THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY 
 OF WAR 
 
 JOHN T. MacCURDY, M.D. 
 
 LECTURER ON MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGY, CORNELL 
 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOL, NEW YORK 
 
 NEW \ORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
Copyright, 1918, by 
 
 E. P. DUTTO^ & COMPANY 
 411 Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The conduct of modern warfare demands 
 the co-operation of practically every sci- 
 ence. Engineering, chemistry, bacteriology 
 and agriculture are all needed. Even the 
 sanctity of home is invaded, and domestic 
 economy regulated. But behind all the sci- 
 ences stands the human factor, infinitely the 
 most important of all. On the behaviour 
 of the private in the trenches, the officer 
 in his dug-out, the mechanic at his lathe, 
 and the woman in the kitchen depends the 
 victory. What science can explain how and 
 why they act, or in what way their mental 
 attitudes are altered? Again, before hos- 
 tilities emerge, something must happen; no 
 meteorological or terrestrial event can 
 cause war, it must be a change in the mind 
 of man. Are the forces which make war 
 
 5 
 
 383085 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 and decide its issue to lie uninvestigated? 
 Is mankind going to accept this stagger- 
 ing burden, or attempt solution of its prob- 
 lem merely by wishing for peace? 
 
 There is a science ambitious enough to 
 hope for an answer to each of these ques- 
 tions. Unfortunately phychology is young 
 amongst the sciences, and must therefore 
 hope rather than promise. Perhaps, were 
 it older, there might be no wars. It is with 
 the confidence that that day of peace will be 
 hastened by the diffusion of a psychological 
 viewpoint that this essay has been written. 
 There can be little claim for originality 
 made, as its aim is to bring before the lay 
 reader material and methods of investiga- 
 tion that are normally not available to him. 
 AVith this some tentative formulations are 
 given, which it is hoped may tend to corre- 
 late the hypotheses that are reviewed. 
 
 In this essay an analogy between war and 
 mental disease is frankly attempted. No 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 medical treatise is complete without a dis- 
 cussion of treatment for the ailment whose 
 pathology and symptoms are described. 
 Some readers may therefore be lured into 
 perusing the following pages with the hope 
 that, in conclusion, some panacea for war's 
 afflictions may be offered. When one con- 
 siders, however, that this spirit of strife has 
 always been an intimate part of the soul 
 of man, it will be evident that no simple 
 formula can ever dispel it from his life. 
 Further than that, it is essential to realise 
 that any summary effort to purge the world 
 of war would be pernicious. It is not an 
 isolated phenomenon, but the product of 
 the best and the worst in human kind. It 
 would be a sad day for the race if man lost 
 his hardihood and ideas of loyalty merely 
 for the sake of peace. His psyche must be 
 transformed, not syncopated. This change 
 can only come from within, and only when 
 he has learned his essential nature. The 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 ambition of the psychologist — a fundamen- 
 tally practical man — is, therefore, to set 
 men thinking before they act. Whether 
 what is found in this pamphlet be right or 
 wrong, it will have served its purpose if it 
 stimulates a more thoroughgoing study of 
 war on the part of the average citizen, a 
 more rigorous analysis of himself and his 
 martial feelings than he has previously un- 
 dertaken. 
 
 The bulk of this essay was written in 
 America in the summer of 1916. The chap- 
 ter on America is essentially a postscript, 
 added in London a few weeks after Con- 
 gress had declared a state of war to exist. 
 
 J. T. M. 
 
 London, May, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I Introduction : The Problem and 
 ITS Approach . . . .11 
 
 II Primitive Instincts . . .24 
 
 III Gregariousness . . . .52 
 
 IV Correlation of Primitive In- 
 
 stincts with Gregariousness . 78 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 introduction: the problem and its 
 approach 
 
 There is probably no practice to which \ 
 man in all his history has clung more tena- ' 
 ciously and irrationally than he has to the 
 pursuit of war. I say irrationally because 
 whatever may have been the incidental ben- 
 efits to individual tribes or nations, man- 
 kind as a whole has surely suffered by war. 
 This statement is really not debatable, since 
 its proof rests on arguments that are tru- 
 isms. Yet war, with its related issues, re- 
 mains the greatest problem man has to 
 solve. In earlier days war was more or less 
 chronic, and was accepted as part of the 
 lot of man; now, with advance of knowl- 
 edge and a growing human self-conscious- 
 11 
 
12 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 ness, its irrationality is better recognised. 
 Perhaps as a result of this there are longer 
 intervals of peace, but warfare when it does 
 come is so much the more bitter. What 
 shall we do about it? Diplomacy fails to 
 answer; education refuses to answer, pre- 
 ferring to inculcate the spirit of war; 
 any religion which tries to answer dies of 
 inanition. Possibly we can turn to those 
 who make human behaviour the object of 
 their study, those whose work it is to begin 
 where common sense ends, those whose task 
 is to teach man what his instincts and ten- 
 dencies are. With this knowledge it may 
 be that he will see the way his footsteps tend 
 
 ^and, seeing, choose or shun that course. 
 
 fBy investigating the world around him, 
 man has found that he can largely control 
 his environment. War shows that he can- 
 
 jiot control himself. The modern advance 
 of the physical sciences has created the illu- 
 sion that human safety, human salvation. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 depends on his clinging to the materialisti- 
 cally obvious. And material science has 
 made of modern war almost a biological 
 suicide. Is it not time to seek aid of psy- 
 chology, the least material and most prac- 
 tical of the sciences, and study man him- 
 self? 
 
 As chemistry grew out of alchemy, so 
 psychology has developed from metaphys- 
 ics. Alchemy consisted largely in the 
 ascription of abstract qualities to material 
 substances, and the combining of these sub- 
 stances in order to produce other abstrac- 
 tions. Chemistry was born when men ex- 
 amined substances to find out what quali- 
 ties they had — the experimental method. So 
 long as psychology consisted of pasting la- 
 bels on to subjective mental phenomena it 
 worked in an arid and barren field. How- 
 ever, at the beginning of the present cen- 
 tury, roughly speaking, it was realised that 
 there was an objective method possible; 
 
14 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 namely, the observation of the mind in dis- 
 ease. It was then discovered that beneath 
 the apparent unity and consistency of con- 
 sciousness there lay a complicated structure 
 of elements, unrecognised by the subject. 
 One combination of these elements in due 
 proportion makes what we call a normal 
 man, another a neurotic, a third a criminal, 
 a lunatic, and so on. Then there came into 
 being what is practically a new science. 
 Dynamic Psychology. . Perhaps the most 
 important achievement of this new study 
 is the demonstration that transition from 
 mental normality to abnormality is not oc- 
 casioned by the addition of something from 
 without, but by a change in combination 
 or relative strengths of the forces that are 
 already operative in "normal'' mental life. 
 In war, without the addition of any extra- 
 mental factor, the behaviour of society and 
 its members is suddenly altered.^ The fact 
 that this alteration is sometimes a most 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 profound one makes the analogy with the 
 psychosis all the more exact. It becomes 
 eAident why psychiatry (using the term in 
 its widest and most correct sense) is the 
 most promising preparation for the psycho- 
 logical study of war. The psychiatrist of 
 the future will be an exi)ert in the affairs 
 of our lives, which are now most notori- 
 ously left to chance. 
 
