The Psychology of Nations. G. E. Partridge

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.