The Psychology of Nations. G. E. Partridge

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.