 The program of the psychologist is, there- 
 fore, to discover, if possible, what tenden- 
 cies of the normal mind upset the balance 
 which exists apparently in times of peace, 
 and thereby produce war. That he should an- 
 alyse the problem completely and estimate 
 to a nicety the strength of every instinct 
 involved is to ask too much of a new science. 
 But if his findings give hints to the edu- 
 cator or law-maker his work will not be in 
 vain. 
 
 The objection that any present discussion 
 must necessarily be focussed on the Euro- 
 
16 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 pean struggle now in progress and inevita- 
 bly be coloured by prejudice is an argument 
 demanding consideration. One must be an 
 emotional ament or dement not to be swayed 
 in his sympathy and thoughts to one side or 
 the other. And history, we frequently hear, 
 will tell us the true story. That she will be 
 free from superficial prejudices is probable; 
 but are basic prejudices likely to die? After 
 a lapse of nearly a thousand years we hear 
 one historian call William Wallace a patriot 
 and another a barbarous outlaw. On the 
 other hand, there is an urgent necessity that 
 the problem be faced now. The will to ac- 
 tion, to reform, to a change of national atti- 
 tude is now present when the carnage of 
 Europe is spread before our eyes; in ten 
 years' time we shall have placidly grouped 
 the War of 1914 with the Napoleonic Wars 
 or the war between the North and the South 
 in the United States — something that can- 
 not happen again because the ^vorld is dif- 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 ferent and those problems have disappeared. 
 Yet history teaches us that wars do not 
 make war (else they would be continuous), 
 but rather that peace makes war. This 
 unpalatable truth can, perhaps, be put in a 
 less paradoxical form by saying that the 
 forces which lead to war are engendered and 
 nourished in times of peace, to burst out 
 when some trivial accident provides an oc- 
 casion. To a psychiatrist accustomed to the 
 defective make-up of his patient, the gradual 
 accumulation of difficulties and the final 
 psychotic explosion, the precipitating factor 
 seems of relative insignificance and the idea 
 of preventing the catastrophe by avoidance 
 of the last "cause'' or by mandate is pre- 
 posterous. One who studies war psycho- 
 logically will probably come to a similar 
 conclusion. An effort to avoid interna- 
 tional quarrels and agreements to arbitrate 
 differences would be at best palliative. 
 What we call "peace" is, apparently, a 
 
 \ 
 
18 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 \ period during wliicli' forces both psycliic 
 ^ and material are dammed up until their 
 I accumulated pressure overpowers the judg- 
 ment of mankind. Only a rigorous anal- 
 ysis of national or racial psychology could 
 lay bare the factors which make of peace 
 a fool's paradise. If these were found we 
 might have a rational hope of modifying 
 these factors until both war and peace were 
 terms of merely historic interest. 
 
 Among the difficulties attending this 
 study (and, properly speaking, part of the 
 problem) are the preconceptions about war. 
 War is a disease ; yet we hear jingoes refer 
 to it as a normal human activity or the rem- 
 edy for any social malaise. On the other 
 hand, the professional pacifists talk belliger- 
 ently about its horrors as if they could wake 
 the public to a realisation of evils previously 
 unrecognised, and with it all, never adduce 
 a single essential fact unknown to society 
 for generations. Were it not for the intense 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 gravity of the problem, one would be tempt- 
 ed to laugh at the seriousness with which, 
 for instance, men have solemnly proved by 
 elaborate statistics that war involves eco- 
 nomic losses. How would a physician be 
 welcomed who harangued his patient on the 
 discomfort and danger of recurrent chills 
 in malaria? The suspicion seems justified 
 that in these matters we share the belief of 
 the savage in the potency of curses. In 
 fact, we might even think that the savage 
 is slightly more rational than we. He has 
 his theory of disease : an evil spirit possesses 
 the patient; the demon must be exorcised. 
 We, on the contrary, seem to deny that there 
 is a disease. We are asked to realize that 
 the symptoms are unpleasant and avoid 
 them as a child must learn to avoid fire. 
 An attempt to discover the cause of this so- 
 cial malady would doubtless be regarded as 
 mawkish sentimentality by the militarists, 
 and as immoral by the pacifists. It is not 
 
20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP WAR 
 
 impossible that these passionate irrational- 
 ities have their influence in the production 
 of the apparently inevitable cycles of war 
 and peace, and it is psychologically inter- 
 esting that there is much in common be- 
 tween the two types. Each party tries to 
 solve a delicate situation by a tour de force. 
 Th5 inilitarist sneers at diplomacy of any 
 kind and seeks to adjust every difference by 
 the sword, while the pacifist would change 
 human nature by fiat. The futility of gain- 
 ing world-wide harmony by such means must 
 be painfully obvious. 
 
 Although the student of mental disease 
 may offer a new approach, too much should 
 not be expected of him, for, with the intro- 
 duction of abnormal mass action, what is 
 practically a new field for psychiatrists is 
 opened up. This is because we have always 
 assumed as a standard of normality for the 
 individual an essential agreement with the 
 average conduct of the community. For 
 
INTKODUCTION 21 
 
 this reason the common belief of fifty or a 
 hundred years ago may be a delusion if en- 
 tertained to-day, when superstitions are 
 dropping out of everyday life and out of 
 religions. Therefore we cannot say that the 
 exhibitions of martial lust, which any per- 
 son may show, stamp him as insane — his 
 neighbours applaud him. Similarly we can- 
 not be psychiatrically exact if we speak of 
 a nation becoming mad if it embarks on a 
 career of self-destruction with the lure of 
 some gain trifling in comparison with the 
 inevitable sacrifice. This w^ould be an ac- 
 curate term if all other peoples instinctively 
 and automatically regarded the nation as 
 suffering from mental disease and took ac- 
 tion in accordance with that view. Obvi- 
 ously we are dealing with an analogy — not 
 an identity. Where the cases fail of identity 
 is in the lack of any universal standard for 
 social behaviour. With a problem of the 
 magnitude of war before us, however, we 
 
22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 must remember that if analogies were iden- 
 tities the problem would long ago have 
 ceased to exist as such, and that our one 
 ambition is, therefore, to compare war with 
 other normal and abnormal phenomena, re- 
 membering always the danger of drawing 
 too rigid inferences and accepting hasty 
 conclusions. 
 
