which appear in the form of

fused, transformed, truncated, generalized and aborted instincts and

feelings.

_Primitive Tendencies_

First of all, the highly complex emotions, moods and impulses we find

in the social consciousness as expressed in the moods of war, do

contain and revert to instincts and feelings that are part of the

primitive equipment of organic life, and are usually identified as

nutritional and reproductive tendencies. The part played in war by

the migratory impulse, the predatory impulse and the like indicates

the connection of the war-moods with the nutritional tendencies; and

the display elements found already in primitive warfare and, as we

have already inferred, in all forms of ecstasy contain factors that

are at bottom sexual. We no longer eat our enemies, and we do not

bring home their heads to our women or practice wife stealing, but it

is easy to observe the remnants of these old feelings and instincts in

war. Trophy hunting continues, and we may suppose that even the moods

of primitive cannibalism have not entirely been lost. The ready

habituation of soldiers to some of the scenes of the recent war seems

to suggest a lingering trace of this motive, while the looting impulse

which plays such a part in war, and some aspects of the destructive

impulses and the like that are displayed, are, with a high degree of

probability, closely related to instincts that were once specifically

practical and belong to the fundamental nutritional motives. Nor is it

a mere euphemism, perhaps, when we speak of the greed of nations, nor

solely analogical when we compare the ambitions of peoples with

certain adolescent phenomena in the life of the individual. Plainly

the social consciousness, as a collective mood, does not command the

specific reactions connected with sexuality and nutrition, but we may

observe the presence of these instinctive reactions in two phases of

war. We see them in the tendencies of various individuals, who under

the excitements of the war moods are controlled more or less

specifically by instinctive reactions. We see also fragments of

instinctive reactions and primitive feeling woven into the total

states of social consciousness. The hunger motive may, and probably

does, supply some of the elements of the fear and the aggressive moods

of war; just as the sex motive provides some of the elements of anger

and hatred, and some of the qualities of combat itself.

_The Aggressive Instinct_

A natural, but somewhat naïve explanation of war is that it is a

survival of the aggressive instinct that man has brought up with him

from animal life, in which he originated, and that very early in his

career was directed toward his fellow men. This aggressive instinct as

expressed in the modern spirit of war does not need, on this view, to

be thought of as something reverted to. It is still active throughout

the social life. Both the purposes and the methods of it remain. We

have referred to one aspect of this before, and to the objection that

can be made that the ancestry of man does not show us such an

aggressive instinct. The nearest relatives of man are mainly social

rather than aggressive in their habits. Even the habits of hunting

other animals and eating animal food appear to have been acquired

during man's career as man, and he never has had the aggressive temper

that some creatures have had. Man has acquired a very effectual and

very complex adjustment to his environment by piecing together, so to

speak, fragments of his original conduct, and developing mechanisms

that have been produced in the race as a means of satisfying

fundamental needs. Modes of reaction produced originally for one

purpose have apparently been utilized by other motives. Of course the

more specific animal instincts are not wholly lacking, but it is also

true that man through his social life has produced habits that

resemble or are substitutes for primitive instincts. The love of

combat, especially as it is shown in play indicates the presence of

instinctive roots, but it does not show the existence of a definite

instinct of aggression. This play is in part an off-shoot of the

reproductive motive. These fighting plays of children are in part

sexual plays, and we see them clearly in their true light in some of

the higher mammals most closely related to man.

One aspect of the aggressive habit of man has been too much neglected.

It is highly probable that aggression in man has been far more closely

related to the emotion of fear than to any assumed predatory instinct.

It is a question whether the predatory habit of man, ending in

cannibalism and the hunting of animals for food, did not originate in

the time of the long battle man must have had with animals in which

the animals themselves for the most part played the part of

aggressors. It was not for nothing, at any rate, that our animal

ancestors took to the trees, and it is certain that the fear element

in human nature is very strong and very deeply ingrained. We see

throughout animal life fear expressed by aggressive movements, by the

show of anger, as well as by flight. This is seen especially clearly

in the birds. With all their equipment for the defensive strategy of

flight they express fear instinctively by attacking, and this is

apparently not a result merely of the habit of defending the young.

The great carnivora also attack from fear, and seem normally never to

attack such animals as they do not hunt for prey unless they are

frightened. The charge of the rhinoceros and other great ungulates is

probably always a fear reaction. They appear to have no other

aggressive impulses, certainly none connected with the nutritional

motives since they are herbivorous in habit.

The fear motive is probably much deeper in human nature, both in the

lower and the higher social reactions than is commonly supposed, the

concealment of fear being precisely a part of the strategy of defense.

Fear has created more history than it is usually given credit for. The

aggressive motive alone, in all probability, would never have made

history such a story of battles as it has been. Nations usually

attribute more aggressive intentions and motives to their neighbors

than their neighbors possess, and war is certainly often precipitated

by an accumulation of mutual distrust and suspicion. Nations are

always watching one another for the least signs of aggression on the

part of their supposed enemies, an attitude which of course is

inspired only by apprehension.

Moods of fear and pessimism we say are deeply implanted in the

consciousness of man, and we must interpret both his optimism, and all

its expressions in philosophy and in religion, and also his aggressive

behavior as in large part the result of a conscious or an unconscious

effort to overcome his fear. The social consciousness is full of marks

of age-long dread and suspicion. Fear of fate, fear of losing identity

as a nation, fear of being overrun by an enemy, fear of internal

disruption, are strong motives in national life. Fear runs like a dark

thread through all the life of nations, and gives to it a quality of

mysticism, and a touch of sadness which is so characteristic of much

of the deepest patriotism of the world.

Fear is one of the most powerful motives of all aggressive warfare in

the world. We find it in every nation, even those which are naturally

most aggressive, and in them perhaps most of all. In the history and

in the war moods of Germany the fear motive is unmistakable. America

is not without it. Nations conceal their fears, presenting a bold

front to the foreigner; but beneath the display one can always detect

suspicion, dread and intense watchfulness. America has in the past

feared Germany, and America fears the Far East; we look furtively

toward Asia, the primeval home of all evils and pestilence, for

something that may arise and engulf us. Small countries fear; large

countries with their sense of distances, have their own characteristic

forms of apprehension. Fear is the motive of preventive wars. It makes

all nations desire to kill their enemies in the egg. It creates the

death wish toward all who thwart our interests or who may in the

future do so.

This fear motive runs through all history. Parsons says that men fight

not because they are warlike, but because they are fearful. Rohrbach

thinks that if Germany and England could each be sure the other would

not be aggressive there would be no war between them. It is this

aspect of the foreign as the unknown that especially plays upon the

motive of fear. This fear is like the child's dread of the dark; it is

not what is seen, but what is not seen that causes apprehension. It is

the stranger whose psychic nature we cannot penetrate, who causes

fear. In small countries having only land borders, this attitude of

suspicion and fear must become an integral part of the whole psychic

structure of the national consciousness. Fear becomes morbid; nations

have illusions and delusions based upon fear. There are reasons for

believing that all aggression contains a pessimistic motive, or

background, and that this pessimistic background is based upon the

emotion of fear. Countries that are most positively aggressive have

such a pessimistic strain. Pessimism is a shadow that lies across the

path of progress of modern Germany. This fear motive, the quality of

the animal that charges when at bay, is to be seen throughout all

German history. Germany's fear of Russia must certainly be blamed for

a great part of the pessimistic strain in the temperament of Germany,

and therefore as an important factor among the causes of the great

war. Every war appears to the people who conduct it as defensive,

precisely because every war is to some extent based upon fear, and

fear in national consciousness is a persistent sense of living by a

defensive strategy. It is existence that nations always think and talk

of fighting for; it is existence about which they have apprehensions.

Beneath all group life there is this sense of fear, since fear itself

was a large factor in creating that life. When people live together,

repress individual desires and participate in a common life we may

know that one of the strongest bonds of this social life is fear. The

need of defense is a more fundamental motive in national life than is

aggression. A "shudder runs through a nation about to go to battle."

The lusts of war are aroused later by the overcoming of fear.

Germany's inclination to preventive wars, her incessant plea of being

about to be attacked, can by no means be interpreted as pure

deception, or as an effort to make political capital. Germany's army

_was_ primarily for defense, because a defensive strategy is the only

strategy that Germany with her position and her temperament can adopt.

Germany's great army was Germany's compensation, in consciousness, for

the insignificance of her territory. It was for defense. It was also a

compensation for a feeling of inferiority, in Adler's sense.

Fanaticism, envy, depreciation of others, aggression, morbid and

excessive ambition were all fruits from the same stem. The gloom which

many have found in German life, and the pessimism in German

philosophy, we may explain in part by the experiences of Germany as

the scene of so many devastating wars. Upon the background of fear, in

our interpretation of aggressive motives, is erected German autocracy,

German ambition and the conception of the absolute State, which may be

interpreted as almost a specific fear reaction. It comes in time to

have other meanings, and like many instinctive reactions, it may be

put to uses for which it was not originally produced, but there is

fear concealed in the heart of it. How action can be both defensive

and strongly aggressive, then, is no mystery if we see that aggression

may be a fear reaction, that even the most ardent imperialism is based

in part upon fear, upon the consciousness at some time of being weak

and inferior.

Fear and suspicion cause aggressive wars even when the fear may be, in

all reason, groundless. There is no more dangerous individual in the

community than the one having delusions of persecution, for his mania

is naturally homicidal. So with nations. Fear is a treacherous and

deceptive passion. We may see this fear, if we choose to look for it,

even in the ecstatic mood of war and the spiritual exaltation of

Germany during the first few weeks or months of the war. This

exaltation was in part a reaction of fear--or a reaction from fear.

Germany was afraid, feared for her existence, and the exaltation was

in part a sense of taking a terrible plunge into the depths of fate.

Germany was afraid of Russia and afraid of England, and that fear had

to be overcome, because the presence of the fear itself was a matter

of life or death. But the exaltation did not merely succeed the fear.

It contained it. And why should Germany, even with all her

preparedness and her resources not be afraid? An inherited fear is not

so easily exorcised. Germany arrayed against all Russia and all the

British Empire, Germany no larger than our Texas experienced a state

of exaltation, overcoming fear. But it required something more than

courage to overcome the fear; and that other element was mysticism. To

the sense of throwing all into the hands of fate which, by all

physical signs must be adverse, was added, as a compensating element,

Germany's mystical belief in her security as a chosen nation. Fear, by

its intensity and depth may, like physical pain, become ecstatic and

thus be overcome.

_Hatred_

Hatred must be considered both as a cause of war, and as an element in

the war moods. Many authors have called hatred one of the deepest

roots of war. This hatred between nations even Freud says is

mysterious. But Pfister, referring to Adler's theory, says that war

must be understood precisely as we understand enmity among

individuals. A sense of inferiority is insulted, and thus aggressive

feelings are aroused. The nation, like the individual, is spurred on

to make good its claim to greatness. It is a feeling of jealousy based

upon a sense of inferiority that causes hatred. O'Ryan and Anderson

(5), military writers, say there are two causes of war: those based

upon an assumed necessity, and those based upon hatred. Nusbaum (86)

also finds two causes of war, the expansion impulse and the egoism of

species, which leads to long enmities.

History shows that we must accept hatred as an underlying cause of

war. The reaction of deep anger which may be aroused by a variety of

situations that arise among nations, especially when it is, so to

speak, an outbreak of a long continued hatred, is a proximate cause of

wars. Hatred, the reaction of anger prolonged into a mood, differs as

national or group emotion from the anger of the individual in part by

being subject strongly to group suggestion, and in part because in the

group consciousness there is only rarely a means of expression, on the

part of the individuals of the group, of the feelings of hatred.

Enemies are far away and inaccessible. Therefore hatred may become

deep and chronic.

Hatred between nations is usually based upon a long series of

reprisals and a history of invasions. These invasions are primarily

physical invasions, but later invasions in the sphere of invisible

values, offenses to honor and the like are added. These ideal values

come to be regarded as more vital than material values. Hatred between

groups becomes chronic and often seems to be groundless because the

values concerned have thus become intangible. The chronic moods of

hatred and dislike become explosive forces, ready to be excited to

action whenever any difference arises. Veblen (97) says wars never

occur except when questions of honor are involved, which is of course

equivalent to saying that the reaction of anger is always required as

an immediate cause of war. Veblen maintains also that emulation is

always involved in the patriotic spirit, that patriotism always

contains the idea of the defeat of an opponent, and is based upon

collective malevolence. The range of these occasions of crisis is so

great, and the feelings of hatred so persistent and volatile, that the

mechanism for the production of war is always present. These causes

range all the way from violation of property to offense to the most

abstract ideas of national etiquette. Violation of international law,

of moral principles, we see now, may have very far-reaching effects as

infringing the sphere of honor of nations not directly concerned,

since the prestige of all nations as participants in creating law and

becoming upholders of it is affected.

If hatred and its crises are causes of war, they do not fit into the

moods in which warfare is generally conducted. Hatred belongs to the

periods of peace and of strained relations, when the cause of war is

present, but the means of retaliation are not at hand or not in

action. The prevalence and persistence of hatred in war is a sign of

imperfect morale. Hatred cannot remain in the war mood of a nation

acting with full confidence in its powers. Hatred always implies

inferiority or impotent superiority. Dide (20) says that the spirit of

hatred does not fit into the soldier's life. It goes with the desire

for revenge and is strongest among those who stay at home and can do

nothing. Hatred is a phase of apprehension. Hatred is a product of the

fear that cannot be taken up into the optimistic moods, and thus be

transformed. It remains as a foreign body and an inhibition. It arises

when obstacles appear to be too great, when there are reverses, and

the enemy shows signs of being able to maintain a long and stubborn

resistance, or flaunts again the original cause of the disagreement.

Scheler (77) says that revenge, which is a form of hate, is not a

justifiable war motive. We should say also that it is not a normal war

mood, that it has no sustaining force, but causes a rapid expenditure

of energy which may be effectual in brief actions, but is even there

wasteful and interferes with judgment and efficiency. Morale based

upon hatred is insecure.

Hatred must have been a very early factor in the relations of groups

to one another, and presumably we should need to go back to animal

life and study antipathies there in order fully to understand the

nature of racial and national antagonisms, some of which may be based

upon physiological traits and primitive æsthetic qualities. The very

fact of the existence of groups, segregated and well bound together

for the purposes of offense and defense implies already a strong

contrast of feeling between that of individuals of the group toward

one another and that directed toward the outsider. This contrast

developed not merely as a reaction, but as a necessity, for groups in

the beginning must have had to contend against their own feeble social

cohesion, and existed only by reason of strong emotions of fear and

anger felt toward the stranger. Hatred toward all outside the group

must at one stage have been highly useful as a means of cementing the

bonds of the group and maintaining the necessary attitude of defense,

at a time when all outsiders were likely to be dangerous. Feelings of

friendliness toward strangers were dangerous to the life of the group,

and so hatred possessed survival value.

The main root of group antipathy is in all probability fear. Hatred is

an aspect of the aggressive defensive toward the stranger. Hatred is a

part of the aggressive reaction. As an expression of ferocity toward

all who are not known to be friendly, it belongs to the first line of

defense. Hatred is likely to be strong in the female because the

attitude of the female is universally defensive.

In the beginning, as MacCurdy (37) says, the contrasts between groups

were sharp, and these definitely separated groups must have felt

toward one another not only antagonism but a sense of being different

in kind. Intensity of feelings of opposition tends to magnify small

differences into specific differences. This sense of specific

difference is never lost, not even in the consciousness of enlightened

nations in regard to one another, and we may see it to-day displayed

as a mystic belief, on the part of many peoples, in their own

superiority. Nations are always outsiders to one another, and the

sense of strangeness perennially sustains defensive attitudes and

moods of hatred. The friendship of nations can never be very secure,

because the old idea of difference of kind is never quite abandoned.

Some degree of enmity seems always to be felt toward the foreigner;

that is, toward all who are not interested in the protective functions

of the group. MacCurdy thinks the intensity of suspicion and hatred of

peoples toward one another belongs to the pathological field, and that

one expression of this is the peculiarity of the mental processes by

which nations always justify their own cause in war. This, however, is

perhaps an exaggeration, since we can trace these states of mind in

all the history of the race.

How deep-seated the enmities and the sense of strangeness among

nations may be is seen in the fact that national groups living in

close proximity to one another tend to become less friendly rather

than to become affiliated. These feelings gradually produce conceptual

entities, which stand for the reality of the foreign. These concepts

are deposits, so to speak, from a great number of affective reactions,

and they always contain imaginative content based upon enmity and

suspicion. This underlying enmity between neighboring peoples is not

something rare in the world. All foreigners, even in the minds of the

most intelligent of peoples, are reconstructions, caricatures. These

feelings and attitudes are strong and deep and they prevent genuine

friendship among nations. We tend to think of all foreigners as in

some degree malicious, as designing, and lacking in the good qualities

and right habits which we ourselves possess.

Many authors have commented upon the entire inability of nations to

understand one another. There is a deep reason for this, which we have

already suggested. They do not wish to understand one another. It is a

part of the archaic system of defense to maintain an attitude of

distrust and misunderstanding and even fear. The fear of the enemy is

a protection--against invasion from without and disruption within.

Nations do not dare to relinquish their fear of one another, and we

see something of this voluntary cherishing of fear and enmity in the

present hesitation about entering into leagues on the part of many

nations. Nations really wish to hate one another, it would seem. Other

evidence of this we have observed in the cult of hate that has been

promulgated to keep up morale in the recent war. We see enmity

maintained when the differences among the peoples holding it are

superficial and must indeed be exaggerated and caricatured in order to

make them support feelings of dislike. Small differences in the

customs of closely related peoples are sufficient sometimes to

maintain intense antagonism. As Collier (68) says, it is precisely the

bad manners of a people that cause conflict. These bad manners are of

course manners that are _different from our own_.

Germany's outburst of hatred and its frequent exhibition during the

war and its promulgation as a cult and a religion appear to have

excited the interest of many writers on the war. As a chapter in the

psychology of war it has suggested new problems and points of view,

and it has also appealed to many as an interesting problem of national

psychology. If our explanation of hatred as especially related to fear

and to the sense of inferiority is correct Germany of all nations must

have been affected with a disorder of morale, or some perversion of

national consciousness.

The hatred of Germany for England is not the only example of

international enmity in the world, but its expression in the war has

made it peculiarly interesting. The grievance against England is first

of all that England is great and prosperous, and lives in comfort upon

the unearned fruits of empire, while the German has toiled hard

through the centuries and has caught nothing. England is hated because

in many ways she has stood squarely in the path of Germany's progress

and because in the history of European diplomacy, doors leading to

wider empire have been again and again slammed in Germany's face,

usually by the hand of England. Germany hates England, according to

German writers, because England, a kindred race, tried to betray

western civilization into the hands of barbarism. Germany hates

England because, to the German mind, England is hypocritical. The

Englishman criticizes in others precisely what he does himself;

Puritanical talk covers a sinful heart. Germany hates England because

in her sea-policy England has been high handed and arrogant. The

Germans often call England a robber nation, with the morals of a

burglar who, having enriched himself by his trade, and having retired

from business, now preaches honesty.

It is not merely the hatred of England on the part of Germany that is

of interest for a psychology of war but the fact that Germany has

taken her hate for England with a peculiar seriousness, believed it

unique, has been to the pains of justifying it morally, has covered it

with religious exaltation, made it a cult and even expressed it in a

formula, and made it an educational program. There are many German

writings justifying the hatred of England and encouraging hate as a

weapon of righteousness. Smith (47) (64) has given us the titles of

forty-four German publications in his own possession, having for

subject Germany's hatred of England, and says that there are

sixty-five more known to him. Some of these expressions of hatred are

extreme. There is, or was, a pastor in Hamburg who declared from his

pulpit that his people were doing God a service in hating England and

in taking every step possible to wipe so pestiferous a nation from the

face of the earth. Frau Reuter says that it is impossible now more

than ever to love our enemies, that England who professed love for

Germany and then betrayed her love must be hated. Stern, in his

studies of hate in children found that hate may be strong without any

clear content, in the minds of German children. That some of this

hatred of England is a direct effect of the teachings of Treitschke

can hardly be doubted, when we recall the great influence his

teachings have had, and the peculiar bitterness of that dramatic

personage for England, for England's pretentiousness, her middle class

satisfaction, her insular conceit.

The further details of the cult of hatred in Germany need not detain

us, since the purpose is only to suggest here the connection of hatred

with the national pessimism, the fear and the inferiority motive of

Germany. We see a similar attitude in Austria, where there is a

violent race hatred toward the Serbians, which Le Bon has regarded as

the motive from which Austria went to war. Ferrero comments upon the

fact that hatred is conspicuously absent in America, and says that the

greater hatred in Europe is due not only to the obvious result of

nations being crowded together, but also to the caste system which

limits the freedom of the individual and tends to engender deep

passions. Dide (20) says that in Germany preoccupation with the idea

of injustice is a cause of war, and Chapman (39) also remarks that

Germany had gone mad thinking of her wrongs. That jealousy and fear

are in general the substratum of national hatred is deeply impressed

upon one in studying the psychology of Germany. All the hate motive of

the late war might well be found in Germany's prayer "_Gott strafe

England._" Germany appealed to God to punish England, of course,

because Germany herself could not. Both the appeal and the hatred are

reactions of fear and a sense of impotence. Germany hated England

because England was secure behind her navy, upon her island, beyond

the reach of the war machine which is Germany's symbol of power and

the compensation for her sense of inferiority and weakness.

_The Instinct of Combat_

We may distinguish in the motives of war between the aggressive

tendency, which we have already discussed as a reaction of fear or of

anger, and a more specific instinct of combat as a possession of the

individual, less subject to suggestion, less closely related to the

phenomena of the herd. The aggressive reaction we associate, or some

writers do associate it, with the _predatory instinct_, practical in

its motive, having in part an economic basis. The love of combat which

appears especially as a play motive in the child and the youth is

expressed as a desire for conquest and in the pleasure of overcoming

an enemy.

Some see in war a recrudescence of the instinct of combat, and indeed

think of war as mainly such a return to primitive instinct. The life

of peace represses this motive too much, they think. Life is too

organized and coöperative and the individual craves release from it.