 This is a practical age and, particularly 
 in these times of stress, the pragmatic value 
 of any proposition is more apt to be ques- 
 tioned than is its theoretic worth. It is only 
 natural, therefore, that the reader should 
 ask, "What guarantee does the psychiatrist 
 offer that his study of war will prove of 
 more than academic value?" 
 
 We are attempting to establish an analogy 
 between the phenomena of war and the 
 symptoms of mental disease. Investigation 
 of the latter field leads inevitably to the 
 conclusion that prevention of insanity de- 
 pends on education in its truest sense of 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 mind training, and it is being slowly real- 
 ised that mental hygiene is as important for 
 human welfare as is the care of the body. 
 Psychiatrists are not hopeless of the day 
 coming when, thanks to a sounder knowl- 
 edge of himself, man may be relatively free 
 from mental infirmities. It is only by edu- 
 cation of this type that the race as a whole 
 may hope to rid itself of the pest of w^ar. 
 Expectations of individual and social health 
 are based upon programs equally ambitious 
 and equally practical. The two problems 
 are probably inseparable. Success, in either 
 case, depends no less upon willingness to 
 learn, and zeal in self-reform, than on the 
 investigation which must precede the teach- 
 ing. Preventive psychiatry is beginning to 
 show its fruits; it is therefore not illogical 
 to entertain a hope that similar efforts may 
 ultimately prevent war. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 
 
 / It may be convenient to consider the phe- 
 I nomena in question as falling into two 
 Lgroups, just as historians speak of remote 
 and immediate causes. In times of peace 
 we have rivalry between nations expressing 
 itself in ways that must appear to any ob- 
 jective view irrational. Individuals of a 
 foreign country are, however, not consid- 
 ered natural enemies — it is only the groups 
 as a whole who are natural rivals. Injury 
 to a foreigner is almost, if not quite, as re- 
 pugnant as injury to a native citizen. This 
 rivalry becomes more intense until with a 
 trifling precipitating factor a totally new 
 set of forces comes into play. What can be 
 termed nothing less than blood-lust springs 
 apparently out of nowhere, and upsets many 
 
 24 
 
PEIMITIVE INSTINCTS 25 
 
 normal standards of conduct. The for- 
 eigner becomes the scapegoat for his race: 
 he must be killed or injured in any possible 
 way. If there is to be a real war it is obvi- 
 ous that this second phase has to develop, 
 for, unless the animosity of the race be- 
 comes individual, it would be impossible for 
 a civilised man to deal a lethal blow, re- 
 strained as he is by the inhibitions of gen- 
 erations. Moreover, these inhibitions must 
 be lifted to the point where killing gives sat- 
 isfaction, else there will be a woeful lack 
 of the enthusiasm necessary to outweigh 
 personal sacrifice and sustain the war. Ob- 
 jectively viewed, the motto of nations in 
 time of peace seems to be, "Live, but do not 
 let live," while in times of war the individ- 
 ual says, "Kill, even if killed." These two 
 factors — tribal rivalry, or more properly 
 speaking, tribal jealousy — and the lust of 
 violence are each held by different schools 
 of dynamic psychology to be the chief cause 
 
26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 c 
 
 of war. It may be well to discuss them sep- 
 arately, and then attempt to weigh their 
 relative importance. 
 
 i Beginning with the blood-lust or cruelty 
 iimpulse, it must be obvious that this phe- 
 pomenon is not confined to warfare. It is 
 an everyday observation that the behaviour 
 of an American college student is more bru- 
 tal in a football game than in his individual 
 activities; he is not ashamed of it, in fact 
 he positively enjoys it. More notorious is 
 the violence of mobs. The statistics of 
 lynching show with what lamentable fre- 
 quency the innocent suffer, and how the tor- 
 ture inflicted is often totally dispropor- 
 tionate to the gravity of the offence. These 
 men who assume the role of judge and exe- 
 cutioner are, many of them, of the highest 
 character, respected and loved for their 
 kindliness and honour. Plainly in mass ac- 
 y tion an opportunity is given for the devel- 
 \ppment of justice into revenge, and revenge 
 
PKIMITIVE INSTINCTS 27 
 
 into cruelty, which becomes an end in itself. J 
 The lyncher, again, is not ashamed of his 
 deed, but takes a grim, if not blithe satis- 
 faction in it.* The greatest inspired psy- 
 chologist of all time has given a true picture 
 of the lust which a mob can call to life in its 
 members — a lust which has no connection 
 with the original common impulse of the 
 crowd. 
 
 ''Third Citizen: Your name, sir, truly. 
 
 Cinna: Truly, my name is Cinna. 
 
 First at. : Tear him to pieces ; he's a con- 
 spirator ! 
 
 Cm.: 1 am Cinna the poet — I am Cinna 
 the poet. 
 
 Fourth at.: Tear him for his bad verses 
 — tear him for his bad verses ! 
 
 Cin.: I am not Cinna the conspirator. 
 
 *This satisfaction is not confined to those taking- 
 part in the outrage. The notorious Frank case is an 
 instance in point. After his brutal execution men 
 and women in Georgia eagerly bought photographs 
 of the final scene. 
 
28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 Fourth at.: It is no matter, his name's 
 Cinna ; pluck but his name out of his heart, 
 and turn him going. 
 
 Third Cit.: Tear him, tear him! Come, 
 brands, ho! firebrands: to Brutus', to Cas- 
 sius'; burn all: some to Decius' house, and 
 some to Casca's, some to Tigurius': away, 
 go!" 
 
 If any one fancies that such bloodthirsty 
 furor is manufactured by the mob and not 
 merely called out of each member by a 
 special stimulus, let him remember that cru- 
 elty and bloodshed have some attraction for 
 I every one of us. The degrees of dilution or 
 manner of disguise may vary; it may be 
 open enjoyment of torture, the morbid fa^ 
 cination of melodrama or accidents (perA 
 haps strongly coloured by horror), or mere- 
 ly a love of the swashbuckling novel. But 
 (in all of us there exists deep down a savage 
 streak which evidences itself when the 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 29 
 
 proper stimulus is applied. We are never/ 
 coldly, judiciously neutral in reaction. / 
 Much of contemporary interest in the psy- 
 chology of the abnormal, and a large share 
 of the impetus recently given to its study, 
 is due to the growth of a school which uses 
 a method termed "psycho-analysis/^ The 
 nature of this technique need not be dis- 
 cussed here, but it should be mentioned that 
 those who use it claim to trace all mental 
 abnormalities to unconscious wishes or, 
 more accurately, unconscious tendencies 
 which gain indirect and symbolic express- 
 sion in neurotic or psychotic symptoms. 
 These tendencies are presumed to be un\ 
 known to the consciousness of the individ- \ 
 ual because they are repugnant to his per- / 
 sonality. It is this repugnance which causes" 
 them to be repressed to the limbo of the un- 
 conscious, where they can live on aw^ay from 
 contact with that part of the mind which is 
 law-abiding, altruistic and social in its aims. 
 
30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 Not unnautrally these unconscious tenden- 
 cies are of a primitive, lawless and individ- 
 ualistic type, and include such impulses of 
 cruelty and violence as are seen in war. 
 /The importance of these tendencies has 
 'been emphasised by two psycho-analysts 
 since the beginning of the present conflict. 
 One is an Austrian and one an Englishman, 
 but both scrupulously avoid any partizan 
 discussion of the war now in progress. Un- 
 der the headings of "The Disillusionment of 
 War," Professor Freud* treats this topic 
 without any reference to the causation of 
 warfare, focusing his attention rather on 
 certain of its phenomena. His tone is pes- 
 simistic, somewhat cynical, and not out of 
 keeping with the general trend of the Vien- 
 na school of psycho-analysis. 
 
 He notes first a destruction of the com- 
 mon feeling of humanity; the clearest in- 
 
 *S. Freud : "Zeitgemasses iiber Krieg' und Tod." — 
 Imago, Bd. IV, H.I. 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 31 
 
 tellects seem distorted ; and we find Science, 
 that should own no country, being prosti- 
 tuted as an argument in favour of one an- 
 tagonist and to the disparagement of an- 
 other. We are not surprised when conflicts 
 arise between nations or tribes of widely 
 varying aims, such as those of savages and 
 the civilised peoples; but had come to be- 
 lieve that between nations with common cul- 
 ture and common morality it was hardly to 
 be expected. He thinks that States have 
 demanded a high standard of honour on the 
 part of their citizens, and that now the 
 States themselves seem to have abolished 
 Buch standards. Facility of travel has made 
 many citizens of the world; our literary, 
 artistic and scientific heroes are interna- 
 tional. We have also grown to believe in 
 the restriction of war to the destruction of , 
 armies and the immunity of non-combatants. 
 Now all these are gone as if they had been 
 illusions, and their place is taken by bit- 
 
32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 terest hate of one people for another. 
 States, he thinks, have monopolised all the 
 wickedness that they suppress in their citi- 
 zens. Every license which the government 
 restricts in the individual is made use of in 
 war by the State, which, in the meantime, 
 demands every virtue from the subject. The 
 States cannot be defended on the ground 
 that virtue does not pay, for it does not pay 
 the individual very often, and he receives 
 no reward from society to compensate him 
 for the sacrifice his virtue involves. The 
 loss of international respect is naturally re- 
 flected in individual conduct, for our inhibi- 
 tions are largely occasioned by fear of so- 
 ciety rather than "conscience." When this 
 ban is removed individuals perform un- 
 thinkable acts. The disillusionments, then, 
 fall into two groups: first, the slight de- 
 cency we see exhibited by nations in their 
 reciprocal relations in contrast to the vig- 
 our of the demands they make on their citi- 
 
•' 
 
 PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 33 
 
 zens; and, second, the general brutality of 
 the soldier, who is such a gentleman in times 
 of peace. 
 
 He discusses the second first, and to ac- 
 count for it recapitulates the development 
 of the individual. Man begins with primi- 
 tive, egoistic tendencies, which are neither 
 good nor bad except in so far as their exhi- 
 bitions affect society. In the process of 
 development these assume socialised forms 
 often appearing in the opposite form from 
 the original, as when the unusually cruel 
 child becomes an unduly sympathetic man. 
 Such metamorphoses are the work of two 
 factors. The first is the desire to be loved, 
 which puts a premium on self-sacrifice and 
 makes an altruistic act pleasurable. Begin- 
 ning as love for others in the family, this 
 spreads out to society in general and forms 
 a genuine basis for virtuous character. The 
 second is the artificial warping of native 
 tendencies by education, laws, and conven- 
 

 U THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 tions, which is natural and genuine only in 
 so far as there is an hereditary predisposi- 
 tion to such adaptation. Conduct arti- 
 ficially determined may be superficially 
 identical with the more genuine type but 
 is never as stable. The person who has 
 been affected only by education and en- 
 vironment is naturally good only when it 
 pays to be, and the number of such people 
 is probably much larger than is generally 
 supposed. This forced virtue really amounts 
 to a kind of hypocrisy, although it is not 
 fully conscious. Freud suggests that a cer- 
 tain amount of hypocrisy may be necessary 
 for the maintenance of our cultured level, 
 which is probably higher than the average 
 individual capacity. The shattered illusion, 
 he therefore concludes, is the belief that the 
 bulk of mankind ever had any true civilisa- 
 tion. As soon as governments relax their 
 reciprocal responsibilities, the governed get 
 an outlet for their original impulses on the 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 85 
 
 bodies of the foe, while the inhibitions pro-^ 
 ceed relatively uninterrupted within the 
 State. 
 
 As to the hate existing between nations, 
 he can only say that it seems that common 
 world interests are not strong enough to 
 hold national passions in check. There is 
 apparently no "fear of society'' in this 
 case. He admits frankly that he can offer 
 no explanation of the phenomenon, merely 
 remarking that it seems as if the aggrega- 
 tion of men simply multiplied their primi- 
 tive impulses. 
 
 It is evident from the above that Freud 
 views the atrocities of the war as more 
 natural than the civilised behaviour of 
 man. Although accounting for war phenom- 
 ena alone, it would perhaps not be doing 
 him an injustice to suggest that he would 
 view violence as the native instinctive meth- 
 od of settling any quarrel, a tendency that 
 is lost only between individuals of the same 
 
36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 state where society has put a ban on such 
 methods. This is equivalent to saying that 
 the mystery to be solved is the behaviour 
 of peace rather than the incidents of war. 
 In passing it may be remarked that in this 
 we have an example of a frequent type of 
 reasoning encountered in many psycho-ana- 
 lytic writings. A symptom is traced to 
 some unconscious instinct, which, because 
 it is deeply rooted and long lived, is stated 
 to be part of the "real'' individual. A some- 
 what similar argument would say that be- 
 cause gill breathing is the most primitive 
 type of respiration, because every foetus has 
 gills, traces of which persist to adult life, 
 and because these traces may have patho- 
 logical development, therefore gill breath- 
 ing is the normal respiration for man. What 
 the individual is in the bulk of his life 
 should constitute his true nature. In the 
 present instance we should not forget that, 
 no matter what man may have been pre- 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 37 
 
 historically, and no matter what character 
 the infant may have, the contemporary 
 adult is by constitution a unit of society, 
 and any purely individualistic acts he may 
 perform must be regarded as abnormal. 
 