The general objections to such an interpretation of war we have

already stated. We think rather of certain specific movements as

avenues of approach to highly complex states of ecstasy, and of these

states of ecstasy as representing or containing the real craving for

war, so far as there is one. The war mood exploits these movements and

gives room for instincts to display themselves, and these instincts,

in their expression, are pleasure-toned because they are archaic and

have once been well organized and habitual forms of activity having

practical objects. But to say that men have a profound but concealed

desire to kill one another, that the fighting impulse remains intact

in some original animal form, is a travesty upon human nature. It is

precisely because in war killing is depersonalized, so to speak, that

it is a moral duty and is performed under conditions in which there is

a summation of many strong motives leading to the act that, as we see

it, men find joy in battle. The instinct of attack, or the hunting

instinct that is involved in this activity, can become pleasure-toned

only because of the presence of other motives, and because the object

is dehumanized for the time. Otherwise we should expect all soldiers,

once having their aggressive instincts aroused in battle, to become

dangerous to the community.

That there is, however, a residue of pure love of physical combat and

a survival of the instinctive movements of combat is shown in play,

although here too the motives are mixed. The desire to fight, to kill,

to hunt are still present but for the most part are sublimated in

adult life into desire for competition in general, love of danger, and

the hunting and gambling impulse. But we can here and there in human

conduct see certain roots of pure instincts having definite

coördinated reactions. These undoubtedly do play a part, but probably

a very small part in the present moods of war. So far as they remain

purely instinctive their place as a general motive of war seems

negligible. It is a question, in fact, whether even in the state of

savagery any pure instinct for killing ever played a considerable

part. There were already practical motives, motives of fear and anger,

and presumably also complex states of pleasure connected with beliefs,

customs and ceremonies as well as with battle, so that even then men

cannot be said to have acted upon anything like purely instinctive

impulses.

Numerous accounts have come from the scenes of the great war about men

who appear for a time to be dominated by irresistible instincts. Gibbs

(80) says there are some men in every army who like slaughter for its

own sake. They find an intoxication in it. They love the hunting

spirit of it all. We have the story of a French soldier of peaceable

disposition who appeared to experience an ecstasy of delight as he lay

concealed in a shell hole and was able to pick off many of the enemy.

This was not the exhilaration and abandon experienced by men while

making attack, when violent muscular exertion produces an

intoxication of mind, but a dominance of the mind by something which

seems very much like the hunting spirit, under circumstances in which,

we may suppose, the enemy had undergone some process of dehumanization

in the mind of the hunter. We may suppose also that there are

individuals in every army who have pathological impulses or

perversions, which show themselves in instinctive reactions of a

specific nature and in excess of the normal.

Both the Germans and the French are accused by French and German

writers respectively with being the real lovers of battle. German

writers say that the Germans are peculiarly peace-loving and by nature

lacking in the battle spirit, but that the French love battle for its

own sake, and that this is shown clearly by their history. Others see

love of conflict, aggressiveness and cruelty in the German

disposition. Boutroux (13) wishes to place among the causes of the

great war the native brutality of the German disposition, a trait

existing from long ago, and now become a disciplined cruelty--a

_zuchtmaessige Grausamkeit_, regarded as right and meritorious. Many

think they find this love of fighting, bloodthirst and love of

destruction in the German soul. Many attribute pure aggressiveness of

a pronounced type or an exaggerated predatory instinct to the Germans.

Chapman (39) says that the war is a flaming forth of passions that

have covertly been burning in the soul of Germany for several decades.

He adds that with the Germans war is instinctive; there is no _casus

belli_ at all. War 'is for war's sake, and is a need of nature with

the German. Smith (64) declares that the German is innately brutal,

and as one proof of this he shows the statistics of brutal crimes in

Germany. He writes of the truculent aggressiveness of the Teutonic

race, of the hatred and love of destruction displayed by the robber

knights of the Middle Ages, and regards quarrelsome aggressiveness as

innate in German character. Dide (20) thinks that such aggressive

warfare as is practiced by the Germans always goes with a pessimistic

disposition. Thayer (58) connects bloodthirstiness with the paganism

of Germany, and says that bloodthirstiness crops out again and again

in German history. Nicolai (79) also refers to the craving for blood

in the German character, and says that it has been shown throughout

the history of the Germans. The old sacrifices which grew out of

cannibalism and are due to the persistence of the craving for blood

show an instinctive desire for slaughter, or at least a confirmed

habit of killing that dies hard. But in all these characterizations of

national temperament there is no clear distinction among various

motives of conduct. Anger and fear reactions, love of combat itself,

the motives of display are all intermingled.

There can of course be no precise way of estimating the place of a

pure instinct of combat among the causes of war, or in the war moods.

We have seen reason for believing that although these instincts remain

as fragments in the individual and especially are utilized in higher

processes of the social life, they are less influential in determining

motives and conduct than is sometimes believed. We cannot at least

explain war as a sudden release of these instincts. That primitive

passions for violence, as MacCurdy (37) maintains, reënforce the herd

antagonism, and in the midst of the apprehension at the threat of war,

give rise to a desire for war, may be true, but such primitive

passions are not all of the forces that are at work in causing modern

wars. To say that in the individual of modern society a savage still

lives is an exaggeration, and does not properly express what social

consciousness is or has done. The social life is not a balance in

which primitive instincts are held in leash by other instincts or

feelings, but a new product in which there is a synthesis of impulses

in which the original form of the impulses may be greatly transformed.

We live in composite situations to which there correspond composite

moods. Often motives which clearly reveal to analysis their

instinctive character have no tendency to express themselves in the

definite instinctive movements corresponding to this instinct-feeling,

having permanently become dissociated from the primitive reactions,

either by a process of generalization and fusion of states and

processes in the individual, or by the inheritance of structural

changes. There are, it is true, all degrees of amalgamation of old and

new elements or of transformation of old elements, but to think of

instincts as remaining intact and unchanged in modern life seems

wholly wrong.

After all man is no longer an animal, and even the distance between

man as a member of the present complex organized society and man as

primitive or savage is considerable. The difference is not entirely in

the associations themselves but in all that the associations have

done, or that they represent, in modifying instincts, which no longer

exist in their original form and distinctness. Man is a creature of

feeling, but not of instinct we say, and this distinction is important

in many ways. All analogies between animal and human life have an

element of danger in them. To explain human conduct in terms of herd

instincts--instincts of aggression and the like--is misleading, since

the instincts that are assumed do not exist as such, and perhaps never

did. The psychology of the crowd, and the psychology of war, cannot be

contained in the psychology of the herd, however attractive the

simplicity of these concepts may be. That primitive instincts may

remain as remnants, that the crowd shows some of the characteristics

of the herd and the pack cannot be denied, and that in the spirit of

war these fragments and traits play a certain part may well be

believed. But the synthetic and highly complex mood we call the war

spirit, and the causes of war, however archaic some of their elements

may be, are very different from any mere sum of instincts. There is no

specific craving for combat that we can call a cause of war, or that,

in our view, plays any considerable part in the causes of war--combat

as apart from practical motives and the complex moods into which, in

its modern form, it enters. Some writers appear to be deceived because

they assume that war is itself primitive, and do not see that in spite

of its conventions and its old forms, it is not far behind

civilization, not because civilization has made no progress, or is so

insecure, but because war, chaos though it be, in some respects

contains all our modern feelings. Kerr says that war is due to a

superfluity of animal force that must vent itself, but such

explanations of war seem certainly to be very far from the truth. That

theory is far from being adequate as an explanation of play. It is

much less so as an explanation of war. The other theory of play that

is most prevalent and which is offered as a theory of war--that play

and war are reversions to primitive instincts, is also insufficient.

War is neither an overflow of energy nor a reversion to primitive

states. Rather it is caused by and involves all the present and active

motives of man and all his essential human qualities.

_Social Instincts_

Whatever the specific causes of war may be, war is of course possible

only because there exists a mechanism or instinct or feeling, because

of which great groups of people act as a unit in the common interests

of all. We usually speak of this collective action as the result of

_social instincts_ or a general _social instinct_. It is the place of

this "instinct" in the causes and moods of war that we must consider.

War is a social phenomenon: it is a movement directed toward an

object, but the force that drives the movement is of course social.

Several writers, among them MacCurdy (37), Murray (90), and Trotter

(82), have dealt with this social aspect of war, and have interpreted

war as a herd reaction. All these theories are simple. Trotter

maintains that in man there are four instincts and no more:

self-preservative, reproductive nutritional, and herd instincts. The

peculiarity of the herd instinct is that it does not itself have

definite motor expression, but serves to intensify and direct the

other instincts. This herd instinct is a tendency, so to speak, which

can confer instinctive sanction upon any other part of the field of

action or belief. The herd instinct, for example, gives instinctive

quality to the social organization and social proclivities of three

different types of society, which appear as national characters. These

are the wolf, the sheep, and the bee types. The aggressive type of

social organization is represented by the Roman and now by the German

civilization. This is a declining type, but it was because moral

equality could not be tolerated in Germany that the rulers were

obliged to cause Germany to revert to the primitive aggressive form of

gregariousness. China would be a good example of Trotter's herd of the

sheep type, for here the defensive instinct seems to be the dominating

social reaction. War becomes, in such a herd, a great stimulus when,

and only when, it is a threat to the whole nation, and when,

therefore, the individual fears for the whole herd rather than for

himself.

The third type is the bee type, well represented by England, although

still imperfectly. This is the type toward which the world as a whole

tends, but as yet there is no complete form of it. At present the

capacity for individual reactions to the same stimulus has far

outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. Intercommunication in

the biological sense has been allowed to run at haphazard. When once a

great gregarious unit of this type shall have been thoroughly

organized, and be subject to conscious direction as a whole, there

will appear in the world a new kind of social mechanism and a new

biological form. The interest in war will give way to a larger and

more dramatic field of interest and of conquest than the mere taking

and re-taking of land. But there is as yet no such society. Even in

times of a great war, there is an internal differentiation that cannot

be overcome, an individualism that creates antagonism, and a type of

leadership which is conservative and static rather than progressive.

If we may safely apply Trotter's generalization to the present

antagonism among groups (within nations, and also national groups) we

might say that the rapid differentiation of the human species has had

an effect of creating within the species _man_ a large number of types

of sub-specific value, and in this respect man differs greatly from

any other species. Differences recognized by groups of the same

species of animals are generally not sufficient to create antagonism

among the groups, but in the case of man these differences have had

precisely the effect of marking off groups with antagonistic

interests. The animal society dominated by a few instincts directed

for the most part toward external objects preserves a state of peace

within the species. Man by reason of his intelligence and his

capacities for specialization and the great number of his desires

tends to prey upon his own kind. This segregation is in part

artificial, becomes conventional and is subject to the effects of

leadership that tends to fixate artificial distinctions, but it is

also in part an effect of the exigencies of the wider life of man, of

his superiority of which variability of conduct is an essential

aspect. This differentiation is one of the conditions of a firmer

organization in the society of man than any animal society can attain,

but at the present time the two processes of differentiation and

organization are to some extent antagonistic to one another.

Trotter maintains that the tendency of nature is to increase and

maintain the homogeneity of the species, but we should say rather that

the whole process of differentiation and organization is upon a level

in which the biological processes that make for or against homogeneity

have but little effect. The task before man is social. It is not so

much a consciousness of his destiny as a species that man requires,

but of his work as an organized group. It is due to a rapid

differentiation and increase in man's desires that he has become a

species in which there is internal warfare. It must be by the control

of these desires in a conscious process of organization that he will

become, if ever, a well-ordered and homogeneous group. Trotter thinks

of such a change as a biological phenomenon, as being one of those

momentous steps which a very few times have been taken in the

development of organic life in the world.

We cannot discuss fully here these biological views, as they relate to

the future organization of the world. That the explanation of wars

within the human species this view affords is correct so far as it

goes one would admit. Men fight among themselves as animals do not,

because of their differences. We should prefer to think of these

differences, however, neither as a phase of biological differentiation

as structural change nor as functional adaptation by differentiation

of reactions to the same stimuli, but as the effect of the new

consciousness of desires that came with the rise of man from the

animal stage, and the conditions under which these desires could and

must be realized. It is the complexity of interests that has given to

man his antagonisms and his differences, and these secondary

differences have been utilized as a means of still further developing

the desires and satisfying them, or justifying their satisfaction. It

is man's intelligence and his capacity for being governed in his

conduct by many desires that teaches him to make war upon his own

kind, and the very same qualities make his associations firm and

lasting. _But just in this way the human group ceases to be a herd and

to be dominated by herd instincts._ To interpret war, therefore, as an

effect of social instinct or herd instinct upon the instincts of

aggression or of self-protection, or as the effect of aroused

instincts of aggression and self-protection exciting the herd

instinct, is unsatisfactory because it is too simple, and erroneously

undertakes to explain human life in terms of instinct and also carries

biological analogies too far. These views, if we understand them, seem

to have the characteristic faults of all purely biological sociology.

That, however, the "herd instinct," or the social feeling or the

cohesive force in groups, whatever it may be, is exceedingly strong

and persistent is shown by the recent war. We see a world highly

differentiated, and with wide associations which seemed to have become

permanent becoming at once a world in which the lines of cleavage are

based upon propinquity and political organization. All ties, except

national ties, were broken up. The nation, conscious of itself,

becomes a unit or personality, and the sense of personality of a

nation becomes greatly intensified in time of war. The individual

becomes unimportant, both in his own estimation and in the eye of the

law. It is the life of the nation as a whole that is felt to be

threatened and under this threat the group as a whole becomes an

object of devotion and solicitude. Nicolai (79) comments upon this

_Massengefuehl_ and says that, when not counterbalanced by higher

elements of social consciousness, it may be a low and dangerous

element in the consciousness of groups. Sumner (70) also speaks of the

extraordinary power of gregariousness, and says that when the movement

is upon a vast scale, the numbers engaged being very large, there is

always an exhilaration connected with the movement, and that if the

causes involved are believed to be deep and holy, the force of this

gregarious mood may become demoniacal.

There are two especially remarkable changes that take place in the

social life in war or in the act of going to war, and which represent

the social instinct or feeling at its highest point. These phenomena

are types of social reaction, but the question may be raised whether

they do not represent something more than reactions in the ordinary

sense. We see in times of war, first, a greatly increased

sensitiveness to leadership, a craving for devotion to a leader,

indeed, which is sometimes pathetic in its effort to transform really

commonplace men into religious objects. The leader as a concept and an

ideal is a product of the social mood itself, which does for him

precisely what romantic love does for its object, exerts a creative

effect upon him. The leader is magnified to heroic size and held up

before the enemy as a threat. It is plain to be seen that this

devotion to leader and imaginative treatment of him is in part a

defensive reaction. The individual hides behind this colossal figure,

and thus feels himself safe. But this protective impulse that creates

the invincible leader is not the only motive; at least it is probably

not the only one. The leader represents the ideals and the ambitions

of the people, and his prestige and the forms that surround him,

especially everything that is aesthetic or suggests the heroic,

symbolize the craving for power in a people. The strength and the

peculiar abandon and perversity, one may say, of the affections of a

nation toward the leader in time of war make the rise of such a leader

dreaded by the political powers in every country. Newspapers, in every

war, find some heroic figure whom they exploit as a coming dictator,

and changes of leadership in the field apparently sometimes have

reference to these popular currents. But a nation in love with its

leader is strong in defense, and readily becomes aggressive, and this

relation of mass to leader is of course one of the main foundations of

military morale.

The second universal social phenomenon of war is the greatly

intensified feeling of solidarity as shown in comradeship and united

feelings on the part of the people. This too is in part, and only in

part, a protective reaction. The individual becomes safe by becoming a

part of a whole which then alone seems to have real existence and true

value. The individual loses himself in the whole, but the whole group

also becomes absorbed and taken into the sphere of protection and

interest of the individual. The individual becomes highly sensitive to

everything that happens to the group, and peculiarly affected by the

social mood of comradeship. This spirit of comradeship becomes one of

the most conspicuous qualities of the social life in time of war.

Comradeship in arms is of course the highest point of this social

solidarity. The mass action, the close physical relationship,

subjection to the same narrow routine and the common experiences of

danger, induce social states that represent the most complete

expression of pure social feeling, and excite moods which, upon

occasion may reach the highest degree of ecstasy or intoxication and

lead to acts of the most exalted heroism.

These changes in the social life in time of war are striking and

fundamental. To explain them would mean to explain social feeling

itself. We may say that these phenomena of the social life are

precisely the _herd reactions_ the biological writers speak of, but to

do so would mean, from our point of view, to ignore some very

significant aspects of human social life. It would ignore first of all

the ecstatic quality of the higher social life, which is indeed the

essential quality of the social spirit of war. Instead of saying that

this intensity of feeling is merely a reflex of an instinctive

reaction, we should say that it is the expression of, and in part the

satisfaction of, desires that are fulfilled in the social experience

of war. The intense social life is craved, not as an instinctive

reaction, but as a complex state expressing explicit desires. The

craving for this social solidarity and ecstasy of social feeling is a

factor in the causes of war. What we experience socially in times of

peace is a society in which social feeling is narrow and provincial,

in which we are conscious of many antagonistic motives. This social

life fails to satisfy the desires which are seeking expression in the

social life. That war is in part a creation of the social impulse

seeking expression may be assumed from the nature of the social

feelings that are excited in war. That such social feeling is a

creation in the sense that it is desired, we see if in no other way in

the fact that social ecstasy is the most universal form of

satisfaction of all those impulses which fuse in the intoxication

impulse, where we recognize it as the craving for an abundant or real

life. Life is most real in its intensely dramatic social forms. Social

ecstasy is in part a conscious adaptation. It is something that is

desired and induced, and artificially cultivated in various ways,

especially by a variety of aesthetic social experiences, and in the

cults of intoxication. Alcohol has been used specifically throughout

the world and from the beginning at least of the historical period for

the purpose of creating social feeling. Patriotism is in part, we may

say, a cultivated, social emotion, and in the art of manners we see

the social life given forms which will increase its susceptibility to

suggestion, its persuasive force and its organized expression. Such

facts show us social emotion which is something more than the feeling

side of an instinctive reaction.

This is hardly the place to try to elucidate the fundamental

principles of the psychology of the social feelings or instincts, but

it may be helpful to suggest in outline certain divergences in the

theory of the social life that seem to be in point. We see on one side

many writers who tend to regard social phenomena as mainly the result

of instinct, as the expression either of a single instinct or of a

combination of several specific instinctive tendencies. Contrasted

with these views are the theories according to which social life is

something that is mainly created by reason, based, so to speak, upon

the observation that in union there is strength. Neither of these

views seems to be satisfactory. That social feeling is based upon

instinct is clear, but that it is also something created, synthetic,

and subjected to selective processes seems also evident. Precisely

what the instinctive basis of the social life is, perhaps one cannot

with any certainty determine, nor can we say how many specific

instincts enter into it. But that social feeling in its higher levels

is a very complex mood, in which, although there are several

instinctive reactions or feelings, there is to be discovered no social

instinct as such, is the conclusion which we reach.

_Social behavior is a development of all the fundamental tendencies of

the organism._ It has its roots both in the reproductive and the

nutritional motives. These fundamental tendencies have issued

phylogenetically in specific reactions that enter into the social life

at all its levels, and in the life of the individual these reactions,

expressing needs and desires, issue in highly complex moods, in which

fundamental feelings are present but do not constitute the whole of

the social moods. The individual does various specific things with

reference to his fellows which are of the nature of instinctive

reactions, but both in the phyletic development and the development in

the individual, elements that enter into the modern social life as

instincts have tended to lose their specific character, have become

general or merely organic, have been transformed and have to some

extent lost their original significance.

The motives of hunger, the reactions of the reproductive mechanisms,

reactions to visual impressions and to sounds, warmth reactions, the

huddling of fear, the influences of suggestion, susceptibility to all

the stimuli of the social object enter into social feelings, and

remain to some extent as instinctive reactions in the higher social

processes. But we do not seem to find any general social instinct, or

any specific herd instinct or any definite and broadly acting

protective and aggressive instincts. As compared with some other views

of the social feelings ours assumes in one way more and in another

less of instinct in the social life. There is more instinct in the

sense that more specific instinctive reactions are recognized in it,

but less in assuming that these reactions are derivatives of primitive

reactions of the organism, and also because they become transformed

and fused and lose their original forms. They have come from common

sources in organic life, we might say, and they meet again in the

general moods which they help to create.

_Conclusions_

It is an important point to observe that most if not all of the

specific instinctive reactions and feelings engendered in war, or

occurring as an incitement to war, are capable of inducing ecstatic

states. There are several of these movements and states, each of which

can become, so to speak, a foundation for the development of ecstasy.

Combat may and must do this, and probably war could never be carried

on at all unless danger and death had qualities which arouse ecstatic

moods. There is a joy in fighting, in killing, and in the tumult of

battle that becomes one of the most important of military assets, and

is one of the main elements of morale in the field. This capacity of

human nature to make over that which is intrinsically painful into the

pleasurable is one of the paradoxes of human life to be explained and

taken into account in the study of the psychology of war. Fear itself

may induce an ecstasy, both in the individual, as we know from many

reported cases from the late war, and as a social mood in which the

fear contributes a quality of intensity and ferocity to patriotism.

The gambling mood, which is in part a play with fear, is another

ecstatic reaction seen in war, and it is often the means of clearing

the way, so to speak, for free and uninhibited action.

Of course all the purely æsthetic elements in the social life have

this effect of arousing exalted moods, and indeed that is precisely

their function. All social impulses tend in this same direction, and

there is induced in all intense social states an intoxication mood. In

these social states, the reproductive motive is often clearly

discernible, but partly by common consent and convention, and partly

because of the composite and fused form of impulses in the social

mood, robbed of its specific reactions and converted into a new

product, regarded both as conduct and as feeling.

All religious states aroused in war tend to become ecstatic. Their

work is to overcome the sense of tragedy of war, and it is only by

becoming intense and voluminous, so to speak, that they can accomplish

their work at all. Either they must end in a mysticism which includes

or takes the form of exalted moods, or they must, as can be

accomplished in some temperaments, become dynamic states by inspiring

a fatalistic attitude, which is at bottom a sense of throwing oneself

unreservedly into the hands of fate.