 It is important to note, however, that 
 Freud correlates the atrocities of war with 
 the lifting of national ambitions. 
 
 Using somewhat the same material, an- 
 other psycho-analyst, Ernest Jones,* of 
 London, gives a wider scope to his specu- 
 lation. "The aim of this essay is to raise 
 the question whether the science of Psy- 
 chology can ever show us how to abolish 
 war." He makes no claim that psychology 
 can do so, but insists that its methods are 
 essential to the study of the problem because 
 it deals with the mental factors that de- 
 termine all decisions. His chief argument ^ 
 is the claim that unconscious wishes distort ^ 
 
 *"Vrar and Individual Psychology," The Sociolog- 
 ical Review, July, 1915. 
 
38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 rational judgment. This phenomenon is 
 part, perhaps, of the essence of war, as an 
 example of which he cites the difficulty of 
 ascertaining the facts in such an apparently 
 simple inquiry as the immediate cause of 
 the present war. The unconscious, he claims, 
 can only be studied by individual psychol- 
 ogy. This term he uses to differentiate the 
 study of the mental phenomena of a group 
 from that of separate persons. After a dis- 
 cussion of the different fields he dismisses 
 social psychology as a superfluous science, 
 accepting Trotter's* view that the reactions 
 of the mass are the sum of the reactions of 
 the units in the mass, and that man invari- 
 ably reacts as a herd animal whether in a 
 crowd or alone. All this may undoubtedly 
 be true and still leave room for a psychology 
 that is broader than the "Individual Psy- 
 chology" developed in Jones' paper, for this 
 is concerned only with impulses that arise 
 
 *"IIerd Instinct," The Sociological Review, 1908. 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 39 
 
 within the individual, whereas there must 
 surely be other forces, or at least stimuli, 
 that are external to him in their origin. 
 The importance of this objection will be 
 discussed later. 
 
 He begins his argument in favour of there 
 being deep-lying mental causes for war by 
 suggesting that man may not be able to live 
 for more than a certain period without war, 
 and that he possibly prefers that form of 
 settling disputes to peaceful means. This 
 would be analogous to the phenomenon 
 recognized by many novelists that an un- 
 conscious wish of the individual may be 
 objectively obvious but subjectively un- 
 recognized. His suspicion of man's bias 
 for fighting is based on the history of great 
 wars recurring after a lapse of several gen- 
 erations, which are marked by a revulsion 
 towards war. This last statement should 
 not pass without comment. Such a psychic 
 factor as this revulsion could never pass 
 
40 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 from one generation to tlie next if it were 
 a force springing up within the individual 
 and not something handed on from man to 
 man. Here is an admission of the exist- 
 ence of what is essentially a social factor, 
 and if such a powerful inhibitive force can 
 have its origin previous to a complete gen- 
 eration, may there not similarly be social 
 tendencies working to produce war, as well 
 as those of the unconscious individual type 
 of which Jones speaks? 
 
 He proceeds to argue that although men 
 act abnormally in certain "social situa- 
 tions," where normal standards seem to be 
 relaxed (e.g. in mob activities), there is a 
 certain unity of aim in both his normal and 
 abnormal behaviour. In normal develop- 
 .^rfient a primitive tendency, when denied 
 direct expression by the repressive side of 
 one's nature, gains outlet in a social or 
 altruistic form which is somehow symbolic 
 Vof the latent, more individualistic craving. 
 
PKIMITIVE INSTINCTS 41 
 
 For example, one might take the case of an 
 unmarried woman in whom the maternal 
 instinct can gain no direct outlet without 
 involving anti-social behaviour, who gets a 
 substitutive outlet through nursing, char- 
 itable work, etc. In such a case the object 
 of her attention receives her "maternal" 
 care, and may stand in the unconscious level 
 of her mind for a child. Such an outlet is 
 termed a sublimation. The analysis of the 
 development of so many activities has 
 shown a similar mechanism that psycho- 
 analysts believe all pursuits are of this type 
 which are not obviously actuated by primi- 
 tive instincts. These sublimations giving 
 only indirect expression to the deeper forces 
 are never absolutely stable, and tend to 
 break down with a return to the more primi- 
 tive form at all times. When such a lapse 
 occurs the conduct of the individual is to- 
 tally different from that of his everyday life, 
 but as the sublimation is being replaced by 
 
42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 directer expression of its more primitive 
 driving impulse there is still the unity be- 
 tween the two of which Jones speaks. It 
 is the same unconscious wish that is grat- 
 ified in each case. The more normal activ- 
 ity is an indirect, distorted, symbolic outlet, 
 its successor is crude and direct. This ac- 
 counts for the appalling changes of charac- 
 ter often seen in senility or other states con- 
 ducive to mental enfeeblement. 
 
 He does not pretend to give any final 
 explanation of the highly frequent phenom- 
 enon (of which many examples will occur 
 to the reader) of mass action favouring 
 cruder expressions of primitive cravings. 
 He does make a clever suggestion, how- 
 ever. Sublimations, he says, are largely in- 
 dividual developments. That is, each per- 
 son works out his particular way of social- 
 izing his individualistic tendencies, while 
 the unconscious wishes, being primitive, are 
 common to all the unite in a given group. 
 
PEIMITIVE INSTINCTS 43 
 
 The mass action proceeding, therefore, as a 
 sum of all the individual tendencies present, 
 is made up of over-determined ^'uncon- 
 scious" forces, while the sublimations, being 
 individual, tend to neutralise one another, 
 because they are individual and may be 
 widely different from the other. Resultant 
 action springs from the wishes that are 
 common to all. This argument is plausible; 
 and it seems reasonable to suppose that 
 this may well operate as a contributing fac- 
 tor in mob suggestion; but, as we shall see 
 presently, there are probably other and 
 more important explanations of these phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 Jones says, then, as does F reud, that we 
 should not consider the atrocities of war as 
 due to' war iSelf, but rather that it is one 
 of a number of conditions which favour the 
 unleashing of tendencies always latent in 
 civilised men. 
 