We may best think of these complex war moods as the forces out of

which wars are made, and the spirit in which they are conducted, but

not as by their own initiative creating wars. These intoxication moods

or ecstasies are forces which contain desires that are general, we

say; they are mental processes that act as a means of greatly

increasing the volume of all social actions. When we analyze them we

find specific desires in them, and evidences of instinct and primitive

feeling, but they are not in themselves tendencies toward specific

reactions and in fact the motor tendencies they contain more or less

inhibit one another.

In general, these war moods of which we speak are _precipitated_ by

definite and incisive reactions of fear and anger. These emotions of

fear or anger seem to be the necessary positive stimuli to induce the

moods of war. Fear and anger, no one can maintain, are the sole causes

of war, and they are far from being the sole factors of the war moods,

but they are the usual precipitants of war.

Fear and anger as social emotions cannot sustain organized and

effectual social activity upon a large scale; we see them always, in

war, taken up, transformed, absorbed in moods which are at once more

practical, and more exalted and which, as complex processes, can be

sustained over long periods of time. But these primitive reactions of

anger and fear enter into the ecstatic moods, become associated with

or induce æsthetic and religious states of consciousness, gain moral

justification or religious exploitation, become aspects of directive

and dynamic moods and so give force and efficiency to morale and

strategy.

War appears as a breakdown of certain modes of volition. Certain types

of conflict are abandoned, and aggressive activities become more

simple and powerful, but war is no reversion to primitive instinct, or

to any number of instincts. The resulting states of mind are too

rational as means, and too exalted and ideal to be thus primitive. New

content is introduced into social consciousness and new purposes come

to light in these ecstasies, even though the consciously sought

objectives may be archaic and conventional and the mental states

traceable to more elementary states, and the conduct be similar in

purpose and type to the simpler forms of conduct we find in the animal

world What we are trying to impress here is the well known truth that

the whole of a thing is not necessarily contained in its parts. It is

the meaning of the war-mood as a whole, as a summation of many factors

of the mental life, and as a direction of social consciousness as a

whole that is its most important characteristic.

CHAPTER IV

AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE MOODS AND IMPULSES OF WAR

That experiences and motives which belong to the field of the

aesthetic play an important part in war can hardly be doubted. The

whole history of war shows this, and even in the beginning war seems

to be an activity carried on in part for its own sake, and not

entirely for its practical results, and thus has qualities which later

are explicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply the

aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so highly complex an

object as war, but that war does partake of the nature of what we call

the _beautiful_, and that the craving for the beautiful is a factor in

the causes of war seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of

course no new theme. War has often been praised because of its

aesthetic nature, and its dramatic features. It is called a beautiful

adventure. It is reproduced in pictorial art, represented in music,

and thus glorified and adorned, showing at least that it can readily

be made to appear beautiful if it does not in itself possess beauty.

Those who think of war as related to play also connect it with art.

Nicolai (79), who condemns war, says that it is when war as an

instinctive action is no longer useful, but is performed for its own

sake that it becomes beautiful.

We cannot undertake to enumerate all the aesthetic qualities of war,

or to show all the relations of the aesthetic aspects to other motives

of war in detail, since to do so would mean to work out some of the

fundamental principles of aesthetics. We may begin, however, by saying

that war as a whole, as a movement in which there is complete

organization of social forces shows already the marks of aesthetic

experience and of art. As such a unification of interest in a strong

and uninhibited movement, as a coördinated expression of deep desires,

a multiplicity of action with a unity of purpose, so to speak, war is

aesthetic in form although to mention such very general qualities does

not go very far toward characterizing an object.

In its meaning as _tragedy_ war contains and exerts a strong aesthetic

appeal. With all its horrors, war fascinates the mind. As fate, death,

history it inspires awe, and creates a sense of the inevitableness of

events and of the play of transcendental and inexorable forces in

human life. When, under any influence, these feelings appear as an

accepting and willing of evil, we have the tragic movement as we find

it in art. The death _motif_ in war is the center of a variety of

states which are ecstatic and have aesthetic quality. The religion of

valor, the passion that is aroused by abandoning oneself to fate, the

absolute devotion of service are aesthetic in form as experience,

whatever else they may be. The relation of these motives to love and

to the reproductive impulses has often been noticed. Devotion and

death appear as beautiful; their representation in art is in part a

recognition of this fact; in part it is an effort to transform them

into the forms of the aesthetic. Art celebrates, but also creates,

this luxury of feeling, and war also in its own dramatic movement

transforms ugly and plain facts of life by including them in ecstatic

states, and surrounding them with glory.

The ideal of glorified death plays a large part in the spirit of war.

In war the fear of death is not only in great part stilled, but there

is a longing to tempt fate and also to experience death itself, and

this desire may become ecstatic. Here we see in effect one of the most

important functions of the aesthetic, which is to carry on a _drama of

the will_ in which something that is in itself painful becomes

pleasant and desired. The desire for war is to some extent a desire

for death, a longing for a form of euthanasia in which the individual

dies but in a sense lives--lives as glorified in death, and also in

the continuance of the life of the group and of the country into which

he has been absorbed. It is of course its relation to death that more

than anything else has made it necessary that war should appeal to

art, and take an aesthetic form, and without the aid of the aesthetic,

war could not maintain itself in the world. As a sheer fulfillment of

duty war could not survive. By the strength of its aesthetic appeal

war must control and overcome the instinct of self-preservation.

War appeals to the human mind as the great adventure of life. To the

healthy normal man this appeal, under certain circumstances, may be

compelling in its power. Man feels the call of adventure in his blood.

War may seem at times the natural expression of what is most real and

most essentially masculine in human nature. War is the essence of all

the dramatic and heroic story of the world. The past lives most

vividly in this theme of war, and the sense of remoteness in time

lends an aesthetic coloring to all the story of war, and is in part

its fascination. The dead heroes of to-day are glorified by linking

their names with the great heroes of the past.

To the glory of the individual, which is an aesthetic appeal, is added

the still stronger appeal of the ideal of national glory. The image

created in the mind which sustains the devotion of the individual is

also an aesthetic form. It is the idea of a nation transformed by

story, symbol and eloquence that is established. The dimness and

mysticism of the long ago, all dramatic scenes of the national life,

the forms of royalty are used in transforming reality into an ideal.

The consciousness of a nation is indeed an artist which creates an

ideal nation, glorifying and transforming the past, and painting a

vivid picture of the empire that is to be. No little part in the

German idea of the fatherland has been taken by the revived image of

the old German Empire, and the story of Charlemagne, the Ottonides,

the Hohenstaufen and the Hohenzollern which has been woven into the

life of the present and has become an aesthetic setting for the idea

of future greatness.

In the religion of valor, also, we may find aesthetic elements. Valor

represents in this cult the spirit of the superior man. It is an

aristocratic idea. Military life is full of this theme. The ideals of

_noblesse oblige_, honor, the spirit of sportsmanship, enter into it,

and all these concepts are in part aesthetic in nature. It is neither

as moral nor as practical ideas that they have so deeply influenced

society, but because of their appeal to the sense of the beautiful.

All this aspect of war and military life, both in its motives and in

its forms, is closely related to the pure beauty of art. The play

spirit also, which in some of its developments at least is aesthetic,

enters into the motives of war. War, we say, is the great adventure.

It is the realization of power. It is an expression of the love of the

sense of freedom. It is the great game, in which everything is staked.

The love of danger and the love of gambling with life that it contains

have roots that are also roots of various forms of art.

Another element, aesthetic in motive and form, obviously related to

the reproductive functions of the individual, is the display motive.

This motive of display is concerned especially with the idea of

courage. It is of course a deep desire of the male to display courage

before the female. This display motive must be the main motive of the

_uniform_ and all the other ornamental aspects of military life. Rank,

titles and decorations belong to the same movement. They are

indications of the advancement of the man in those essential qualities

of the soldier, the chief of which is courage. The aesthetic forms in

which courage is represented help to sustain it, and are an important

element in morale, and they also serve a purpose in creating or

adding to the allurement of the service and the fascination of war. It

is the craving for the display of courage, the desire of the man "to

show the stuff that is in him," that gives to war some of its most

persistent aesthetic forms, and these aesthetic forms help both to

make the display of courage effective and to create courage.

Among these aesthetic elements of war must be considered of course the

rhythms, the forms, all the concerted action, the marching (which may

be regarded as one of the forms of the dance), the parade, the

maneuvering and drill that enter into military life. Already in

primitive warfare these aesthetic forms begin to appear and indicate

clearly both their practical significance as means of affecting the

will, and their relations to the religious and to the reproductive

motives. The warrior tries to create in his person the appearance of

power, and also by the aesthetic forms he introduces into his warfare,

the feeling of power. He believes indeed that through these aesthetic

forms he actually creates or exerts power. This is the motive of the

war dance, which as an aesthetic form produces this ecstasy of the

feeling of power. This power is often conceived to be magical; the

women dancing at home are supposed to exert an influence upon the men

in the field or upon the enemy, and the savage believes that in his

own displays he actually overcomes the spirit of his enemy. Art is

here plainly serving a purpose. Display is a means of creating an

impression in the minds of the enemy. It also has the purpose of

creating an effect in the mind of the soldier himself. The art in

military life is, indeed, to give the impression of power to all who

must be affected by the exhibition of force.

All social life contains elements that appeal to the aesthetic sense,

and these aesthetic elements are by no means solely ornamental. The

universal development of etiquette and manners has reference to very

practical aspects of the social life. Their function is to influence

the will. The highly developed etiquette of military life is not

merely to facilitate the military functions, and it is no explanation

of the formalism of the military life to say that this is a sign of

its archaic nature. Formalism in this life is one of the means taken

to cover up all the details of militarism that are repugnant: the

hardship, the lack of freedom and the like. Etiquette acts

persuasively upon the will, it helps to make military life desired,

and to make men submissive under control of absolute leaders. All

formalism in social life, considered in one aspect of it, is a symbol

of the resignation of the will of the individual. As thus a symbol it

may either convey or mediate social feeling, and when social feeling

is absent the art of manners may become a substitute for this social

feeling, and in both these ways it is a means of giving to society

cohesion, order and form.

Such considerations as these help to explain the longing for war or

its equivalent which persists in the human heart. It helps us to

realize the truth of Cramb's (66) assertion that the whole history of

the world shows that man has lacked not only the power but the will to

end war and establish perpetual peace. There are still motives in the

mind of man that make him approve of war. War is perpetuated because

of its heroic form, as a form of experience in which the meaning of

life is felt to be exploited, in which life is transformed and

glorified, in which the tragedy of life, which in any case is

inevitable, becomes a tragedy which, because it bears the form of art,

is acceptable and even longed for. This is the allurement of war, its

persistent illusion, perhaps. The aesthetic forms of war take war out

of the field of reason, and on occasion make it transcend or pervert

reason. So we may understand why it is true that sometimes those who

but little understand why they are to die on the field of battle may

display the greatest courage and the greatest enthusiasm for war, and

we must not say that these causes are fatuous because they exist in

the realm of aesthetic values.

If we take war too realistically, with reference to its practical

motives, its mere killing and looting, which we may suspect are

related to the nutritional motive that we always find running through

human conduct, and leave out of account those aspects of war which

seem to belong mainly to the reproductive motive, to the enthusiasm

and intoxication and art of the world, we shall to that extent

misunderstand it. These motives cannot, of course, be separated

definitely from one another in analyzing conduct, but we cannot be

very wrong in differentiating phases of war which belong predominantly

to the reproductive motive. It is because, at least, all deep

tendencies of life are involved in war that it is so hard to eliminate

it from experience. If war were an instinctive reaction it might be

controlled by reason. If it were an atavism or a rudimentary organ

some social surgery or other might relieve us of it. But war is a

product of man's idealism, misdirected and impracticable idealism

though it may be, but still something very expressive of what man is.

It is this idealism of nations, leading them to the larger life, that

makes them cling to war, whether for good or for evil. It will avail

little to prove to the world that war is an evil, so long as war is

desired, or so long as something which war so readily yields is

desired. Statistics of eugenics and proofs that war ruins business

will not yet cure us of our habit of war, and not at all so long as

there is a vacancy in life which only the dramatic experiences of war

can fill. When war is abandoned, it will be given up probably not

because economists and sociologists vote against k, and we see that

peace is good, but by the consent of a world which, once for all, is

willing to renounce something that is dear to it and held to be good,

if for no other reason, because it symbolizes what life and reality

are. The world appears to have two minds about war, or at least it

does not hold consistently to any one attitude toward it. Beneath all

judgments about the evils of war, there is the allurement of these

aesthetic motives which must be reckoned with in any psychology of

war, or in any practical plan for eliminating war from the future

experience of the race.

CHAPTER V

PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL HONOR

Many authors find in patriotism or in national honor the chief or the

sole cause of war. Jones (37), the Freudian, for example, says that

patriotism is the sum of those causes of war which are conscious as

distinguished from the repressed motives. Nicolai (79) says that

patriotism and chauvinism would have no meaning and no interest

without reference to war, and that for the arts of peace one needs no

patriotism at all. Hoesch-Ernst (32), another German writer, says that

patriotism has made history a story of wars. It has developed the

highest virtues (and the worst vices), but it creates artificial

boundaries among peoples, and gives to every fighter the belief that

he is contending against brute force. Veblen (97) says that patriotism

is the only obstacle to peace among the nations. MacCurdy (37) speaks

of the paradox of human nature seen in the fact that the loyalty we

call patriotism, which may make a man a benefactor to the whole race,

may become a menace to mankind when it is narrowly focussed. Novicow

says that what shall be foreign is a purely conventional matter.

Another writer remarks that patriotism is the guise under which the

instincts of tiger and wolf run riot.

Several writers, Powers (75), and especially Veblen, place questions

of national honor among the main causes of war. Veblen would hold that

wars never occur unless the questions involved are first converted

into questions of national honor--and are then, but only then,

supported as moral issues. Other writers are to be found who make the

same claims for honor, saying that wars are always over questions of

national honor--honor always meaning here, let us observe, not moral

principle but prestige, dignity, analogous to what we call personal

pride in the individual.

Broadly speaking, we may say that such views of war base it upon the

fact that nations are individuals, having personality and

self-consciousness, and are moved by emotions such as dominate the

individual, although such analogies between individual and group are

never free from objection. But that the consciousness of the group as

an individual may be exceedingly intense, full of aggressiveness,

intolerance and pride, of great sensitiveness to all outside the

group, is, of course, obvious from the history of nations. Groups thus

endowed with a sense of solidarity and sensitiveness become highly

vitalized and persistent personalities which stalk through the pages

of history with tremendous power and tenacity of purpose. Nations thus

live intensely, and in their intense feelings and personal attributes

there are expressed purposes and ideals, conscious and unconscious,

analogous to those which make the individual also an historical

entity.

There seem to be two aspects of group personality that need to be

investigated in detail in any study of war, and which must be

distinguished from one another, as they may be by referring to the

primitive or central emotional quality which each has. These are

patriotism and the sense of honor, the former, for our purposes, to be

regarded as the sum of the affections a people has for that which is

its own; the second a sum of those feelings and attitudes, the

emotional root of which is _pride_. These feelings are the affective

basis of the idea of _nationalism_.

Patriotism, or love of country or feeling of loyalty toward country,

is a highly complex emotion or mood, and its object, an ideal

construction, is formed by a process of abstraction in which certain

qualities of home, environment, social objects selected by those

feelings are made over into a composite whole. Patriotism is

immediately connected with the fact that men, by some biological or

other necessity are formed into groups, in which the consciousness of

the individual in regard to the group and its members and its habitat

is different from the consciousness in regard to everything outside.

Patriotism is devotion to all that pertains to the group as a separate

unit, and its form and intensity are dependent upon what the group as

a unit does. The size and organization of the group to which the

patriotic feeling may go out may, it is obvious, differ widely.

There appear to be five more or less distinct and different factors in

patriotism; or, we might say, five or more objects of attachment, the

love of which all together constitutes patriotism. These objects are:

home, as physical country; the group as collection of individuals;

mores, the sum of the customs of a people; country as personality or

historical object, and its various symbols; leaders or organized

government or state, its conventions and representations.

The deepest of all strata in the very complex feeling of patriotism,

one which is concerned in every relation among nations, is the

devotion to, or habituation to--or we might say identity with--the

great complex of ideals, feelings, and the like which make up the

customs, folkways, mores or ethos of a group. The individual as a

conscious person is to such an extent created by these conscious

factors that we find that the reality sense is in part produced by

them. We have already referred to the belief on the part of many

peoples that they alone are real. Foreigners with different mores

probably always seem less real than our own people: they may even be

looked upon as automata, as not being moved by the feelings and

purposes that we ourselves have. The language of the foreigner, the

uneducated man is inclined to think of as having no meaning. Every

group has its own ways, and whatever else war may be, it is in every

case an argument for the superiority of the ways of the group. Each

group in war feels that its own most intimate possessions, its

morality and its genius are attacked. It guards these instinctively,

and a part of the purpose of aggression is the desire to make these

things prevail in the world, because they are felt to be the only

right, true and sensible ways. This preference for our own ways, and

participation in them, is the basic fact of nationality.

The feeling of patriotism is thus primarily an æsthetic appreciation

(or at least an immediate and intuitive one) of the totality of the

life of the group. Just as standards of normality and artistic form in

regard to the human person and its adornment vary from group to group,

and are produced in the consciousness of the group, so there is a

reaction of pleasure to, and attachment for, the whole of the life

that surrounds the individual. This appreciation is wider than moral

feeling, which indeed is in part based upon it, and is a sense of the

fitness of any act to belong to the whole of the conduct that promotes

the welfare of the group.

Patriotism is best known, or at least it is most celebrated, as an

attachment to the native land as _place_. This is the poet's

patriotism. It is, however, something more than a mere love of the

homeland as landscape, and we cannot, indeed, separate out any pure

love of physical country. The love of country seems to be an expansion

of the attachment to home, as the place in which the family relations

are experienced. The sense of place is the core of the love of home,

but it is supplemented and reënforced by the personal affections. The

attachment to place has also its biological roots, the sense of

familiarity of place being, of course, as the basis of orientation, a

deep element in consciousness. Fear of the unknown increases the

attachment to the known. The land as the source of livelihood is

loved, and there are also older elements in the love of the land as is

shown by myths and folklore. There is in it the idea of ownership but

also the idea of belonging to the land. So there is both the filial

and the parental attitude in patriotism. As fatherland or motherland

country is superior to and antecedent to us; as possession it is

something to hold and to transmit, to improve and to leave the impress

of our work upon. As historic land there is the idea of sacred soil,

of land which persists through all time. Ancestor worship enters; the

soil as the resting place of forefathers acquires not only a religious

meaning, but there is attached to it such feeling of an æsthetic

nature as is attached to everything that is full of tradition. The

protective attitude is prominent in this patriotic love of land. There

is in it the fear of invasion, a sense of the sacredness and

inviolability of the body of a country when it has once been

established as an historical entity. A study of the psychology of

invasion and of homesickness would no doubt throw further light upon

the still unknown aspects of the intricate moods of home love.

A third element in patriotism is social feeling. This is primitive,

but whether it is a herd consciousness or a radiation of the social

feelings connected with blood relationship and community of immediate

practical interests it is not especially important to decide in this

connection, except that the assumption of a specific herd instinct as

distinguished from social feeling or instinct appears to be

unnecessary. Loyalty of the individual to the group, which is

accompanied by or is based upon intensified or ecstatic feeling is one

of the strongest elements of patriotism. Social feeling as an

attachment to the widest group, the nation, is in general a latent

feeling or an undeveloped one. We see it becoming active and intense

only under circumstances in which the whole group is threatened or for

some other reason is compelled to act as a unit. The recent psychology

of the soldier shows us that absolute devotion to or absorption in the

whole may be produced automatically by the proper stimuli, and may be

controlled as the mechanism of morale, and that elementary sensations

enter into it. The wider social consciousness as devotion to the whole

group, the nation, is based upon such reactions, and can probably not

be fully, developed without them.

This transformation of the individual is something desired and sought

by the individual. It comes as a fulfillment of impulses that are

latent in the social life, and these impulses are tendencies to seek

exalted states of social feeling, rather than to perform specific

social functions. War is seized upon by the social consciousness, so

to speak, as an opportunity to extend itself and become more intense,

and indeed in war we see the social consciousness performing a work of

genius, overcoming apparently insurmountable obstacles and aversions.

Under such circumstances, social feeling becomes strongly fortified

against many suggestions that tend to break it down. An intense

ferocity is directed toward any disloyal member of the group, a

fictitious character may be attributed to the enemy, and there is an

imaginative interpretation of all his acts in a manner favorable to

uniting the sentiment of the group. This does not appear to be merely

a defensive reaction or a result of fear, but an awareness of the

precarious condition of the social feeling itself, when it is widely

extended. In its moments of most extreme and fanatical intensity it is

likely to be most unstable. It has been said that the surest way to

break down social feeling is to make it include too much. The

conditions of war always create that danger. Patriotism is greatly

intensified, but it is in danger of collapse. The mild patriotism and

yet secure cohesion of peace is replaced by a social consciousness

increased in breadth and depth, but which is liable also to sudden

contraction. All nations when at war appear to be quite as much afraid

of themselves as they are of the enemy. It is in part this

susceptibility of social feeling to rapid and extreme variation that

makes patriotism so mysterious a force. It may be extended in a moment

to unite supposed incompatibles, or again apparently strongly cemented

groups may fall into disunion. This seems to be due to the fact that

social feeling is plastic and is subject to control and is a force

and not merely an instinctive reaction.

The fourth element of patriotism is devotion to leader, to government,

or to the idea of state. Devotion to leader must have been one of the

earliest forms of loyalty. The prestige of the leader is acquired as

the result of any action of the group under stimuli that produce

either fear or anger. Just as the necessity for strong action creates

the leader out of average humanity, so continuation of this necessity,

that is the whole historical movement of the life of the group such as

a nation continues to add elements of prestige to leadership. The

exaltation and typically to some extent the deification of the leader

is a natural consequence or aspect of the dramatic life of the group.

The leader becomes symbolic of the group, and of its purposes and

meaning, so that in devoting itself to a leader the people do more

than sustain an emotional relation to a superior person. They transfer

their own individual nature, so to speak, to the leader so that he

becomes the essence or the spirit of the people.

The dynasty is the connecting link between the leader as the object of

devotion of a people and the abstract idea of the state as an entity.