 But Jone« goes further still, suggesting 
 
44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 that the impulse to release these tendencies 
 may be one of the important causes of war 
 itself. ^^The essence of war surely consists 
 in an abrogation of standards of conduct 
 approved of by the ethical sense of commu- 
 nities. By this is meant that in war an 
 attempt is made to achieve a given purpose 
 by means which are otherwise regarded as 
 reprehensible." An individual in such a 
 situation is ashamed and attempts to excuse 
 himself with all sorts of tenuous proofs of 
 the justifiability of his actions. This is, he 
 thinks, true of the nations now at war. 
 Although each insists that the war was inev- 
 itable, each is unwilling to assume respon- 
 sibility for its actual inception. It is 
 generally held that in war the ends justify 
 the means, while Jones boldly suggests that 
 perhaps it is really the means which are 
 primary and that the ends are found to 
 justify them. . He quotes Nietzsche quite 
 aptly for his argument : "Ye say that it is the 
 
PKIMITIVE INSTINCTS 45 
 
 good cause which halloweth every war? I 
 say unto you : It is the good war which hal- 
 loweth every cause." It is interesting that 
 each nation imputes such motives to its foes. 
 It is easier for an enemy to see a disagree- 
 able characteristic than it is for the pos- 
 sessor of it. 
 
 The problem may then be stated, he pro- 
 2eeds, as the determination of the relative 
 mportance of the conscious and unconscious 
 motives in the initiation of war. As con- 
 scious motives may be all grouped under the 
 term patriotism, he analyses this complex of 
 feelings. The relation of the individual to 
 his country is an outgrowth of the relation- 
 ships existing in childhood in the home. 
 These centre around three effective com- 
 plexes : the relationships of the child to his 
 mother, his father and himself. Generally 
 the country wins in adult life the devotion 
 originally given the mother, more rarely the 
 state stands in a paternal position (such as 
 
46 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 in patriarchal governments). The oppor- 
 tunities for unconscious reinforcement of 
 patriotic impulses with this history is ob- 
 vious to any one familiar with psycho- 
 analysis and is well shown in the "self 
 relationship, where the individual identifies 
 the country with himself, is personally 
 inflated or depleted with its success or 
 failure. The development of those uncon- 
 scious forces has, probably, a great deal to 
 do with one's attitude towards war, whether 
 one is a pacifist or a firebrand, just as other 
 characteristics have their unconscious deri- 
 vation and history. But to urge that all 
 patriotic impulses may be thus disposed of 
 is too sweeping a generality. This is well 
 shown by Jones' suggestion that national 
 make-up may be the outcome of the type of 
 family life existing in the nation. If there 
 is a similarity in homes, it is surely self- 
 evident that this is due to conformity to a 
 national standard of domestic life or else the 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 47 
 
 product of a stupendous coincidence of 
 identical, independent development. In his 
 endeavour to make unconscious motives 
 responsible for everything he has succeeded 
 in putting the cart before the horse. It is 
 only fair to add, however, that a uniformity 
 of home life may well act, secondarily, in 
 reinforcing a homogenity of national con- 
 duct and thought. But primary it can never 
 be. 
 
 Many of the conscious motives are, then, 
 according to Jones, essentially unconscious 
 if their history be traced far enough back. 
 The undoubtedly unconscious motives which 
 find an outlet in war centre around the pas- 
 sions for cruelty, destruction, lust and loot. 
 He claims that no army has ever been with- 
 out one or more of these, which is probably 
 true. He cites the orgies of destruction 
 indulged in by Cromwell's Puritan army. 
 That the innate desire for outlet of these 
 passions is mainly responsible for war he 
 
48 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 merely suggests; that, at least, they con- 
 stantly reinforce the more conscious pa- 
 jtriotic motiyes he confidently asserts. 
 
 As to the future, he is wise enough not to 
 offer any panacea. The few generalities 
 offered are worthy of attention. In the first 
 place he deprecates any attempts to abolish 
 war by forcible repression of primitive in- 
 stincts. Psycho-analysis tends to show that 
 repression leads only to a temporary 
 damming up of such forces, with later ex- 
 plosions, unless the opportunities for sub- 
 limated outlets be favourable. He suggests 
 that it may be possible that the sublimating 
 capacity of man is now at its greatest height, 
 which, if true, would certainly mean that 
 civilisation is maintained only by virtue of 
 the safety valve of war, although, strange to 
 say, he does not put forward this hypothesis 
 as such. What he recommends is a more 
 intelligent treatment of primitive instincts, 
 the substitution of open-eyed study and con- 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 49 
 
 trol of social problems rather than blind 
 legal negations which tend to increase social 
 unrest. As an example of what such a policy 
 can do in preventing unrest he cites the suc- 
 cess of the modern British colonial policy. 
 As a corollary of this he mentions the grant- 
 ing of outlet to these instincts in a less harm- 
 ful form than war. Naturally he gives credit 
 here to William James, who first made this 
 suggestion in his essay on "The Moral Equiv- 
 alents of War." 
 
 In conclusion, with a few striking sen- 
 tences he gives a picture of the benefits of 
 war as a national and individual stimulus 
 and an agency bringing man closer to the 
 essential realities of life. He does not sug- 
 gest that these benefits have any causal 
 relation to war. On the whole, therefore, we 
 can sum np Jones' contribution as an effort 
 to establish the violent, primitive instincts of 
 man, usually unconscious, as an important, 
 if not the primary, cause of war. 
 
50 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 It is striking that in this able paper no 
 mention is made of the phenomena of inter- 
 national hostility, the jealousy which is 
 exhibited in times of peace. Yet it is a fact 
 ^"hich historians constantly impress upon 
 (their readers that prior to a warthe^ is 
 \always a tension gradually increasing be- 
 tween rival nations, which finally culminates 
 fen the outbreak of hostilities. If the forces 
 Jones speaks of were the only ones at work, 
 the increasing tension would always be an 
 internal one, an unrest from the pent-up 
 lawless energies of the citizens which would 
 finally seek an outlet in indiscriminate 
 violence, not necessarily focused on one par- 
 jticular foe. In other words, who the enemy 
 should be would be a matter of accident. 
 Such unconscious motives as Freud and 
 Jones discuss could easily account for the 
 choice of war in time of crisis, for clinical 
 experience teaches us that in any occasion 
 of mental stress the primitive tendency is 
 
PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS 51 
 
 most apt to be followed. We might, there- 
 fore, leave this type of psychological ap- 
 proach with the suggestion that unconscious 
 impulses may more than any other influ- 
 ences be responsible for the actual initiation 
 of war and the abnormal behaviour of the 
 antagonists. There remain to be discussed 
 the psychological factors which engender the 
 international animosities and antagonisms 
 in times of peace. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 GREGAEIOUSNESS 
 