The prestige and all the supernaturalism contained in the ideas of

divine rights and divine descent that have become attached to the idea

of kings are transferred to the government, or extended to the

government or state. The illusion of superiority and remoteness is

kept up by various forms and ceremonials. Becoming an abstract form,

the organization or the office remaining while its personnel changes,

the state acquires the character of a religious object. It takes on

the character of the eternal, while still it retains all the

persuasive and suggestive qualities that belong to individuals. The

idea of state thus commands a very high degree of loyalty, and is in a

sense itself a product of the feeling of loyalty. Once established the

state becomes a medium through which patriotism may be subjected to

control and also be manipulated for political ends. It can be

extended, transferred, contracted according to what at any time may be

subsumed under the government that has thus come to be the central and

coordinating factor in the object of patriotism.

Another element of patriotism appears in the form of a deep reaction

of the mind of the individual, usually under the influence of social

stimuli that take the form of artistic or dramatic situations, to the

idea of country as a historical personage. This stimulus may be

symbolic--the flag or any other emblem signifying the life or the

spirit of a country; or it may be concrete, historic, a story, and

this story, which is the content of the idea of country, is in general

a narrative assuming a certain artistic form in which facts are

treated at least selectively, and usually imaginatively. This work of

portrayal of the life of a nation by its story is consciously or

unconsciously an appeal to the will; it is given artistic rather than

scientific form for this reason. Its purpose is to present a national

spirit, or ideal, or principle, and also to persuade the mind to

become loyal to this spirit of country.

All countries, as the object of the feeling of patriotism, tend to be

personified, and it is thus as a person that country commands the

deepest loyalty of the individual. Hence the personified

representation of country whenever the will of the individual is

appealed to most strongly. Redier (30), a French writer, illustrates

this very clearly when he pleads that the interest of the motherland

must be placed first. It is not for liberty, or for the civilization

of the world that the French are fighting, he says, but for France,

"that most saintly, animated and tragic of figures." It is by this

process of personification of country that the patriotism of the

individual becomes most complete. He thus becomes loyal to a living

reality representing an idea, a spirit. To defend the honor and the

integrity of this person, one is willing to sacrifice everything that

is individually possessed, in causes that can affect one materially

in no important way. The desire for personal identity and immortality

may be transferred to country as thus idealized, and the individual is

satisfied to lose himself that country may live. The common man

realizes in a simple and concrete way, in regard to country, the

Hegelian conception of state as the reality of mind in the world.

About this idea of country held by the truly patriotic mind, as we

find it expressed in history and in literature, there grows up a

religious sentiment, which protects from criticism the qualities of

the ideal personage. A certain pathos of country attaches itself to

all who as great individuals represent country, and to all its

portrayals and symbols. All these symbols acquire a high degree of

suggestive force because of the depth of sentiment and the richness of

the content of the ideas that have produced them.

Patriotism, then, is a very complex idea and feeling which we realize

as love of country--or, as we might better say, it is an animation by

the idea of a very complex object which is country. It is a profound

attachment, rooted in the most original and essential relations, and

appears to be natural and necessary to every normal mind. The

individual consciousness is complete only by including the

attachments, in narrower and broader relations, to precisely the

elements that enter into patriotism--to place, to the fundamental ways

and appreciations of the social surroundings, to persons, to

authority, to traditions. The composite effects of these attachments

may be greater or smaller, as determined by a totality of conditions,

but the foundations of patriotism, whatever its object, are deep in

consciousness.

The presence and persistence of patriotism in the world as a deep and

intense feeling raises questions that are of both theoretical and

practical importance. Here we are interested mainly in the relation of

patriotism to war. There is a widespread view that may be expressed

somewhat as follows. Patriotism and internationalism or

cosmopolitanism are two _opposites_. Patriotism delimits groups,

whether rightly or wrongly, and therefore produces antagonism in the

world, and either causes wars directly or maintains a continual threat

of wars. On the other hand there is cosmopolitanism, a very little too

much of which might destroy civilization by removing the inspiration

that country gives. Patriotism, standing for the integrity of historic

entities, makes the world a world of nations having separate and

conflicting wills. Thus we have a choice of evils--between a world of

ardent, quarrelsome, but efficient groups and a world in which the

chief motive of progress, the vital principle of national growth, is

left out.

What is the truth about this? What is the relation of patriotism to

war? Confusion and difference of views are likely to arise from a

failure to distinguish in the idea of nationalism as a whole, between

two very different emotions and purposes. Psychologically, patriotism

is a sum of affections. As such, it has a distinct character,

constitutes a mood, the possession of which may characterize an

individual, and dominance by which may be the main fact in life. As a

devotion to certain objects, this motive of patriotism enters into the

sphere of motives of war, but it does so mainly, in our view, as a

powerful and highly suggestible energy which becomes aggressive only

under the stimulus of threat to its objects. Patriotism is indeed

tolerant by nature, and one may well doubt whether a genuine love of

country is possible without a profound realization of the value of

other countries as objects of devotion, and of the validity of the

patriotism of every group. True patriotism must always be to some

extent devotion to patriotism itself as a progressive force in the

world, and it is, therefore, by the very fact of becoming intense and

pure, a motive of internationalism.

Such patriotism seems to be free from most of the delusions of

greatness that affect national consciousness. Its mood is optimistic

and its spirit tolerant and just. We should say that, instead of

causing wars, by any initiative of its own, it is itself caused by

wars. It grows in a medium of defensive attitudes. It may, of course,

play into the hands of all the aggressive motives of war; there are

always circumstances creating the illusion of danger, and it is

possible, even, that there would be little war if there were no

patriotism as love of country to support it. But on the other hand

patriotism itself does not seem to be a cause of war. We should say,

indeed, that patriotism, to the extent that it becomes intelligent and

is a devotion to an ideal of country, and so is not dominated and

influenced by other motives is a factor of peace in the world, and is

moral in its principles and its nature. This is not the place in which

to speak of internationalism as an ideal, but we may at least observe

how, conceivably, patriotism may be cultivated, be greatly deepened

and intensified, while at the same time and indeed because of this

deepening of patriotism all international causes are also served. Such

patriotism may leave us with the danger of wars, since it leaves us

with a world of individuals having wills and self-interests. But this

world, with such a danger of wars, would be better after all than a

certain kind of cosmopolitanism in a world such as, for example, might

be arranged by an unintelligent socialism.

_National Honor_

There is another aspect of nationalism, which is psychologically

distinct from patriotism as love of country, because primitively it is

based upon a different motive. Emotionally it is expressed finally as

national pride, as we use the word mainly with a derogatory

implication. Just as patriotic feeling is intensified and crystallized

by fear, and is in a sense an overcoming of fear, by devotion, so this

motive of pride rests upon a basis of jealousy and of hatred, and is

essentially a movement in which display is used to obtain prestige, to

overcome opposition and to defend consciousness against a sense of

inferiority. As a display motive it contains the feeling of anger,

and the impulses of combat, and its relation to the reproductive

motive is obvious. It is as an aspect of a deeply pessimistic strain

in national life, as a process in which an original and naïve sense of

reality and superiority, challenged and attacked and brought into the

field of opposition and criticism and thus negated by a feeling of

inferiority, that this motive becomes of special interest to the

psychology of nations and of war.

The roots of this pride and honor process we can find in the impulses

which lead groups to demonstrate power and prowess to one another, and

in the original feeling of reality which is accompanied by the belief

on the part of the group that its own ways are normal and right. We

might mention as significant the widespread belief on the part of very

primitive peoples that they alone are real people, or are the superior

people of the world. The Lapps, Sumner (70) says, regard themselves as

"men" as distinguished from all other peoples, a form of

self-consciousness which lingers in all such antitheses as Jew and

Gentile, Greek and barbarian, and the like. This basic idea of

difference in reality is not confined to a few peoples, but there is a

tendency for every group to divide the world into two parties: selves

and outsiders, and this feeling of difference readily develops into

the moods in which there is a mystic sense on the part of a people of

being the chosen people, and into those specific theories of

superiority that run through the history of most if not of all

nations. It belongs to the psychology of Greeks, Romans, Arabs,

Chinese, Japanese, and also to Americans as well as Germans; and we

learn that Russian books and newspapers sometimes discuss the

_civilizing mission of Russia_.

That the motives of display and pride have been peculiarly active in

Germany in the last few decades has been maintained by many writers.

German writers are inclined to believe that the motive for the "attack

upon Germany" was jealousy on the part of her enemies, that Germany

was supreme in everything and other countries could tolerate this no

longer. Germany has talked about her virtues, her rank, her coming

place in the world. Bergson says that Germany's energy comes from

pride. Some see the source of this alleged conceit of Germany and her

excessive self-consciousness in Germany's hard experiences--the recent

slavery, Germany's position as the battle ground of Europe, her late

arrival among the great nations. Germany still lacks, they say, the

quiet assurance that an old culture gives. Some call Germany morbid

and quarrelsome. Again we hear the pride of Germany called an

adolescent phenomenon, and they say that Germany is fighting not for

principle but to see who is superior. Bosanquet (91) thinks that the

lack of political liberty in Germany has had the effect of producing

self-consciousness, and a morbid interest in small distinctions of

title and rank, and that it is thwarted national ambition that has

expressed itself in such writers as Treitschke and Bernhardi. Bourdon

(67) thinks Germany is jealous of the culture and the glory and the

political and literary prestige of France. Collier (68) says that

Germany is forever looking into a mirror rather than out the open

window and even sees herself a little out of focus. The seriousness of

the Germans, others think, is an indication that Germany takes

_herself_ too seriously.

But national vanity, we see, is certainly not confined to Germany. The

Germans at least think France is highly self-conscious, always

thinking of her dignity, glory, prestige and of revenge. Wundt (85)

feels much the same about the English. He says they always want to be

first in everything, and to dominate the earth. We know that the

Confederacy of the United States, at the outbreak of the Civil War,

appealed to the world on the ground that it had reached the most noble

civilization the world had ever seen. The Japanese (73), we have

heard, believe that they are of divine descent, and that they are

supreme in manliness, loyalty and virtue. Every nation presumably has

somewhere in the back of its mind a belief in its own supremacy in

something, and has a sense of being or having something that makes it

unique in the world.

We can now see in part how the idea of national honor arises out of

the pride of nations. Certain fundamental feelings issue in the form

of claims of superiority or supremacy, which may be either vague and

unclear or very definite and self-conscious. This claim to superiority

is precisely what we mean by national vanity. With this consciousness

there goes a knowledge that these claims are in general not recognized

by other nations, or that the prestige which the recognition of this

superiority presupposes is at least insecure. Since, of course, these

claims to supremacy cannot all be valid, there must be a great amount

of inferiority parading in the world as superiority, many fictitious

and presumably half-hearted assumptions that must not only be defended

against outsiders, but must also be _internally fortified_. The pride

and the conceit must be justified by the creation of a fictitious

past, and of an impossible future. The motive of these falsifications

on the part of race consciousness is clear. A nation is defending its

claim to superiority by first establishing the claim in its own mind.

These claims being really unfounded must be placed beyond criticism.

They must be given a religious form. But also external forms and

relations of an artificial nature must be established. Nations always

hide behind barriers of formality. They make displays to one another.

In this way the feeling and the appearance of superiority are kept up.

Everything external to the group and not participating in its illusion

of supremacy must be _kept_ external to it. The belief which the

nation itself assumes in regard to its virtue must be demanded from

all outsiders with whom the nation has relations of any kind. At least

the forms of the recognition of the claim must be insisted upon. This

is the principle of national honor. It is a defense of certain ideal

or fictitious values in which nations insist that others should

recognize these claims and values. National honor is an artifice for

defending a claim to superiority and concealing an actual inferiority,

and it relates to values which, in general, do not exist. Its work is

concerned with the maintenance of prestige.

These ideal values and the integrity of the appearance of supremacy,

are sustained by the assumption of the forms of empire or the

imperialistic attitude. Empire is indeed what is dramatized in the

forms which nations assume, and this dramatization of imperial form is

the background of all the ideas of honor. The maintenance of the

integrity of the imperial form, as an ideal realization of the

supremacy a nation assumes, becomes more important than even the

securing of material possessions, for the imperial form is the very

reality and existence of the nation. It is at bottom merely the

assertion that its own mores are supreme and entitled to be universal.

To admit that this is not so would be to become to some extent unreal,

and to lose something essential to a sense of personality. Therefore,

there can be thus far no intimate relations among nations. They must

present to one another symbolic representations of themselves. It is

their flag, the symbol of their place in the world and of their

military prowess and courage; their ambassadors, the representatives

of their dignity and the symbol of their pretended friendliness; their

display of royal forms, which is the sign of their prestige and their

imperial nature, about which they are most sensitive. Offenses to

these symbols of what a nation assumes itself to be and demands that

others should think it, tend to be _mortal_ offenses, because they

invade the sphere of what nations hold to be their reality. So the

relations of nations to one another must, as we say, always be formal.

Nations can allow no intimacy. Why they cannot one can readily see,

for it is not difficult to detect the fear, the jealousy, and the

inferiority motive behind all this assumption and display. Treitschke

shows us what national honor may mean when it is carried out into a

philosophy of state. Here is the idea of national self-consciousness

at its greatest height. The state must not tolerate equals, or at

least it must reduce the number of equals as much as possible. The

state must be absolutely independent. The state, furthermore, cannot

have too keen a sense of its dignity and position. A state must

declare war if its flag is insulted, however slight the circumstances

may be.

National honor, its codes and standards and its justification and

vindication by combat, present so many resemblances to the practice of

dueling and the idea of personal honor once so generally held by the

upper class, and still existent where the military spirit prevails,

that we ought to study the dueling code with reference to the

psychology of war. There are psychological features that appear to be

identical. The idea of personal honor is associated with a feeling of

superiority that must be defended. Any offense or affront to the

individual was a mortal offense. The superiority in question was first

of all superiority of ancestry; it was this that constituted the value

of the individual and set the standards that he must maintain. This

superiority was to be judged not so much by conduct as by an assertion

of it represented by certain external forms. The individual by his

manners declared himself a gentleman, and laid claim to forms and

considerations that must not be omitted in relations with him. The

virtues he defended so rigorously did not exist as a rule in

calculable or practical form, since they did nothing objective. They

might be ornamental or purely fictitious. They existed in the form of

claims, and the values assigned to them were arbitrary. The man

declared himself possessed of superiority, and was ready uniformly to

prove this claim by acts purporting to indicate willingness to die.

This code and belief belonged to a day when relations among

individuals were simple and, so to speak, external. They were

relations that were readily codified and made invariable, since they

had no essential practical content or function. Manners were

significant as substitutes for friendly relations, since the system

was lacking in moral and social sentiments. Manners were a means of

fitting together individuals who really belonged to no functioning

whole, except when, for example, they might be united in military

exploits. Everything was unitary and independent of everything else in

this society.

Now this code and this philosophy of life have declined precisely to

the extent that the conception of ideal human life has changed, from

that of something ornamental and personal to that of something useful

and moral. Life has become organized, and relations have become more

practical, so that the values of conduct may now be estimated, and one

no longer may maintain a claim to virtue based upon forms expressing

intangible or subjective or unreal virtues. The virtues of a man in a

democratic society are, indeed, more or less obvious and open. Pride

of family, an ornamental mode of life, and a scorn of death are no

longer necessary and sufficient guarantees of worth. Evidence of value

is both possible and required; before value is admitted it must be

shown. Self-defense in a legal and moral society are in the main

superfluous, and the values of individuals are so changed that to

justify them by the duel would seem out of place. Its service being to

defend artificial or arbitrary claims to distinction, it ceases or it

falls into disuse when the individual's reality and value come to

depend upon his functional place in society. It would be highly

illogical to put to test social values by a process that appears to

have nothing but anti-social elements in it.

That nations exhibit the same type of relation toward one another that

we find in dueling and its code seems to be clear, although we must

always avoid pressing any analogy between individual and nation too

far. A claim to superiority that is deep and irrational, and which

appears on the surface as sensitiveness in regard to honor and

vanity, keeps nations always in defensive attitudes, quite apart from

the actual fear of aggression. This superficiality or at least

externality of relations is the source of actual conflict. The forms

employed to maintain these relations are obviously ornamental, are

elaborations of the forms of courtesy among individuals, are little

dramas of friendship, so to speak, little plays representing

friendliness, while the diplomatic motives are simply to obtain

everything possible, each nation for itself, without war, and to

maintain prestige. These relations are substitutes for social feelings

that do not exist. Generally speaking, nations are never friends. They

never really share in anything. They are all highly conscious of their

own prestige and dignity, and they always communicate with one another

in a formal way. In it all, we see the signs of emotions and habits

that extend far back to the beginnings of social life and indeed into

animal life. The display which takes the form of social relations

among nations, represented well by uniformed diplomats, is so plainly

archaic and its real meaning so obvious that we can hardly fail to

understand what it is all about. That the attitude is really

defensive, and the purpose to keep up appearances before strangers, so

to speak, can hardly be doubted.

The fact that these questions of national honor are in some respects

detached from the main realities of _political relations_, and are,

indeed, fictitious and exist in the region of the imagination, that

they pertain to the conventional and ornamental sides of national

life, might be supposed to indicate that they could easily be done

away with, and all these fertile causes of war be eliminated. That

must not be assumed. Vanity has deep roots. The ornamental in life

symbolizes the real. It is the point of entrance to the deepest

motives. Conventional and archaic forms do not die out, just because

we discover that they are irrational and harmful, and the causes they

serve seem to us to be unreal. This kind of unreality in the

consciousness of nations is in fact the ideal for which nations live.

Nations play at being great, and fight to defend their prestige--but

this play, as we know, is oftentimes terribly real.

CHAPTER VI

"CAUSES" AS PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES IN WAR

The causes for which wars are fought, or which are asserted to be the

causes, make one of the important psychological problems of war.

Sometimes these causes are elusive, sometimes they may give occasion

for cynicism and a pessimistic view of national morals; again we see

self-deception, again ideals seeking for light, peoples trying to find

something to live for or to die for. We see in the recent great war as

in other wars, a great variety of causes for which men are said to be

fighting. Some would say that the war was entirely a war of

principles; some take a purely political point of view and say that

principles are not involved at all, and others that nothing was

displayed at all of motives except primitive passions which are

equally devoid of moral issues or any principles.

It would be interesting from the psychological point of view to make,

if possible, a complete collection and classification of the causes

that have been brought forward as the fundamental things fought for in

the late war. Many widely different and divergent views are held. The

forms in which the issues of the war have been stated are almost

innumerable. New definitions and new statements of old conventional

ideas appear continuously. Every writer seems to see the war from a

different point of view from all others. Eventually, we may suppose,

all this will be clear, since these "causes" of the war will be one of

the great themes of future philosophical history. At present we can

only formulate such a view as may be suggestive with reference to

general interpretations of the place of principles and causes in war.

Let us examine a few of the opinions about the issues fought for in

the recent war. MacFall (56) says that the whole strategy of the

civilized world is bent upon creating permanent peace. Many speak of

the war as a war to overcome war; we are told that one of the most

conscious motives of the soldiers in the field has been to make the

great war the last war the world should ever see. Something of the

same idea is involved in the view each nation has that it was

attacked, and that the purpose of the war was to defeat and punish

aggressors. Apparently every nation and every army engaged in the war

has had the feeling that it was fighting in the interests of world

peace.

The German explanations of the war and of its issues have been very

numerous and widely varied. The German has had his own interpretation

of the "white man's burden," Tower (57) calls attention to the German

hybrid word "Sahibthum," expressing the mission of a people. Each

nation has its essence, which becomes a deep impulse. The German's

impulse is translatable in the words "Be organized." The German has

been eager to organize the world. He-believed in all seriousness that

he was fighting the fight of order against chaos. It was the fight of

the spirit against that which is dead and inefficient. The German

believed that the systematic exploitation of the world was his

peculiar mission. Ostwald is the great apostle of this view. He said

that the war was a battle of the higher life against the lower

instincts. Germany represents European civilization. The German

emperor said that Germany should do for Europe what Prussia had done

for Germany--organize it. In the German philosophy of life this

principle of order had become a serious principle. An inefficient and

disorderly world had need of Germany. Everywhere there was waste and

stupidity, and a want of reason in the world. System was to be the

cure. The fundamental fault in all this disorder the German mind

recognized as an excessive individualism. Individual instinct and the

social order were in eternal conflict, as Dietzel expressed the issue,

and Germany stood for the social order, for reason, since reason is

precisely the denial of the instincts and the desires of the

individual in the interest of a foreseen result.

Shortly after the beginning of the war, we remember, a manifesto

appeared signed by three thousand German university professors and

other teachers, saying that they, the signers, firmly believed that

the salvation of the whole of European civilization depended upon the

victory of German militarism. Hintze (49) said that Germany was

fighting for the freedom of everybody, meaning presumably according to

the German principle that freedom consists in voluntarily submitting

to order. This freedom is also in Hintze's view a principle of freedom

and equal rights for all nations, in so far as these nations have

reached the necessary stage of civilization. The mission of the coming

central management of mankind (_Menschheitzentralverwaltung_) implied

in the most ideal theory of Germany's mission is the true German

burden. Haeckel says that the work of the German people to assure and

develop civilization gives Germany the right to occupy the Balkans,

Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and to exclude from those

countries the races that occupy them. Schellendorf says that Germany

must not forget her civilizing task, which is to become the nucleus of

a future empire of the west. Koenig says that the spiritual life of

Europe is at stake, Germany's fight is the fight of civilization

against barbarism--against Russian barbarism he means. This ought to

be the cause of all Western Europe, but England and France have

betrayed the western civilization into the hands of the East. This

belief gave to Germany's cause a deep impulsion (12).

Another way in which Germany's cause was frequently stated was that

Germany was a pure, virile and young race which was fighting the

older civilizations of the world. Vigor was assured of victory in any

case, but young life had a duty to perform--that of clearing the way

for new growth. This has found numerous forms of expression among

German writers, some of them highly dramatic and exaggerated; as, for

example, that the human race is divided into two species or kinds, the

male and the female, assuming that the German is the male among the

national spirits.

With these views of the nature of the German ideal or cause there have

gone, of course, interpretations of the conscious motives and

principles of other nations. In general other nations had no

principle. German writers have tended to believe that both England and

America were hypocritical and that their pretended democratic cause

was at heart only party and political aspiration. These nations, they

said, claimed to desire the world to enjoy the rights of democracy,

but each country assumed that it itself must be the controller of that

democratic principle. Another frequently expressed view of the

purposes of England and America is that they have purely sordid

interests, that they are capable of fighting only for advantage and

material gain.

Many of these German views of the war imply a principle that runs

through many fields of German thought--that values are something to be

determined objectively. It is a scientific principle. Its conclusions

rest upon proof, rather than upon subjective principles of valuation.

There is another argument which is in part based upon an

interpretation of scientific principles, but is in part also a

fatalistic doctrine--confidence in the issues of battle as a means of

testing the right and the validity of culture. The right will prevail,

on this theory, because the right is the stronger or because in some

sense strength _is_ the right, and because the method of selection of

the best by struggle is a basic principle, and may be applied to

everything that is living or is a product of life.

If the German interpretation of the German cause has been dominated by

an ideal of objective proof, we hear on the other side much about

subjective rights and subjective evaluations--the right, for example,

of every people to determine its own life, to have its own culture, to

decide upon its own nationality. The Allies have believed that they

were fighting to establish this principle throughout the world, and

that this principle is diametrically opposed to the German principle.

The thought of centralization, of a hierarchy of nations and the like,

is wholly foreign to this democratic principle. Bergson (17) finds in

the idea of industry the cause of the war and the principle of

opposition in it. The Allies, he says, have been fighting against

materialism with the forces of the spirit. Germany's forces are

material. A mechanism is fighting against a self-renewing spirit. The

ideal of force is met by the force of the ideal.

Boutroux (13) says that France, in the war, has had before her eyes

the idea of humanity; France was fighting for the recognition of the

rights of personality--rights of each nation to its own existence.

France is a champion of freedom; she wants all the legitimate

aspirations of peoples to be realized. Germanism, with its ideal of

force, is contrasted with the ideal of Greek and Christian culture and

philosophy. A cult of justice and modesty is contrasted with the cult

of power; in the former, sentiment and feeling have a place as

criteria of values; in the latter the appeal is to science and to

reason.

Hobhouse (34) says that the war is a conflict of the spirit of the

West against the spirit of the East (precisely the same as the German

view, we see, but with a very different identification of the

champions). Germany has never felt the spirit of the West. The war is

for something far deeper than national freedom; it is a war to justify

the primary rules of right. Burnet (18) thinks that the great conflict

was a conflict between Kultur as nationalistic, and humanism as

something international--that Germany, in recent years, had abandoned

an ideal of culture for that of specialization in the service of the

State. England's answer to the call was not to the specific need and

appeal of Belgium, but because England felt that there was something

in Germany incompatible with Western civilization.

Le Bon (42) says that we must always remember that the Teuton is the

irreconcilable enemy of the civilization of the French and of all it

stands for, and that he must always be kept at a distance. Durkheim's

view is that Germany's ambition and energy and will antagonize the

freedom of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world felt this

and the war was the consequence. Dillon (55) says that the future for

which Germany has been striving is a future incompatible with those

ideals which our race cherishes and reveres, and that we must make a

definite choice between our philosophy and religion and our code on

one side and those of the German on the other. Drawbridge (19) says

that the war has been a conflict between the ideals of gentleness and

tact, on one side, and of brutality and ruthlessness on the other. It

is the Christian spirit against the Nietzschean.

Again we have been told that the war was simply a war of autocracy

against democracy, of mediævalism against modern life, of progress

against stagnation, of militarism and war against peace, of the

Napoleonic against the Christian spirit. Occasionally we hear more

personal and subjective notes. Redier (30) says that France was

fighting solely to retain mastery of her own genius, in order to draw

from it noble joys and just profits.

The American point of view has been expressed in several forms by the

President of the United States. For example, he has said that we are

one of the champions of the rights of mankind. The world must be made

safe for democracy. And again, that America is fighting for no selfish

purpose, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the

aggression of autocratic powers. This view that the war was remedial,

that it was in the interest of progress, to prevent that which is

belated in civilization from gaining the upper hand, and that it is on

the part of America a war of participation and aid in a cause which

though supremely good might otherwise be lost, is the prevailing idea.

That this spirit of the championship of causes and of justice to other

nations is a stronger motive in the Anglo-Saxon peoples than in others

appears to be an opinion that history on the whole can confirm.

It is relatively easy to obtain the opinion of philosophers about the

"causes" represented in the war; it would be of interest also to know

what the millions of men in the field think. Data are not altogether

wanting, but there appear to be no general studies. That many men, in

more than one army, have no clear knowledge of any cause for which

they have fought, except as these causes are nationalistic is certain.

That there is ignorance even among the men of our own army in regard

to the causes and purposes of the war has been made evident. Knowledge

and enlightenment can hardly have been greater elsewhere. German

soldiers are credited with believing that they are defending Germany

from attack. The French soldier was fighting for France. The invasion

of his country left him no doubt and no choice. The English soldier

has often said that he was doing it for the women and the children,

and one writer says that the deepest motive of two thirds of the

British army was to make this war the last. The American soldier, from

the nature of the circumstances under which he himself entered the war

has been more conscious of a motive of helpfulness and of comradeship

with other peoples who are in distress and danger. Probably the idea

of America's honor, and the more abstract idea still of the cause of

freedom, even though this idea has been, so to speak, our watchword,

have not been the most influential motives in the mind of the

individual. Germany was attacking people who were in distress, and

the American soldier went over to make the scales turn in the

direction of victory for the oppressed.

There is, of course, a literature of the war produced by the soldier

in the field, in which there are expressed high ideals, abstract

conceptions and firm principles. The French soldier has written about

liberty, the German soldier has had considerable to say about a Kultur

war. An American volunteer in the British army has written, "I find

myself among the millions of others in the great allied armies

fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane against a

power which is evil and which threatens the existence of all the right

we prize and the freedom we enjoy" (24). But in general the

consciousness of the soldier, from all the evidence we have, was

concerned, as presumably was that of most of us, mainly with the most

obvious qualities of opposing forces, their concrete actions, and the

personal motives of rulers.

Leaving aside so far as one can one's own partisanship and mores

(which is not a very easy task), what causes can we say, with a

considerable degree of certainty, have actually been issues in the

present war? To some extent what one thinks these causes are will

remain matters of personal opinion and preference. Are there also

principles which, when once observed, will be accepted as the

fundamental "causes" of the war? There seem to be three at least which

characterize wide differences in the ideals and the civilization of

the opposing forces.

There is, first of all, an issue between the ideals of a relatively

autocratic form of government and a relatively more democratic form of

government. This was a cause of the intellectuals, but it was also a

popular cause. Men in general like the form of government under which

they live. From the standpoint of those who hold that a democratic

form of government is right, the war seemed to be a conflict between a

modern and progressive régime and an old and vicious one. So far as

this autocratic principle aimed to suppress the rights of individuals,

or to menace the liberties of small nations, so far as it was

aggressively militaristic and had imperial ambitions, which could be

achieved only by force, it stood clearly opposed to democracy.

Democracy and autocracy were plainly at war with one another, and yet

if we look closely we shall see that neither one can offer any actual

demonstration of its validity as the most superior or the final form

of government. In part they may appeal to the observable course of

history for their justification, but the final source of judgment

seems to rest in the mass of opinion in the world. Questions of form

and taste are not wholly absent. But the believer in democracy and the

believer in autocracy will both assert that deep differences in

principle are involved. They will not admit that democracy and

autocracy are superficial forms, and are questions of taste, and they

will not agree with Munsterberg, who says that the two forms tend

inevitably toward a compromise, by a process of alternation in which

first one and-then the other is the dominant form in the world.

The war, in another aspect of it, has been a conflict between the idea

of nationalism and that of internationalism. It is a conflict between

an ideal of state, represented in the German philosophy of state by

the principle of complete autonomy of the individual nation, and one

which assumes that states, while retaining their rights of sovereignty

are to be governed by laws which regulate their conduct as functioning

members of a society of nations. The difference is that, relatively,

between a state of anarchy among nations and a state of order. To some

extent there has been a conflict between the idea of rights and the

idea of duties of nations. This internationalism is not merely a

sociological principle, something academic and scientific, as a theory

of state or society; it is an ethical principle, which contains some

recognition of justice as a subjective principle. It has some roots

in theory, but it is also based upon the immediate recognition of the

rights of peoples to their own individual lives. Its ideal is a world

containing many nations, coördinated by natural processes and not a

world in which a single nation or a few may hold the supreme place,

except as this supremacy might come by a process of natural

development.

The third conflict of the war was one which we may call a

psychological conflict. It was a conflict between two ideas of life,

one based upon a belief in the supremacy of reason, the other implying

that the final test of values in life remains in the sphere of the

feelings, or is a matter of appreciation. Germany, in her recent

history, has stood conspicuously for the belief that human society may

and indeed must be controlled and regulated by definite

principles--principles that must be determined according to the

methods of science. These principles take the place, in this

philosophy of life, of certain typical human reactions that are

believed to be demonstrably irrational. In its visible and most

practical form the application of this principle is through

organization.

This characterization of German life reveals something very much like

a paradox in the principles of the war. We see a conflict in one

direction between a certain mediævalism in government and social forms

and a more modern and progressive type; we see also a conflict of a

modernism of an extreme form, represented by a scientific

civilization, united with this mediævalism, and in opposition to a

conception of life which is in some respects more naïve and more

primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that Germany offers an

illustration of a phenomenon of development that has been seen before

in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a

direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at

least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of

rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This

rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and

propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part

temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a small state with

a highly centralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that

Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by persuasion nor

by force. If we may apply a biological analogy we may say that German

Kultur in its modern form cannot survive. That this German

civilization has been felt by the world at large to be abnormal and of

the nature of a monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to

some extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of

Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank growth. Germany,

seeing in her own civilization only the appearance of modernism, has

been inclined to regard all other civilizations as decadent.

Germany, governed by the ideals of rationalism, has assumed that

history can be made, wars conducted, life regulated in accordance with

a program. On the other side we see a very general acceptance of a

philosophy of life in which many evils of disorder and waste and the

necessity of an experimental attitude toward life are accepted as

necessary consequences of the life of freedom. We see implied in this

philosophy of life a belief in a morality and a religion that are

based upon feeling rather than upon objective evidences, and a way of

judging conduct more or less naively and simply or according to

methods of appreciation that are essentially æsthetic, using the term

in a wide sense. This mode of life is accepted in the belief that

order in due season will come out of relative disorder, by a natural

process or by a gradually increasing organization and voluntary

adjustment. If we accept the validity of this attitude in life we

shall be inclined to regard rationalism as it is manifested to-day in

German life as an evil. We may believe that in the end the cure for

this rationalism will not be less reason but rather more, but we shall

see also that it is possible for reason to outstrip and pervert life,

and indeed involve life in an absurdity, simply because as a method of

dealing with the whole of life it cannot be sufficiently

comprehensive.

Are these and all such issues that we find in war, causes of war? Do

nations fight for principles? Opinions certainly differ on this point.

Some think of wars, we say, as essentially conflicts of principles;

some interpret wars wholly in terms of political issues. We should say

that the truth lies between these assertions or is the sum of their

half-truths. Wars are not in their origin wars of principle. The

political, the personal, the concrete aspects of the relations of

nations are always in the foreground in causing wars. Wars become wars

of principle after they have been begun for other reasons. Sanctions

and motives appear after the fact. Fundamental differences of mores

which include the raw material, so to speak, of principles and causes

are factors in wars in so far as they create misunderstanding and

antipathy, but in so far as these differences of nature and of

principle do not enter into the sphere of politics and of national

honor, they do not as such cause wars Those deep moods which

accumulate in the minds of peoples and enter into the causes of war

are not convictions about principles. They are more generic and

natural. History does not seem to show us wars caused by pure

principles. We sometimes say that the Civil War in our own country was

fought over a principle, but that is something less than the truth.

The fundamental question at issue was plainly that of the rights of

certain states at a particular time to be independent and free.

Principles emerge in war, we say, and then they become secondary

causes. And it is precisely this emergence of principles from fields

of battle that perhaps constitutes the greatest contribution of wars

to the civilization of the world. We need to reflect upon this deeply,

since the whole philosophy of history is concerned in it. The virtues

that nations discover in themselves in war they elaborate in peace.

Nations at war become conscious of their spiritual possessions. Since

their existence, they believe, is at stake, it is a part of their

self-defense to justify their value in the world. They discover in

themselves that which is most characteristic of them, and this becomes

their principle. The principle of a nation is that which the national

consciousness fixates itself upon as the title of the nation to

continued existence. Nations do not go to war over their causes, or

about their distinctive virtues and missions in the world. Rather it

is their likenesses that precipitate wars,--their resemblances and

identities in being the same in ambition, and having the same

conceptions of national honor and the same motives for war and

desiring the same objects. Nations in general do not go to war over

principles because they are not motivated by principles in their

historical course. The principles of nations are aspects of their

inner development. The "causes" of nations at war, according to our

view, are these inner qualities of which they have become conscious.

Nations discover them in the stress of war, and it is quite natural

also that in such times they should not always judge them fairly, and

that they should often make for themselves a fictitious character.

CHAPTER VII

PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES

Philosophy, in the minds of many writers, must be given a high place

among the causes of war, and a considerable fraction of the literature

of the late war is devoted to the problem of discovering, in the field

of abstract thought, the influences that led to the great conflict.

Nietzsche, especially, seems to have been held responsible for the

European conflagration. As the philosopher of the New Germany, as the

chief expositor of the doctrine of force, the inventor of the

super-man and of the idea of the beyond-good, Nietzsche seems to stand

convicted of furnishing precisely the concepts that have become the

German's gospel of war; and since the German is prone to be guided by

abstractions, the evidence, even though circumstantial, seems to many

to be convincing.

Schopenhauer, also, as the great pessimist; Hegel, with his doctrine

of the supremacy of the State as the representative of the Idea on

earth; Kant, as the discoverer of the subjective moral principle;

English utilitarianism as the doctrine of the main chance; empiricism,

as the philosophy of inconsistency and dual principles of thought and

conduct; even the whole spirit of the English philosophy, which Wundt

says is nothing but an attempt to reconcile thought with the ideas of

peace and comfort--all these have been charged with being instigators

of the war.

Bergson (17) takes a different view. He says that the desire comes

first, the doctrine afterwards. Germany, determined upon war, invokes

Nietzsche or Hegel. Germany in a moral temper would appeal to Kant, or

in still a different mood to the Romanticists. Le Bon (42) says that

nations are pushed forward by forces which they cannot understand, and

that rational thoughts and desires play but a little part in war. That

appears to be true. We cannot say that philosophies do not enter at

all into the causes of war, but among these causes they must be

insignificant as compared with other causes that neither arise from

abstract thought nor are greatly modified by reason in any way.

Consider the influence of Napoleon (himself so little a product of any

philosophical influence), as compared with Hegel; or of Bismarck as

compared with Nietzsche, and this will be apparent. There are in the

course of the centuries books and men that, as rational forces, do

exert profound effect upon the practical life, but they must be rarer

than is sometimes supposed. It is all too easy to assume a relation of

cause and effect when there is only a similarity between thought and

subsequent conduct. Rousseau may or may not have inspired the French

Revolution. Probably he did not. The recent great war, we might say,

has occurred in spite of philosophy, and if Nietzsche's influence

gravitated toward war, it can hardly be thought to have had any

deciding force in turning the scales already so overloaded by fate.

Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause

it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to

express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of

his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather

to his literary impressiveness than to his thought as a contribution

to philosophy.

Darwin, as the great force behind a new and varied development of

science, has had the fate to be, in some sense, a factor in the moods

and the new habits of life that led toward the final issue in the

great war. It is not so much that his principle, misapplied, or

applied uncritically may become a justification of war or even its

basic principle that has made him so great an influence, but

precisely because his thought, by becoming one of the great

coordinating principles of all the natural sciences has given power to

a movement which has had various practical consequences, not all of

them good, or at least not all yielding fruit for our own age.

Darwin's great influence as a force turning scholarly interest toward

naturalism and away from classicism, as a factor in modern materialism

and even pessimism, as a background, if no more, for the Haeckels and

Ostwalds of science is no inconsiderable factor in the scientific and

objective spirit of the day.

Facts must be faced. It is not such influences as that of

Schopenhauer, who expresses a logical or at least an abstract and we

might add literary form of pessimism, that in the generations just

past have transformed most of the conceptions of religion, with all

the effects upon the practical life that have followed, but the force

of our modern science combining with tendencies which it fosters but

perhaps does not create, giving momentum to industrialism and

specialization,--it is this change in the ideas of men that we must

suspect of being implicated in the present catastrophe of the world,

if any influence from the rational life is to be counted at all. Hegel

and Kant hover in the background. The author of the plan for universal

peace provides us with a subjective principle of morality which can be

distorted into a philosophy of moral independence and even of

independence from morality, and Hegel must have helped to establish

the German theory of the State, although with Treitschke and with the

practical state-makers like Frederick the Great and his followers, we

can hardly believe Hegel indispensable. The causes of war are too

general, too old and too fundamental to be greatly added to or

detracted from as yet by philosophy. Philosophy is the hope of the

world, it may be, and by no means a forlorn hope, but it is not yet

one of the great powers. When philosophy is a mere endorsement by

reason of some motive that has arisen in the practical life, or is a

literary expression of views about life, it may give the appearance

of being a profound force in the world. But this is not real

philosophy, in any case. Philosophy has not as yet shown itself highly

creative even in the calm fields of education and the moral life.

No! Philosophy is a factor in the motives of war rather by reason of

what it has not done, than because of its positive teachings. To-day

we ought no longer to be under illusions on that point. Neither

Christianity nor philosophy can make or prevent wars as yet. They have

not been able to cope with the practical forces of the world which

make for nationalism, partisanship and personal interests. It would

require a greater amount both of religion and of philosophy than we

now can bring to bear upon the world to offset the influence of

Napoleon alone in the practical life of nations. It is the Napoleonic

spirit that still governs Europe. Philosophy has been thus far a

science of being an explanation of the world after the fact, and not

even to any great extent a science of its progress, except in so far

as, we may say, beginning with Hegel and with Spencer, there has been

some development of the methods and the most formal conceptions of

such a science. It is asking too much of philosophy, in its present

stage, to expect it to preach the gospel, or to teach school, or to

direct politics, and for the same reason it is unjust to charge

philosophy with having created the greatest catastrophe of history. If

philosophy cannot wield any great power now in those parts of life

that are by their nature presumably most amenable to reason, its

effect upon those events that express the supreme force of human

passions and the totality of life will not be very important. The

influences of philosophy are academic, and presumably any doctrine of

life that preaches achievement, virility and unmorality will include

in some degree war among the interests that it will affect, within the

limits of its academic nature. But youth is inherently warlike,

because above everything else it seeks to realize life in its

fullness, and war at least does symbolize this reality and abundance

of life. A philosophy which preached peace would hardly become a great

influence with youth. A philosophy advocating the cause of war would

form a natural background for the essential motives of youth. If the

scales were evenly balanced, it might turn them. It is hard at least

to see the relations of philosophy to the practical life in any other

light to-day. Philosophies are tenuous and adaptable things. We see

them used to support opposite causes, and they change color under the

influence of strong desires. Bosanquet (91) shows us how Hegel's noble

conception of the State, if we but substitute for its central thought

of welfare of the State, that of selfish interest, may be made to

change before our eyes into the meanest of maxims. This process is,

however, not unique in the history of the relations of thought and

life.

A detailed study of the relations of intellectual factors to war would

need to consider the effects of a great number of more or less

philosophical ideas which throw their weight on the side of war. So

far as these ideas are simple and clear, and especially if they can be

conveyed in the form of the phrase, their influence cannot wholly be

ignored. Some we have already referred to. The doctrine that might

makes right, the conception of state as supreme, the belief in the

divine right of kings, the belief in the ordained rights of

aristocracy, belief in militarism as a social institution, the

doctrine that life may be controlled by reason, all intellectual

pessimism, skepticism, any form of concept-worship, whether Hegelian

or other, acceptance of the methods of science and the results of

science as applicable to all the problems of life--all such principles

which inhabit the region, so to speak, between philosophy and the

practical life manifestly have some relation to the spirit of war. In

a very general way they may be counted as philosophical factors in

war. For the most part, however, those ideas that have been accused

of abetting war are exaggerations and perversions of philosophical

ideas. Nietzsche, Darwin and Hegel have all been exploited and made to

stand sponsor for specific philosophies of war. In the new philosophy

of life which Patten thinks has greatly influenced German conduct, and

which may be expressed in the words _Dienst_, _Ordnung_, and _Kraft_,

we can see both the effects of impulses that have grown out of the new

life itself, and the influences of formal philosophy. That such ideas

have had relatively a greater influence in Germany than elsewhere must

be admitted, but that either this devotion to ideas or the ideas

themselves have been derived from philosophical interests and from

philosophies that have played any important part in the history of

thought we may well doubt. We should suspect that the same practical

interest that works unceasingly to distort and popularize philosophy

would help to create such pseudo-philosophy.

Von Bülow (65) says that the German people have a passion for logic,

and that this passion amounts to fanaticism:--that when an

intellectual form or system has been found for anything, they insist

with obstinate perseverance on fitting realities into the system.

Durkheim (16) says that the Germans' organized system of ideas is a

cause of war. It is also true, we should say, that the tendency to

organize ideas and even the fundamental ideas by which the Germans

have been guided are deeply rooted in temperament, in history and in

the social order of the past. Boutroux (13) says that the Germans

themselves regard the war as the culmination of their philosophy. We

should say on the contrary that the whole war philosophy of Europe is

almost wholly a product of strife and comes from impulses that arise

irresistibly in the practical life. Into these movements philosophy

fits or may be made to fit, and the presence of ideas in a society in

which the academic life has great prestige, ideas which coincide with

beliefs readily gives an illusion of an order governed by the higher

reason. The fact that Germany's recent wars had all been highly

successful, the fact that Germany had learned to depend upon her good

sword in time of need are the chief sources of Germany's doctrines of

war: the Hegelian background in the light of what we have learned in

recent times about the psychology of nations, must seem to be rather

of the nature of the ornamental. The ideal of the Prussian State to be

a power directed by intelligence suggests Hegel, but it seems highly

improbable, to say the least, that Hegelian philosophy has had much to

do with shaping this ideal. Behind all this is the necessity of

shaping German life in the form which it has taken--necessity if we

accept, at least, Germany's national temperament itself as a

necessity. That other belief, widely held by German intellectuals and

officers that war is the testing of the validity of national cultures

would also probably never have appeared on the scene had not Germany

been secure in the belief that she herself had both the right and the

might on her side. It is possible, of course, that the war has

distorted our vision so that the relations of the practical life and

the life of reason have all been thrown out of focus, but when we see

what forces have been at work, and what they have done, it is

difficult to escape the conviction that we have been inclined to

believe too much in the power of mere ideas. This may be the great

lesson of the war. We may learn from it how to make ideas become the

power that hitherto they have failed to be.