 ( International rivalry is, apparently, 
 never friendly ; in fact, it seems to be invari- 
 ably characterised by jealousy, often by bit- 
 
 \ terness. Community of interest is only a 
 phrase, and never sought in practice. If 
 nation A develops trade in some com- 
 mercially isolated district, the citizens of 
 nation B do not see in this a gain for their 
 own merchants in the opening up of a new 
 outlet for business, but view the growth with 
 alarm and bend their energies towards 
 blocking the foreigner's efforts as much or 
 more than they extend their own. Similarly 
 a new warship or new military program is 
 regarded with an almost paranoic suspicion 
 by all possible military rivals. All this is 
 
 53 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 53 
 
 obviously irrational, and is certainly a prob- 
 lem to be studied by psychopathologists. If 
 the average citizen is asked why this situa- 
 tion exists, he gives one of two answers: 
 either, "It is silly, and we shouldn't do it any 
 more;" or, "History teaches us that the na- 
 tion which is not suspicious is destroyed." 
 The first reply is a form of the pacifist's fiat 
 that human nature be changed. The second 
 makes a pretence of rationality. But does 
 man listen to History? Have the yoking of 
 force and suspicion ever led to anything but 
 disaster, even after a short triumph? Surely 
 here, as elsewhere, man learns what he 
 washes to learn; some powerful instinct 
 urges him the way he goes. 
 
 War is never far from consciousness when 
 such suspicious rivalry is in the air. What 
 is the attitude of any nation towards war in 
 time of peace? War, of course, is damnable, 
 all readily agree. But this is war as an 
 abstraction. What do the citizens of any 
 
54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OP WAR 
 
 given country think of their own ivars? All 
 are excusable, some justifiable and some 
 glorious. Every thinking man will admit afc 
 least these differences, and here there 
 /"emerges a not unimportant fact. Tjie wars) 
 I that fire the national imagination are those | 
 \ in which the nation's existence was threat-^^ 
 Njened. The same is true of national heroes : 
 no heterogeneous English gathering ever 
 waxed enthusiastic over the name of Dar- 
 win, nor did a German crowd applaud 
 Goethe to the skies.* It is the military hero 
 
 *It is true that a few years ago a large plebiscite, 
 instituted by a Parisian newspaj)er, placed Pasteur 
 first in answer to the question, "Who was the great* 
 est Frenchman?" But the form of this question 
 naturally calls for an objective, intellectual judgment. 
 The voter probably put himself in the place of a for- 
 eigner, trying to decide what Frenchman had done 
 most for the world. Had the question been, "As a> 
 Frenchman, whom do you admire m:Ost?" the vote 
 •would probably have placed Napoleon first, a sim- 
 ilar plebiscite had some years before. Emotional 
 feelings are more dynamic than intellectual judg- 
 m^ents, as every observer knows. It is safe to guess 
 that many more Frenchmen to-day visit the tomb of 
 Napoleon than the grave of Pasteur. 
 
GREGARIOUSXESS 55 
 
 who is the national hero, and here again a 
 discrimination can be made. It is not the 
 genius who fought in some small campaign 
 that stirs the blood, but the man of force 
 who saved the country or founded the empire. 
 The point of these observations is this : The^ 
 attitude of a people towards its wars is not 
 a glorification of war, but rather an en- 
 thusiasm for itself as a nation. War marks 
 the highest level of national consciousness 
 that is ever reached. In earlier days, when' 
 primitive man had not known the advan- 
 tages of herd life for very long, friction with 
 other tribes over hunting grounds or other 
 coveted possessions must have made 
 strangers appear like those of another 
 species in the struggle for existence. Ad- 
 vance of knowledge has taught that all the 
 members of the species Homo sapiens are 
 men, but it is doubtful whether that knowl- 
 edge is a vital part of our automatic mental 
 life. It is one thing for us to recognise in 
 
56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 an animal identity of anatomical structure, 
 and another to feel that he is like ourselves. 
 Without this instinctive bond, every 
 stranger, every member of every other group, 
 must to a greater or less extent arouse in us 
 the biological reaction appropriate towards 
 a different species. We have sympathy for a 
 dog, an animal useful to us, but we kill 
 wolves, snakes and insects without any 
 revulsion of feeling for the act. Interna- 
 tional relationships are probably largely 
 traceable to this feeling of specific differ- 
 ences and to the deep-lying instinct for 
 preservation of the species, distorted in this 
 case to the preservation of what is at most 
 only a variety. 
 
 This phenomenon of group allegiance is, 
 of course, a commonplace to sociologists. 
 One might hazard the generality that with- 
 out it there would be no large political or 
 social problems. It is this instinct which 
 cements the labour unions, maintains re- 
 
I 
 
 GREGARIOUSNESS 57 
 
 ligious factions. Here we have what is, per- 
 haps, the greatest paradox of human nature. 
 The forgetting of self in devotion to others, 
 altruism or loyalty, is the essence of virtue. 
 At the same time, precisely the same type of 
 loyalty that makes of a man a benefactor to 
 all mankind can become the direst menace 
 to mankind when focused on a small group. 
 The bigot can with all sincerity and con- 
 sciousness of high motive enslave thought 
 and retard science for centuries. Similarly 
 the labour leader, in his zeal to better the 
 condition of his fellow unionists, will shake 
 the foundations of industry. The reader will 
 call to mind countless examples having this 
 in common, that the small group calls forth 
 a loyalty which is inimical to larger groups. 
 In the case of war we have national loyalty 
 destroying the civilisation of all mankind. 
 
 There is but one psychologist who has seen 
 the potentiality of man's gregariousness. 
 
58 -THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 This is Wilfrid Trotter.* The substance of 
 his claims is that one can understand many 
 anomalies of man's conduct by regarding 
 him as a herd animal: that is, not only an 
 animal who lives gregariously, but one whose 
 instinct it is to react with the herd. He is 
 deaf to the voice of one without the herd, but 
 infinitely suggestible to influences coming 
 from within it. In this way herd traditions 
 and herd thoughts are superior in their in- 
 fluence to individual reason, and the strug- 
 gle between these two he assigns as the cause 
 for most human ills that are not frankly 
 physical in origin. 
 
 f He says that there are three great types 
 of development in herd life: that of the 
 animals, who unite for aggression as do 
 wolves ; that of the species like sheep, whose 
 cohesion gives protection; and finally, the 
 highest degree of gregariousness, which he 
 
 V 
 
 ^Instincts of the Herd in Peace and in War. Fisher 
 Unwin & Co., London. V'\^ 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 59 
 
 terms the socialised type, exemplified in the 
 society of ants, or better still by bees. Each 
 kind of specialisation is represented in man, 
 and has its peculiar mental make up exhib- 
 ited both in the reactions of the mass and 
 the individual. Each tends in human devel- 
 opment to exclude the others and produce a 
 type that is almost a specific variation bio- 
 logically. This leads to lack of sympathy 
 and, if the interests of two "herds" come into 
 collision, a deep hostility. 
 