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INFLUENCES

That war and religion have always been closely associated with one

another is one of the outstanding facts of history. This is true both

of primitive warfare and of warfare to-day. Yet we cannot say that

religion as such has been a cause of war. Religious wars are almost

invariably also political wars, and as soon as religion and politics

are separated, religion no longer appears to be a war motive. When

religion becomes associated with worldly ideas which it supports and

makes dynamic it may become a strong factor in the spirit of war, but

as a means of segregating men, and giving them unity of action

religion can no longer be regarded as a power, if it ever was. Any

motive that will not so segregate men and break up all other bonds

cannot be said to be a very fertile cause of war. Religion as a cause

of war belongs to a day in which the spirit of nationalism was weak,

and when religious empire had a visible and political position in the

world. Nationalism, growing stronger, became the supreme force

dominating the motives and interests of men and governing the

formation of groups, or at least the actions of groups as interrelated

units. In the recent war we have seen how the sense of national unity

has been able to hold in check all other motives. Neither religion nor

any class or clan or guild interests could trace the faintest line of

cleavage so long as the motive of war remained.

The mood of war always contains a religious element. Not only is this

shown in primitive wars, where the relations of religion, war and art

are indicated in such phenomena as the war dance, which is of the

nature of a magic weapon, but we see it also in the complex moods of

the present war spirit of the world. The idea and mood of valor have a

religious significance. Cramb says that we can trace in Germany before

the war, showing through the transient mists of industrialism and

socialism, the vision of the religion of valor which runs through all

German history. The craving for a valorous life, for reality, the

desire to lose one's own individuality--these moods of war are

religious or mystic whatever else they may be or contain. The

inseparable relation of war and death necessarily inspires a religious

consciousness. Without exalted moods which in some way contain

religious faith--faith on the part of the individual in the eternal

values which he represents and in his own security in the hands of

fate, and in the immortality of the country which he serves, war could

not exist.

The mood of war always contains a religious sanction, and every

important religion sanctions war. This explicit relation between

religion and war is seen very early. Wherever there is ghost worship,

and the warriors justify war and fortify themselves for it by

believing that their ancestors still participate in the combats of

their children, and that in waging war they are doing a duty in

keeping up the traditional feuds of their race there is found the root

of the relation between war and religion. Every war is a holy war; it

is but a change in degree from these primitive wars in which the ideas

of ghosts must have had almost the clearness of reality to our modern

wars with their deeper but more indefinite religious sanctions. Since

war always creates the need of moral justification, the war mood at

all times tends to seek religious sanctions. Christianity, the

doctrine of peace and good will, very readily lends its support to

war, since wars are almost invariably regarded as defensive by all who

participate in them. War in the service of the weak and endangered

can always invoke the spirit of Christianity. The logical ground for

this has been laid for us by many writers; Drawbridge (19), one of the

most recent, finds no support in Christianity for the doctrines of

pacifism. All nations, when they fight, fight for God, for liberty and

the right, with the implied belief that their own country has a

mission in the world, supported by divine authority.

All governments have in them a strain of theocracy. We see this in

many degrees and forms, from the original totemistic belief in descent

from animals that are also gods to the vaguest remnants of the habit

of interpreting national interests as guarded by divine powers that we

often see in the language of practical statesmen. The doctrine of the

divine rights of kings of course had its origin in that of divine

descent. The most striking revelation of the place such theories may

have, even in modern times and in enlightened nations, is to be seen

in the revival and deliberate use of the doctrine of divine descent as

a fundamental principle of the government and theory of State in the

New Japan. All nations hold something of this philosophy; God and

State are always related and all wars, whatever else they may be, are

waged in the service of religion and with the sanction of it. This

spirit is not wanting even in the most modern democracy. The

historians of Germany have shown us to what an extent the theory of

the divinity of state and its divine mission may be intermingled with

practical politics and have helped to bring to light the psychology of

this movement in history.

Several writers, but especially Le Bon (42), have written about the

relation of mysticism to war. Le Bon said indeed that the main causes

of war, including the most recent one, are mystical causes. By

mysticism he means unconscious factors which are religious in quality

and which contain a race ideal which is both powerful and irrational.

German mysticism appears to have attracted much attention during the

years of the war. Germany has presented the picture, we are told, of

a people becoming dangerous by couching national ambition and honor in

terms of religion. This mysticism of the German contains a powerful

belief in race superiority, and in the supremacy of the culture of

their own nation, beliefs which have the clear marks of mysticism

about them. The traces of the theory of divine origin still cling to

them. Boutroux (13) says the Prussian State is a synthesis of the

divine and the human. Another writer observes that the Germans believe

in the altogether unique and quasi-divine excellence of the German

race, and of Germanism, and that the Germans have a new religion which

they believe in spreading by the sword. Some see in Germany a serious

demand for the revival of the religion of Odin and Thor, the religion

of conflict of primeval forces, and of the triumph of might. Literary

expressions of this religion are certainly to be found, and it may

fairly be maintained that Germany has never become Christianized to

the extent that most modern nations have.

That mysticism has been a large factor in the war spirit of the

Germans in the late war can hardly be doubted, or at least that a

religious element of some kind has played a great part in it. The war

began as Germany's holy war. A cult of State and of self-worship are

involved in it. If not, innumerable expressions of Germany's cause

among German writers are simply literary exaggerations. The Germans

have believed that they are God's chosen people, that they represent

God, and since the German civilization grew up in antagonism to the

Graeco-Roman civilization, God must have adopted the one and discarded

the other. One German writer says that we must eliminate from our

belief the last drop of faith in the idea of a progressive movement of

humanity as a whole. Reality is represented in one nation at a time,

and the chosen nation is the leader of all the rest.

While such mysticism as this (if it be mysticism) is most conspicuous

in aristocratic and imperialistic nations, we find it elsewhere. It is

a powerful force in imperialistic Japan and in Russia. We find it

everywhere in history in some form. In France it is still the "saintly

figure" of France that inspires the soldier and induces a religious

mood. There is no longer a vision of an empire of the future, perhaps,

and this mysticism of France has not in recent history shown itself in

the form of aggression, but French mysticism clings to the ideal and

the hope of a glorious future for a deathless France soon to be

renewed. All peoples that have declined or suffered an adverse fate,

even the pathetic remnants of the American Indians, expect the return

of their lost power. Such mysticism is, we may think, the only

condition under which national life in many cases can continue. The

religious or the mystical mood of nations is created by the need of

making belief dynamic, of overcoming doubts and fears. Hence the

exaggerated and irrational claims peoples make in regard to the value

of their culture and about their mission on earth. By their mysticism

nations justify their aggressive wars and fortify themselves in their

defensive wars. Thus nations acquire a feeling of security. They

believe in their star of destiny. They feel that their life which is

of supreme value to the world cannot perish. It is this spirit that

nations take with them into battle. It is a mystic force, and this

mystic force is, in great part, we may believe, one of the by-products

of the tragedy of history. Faith and hope have one of their roots at

least in fear and pessimism.

_Moral Motives and War_

That the attitude of nations toward one another is not, generally

speaking, an ethical attitude and that moral principles do not

motivate the conduct of peoples we have already suggested. Sumner (70)

says that the whole history of mankind is a series of acts open to

doubt, dispute and criticism as to their right and justice.

Differences end in force, and the defeated side always protests that

the results are unjust. And yet wars are always conducted with moral

justification and in the belief that moral principles are involved.

These moral principles, however, are not the points of difference upon

which the beginning of wars depends. Nations never go to war for

purely moral reasons. Moral feeling may coincide with the interests of

state, and a defensive war may of course be conducted in the spirit of

deep moral right and duty, but plainly it is never the sense of right

and duty alone that is the motive of defense. Perhaps after all this

question of the moral element in the causes of war is a futile one,

and leads to casuistry. There are always political and other practical

questions involved, whenever strain occurs between nations, so that

wholly moral issues can never arise.

If wars are not moral in the making they are always justified morally,

whatever the motives may have been that caused them. Without this

moral sanction it is doubtful whether wars could be conducted at all,

although this moral sanction may be based upon very superficial

grounds. The higher patriotic feeling runs, says Veblen (97), the

thinner may be the moral sanction that satisfies the public

conscience. On the other hand moral sentiment may often be strong and

deep in the minds of the masses of people in a nation, and the public

feeling of obligation to enter a war may be strong, but in general

such moral feeling does not lead to war. Righteous indignation lacks

initiative. Honor as moral obligation requires the aid of honor as

national pride and dignity. The relations among allies may at first

thought seem to be moral relations, but when we observe closely we see

that usually nations go to war together because their common interests

are endangered. When their common interests are not involved they

usually break treaties and so do not stay together. Actions directed

offensively against one member of a coalition are usually directed

against the others, so that in most cases the allies of a nation have

no choice, but must defend themselves.

The relative importance of moral principles in the motives of war may

be observed by comparing the motives assigned by the nations that

participated in the late war with the motives which a study of the

history and political situations of these countries reveals. There are

wide disparities between these historical causes and the assigned

causes. These need not, however, lead us to take a cynical view of

history as many sociologists and students of politics do. We have as

yet no organized world in which moral principle can operate. The

world, we might say, is still infantile or immature. The world is

still unmoral. We cannot say that nationalism as the principle of the

conduct of nations is a wholly selfish principle as contrasted with a

moral or altruistic motive, since such an analogy with individual

morality fails to take into account the complex nature of nationalism,

and overlooks the social qualities of patriotism.

England's purpose in entering the war has been freely discussed in

England. The popular impression is that England declared war upon

Germany in order to defend Belgium and to keep her treaty obligations.

If we consider conduct in a certain abstraction from the practical

setting in which it is performed such a conclusion can be drawn. There

was a moral stirring in England, and several writers have commented

upon the fact that England subverted her own conscious purposes by her

unconscious and instinctive morality. There was a strong feeling

against war, even a widespread moral sense that England had become too

civilized to wage war. There was a shrinking from the economic

hardships that war would entail. Against these strong tendencies there

prevailed, at least in popular sentiment, a profound feeling that in

some way Germany's civilization was incompatible with England's, and

this feeling was in part of the nature of moral aversion. Dillion

(55), at least, sees a profound ethical motive in Italy in the late

war. After a pro-German party had won out in favor of war, he says, a

_deus ex machina_ in the shape of an indignant nation descended upon

the scene. But after making allowance for all moral feeling and the

unusual and dramatic manner in which moral issues, to a greater degree

than ever before in modern history, were brought to the front, we must

admit that the political and diplomatic interests and manners of

nations have taken their usual course in the war. Nations have been

governed by the motives that have always dominated the relations of

groups to one another.

Germany presents the most glaring example of the contrast between

public opinion and expressed motives and political facts. Such

expressions as these: that Germany's ideal is one that does violence

to no one; that humanity and all human blessings stand under the

protection of German arms; that, where the German spirit obtains

supremacy, there freedom reigns; that in regard to England's downfall,

there can be but one opinion--it is the very highest mission of German

culture; that Germany's war is a holy war--such expressions as these,

which are psychologically explicable without questioning their

sincerity, seem out of harmony, to say the least, with what we know of

Germany's political aspirations. Germany's desire for England's

downfall does not appear to us to be based upon a moral motive;

Germany's war seems far from being a holy war, and it is hard to see

in it a means of spreading culture abroad in the world. We cannot give

any place in the causes of this war to a moral desire to make the

world better. However much Germany may have been convinced that

Germany was destined to be a civilizing force in the world, the moral

obligation thus aroused, we may be sure, did not become the real

motive of the war.

The moral justifications of war are very numerous, and that this

belief in war has some effect upon the spirit of war and helps to

perpetuate it, and is not a mere reflection of the warlike spirit

itself, may of course be admitted. Many believe that war accomplishes

work in the world; war is a great organizing force. There is also a

view that war is good as a moral stimulant, or as a creative moral

force. War is often regarded as the means of moral revival of a people

that has become sordid and dull. Schmitz (29) says that war gives

reality to a country. War strengthens national character, some think.

It purges nations. In war people grow hard but pure. Irwin (25) says

that such war philosophy as this is to be heard broadly in Europe,

chiefly in Germany, but also in France and in England. Mach (95) says

that disintegration takes place in times of peace. Schoonmaker says

that war has taught men socialization. Again we hear that wars are

just and right because they are necessary. Redier (30) says that war

is a way of giving back courage to the men of our times. This praise

of war which comes from the depths of feelings, we must suppose helps

to give continuity and force to these feelings.

_Institutional Factors_

If the spirit of war is to any extent educable, and is created in

national life and is not merely something instinctive, it is

presumably modified in one way and another by all those institutions

that are educational in their effect. Perhaps one of the most pressing

problems of education in the near future will be that of the relation

of education to war. We shall need to know what the school has done to

cause wars, what changes should be made in the future with reference

to this influence of education upon the fundamental motives of

national life. The schoolmaster has been indicted among other

instigators of war. We must see how much truth there is in this

allegation. We must understand also how the whole educational

process, as we may see it now after the war, may be made if possible

to become a greater factor in life than it has been in the past, if it

is at all an important element in the development and the control of

the psychic powers of nations.

Schmitz (29) says that the eighteenth century and the French

Revolution were dominated by the phrase, the nineteenth by money, and

that there was a danger that the twentieth century would be dominated

by the schoolmaster and by the concept, but that this danger is past

because life has become so full of realities. Russell says, we know,

that men fight because they have been governed in their beliefs and in

their conduct by authority. If this be true the authority exercised

upon the mind of the child by all his teachers may be suspected of

having been in one way or another an influence in creating the moral

attitudes that prevail in regard to war and peace. We have heard the

question raised as to whether in the past the teaching of history as

the story of wars, and the presentation of the facts of history from

the nationalistic point of view, have not been morally wrong.

German schools, and the method of public education the sinister

effects of which we have abundantly felt--that is, the propaganda,

show us educational phenomena that are psychologically of great

interest and which are also unique from the educational point of view.

The influence of schools seems in general so negative, and there is so

little connection between what is learned as fact and conduct in the

practical life that, even in the case of the German teaching of war

philosophy we must suspect that this teaching has been successful only

because it has gone with the strong tide of feeling in the popular

mind. That the German schools have directly and indirectly fostered

the development of ideas that lead in the direction of war there is no

doubt. Even more influential than the specific ideas that have been

implanted, is the spirit of these schools: it is their militaristic

and routine life, the great authority assumed by the teacher, the

specialization, that has helped to nourish the warlike spirit of

Germany, quite as much as the fact, for example, that Daniel's

Geography teaches that Germany is the heart of Europe, surrounded by

countries that were once a part of Germany and will be again.

German education, we say, seems to be unique in the extent to which it

influences public sentiment and national conduct. In general,

education has appeared among the influences that lead to war rather by

default of positive teaching than by anything positive it has done.

Even in Germany, we should say, the spirit of war has been made to

flourish less by the teaching of a narrow nationalism, by inculcating

hatred, and implanting wrong conceptions of German history than by

failing to provide youth with means of deep satisfaction, by failing

to coordinate deep desires of the individual, and to organize

individuals in a normal social life. This is true everywhere.

Education has not affected life as a whole, and it has not thus far

been an influence which, to any appreciable extent, has accelerated

the development of peoples in their especially national aspects and

relations. It has nowhere fostered any conception of the whole world

as an object of social feeling. It has everywhere accepted a certain

provincialism as natural and necessary, and has tacitly assumed that

national boundaries are the horizon of the practical life of the

child. The school has in fact failed to take advantage of its

unmatched opportunity to use the imagination of the child to develop

his social powers. Sociologists say that if sociologists had been more

diligent in spreading abroad information about the social life, the

great war would perhaps never have happened. That we may certainly

doubt; something more profound must be done by education than to

disseminate knowledge, if it would undertake to be a power in the

world and to do anything more than add its influence to the tendencies

of the day, or perhaps temporarily change the direction of these

tendencies.

CHAPTER IX

ECONOMIC FACTORS AND MOTIVES

Thus far we have considered the motives of war mainly from the

psychological point of view, discovering its main movement and

development in the world to be a product of the psychic forces in the

social order. This method, however, did not exclude the objective

facts, and did not ignore the practical motives. We found that war is

a manifestation of many tendencies, and in fact is related to all the

deep movements in the life of society and of the individual. War comes

out of the whole of life in a way to preclude the interpretation of it

in terms of any single principle, or at least to prevent our finding a

single cause of war. We ought to try to see now how such a

psychological view of war stands in relation to certain more objective

views of it, which in a very general way may be said to be centered in

two closely related views. One is that war is almost exclusively an

economic phenomenon, and the other that war is the work of

individuals. One is the economic interpretation of history, and the

other is the great man view of history.

We still see a lingering theory that war is a result of the ancient

migratory or expansion impulse--that over-population and the pressure

of various economic conditions are the source of the impulses that

lead to war. We have seen reasons for believing, however, that war,

even in the beginning, has not been a wholly practical matter. Hunger,

pressure of population, migratory movements because of economic

conditions, will not explain the origin and the persistence of wars.

Wars are not simple as these views would imply, at any stage. That at

the present time economic advantage, whether or not it be the motive

of war, is in general not gained seems to be very clearly indicated.

The taking of colonies and other lands may be a detriment rather than

a gain to the conquering nation. The industry and the finance, of all

concerned in war, are likely to suffer disaster. Peace is the great

producer of wealth. War is a terrible destroyer of it. Ross says that

as industry progresses, wars become continually more expensive and

less profitable, that the drain is not upon man power so much as upon

economic power; nations bleed the treasure of one another until some

one of them is exhausted and must yield.

The theory that war is caused by the pressure of population,

especially as applied to the recent war, now appears to have been very

naïve. It was maintained that Germany needed more room for her growing

population, that Germany must have more land at home and more

colonies. Claes (46), among several writers, shows that this is not

true. Germany had no pressing need of more land, except for political

purposes, or such land as provided the raw materials for her military

industries. Bourdon (67) maintains that it is not true that Germany's

population was becoming excessive. Le Bon (42) says that this theory

of over-population is a myth. Still others have shown that in a

country that is rapidly becoming industrial, as was Germany, where

population is becoming massed in the great cities, emigration ceases;

and that actually, in Germany's case, labor was imported every year,

and that there are great tracts of arable land in Germany still but

sparsely populated. Nicolai (79) also attacks the theory that war is

sought for economic gain and says that an economic war among the

European states is an absurdity.

The need of colonies is often put forward as a real and also a

legitimate motive for war. Colonies must be provided, they say, for

the overflow of population from the homeland; colonies are the

foundation of the trade of nations--trade follows the flag. They think

of colonies as the offspring of nations, and nations without colonies

seem sterile and destined to extinction. We know that Germany's desire

for colonies is one of the causes of the European crisis, and that the

colonial question has been a fertile cause of trouble in Europe for

many years. And yet we have evidence that in the present economic

stage of the world, colonies do not perform to any great extent either

of the functions that are claimed for them. Trade does not in general

follow the flag; industrial nations do not need colonies either to

provide for over-population or for commercial reasons. The acquisition

of colonies does not as such benefit the great industrial and

financial interests. Why, then, do nations so ardently desire

colonies; and why, without colonies, do they feel themselves inferior

and at a disadvantage? Why, in a stage of industry, in which it is

presumably more to their advantage to conduct aggressive campaigns in

countries already densely populated, are nations so willing even to

fight to obtain colonies? Powers (75) says that the desire for

colonies comes from the idealistic tendencies of nations. This appears

to be true. Correspondingly we find that colonies are of more interest

to general staffs and admiralties than to captains of industry.

Colonies are wanted for military reasons, more than for trade reasons.

Colonies are desired as bases of operation in the game of empire

building by conquest. There is still another reason. The race for

colonies perpetuates an ideal which has grown out of an earlier stage

of the life of nations. Colonies were once actually the means of the

greatness of nations. The longing for colonial possessions, for the

extension of commerce, the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples

in regard to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their

commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and conditions, hark

back to an old romance of the sea. The waterways of the world, the

islands and new continents have a traditional appeal, which comes down

to us from the days when the small countries of Europe, one after

another--Portugal, Holland, Spain, England--became great in wealth,

and grew to be world powers, by their commerce and their colonial

possessions. In those days the expansion of nations was not at all due

to economic pressure at home. The landowners, the rules, the

privileged class in general were interested in colonies, because in

that direction stretched the path to fabulous wealth, and because over

the seas were the lands of adventure. The seeking of colonies was both

the business and the pleasure of the nations. To-day the gaining of

colonies may be only a loss to nations economically, but they satisfy

the craving for visible empire, and also a longing that is deep and

intense because tradition and romance are deeply embedded in it.

Probably no one now believes that war among modern nations is due to a

pure predatory instinct or to a migratory instinct which is supposed

to have led primitive hordes to seek new habitats and to prey upon

other peoples. Hunger does not now drive people in companies from

their homes and pour them into other lands, although it is true that

any threat which excites the old hunger-fear tends to arouse the war

spirit and to stir the migratory impulse; and a deep sensitiveness to

climatic conditions and a claustrophobia of peoples have remained long

after the need of land urged as the main cause of war, and we hear war

justified on the ground that crowded peoples require more land. This

_land hunger_ is an old motive and it still remains deep in the

consciousness of peoples long after its economic significance has

ceased. Just as we say the threat of hunger is often imagined, and the

fear of hunger and a deep and persistent fear of peoples and the sense

of danger of being engulfed and destroyed by other peoples linger in

consciousness, so the consciousness of the old struggle for land

remains as one of the most powerful of traditions, and any threat,

near or remote, to a nation's land arouses all the forces of the war

spirit, and the thought of aggression as a means of conquest of land

is always alluring.

Land was once the main possession and the main need. To-day it is the

chief symbol of the power of a nation. The possession of it is desired

when it gives nothing in return, certainly when there are no valid

economic reasons for taking it. This land hunger becomes the excuse of

nations for their sins of aggression. A differentiated society, so

organized that only the few, if any at all, can by any possibility

profit by the taking of lands still hungers for this primitive

possession. To a great extent land as a national possession has an

ideal rather than a practical value. It was one of the original

sources of prestige and distinction, having become the main material

interest of man as soon as he came to have fixed abode. The whole

historic period of the world has been a story of a struggle for land.

It is the memory of this land struggle, which is one of the deep

motives of war, which often determines the strategy of war, and the

policies of nations.

Precisely how the system of great land ownership originated is

obscure. Sumner (70) says that the belief that nobles have always held

lands, and are noble by reason of this possession, is false. Nobles

have in one way and another enriched themselves and bought land; or

rather having acquired land they have succeeded in acquiring titles of

nobility, and establishing their lines. In all nations which have

retained any traces of the feudalistic form, and to some extent

everywhere, land continues to be the basis of wealth, and also of

power, and the land-owning classes are still mainly the ruling

classes. This land-owning class is still dominated by the old

traditions of the landed aristocracy. It is the fighting class, and

supplies great numbers of officers for the armies. It upholds the idea

of national honor in its ancient forms as related to private honor;

it provides the great number of diplomatic and decorative officers.

Japan, Russia, Germany and to some extent England, at least up to the

time of the war, have retained feudalistic institutions, and the land

interest still remains as a motive of war. In all these nations,

certainly in those which have remained feudalistic in fact, it is the

aristocratic and owning class that usually represents the war

interest. It both rules and owns. It sends out the peasant and the

worker to extend the state. It is the protected class. Laws and

constitutions favor it. Taxes fall lightly upon it. Originally this

was the class that received all the benefits of war. To-day it suffers

less from war than do other classes. Even when it does not gain by war

in a material way, it is likely to gain in power (100).

We have seen this system of class rule at work in very recent times,

and it is a question whether the old ideal of land possession did not

work to the ruin of Germany economically, and indirectly antagonize

the industrial interests of the nation. German politics had been

trying to serve two masters, who were not entirely in agreement.

Germany was still a country of landed proprietors, and these

proprietors always have thrown their weight to the side of war. They

were by no means dominated by a motive of pure greed, and they did not

seek war entirely for their own advantage, but because, we might say,

they are ruled through and through by motives that can be satisfied

only in a militaristic state of society. Their gain from a successful

war is mainly a gain in prestige and distinction. An unsuccessful war,

as we have seen, threatens their extinction as a class. All democratic

movements tend toward land division, or is indeed in part precisely

this process. Aristocracy without land cannot maintain itself.

The economic theory of war comes to its own in the view that industry

now controls the world, that industry is the power behind politics,

and that industrial needs are the real energies that make wars. We

live in an industrial age, they say, and industry rules. Plainly to

find the whole truth about this relation of industry to war is no

simple matter. There are at least three more or less separate

questions involved in it. We need to know whether an industrial state

of society, or the industrial stage of economic development, is

especially prone to cause wars, as distinguished from more general

political and economic interests. We need to know whether wars, in an

industrial stage, do really serve either the interests of industry or

countries as a whole. Finally, there is the question whether those who

control industry and finance do actually create wars.

In the industrial and financial stages of economic development new

conditions arise which certainly must be taken into account in any

theory of war. There are deep changes in national life. The moods of

the city become a new force or a new factor in national life.

Socialistic ideas and new aspects of nationalism and patriotism

appear. There is a spirit of unrest; both pessimistic and optimistic

tendencies in society are increased; the motive of power takes new

forms, and there is a deep stirring of fundamental feelings and

impulses. The crowd instincts, the old hunger motives, are felt

beneath the surface of life. This is the effect of industrialism upon

the psychic forces of peoples in their collective aspects. Nations

also become as wholes more specialized in the industrial life; they

are dependent upon one another as never before. All the ancient

motives of commerce are stimulated, and the minds of nations revert to

the old fears and the old romance connected with the thought of the

seas. The growing interdependence of nations produces a peculiar and

paradoxical condition. Competition in regard to markets arises, with

all the complications and strains that we have seen in recent years.

There are new motives of aggression, but at the same time the need and

motives for peace are increased. Industries in general thrive best in

an era of assured peace. They live upon the wealth and prosperity

they themselves create. Intrigue, not force, is their proper weapon.

Le Bon (42) says, that the desire to create markets was not the cause

of the great war, because expansion went on very well in the time of

peace. Germany had no aggressive designs except commercial designs we

are told. Mach (95) tells us Germany's whole future, the success of

her carefully laid plans for industrial development and supremacy,

depended upon continued peace.

That such views of the relation of industry to war are in the main

correct can hardly be doubted. Industrial relations create strains

among nations, but when as a result of these strains war occurs it

must be regarded as a disaster from the point of view of the

industrial interests. Industry we say thrives upon the wealth that it

creates. A war which destroys half the wealth of the world must be a

calamity for all great industries except at the most a very few having

peculiar relations to the activities of war.

But there is another aspect of the relations of industry to war.

Industrialism as a great institution and movement of modern life

becomes in itself a political power. Howe (100) says that with the end

of Bismarck's wars personal wars and nationalistic wars came to an

end. The old aristocracy of the land merged with the new aristocracy

of wealth and this wealth has become the great political power in the

world. But this is only a half truth. Industry has become a factor in

the foreign relations of nations, and has become a power in politics,

but the motives and powers we call political are exceedingly complex,

and the interests of business, industry and finance are by no means

the whole of or coincident with political interests. There are of

course certain industries and financial interests which may even

instigate wars, and some writers give them a high place among the

causes of war. Especially the makers of munitions and armaments are

credited with a baneful influence in the world. With their

international understandings, their influence in legislative bodies,

their control of newspapers, they are open to the charge of

manipulating public sentiment, and bringing influence to bear upon

governments. They are accused of equipping small countries and setting

them against one another, of deliberately encouraging the race for

military and naval supremacy. No one can doubt that their

opportunities for trouble-making are many and enticing, but to think

of these influences as anything more than the incidental and secondary

causes of war seems to be a curious way of understanding history

(100).

The inside history of the great financiering projects would no doubt

give us some of the main clews to the present diplomatic relations of

nations to one another. If we take into account the various intrigues

in connection with the building of the Bagdad route, the financing of

the Balkan States in their wars, the bargaining of the Powers in

Turkey for financial concessions, the great business interests

involved in the Russo-Japanese war, the loans to China and all the

rest of the financial history of a few decades we should have in hand

materials that no one could deny the importance of for an

understanding of current history. Diplomacy has had added to its

already complex duties the art of securing financial advantages. In

general the art of this diplomacy is to secure these advantages

without war, but there can be no doubt that financial relations have

multiplied the points of contact and strain among peoples, and that

these financial relations have become the main occasional causes of

wars. Howe (100) thinks that surplus capital is to blame for a great

many of the great disasters of modern times--that it destroyed

Egyptian independence, led France into Morocco, Germany into Turkey,

and into the farther East, embroiled the Balkan States; and that the

great war has been a conflict over conflicting interests of Russia,

England and Germany in Turkey. Under the guise of expansion of trade

this invisible wealth has been exploiting the most vital interests of

foreign countries. Veblen would go so far as to say that wars are

government-made, that patriotism is exploited by governments in

advance of pre-arranged hostilities to produce the spirit of war (97).

If we hold that these economic causes are now the most important

causes of wars, it is easy to accept the conclusion that the most

fundamental, and even perhaps the sole cause of war is the evil

principle of ownership, as is actually maintained by many economists.

If men in cliques, and men as individuals did not own privately great

parts of the wealth of the world, these conflicts in which wealth and

its distribution are the most vital interests would not take place.

Many socialists, we know, hold these views, asserting that wars are

due solely to industrial competition among nations, and to the fact

that industrialism is based upon the wholly wrong principle of private

ownership. Hullquist, a socialist, says that wars are likely to become

more frequent and more violent as the capitalist system of production

approaches its climax. The working classes, the socialists say, who

have nothing permanent, are the natural enemies of war; the

capitalists, who have much and want more, are constantly placing peace

in jeopardy. The protective system of tariff also receives much abuse

from these writers. Novicow (71) places the tariff system high among

the causes of war. The belief that it is good to sell and bad to buy,

he says, is the great trouble maker in the world. This was also the

principle of Cobden the great English free-trader of the middle of the

last century. The Manchester school of which he was the leader would

do away with wars by making the world economically a unit.

Veblen (97) charges the price system with being a fundamental cause of

war, and says that it must now come up for radical examination and

perhaps modification. The theory of the rights of property and

contract which have been taken as axiomatic premises by economic

science may itself fail, or at least be thrown open to question.

Either the price system will go, or there will be wars between nations

in the future as there have been in the past, because of the need of

protection of ownership rights, and because of the nationalism these

rights create. To some extent these rights of property _have_ been

curtailed, Veblen remarks; the old feudalistic rights have in large

part been annulled, and the world is at least owned by more people

than was once the case. That these changes and readjustments of

property rights will be carried still further he thinks there can be

no doubt.

Stevens draws similar conclusions about the evil effects of property

rights. The great war and all wars, he asserts, are based upon

existing social conditions--upon the organization of the family, the

school, the state, the church, upon the institution of property, with

its corollaries of foreign markets and other industrial relations.

Protection of trade, which works in the interest of the owner classes,

indirect taxes which fall upon the consumer, the labor system by

which, at the present time, the laborer receives but a small share of

the profits, but must become when necessary the defender of the

interests in which he does not share--all these things we hear being

charged vigorously with being the causes of wars, including the recent

great conflict. This system is blamed not only for our great

international wars, but it is looked upon as the germ of wars to come,

internal wars, when international wars shall have ceased, or

temporarily have been abated. When, perhaps, the restrictions that

assume that the gain of one country is the loss of another have

satisfactorily been adjusted, the system that maintains that the

capitalist can prosper only at the expense of the laborer will come up

for final settlement (97).

All these views, from a psychological point of view, seem to be open

to the criticism that they tend to consider the world one-sidedly and

by a certain abstraction. They are dealing with a world governed only

by economic laws. It is easy to construct these ideal worlds. They are

simple and they lend themselves readily to the purposes of a political

calculus. Finding economic motives in individual life, in the social

life and in politics, and in history it is tempting both to explain

the past and plan the future in terms of the entities and principles

of economics. But after all it is only when we consider economic

motives in their relations to all the motives behind human conduct

that we are likely to see the economic motives in history in their

true light. Then we shall very much doubt whether property has been in

any real sense the cause of wars, or that the abrogation of property

rights will be the means of establishing perpetual peace. We shall see

that economic motives themselves are but aspects of deeper motives,

and involve desire for objectives that are not sought for their

material value, and also objectives that are not material at all. The

process of development of present human society, so far back as we can

see, and as far into the future as we can with any confidence predict,

seems to contain as a necessity some form and degree of human slavery.

This appears to be inherent in the fact itself of the existence of

individual wills, having in any degree individual or personal

interests as they must, and the impossibility of devising any social

order or government that will give to the individual an ideal freedom,

if such a conception be indeed possible at all. We may conjecture at

least that in a world in which every trace of an economic motive had

been removed, if this were possible, there would still be slavery of

some kind, and the inexorable logic of individuality would in the end

produce conflict and war.

Nations, like individuals, live, and they pass through certain stages

that seem in a general way to be necessary phases of their

development. During this process of development certain objects

become, one after another, of the most vital concern because they are

necessary to the satisfaction of the motives which guide the lives of

these nations. But these objects are never so definitely marked off

that they become to the exclusion of other motives the causes of wars.

The social life is never so simple as this would imply. The past is

always involved in the present. One after another certain types of

economic objects-become more or less central in the interests of

nations, but the minds of nations, like those of individuals, are

always influenced by the tradition. Objects are desired with reference

to the satisfaction of motives that represent complex and general

desires. There are ideal objects as well as material objects; and the

material object is often sought because of its possible use as a means

of satisfying the desire for ideal values. First food, then land, then

commerce, then industry, then wealth itself,--this has been the order

in which economic values have become objects for the consciousness of

people as groups, and have become involved in and more or less

completely represent the relations among peoples we call political.

That which is, relatively speaking, an object of necessity at one

stage tends to become an ideal or romantic object of the next stage.

The relations of economic objects to the desires of nations and to war

are complex and not precisely what they may on the surface appear to

be. Nations, like individuals, do not know what they need, and they do

not even understand clearly what they desire. Their desires are

complex: elementary economic motives, political motives, personal

motives, the motives of industry and finance, the motive of power and

the craving for certain states of consciousness all exist together,

and to some extent antagonize one another. The present practical

desire is confused by the traditional object. The will of a nation is

a composite will, and its history is full of contradictory impulses,

and also full of surprises. Nations often think they are fighting for

economic reasons when their real motives are plainly to gain military

distinction. The reputation is quite as satisfying as any material

prosperity gained. There is an illusion and a delusion about it all.

All these economic advantages that nations are always seeking have

something unreal about them. Nations seek them long after they

represent real values. Nations seek colonies when, if business is what

they want, it could better be obtained nearer home. Finance looks for

advantages overseas, when there are quite as safe investments at home

paying quite as large profits. Nations have desires to do great

things, not merely to live and prosper.

That is the way these economic problems of war appear, at least when

they are examined in relation to other aspects of war and of society.

These economic problems are merged into and subordinate to the

political or the historical problems, and economic causes of war must

be considered with reference to the psychological principles that are

at the bottom of all social development.

CHAPTER X

POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL FACTORS

We think of political causes of war mainly as an aspect of the fact

that nations desire always certain _geographical objectives_. These

desires are represented in part by the policies of governments and

leaders, but we must also think of nations as a whole as having

desires, and as being moved by profound purposes. At once the question

arises whether we shall think of these political objectives, and the

wars the desires for them cause, as essentially the objects and the

work of individuals. Do individuals in any real sense create history?

This, of course, is a profound question and involves fundamental

theories of history. Shall we accept the "great man" theory of

history, and say that history is mainly the work of a few who are able

to shape events with reference to policies of their own, or shall we

think that forces that determine history reside rather in the

instincts or desires of the common life of the people?

A psychological study of history inclines us to the belief that the

forces that make history are mainly forces that do not exist as

conscious purposes and are therefore not essentially political forces.

One of the conditions of leadership seems to be that the leader shall

seek his own personal ends and realize his own purposes for his

country only within the field of the traditional and common objectives

which are held by the people as a whole as their purpose in history.

These are the materials with which the leader must work. Historically

his work may seem decisive. Psychologically it is to be regarded as a

complex effect of lawfully related social reactions. The motives of

leader and people must have large common factors. The leader holds

his power and his prestige by embodying in his own will and

representing in his own conscious policies the will of the people and

their idea of country as an historic entity. The leader is leader only

in so far as he is recognized as representing the will of the "herd."

As genius, this leader is manifestly creative, but the true genius in

statesmanship is even rarer than genius elsewhere. The great leader is

an artist. He must take certain vague or clear ambitions of the

people, must accept the nation's historic objectives as the

foundations of his policies, and working with these objects and

desires make his own page of history. His glory and his prestige

depend upon his fulfilling deep desires of his people. The forces with

which he deals are plastic, but only within narrow limits. Leadership

at best is a fragile thing. However autocratic the power, it is after

all dependent upon the good will of the people, and the acceptance of

the leader as one who is serving the interests of the people.

When we consider the nature and the objects of the ambitions and

desires that the statesman or leader must fulfill, we see why the

relations of ruler to people are difficult to understand. Nations do

not know with clearness either what they desire or why at heart they

desire the objectives that seem of most importance. People give

economic and political reasons, but the consciousness of nations is

subject to deep moods, and is influenced by remote events and

traditions. Nations have generic desires as well as specific ones.

They always crave empire; they all desire to have rank. They are

always ambitious, jealous and watchful of one another. These general

and more or less subconscious desires make their desires for specific

objects intense, but they also make them peculiarly irrational. The

heroic examples of history, hereditary emotions and the effects of

specific events in the history of peoples complicate their politics,

and often make rational politics impossible. Nations will not act in

their own best interests, because they are governed by irrational

motives. In this way certain disparities are often produced between

the people and their practical statesmen, but history seems to show us

that when these disparities exist in the region of fundamental desires

and policies it is the leader who must yield. History seems to show us

also that wars, coming in general out of the deeper motives of

nations, do not belong to such an extent as is often supposed to the

realm of politics. Political causes are often incidental causes and

determine the time and place of wars but do not create them. Cramb

(66) says that wars persist in spite of their unreason, because there

is something transcendental that supports them, and this

transcendental purpose is the desire for empire. Powers (75) says that

nations fight for tangible things and also for intangible things. The

tangible things are existence, commerce, independence, territory;

nations also desire objects that are not useful, the worth of which

consists in their satisfaction of taste. The ambition to own colonies,

Powers thinks, is of this nature. Colonies are quite as much

ornamental as they are useful. They convey the feeling and impression

of power.

That these deep desires of nations as expressed in the ambition to

reach certain geographical objectives are exceedingly strong, often if

not always irrational, brutally arrogant and tenacious, the whole

course of history teaches us. These desires are indeed the forces

behind historical movements. They create politics and policies. War

preexists in these irrational purposes. These purposes are charged

with emotion, with prejudice, and tradition. It is with these motives

that all practical politics must contend, and these motives are the

forces that the statesman must use and make more rational.

The purposes of nations are usually if not always we say obscure and

deep, existing in the form of ideals and tendencies, and likely to

take the form of visions of empire wholly unrealizable. And yet there

are always certain perfectly clear objectives upon which all the

force of these half understood motives impinge. These objectives may

or may not be economically rational or morally justifiable. We always

know with certainty certain of these objectives for which any nation

will if necessary fight. These objectives have often a long history

behind them. They are surrounded by tradition, sincerely and even

religiously sought. They are ideal objects which nations feel they

have a right to possess. Every nation apparently believes itself the

logical possessor of something it does not now hold (99). All peoples

have their longings for these possessions, which are their vision of a

greater self. These objects are often desired for reasons that are

clear enough to all; but they are also often but the symbols of deeper

desires. As such, nations act toward them with almost instinctive

compulsion.

We may suppose that no great historical event is ever enacted that is

not determined more by traditional desires than by conscious politics.

A thousand years of strife have provided the motives for the great

European war. Memories of time-honored objectives have arisen in the

consciousness of many peoples, and these memories cannot be recalled

without exciting passions that make all rational politics unavailing.

Europe has been fighting over again her battles of the past, and at

the moment of the present writing is carrying them into the conference

of peace. The plans of statesmen and the intrigues of finance have but

little success in contending against these forces. Since the leaders

themselves are not free from the prejudices and the compulsion of

traditions and the unconscious desires and deep impulses which move

their people, they can with but dubious success bring international

politics into the sphere of reason. They do not represent merely the

selfish desires of their people. They are not merely spokesmen of the

interests of class or individual. They are embodiments of the whole

history of their nations.

All history, and all the present relations of nations to one another

may, of course, be considered in terms of the desires for specific

objectives caused by the imperial desires of peoples, these desires

themselves being regarded as a sum of motives, the effects of past

political relations, and containing both rational and irrational

elements. The world is a vast field of stress in which the powers at

work are national wills rather than political forces as the projects

of rulers and the diplomats. These powers, when fully aroused, are

quite beyond the control of statesmen acting in their ordinary

capacities, and their final issues no historian ought now to try to

predict. History has been full of surprises because of the nature of

the forces which create history, and these surprises seem to have been

sometimes the greatest for those who were most intimately concerned in

making history. Events seldom run smoothly according to well laid

plans.

It would not fall within the scope of a psychological study of war to

describe or analyze the complex system of strains that exist in the

world to-day, and to point out the conditions that led to the great

war would be for the most part unnecessary, since they must be obvious

to all. The main items in such a study of history, however, may well

be recalled to mind. One would need to show the effects of England's

irresistible development through several centuries; the struggle for

the control of the Mediterranean; Germany's efforts to extend her

empire toward the East, and the closing of doors against Germany's

advance; Russia's pressure upon the Teutonic peoples, the ancient and

terrible dread of Russia on the part of the nations of Western Europe,

the shadow under which Turkey, Germany, and England had lived because

of the presence of the great Slavic state, with its mysticism, its

dynastic ambitions and its great growth force, its need of open ports,

and vital interest in the amalgamation of the South Slavic peoples,

and the determination to own Constantinople and to succeed to the

place of the Turkish Empire. We should need to take into account the

long history of the struggle for colonies, the colonial trust of

Russia, England and France, the ambitions of France for empire in

Africa, the operations of French finance in the Balkans and elsewhere,

Austria's aggressive hatred of Serbia, and her effort to prevent the

revival of Poland, the conflicts of Germany and Austria with Italy in

regard to the Ægean and the Adriatic and their shores, the fierce

irredentism of Italy, and the ambitions of Italy that have brought her

into conflict with the Teutonic powers and with Turkey, all the

conflicting purposes and ambitions of Greece, Roumania, Bulgaria, and

Serbia, and the added strain in the Balkans because of the vital

interests of all the Great Powers there, and many other conflicts and

causes of conflicts. These conflicts we see repeated in kind in the

relations of Japan, China and Russia and the other powers interested

in the geography of Asia, and in the waters of the Pacific, and once

more in the growing strains between the East and the West (99).

Taking our world as we find it, and viewing the nature of nations in

the light of their history and of their persistent antagonisms, one

might readily believe that the causes of war and war itself will

continue into a far future. No war, the pessimist might well argue,

will destroy national vitality or neutralize the many points of

strain. There may be great coalitions and even Leagues of Nations, but

these may only make wars more terrible when they come. The friendship

of nations will still be insecure and shifting. The great strategic

points of the world will remain. Small countries will continue to be

ambitious and jealous of one another. Island countries will still be

faced by coasts that contain possibilities of danger. The

Constantinoples and the Gibraltars will remain; Suez and Panama will

be left, and Verdun will still be something more than a historic

memory (99).

That these objectives might all be brought into a permanent state of

equilibrium, by some ideal world politics, that nations _ought_ to

abandon their ideas of empire or at least see how crude these ideas

are, how out of relation to our modern ideas of value, and how out of

place in a practical world--all this we can readily understand, but

who will expect nations to become very different from what they are

now, and who shall say how many imperial eggs there are in the world

yet to be hatched? There are many ways of justifying these

ambitions--Germany justifies hers by reason, and the researches of her

great historians--the Treitschkes and the Mommsens; Russia bases her

claims upon her religion and her ethos; Japan brings her divinity and

her traditions, her vitality and her intelligence; England offers her

justice and above all her proved genius for government as a

justification of empire. But after all, these desires for empire lie

deeper than proof and reason can go. Poetic, dramatic and religious

elements enter into them. There are geniuses among nations. The

creative force in a nation is its life force, its essence and its

reality. In some sense the desire to be an empire is the whole meaning

of a nation, for without the ambition to be supreme, peoples, some of

them, would be nothing. It is the vision of empire, however forlorn

and hopeless, that keeps many nations alive, perhaps all. Nations seek

to express in visible form the evidence of their inner and potential

greatness. The historic and time-honored art of empire-building is the

only art they know. Whether this is the tragedy of history, the

world's fate and the condemnation of it to perpetual warfare--or is

but a term in the logic by which nations rise to other and higher

forms; or finally is a crime or a mistake which it is within the power

of the will of man to abandon or amend--these are problems of the

philosophy of history.

_Historical Causes_

Historical causes of war are in part the sequences of events that the

political causes of war produce (political as the causes inherent in

the wills of nations), and we must suppose they are mainly this.

History, from this point of view, is the working out of the motives or

the desires contained in these national wills. The causes of our late

war, for example, are to be sought mainly in the wills of the great

powers that are concerned in it. Economic forces, the laws of the

growth of nations (both psychological and physical laws), the

conditions of the geographical distributions of peoples over the

earth--all these are involved in the cause of wars. There are also

great personages whose actions must to some extent be considered apart

from these general laws; these personages contribute factors to the

causation of any given war that are not entirely inherent in the laws

of growth or the psychology of nations. Shall we say also that there

are fortuitous factors, historical causes that are not contained in

any logic of human desires? Can we say, perhaps, that these fortuitous

causes are indeed the main causes--in a word that wars are not

desired, mainly, but are the product, indeed, either of the mere logic

of chance, or of a design that transcends human will altogether? Are

wars willed, or are they the results of the complex, the illogical and

uncontrollable factors of the world's existence and movement? These

may not be practical problems, but they are serious problems, since in

the end they implicate the whole of philosophy.

What place shall we give, in the laws of history, to the sudden and

chance turn of affairs; to the quick shift of the wheels of fortune;

to the incidents, the accidents, the mis-judgments of rulers and the

slips of the diplomats? Are wars after all a product of the logic of

life, or are they mere fortuitous syntheses of events which in their

particular combination make a total that is not involved, either as

desire or as tendency, in the sum of the particulars that enter into

the whole? How completely, in a word, do the interests and purposes of

nations determine wars? May we speak of motives that always tend to

produce wars, but never seem to will them?

History seems to show us that wars are less directly willed than we

have sometimes supposed, and perhaps that there is a large element of

chance in them as regards a given war at any time and in any place.

War in general is inherent in, or is a natural effect of, the laws of

development of nations. Wars as historical events are not completely

describable in terms of these laws. It is the old contrast between the

historical and the scientific explanation of things that appears here.

Nations have deep and vague desires, we say. They want satisfaction of

their honor; they crave a dramatic life, even military prestige and

glory, but we do not often find war itself definitely willed. The

desires of nations, we repeat, tend to be too fundamental to be

specific. Their specific desires are indeed and for that reason likely

to be contradictory. They desire both war and peace at the same time,

and have interests that may be served by both. They live in indecision

like individuals. Motives conflict. They hesitate, and doubt, and

fear. They shrink from taking the plunge. It requires the sharp and

clear event, the chance event, most often, to precipitate them into

wars. It is always to-morrow that they are to wage wars. So wars do

not usually occur by the rational plans and devices of any man or any

historical sequences of men, we may believe, and it is a question

whether wars are very often intended in a real sense by any one. Wars

occur as crises in events. The strains that produce them are certainly

inherent in the relations of nations at all times, and even in the

motives of personal politics, but in general these relations as

consciously governed relations are in the direction of seeking the

greatest advantage with the least show of force. The conditions must

all be present, both the match and the powder, before war can take

place. There must be a condition of strain, having certain

psychological features none of which can be missing, the condition

being something complex and not readily analyzable, at any given time.

In addition to these strains events must take place which, in all

their appearances, are fortuitous.

One might argue from this that the cure of war consists in eternal

watchfulness to see that the match does not touch the powder, that we

must watch these events that precipitate wars and safeguard peoples

from being affected by them. This, of course, is more or less the

method of diplomacy; to some minds the league of nations is a device

for doing this on a larger and more systematic scale. But when we

study history and see what these war-causing incidents are, how

numerous and how variable, we can see that diplomacy and statesmanship

undertake an impossible task when they try to steer the world along

its narrow historical course, with only historical landmarks for

guides.

The war that is so vividly in mind now furnishes us with an

illustration of the complexity of the causes of war, and allows us to

see clearly contrasting views of the causal factors in great wars in

general. We see here a closely fitting series of events, each in

itself having but little reference to the great crisis, all fitting

together, and for want of any one of which, if one takes the purely

historical view, we might suppose the war would never have happened,

or might have been postponed indefinitely. If Venezelos, to go back no

further than that, had remained in Crete and had been content to be an

island politician, would not the course of events in the Balkans have

been very different? Out of his course came events which no one could

have foreseen, but which, without similar actions on the part of

individuals producing other links in the chain, would not have taken

place. If some diplomat or some foreign office had made a decision

slightly different from what was actually decided; if the three

emperors had had a little more reliable information about one

another; if the statisticians of the German service had computed a

little better England's resources, and had put the moral factor into

the sum--would the war have happened at all?

In this direction, of course, lies the chaos of history and its

madness--and also its philosophy. We may be driven on the one hand to

think of all history as a matter of the chance relations of

individuals and of detached particular events, having significance as

a series but never planned or controlled as a whole, or we may resort

to the opposite way of thinking, and say that all of history, in every

particular and detail, is divinely planned and prearranged, and each

event fits into a rational whole. This, of course, is our final

problem of history, we say, as it is the final problem of every

question that considers life as concrete events having value precisely

as the particular sequence that it is--when we view life historically,

in a word, rather than by the methods of the quantitative sciences, or

by the genetic methods such as are used mainly in the psychological

sciences, and which we may say stand between history and the sciences

of matter.

CHAPTER XI

THE SYNTHESIS OF CAUSES

It appears to be no very difficult matter to discover causes of war,

and indeed a considerable number of causes. In fact the problem seems

to yield an embarrassment of riches, especially if our chief interest

happens to be a practical one, and we wish to find the causes of war

in order to see how they may be controlled. We might even have

discovered all the causes of war and still be as far as before from

any real understanding of the cause of war. Unless one can know the

relative importance of the causes, and the manner in which the causes

combine to produce wars; unless the results give in some way a

synthetic view of the causes of war, show _dominating_ causes, or

reveal a total cause which is not merely a summation of stimuli, but

is both a necessary and a sufficient situation for the production of

war; unless we have shown some fundamental cause and movement in the

social order, we are still left in search of the cause of war.

We have, indeed, found a number of causes of war, but at the same time

the causes have not appeared to exist as separate causes. We are

always catching sight of a movement in the development of nations and

of the world--of certain fundamental motives, the most basic of all,

the most general, being the motive of power. These causes of war do

not appear, however, to be of the nature of a _chain_, giving us the

impression that in order to break the habit of war, all we need do is

to discover the weakest link in the chain of causes, break the chain

there, and so interrupt the whole mechanism of war-making in the

world. Above all, although fortuitous events as causes of war must

not be overlooked, war is not continually being made anew by the

appearance again and again of accidental situations, which are thus to

be regarded as the cause of war.

War is, first of all, a natural expression of the social life, resting

primarily upon the fact of the existence, universally, of groups of

individuals acting as units. But here cause and effect are lost in one

another. Conflict cements the group, and the existence of the group,

again, is the cause of conflict. War is an aspect of the social

solidarity of the group acting under certain conditions, and these

conditions are the presence of deep desires that can, in general, be

satisfied only by the exertion of force on the part of communities

acting as wholes.

These primitive motives and moods of war that we find in the nature of

the social group itself, emerge finally in three aspects of the life

of nations, and it is these aspects of the life of nations that appear

to us as the causes of war. They are not separate and independent

features of the social life, and it is in part only for the sake of

convenience that they are sharply separated at all. They are all at

bottom manifestations of the motive of power that runs through all

history, and all the social and individual life. On one side this

motive appears in moods and impulses that we called the "intoxication"

moods and impulses. National honor was found to be another effect of

it. The political motives of war are its concrete expression. These

motives all together--all being but phases of a deep, powerful energy

and purpose, are the source of the main movement in history out of

which war comes. In this movement all the motives of the social life

are always present and active at the same time. The good and the bad

of national life are phases of a single purpose and are not two

contrasted principles or moments. The past is always contained in the

present.

War, then, is the result of certain motives which are fundamental to

the group life. It is a natural form in which, given a certain degree

of intelligence and of complexity of the social life, these motives

express themselves. All the motives and forms of expression are

present in germ at least from the beginning of the development of the

social life. Considering the whole history of war we see that it is a

part of a very complex movement in human society, and yet that no war

appears to be the final term of a process of inexorable logic. Taking

history as a whole, we see that the natural laws involved and the

nature of the social consciousness make a state of war from time to

time highly probable, but war is not a necessary consequence of any

natural law. Nations are self-conscious personalities. Perhaps in the

future they may change their ways, abandon voluntarily their desires,

subject themselves to discipline, or deliberately invent a plan of

international relations that will have the effect of eliminating war

from their lives altogether.

It is always dangerous, but at the same time it is always tempting to

try to explain national life, or all life and history, in terms of the

individual and his experience. Once more, however, we may yield to

that temptation and say that the world to-day is in a stage of

development which has many traits that show its relation in some very

significant ways to certain undeveloped conditions found in

individuals, which in fact always appear as phases of the life of all

individuals in some degree and form. Nations have acquired a high

degree of subjectivism, partly on account of the geographical

conditions under which they have lived, and the many barriers between

nations due to difference of origin and of language, and the

fundamental emotions of fear and jealousy which, as we have seen, play

so large a part in the life and conduct of groups. Nations, however

close to one another, have remained isolated in spirit; they have

lacked both the initiative and the means for becoming definitely

related to one another in purposive and sustained activities.

Therefore all their relations have remained highly emotional,

subjective, influenced by mysticism, filled with hatred and fear, hero

worship and illusion. Nations have lacked both the power, and we might

say, the organs, for externalizing their spirit. They have dreamed

dreams and played plays, and followed their illusions of empire. Even

their wars have not, until perhaps now, become wholly real and serious

in a measure commensurate with their powers and resources. The present

war more than any other, and more than any other event in history,

represents an escape on the part of nations from their subjectivism,

and a beginning, it may be, of the realization of a more mature, or

shall we say more _normal_ conception of the world. Nations have

played at being great and have really produced but little true

greatness. Now, let us say, their dream is over. We see that these

nations can no longer play. Their wooden weapons have at last been

turned to steel. They can fight no longer indeed without destroying

one another. They must now _live_ in practical and moral relations,

give up their bright dreams of empire after the old heroic order, and

be content to be imperial (if they are born to be imperial) by

performing distinguished service in the world, by their own genius of

leadership. There is work in the world for nations to do; there are

empires of the spirit, it may be, greater than have yet been dreamed

of in the nations' childish philosophies of life. The consciousness of

nations contains, it may be, unsuspected powers, suppressed in the

past by narrow nationalism, by fear, habit and convention. These

powers may now, if ever, blossom forth; they have been wasted too long

in patriotic feeling and in idle dreamery. They must now show what

they can do in a practical world that will have no more of mere

assertions.

The world stands to-day balanced between two ideals. Human spirit, the

spirit of nations, is a free and plastic force; it is also a sum of

motives and desires; but most fundamentally of all it is a growing,

living, creative and personal spirit. It still clings to its luxuries

of feeling, to its provincial life, it is still fascinated by its

beautiful romance of empire. On the other hand we see the stirring of

a new idea. A new world arises, less dramatic in its appeal than the

old world, but a world appealing by its practical problems both to the

will and to the intellect. Shall we yield to the fascination of the

old romance and go back to our hero worship; or shall we be inspired

now by this vision of a new and greater social order, create out of

our own powers of imagination the forms this world must assume if it

is to appeal to the deepest feelings of all peoples, and make this new

world real by our own intelligence and determination?

We stand to-day at a dramatic moment in history; a more dramatic

moment than when the victory itself hung in the balance. Perhaps our

sense of responsibility for the future is an illusion; perhaps we are

driven by an inexorable logic of history, and we do not after all

choose what our world shall be. But certainly the sense of human power

in the world has never been greater than now nor seemed better

justified; nor, if we are deceived, has the reality ever been more out

of harmony with the ambitions of man.

PART II

THE EDUCATIONAL FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONS

CHAPTER I

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE DAY

Education, like all other institutions, has been charged, we know,

with having contributed its share to the causes of the war. The

Prussian school system, we have been told, was mainly a school of war;

all the emotions and ideas necessary to produce morbid nationalism,

distorted views of history, and a belief in and a love of war were

there fostered and deliberately cultivated. There is, of course, some

truth in this; it is a truth that is deceiving, however, if we regard

it as at all indicating the true relation between education and

practical affairs. If the school was a factor in the late war, such a

creative effect of education appears to be rare in history. In general

it is the negative effect of the school that is most conspicuous. It

is what the school has not done to prevent war, what it has failed to

do in not bringing nations out of their perverted nationalism into a

life of more practical relationship with one another that really best

characterizes the school.

It is difficult or impossible for us now, of course, to perceive what

the war has done--in what way, all in all, the future will be

different from the past. It is very easy and natural to look at

everything dramatically now, see revolution everywhere and believe

that all institutions are now to be radically changed. Or, going to

the other extreme, we may become cynical, and say that, human nature

being unchangeable, we shall soon settle down into the old routine and

we shall see presently that nothing revolutionizing has transpired.

Some will say, and indeed are saying that education must now be

entirely remodeled; some will think that education had best go on as

before--that nothing has happened certainly to require any new

philosophy of the school, or any profound change in its form. We see

these two tendencies in many phases of our present situation: in

politics, in education, and in the business world.

It is impossible, we may repeat, to make wholly safe judgments now

about the future, but still something must in the meantime be done. We

must either stand still or go forward--or backward; we must act either

with a theory or without one. The school is involved in this

necessity. There is a new content of history that we cannot ignore,

but must in some way _teach_. We must say something about the war;

current events can hardly be kept out of the school, and to understand

current events there must be a wider content of history than we have

had in the past. There are new, or at least disturbed, conditions in

the industrial and in all the social life, and these conditions cannot

fail to have some effect upon the school. The school must adjust

itself to them, and it must surely take into account new needs that

have arisen. Patriotism may need to be taught now, or taught in a

different manner. There is a problem of war and peace, the question of

what ideals of national life we are to convey. Internationalism

demands some recognition on the part of the school. It seems probable,

therefore, and even necessary that a new interest in the function of

education will be felt and must be aroused. Must we not indeed now

examine once more all the foundations upon which our ideas about

education rest? Certainly there will never be a more favorable time,

or more reasons for such a task.

It is the impending internationalism, or the idea of internationalism

now so vividly put before us all, that most incites new thought about

education, and about all the means of controlling the ideas and

feelings of the people. We hear much about _re_construction and

_re_adjustment, and these terms obviously imply the old ways and the

old institutions. But internationalism is something new, having many

possibilities; it means new relations among peoples; it opens up new

practical fields and new phases of sociology and economics. It is

because of this new phase of the social life and social consciousness

of man, we might suppose, that education is most likely to be affected

in its foundations, so that no mere readjustment will be enough. A new

politics and a new science of nations appear, and we cannot fail to

see that there is at the present time something decidedly lacking in

education; that there is a larger life perhaps for which our present

ways of educating children would not sufficiently prepare, and that to

prepare for this larger life something more would be needed than an

added subject in the curriculum. This is because internationalism is

not simply more of something we have already; it is a turn in the

road, and a turn which, it can hardly be denied, will finally affect

all institutions. If internationalism has come to stay, it will need,

and it must have, powerful support from all educational forces. It

will need something more than support; education must produce creative

habits of mind, which shall make and nourish new relations in the

world, and it must make people intelligent, so that they can

understand what the new and larger relations mean and what must be

accomplished by them.

A casual observation of the educational situation might indicate that

education is limited in two ways, so far as being a means of meeting

our present needs is concerned. _It is lacking in power_; it treats

children and youths still in a fragmentary way, and the process of

learning is somewhat detached from the totality of living. There is a

lack of richness of content, and a lack of responsiveness in the

school to the stirring life outside the school. If we may say that

history now turns a new page, and that society stands at a change of

tide, education is also in a peculiar and interesting position. The

school may, from now on, if our view of it be at all just, be expected

to do one of two things: it may settle down to a relatively successful

work, in a limited sphere of usefulness, training children well,

especially fitting them to enter into our present social order; or, on

the other hand, the school may now become a much greater power, and

may seize hold upon fundamental things in life and society under the

stimulus of new conditions--find a way to a deeper philosophy, a more

consistent theory, attain a more exalted mood and higher purpose, and

become a far more potent factor in civilization.

That education will remain unaffected in profound ways by the war, is

difficult to believe. One may very readily, as we say, see these

impending changes in too dramatic a way, and begin to talk about

profound upheavals and ideals that certainly will never be realized (and

we ought to guard against this easy idealizing, which leaves human

nature out of the reckoning); still we cannot but feel that in some way

a new dimension has been added to the social life as a result of the

war, and that education, in dealing with this greater society, must

itself be raised to a higher power. If we think, educationally speaking,

in terms of a world at all, rather than in terms of individuals, or

communities, families and nations, we are quickly impressed by the sense

of living in a new order of educational problems, and possessing, it may

be, a new variety of self-consciousness. Nations in this new view are

thought of as parts of a world, as having many external relations,

whereas formerly almost all education has had reference at the most to

the internal life of nations. Patriotism has been the expression of its

most distant horizon.

If we believe that anything new is about to be realized in education,

it might seem natural to begin to think about changes from the

standpoint and in the terms of the old chapters and topics. We might

ask what this or that subject of the curriculum means or must produce

that it did not mean and did not produce before; or we might consider

the old and the new requirements in the education of the feelings, the

will, the intellect; or we might take any other of the educational

categories as a basis for a discussion of the philosophy of the

school. These programs, however, do not seem to be very inspiring.

Would it not be better now to try to distinguish the main fields of

life and the main interests in regard to which new questions and new

needs have arisen, and see what changes in our educational thought are

really demanded by them? On such a plan, internationalism itself would

first demand attention, and indeed most of all. In a sense all

questions about education must now be considered with reference to

internationalism in some way. Then there are the problems already

raised during the war and widely discussed, about the teaching of

patriotism. Patriotism becomes a new educational problem, a chapter in

our theory of education, in which we become conscious of ourselves in

a new way, and are aware of our larger field and changed conditions.

There are questions, too, about the teaching of the lessons of the

war, what we shall think about war in general as a good or an evil,

how we shall conceive peace and its values. Changes are taking place

in government, and in our ideas of government, and governments are

being put to new tests. Political education can hardly fail to be now

one of our most serious concerns. Democracy appears to be our great

word; the control and education of the democratic forces and the

democratic spirit becomes an urgent need. Industry acquires new

meanings; we must take up again all the theory of industrial

education, for we have seen of late that industry contains

possibilities of evil we did not before understand. Social problems

arise in changed forms. The new world-idea or world-consciousness

becomes an educational problem of the social life. Class difference

can never again be ignored as it has been in the past in the schools.

Moral, religious and æsthetic education seems to have a different

place in the school, just to the extent that all life has become more

serious on account of the war. These demands made upon the deepest

elements of the psychic life suggest the need once more of a new

philosophy of education, or, at the least, a greatly increased

recognition and application of the philosophy we already have.

Before the war there was a sense of security and the feeling that our

education was adequate to meet all demands. We were proud of our

educational system. Our democratic ideals, people said, were safe in

the hands of the public school. Industrial education was meeting

fairly well the needs of the industrial life. There were no very

pressing class problems. The troubles of capital and labor, although

always threatening, seemed to demand no educational interference. The

religious problem was temporarily not acute. Aesthetic forms had been

attended to in the curriculum sufficiently to meet the demands of the

day. Hygiene and physical education and individual attention seemed to

be making rapid advances. All of these had been influenced by the

scientific methods of treating educational questions. On the whole we

seemed to have a good school. But now the question must be asked

whether this school of yesterday will be adequate to meet the needs of

to-morrow; whether new conditions do not call for new thought, new

philosophy, new schools. These things of course cannot be had for the

asking. We cannot give orders to genius to produce them for us. But a

generation that does not hope for them, we might suspect of not having

realized what the war has cost. For so great a price paid have we not

a right to expect much in return, especially if we are willing to

regard the war as a lesson rather than as a debt to us, and bend all

our energies to make it count for a better civilization?

We may already see in a general way what the effect of the war is to be

upon the mind of the educator. The journals begin to be filled with

plans for the participation of the school in the work of

reconstruction. There are many suggestions for the improvement of the

school. Industrial education, the classics, history, military

education, social education are all being discussed. Evidently many

minds are at work. Some of them, indeed many of them, are apparently

most concerned about what changes we shall make at once in the day's

work of the school. Many wish to know what we are going to do now with

Latin, or history, and how we can improve the method of teaching in

this or that particular. But there are some deeper notes. Thinkers are

asking elementary questions about the whole of human nature. They wish

to know what the original nature of man is, and what the limits of our

control over human nature are. Such books as Hocking's "Human Nature

and its Re-making" and Russell's "Principles of Social Reconstruction,"

which grapple with the basic problems of human life, are signs of the

times. No one can yet predict what the final result of the increased

intellectual ardor that has come out of the war will be, but it seems

certain that that striving of the mind which has made the literature of

the war so remarkable a page in the history of the human spirit will

continue, and in the field of education as elsewhere in the practical

life there will be new vitality and earnestness.