 In his original papers,* he showed how 
 gregariousness leads inevitably to unques- 
 tioning acceptance of the herd dogma, and 
 that this works strongly against that sensi- 
 tiveness to experience — open mindedness — 
 w^hich is necessary for progress. In bio- 
 logical terms, the aggregation of units in the 
 herd, which ought to facilitate variation, 
 actually inhibits variation. He concluded, 
 therefore, that the human race was doomed 
 
 *The Sociological Review, 1908 and 190y. 
 
60 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 to extinction unless some new factor should 
 come into play. Hints as to the nature 
 of this force were extremely vague. He now 
 states that this must be an understanding 
 of man's psychology in the biological sense, 
 and a conscious guidance along the path of 
 evolution on which he has entered only to 
 halt long before the goal is reached. Both 
 of these definite additions to his theory ap- 
 pear prominently in his discussion of war. 
 
 In this book there are no statements as to 
 the causation of warfare in general, but only 
 arguments about the present conflict. The 
 author frankly admits that prejudice is un- 
 avoidable, and claims no immunity from 
 that vice in his discussion. He places entire 
 responsibility for the war on Germany, giv- 
 ing no suggestion as to how England could 
 have had a hand in producing the situation 
 which made war inevitable. Such criticisms 
 as he directs against England concern only 
 her internal politics and social constitution. 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 61 
 
 If there be a neutral bloodless enough to 
 qualify as an impartial critic, and if he 
 dispute the validity of such claims, he could 
 still profit from Trotter's work. One does 
 not need to sympathise with his antagonism 
 to Germany to get helpful material from his 
 essay. It is only necessary to agree that 
 forces such as he alleges to be operative there 
 w^ould probably produce war, to gain a hint 
 as to what underlies warlike impulses in 
 general. Similarly whether English society 
 has the inherent virtue he ascribes to it or 
 not, is for our present jjurposes immaterial. 
 In the type of herd he describes as British 
 would certainly be found a people whose 
 power could only be a blessing to the world. 
 In 1908 Trotter wrote as follows — 
 "The solutions [of the problem of recon- 
 ciling individual desires or experience with 
 herd suggestion] by indifference and by 
 rationalisation, or by a mixture of these two 
 processes, are characteristic of the great 
 
62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 class of normal, sensible, reliable middle 
 age, with its definite views, its resiliency to 
 the depressing influence of facts, and its gift 
 for forming the backbone of the State. In 
 them herd suggestion shows its capacity to 
 triumph over experience, to delay the evolu- 
 tion of altruism, and to obscure the existence 
 and falsify the results of the contest between 
 personal and social desires. That it is able 
 to do so has the advantage of establishing 
 society with great firmness, but it has also 
 the consequence of entrusting the conduct of 
 the State and the attitude of it towards life 
 to a class which their very stability shows 
 to possess a certain relative incapacity to 
 take experience seriously, a certain relative 
 insensibility to the value of feeling and to 
 suffering, and a decided preference for herd 
 tradition over all other sources of conduct. 
 "Early in history the bulk of mankind 
 must have been of this type, because ex- 
 perience, being still relatively simple, would 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 63 
 
 have but little suggestive force, and would 
 therefore readily be suppressed by herd sug- 
 gestion. There would be little or no mental 
 conflict, and such as there was would be 
 readily stilled by comparatively simple 
 rationalisations. The average man would 
 then be happy, active, and possessed of an 
 inexhaustible fund of motive and energy, 
 capable of intense patriotism and even of 
 self-immolation for the herd. The nation 
 consequently, in an appropriate environ- 
 ment, would be an expanding one and rend- 
 ered ruthless and formidable by an intense, 
 unshakable conviction of its divine mission. 
 Its blindness towards the new in experience 
 would keep its patriots narrow and fierce, 
 its priests bigoted and bloodthirsty, its 
 rulers arrogant, reactionary and overconfi- 
 dent. Should chance ordain that there arose 
 no great environmental change, rendering 
 necessary great modifications, such a nation 
 would have a brilliant career of conquest, as 
 
64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 has been so often demonstrated by history. 
 "Among the first-class Powers to-day the 
 mentally stable are still the directing class, 
 and their characteristic tone is discernible 
 in national attitudes towards experience, in 
 national ideals and religions, and in national 
 morality. It is this possession of the power 
 of directing national opinion by a class 
 which is in essence relatively insensitive 
 towards new combinations of experience; 
 this persistence of a mental type, which may 
 have been adequate in the simpler past, into 
 a world where environments are daily be- 
 coming more complex — it is this survival, so 
 to say, of the wagoner upon the footplate of 
 the express engine, which has made the 
 modern history of nations a series of such 
 breathless adventures and hairbreadth 
 escapes. To those who are able to view 
 national affairs from an objective stand- 
 point, it is obvious that each of these escapes 
 might very easily have been a disaster, and 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 65 
 
 that sooner or later one of them must be 
 such." 
 
 In his later work Trotter ascribes these- 
 primitive characteristics more specifically 
 to the aggressive or wolf gregariousness and, 
 needless to say, he finds them highly devel- 
 oped in the Germans. This race, he thinks, 
 demonstrate the validity of his claim that 
 great development can be obtained by con- 
 scious direction of what is the evolutionary 
 tendency, although, of course, he looks on 
 lupine gregariousness as inimical to civiliza- 
 tion as a whole, and therefore bound to fail 
 in the end. It may seem grotesque to attempt 
 an analogy between the society of the wolf 
 and that of any group of men, and it would 
 probably be impossible to present Trotter's 
 arguments sympathetically without quota- 
 tion in extenso. Assuming this risk, how- 
 ever, what he considers to be the lupine 
 characteristics in man may be enumerated. 
 
 Wolves band themselves together purely 
 
66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 for the sake of the advantages the pack 
 enjoys over the individual in hunting. Wolf 
 gregariousness is, therefore, founded on 
 aggression. Trotter notes that the Germans 
 are constantly taking as their ideal the 
 civilisations which in the past were built on 
 aggression. Not unnaturally he points to 
 the fact that peoples of the "socialised" (the 
 bee) type, such as Italians and Americans, 
 have not been impressed by German propa- 
 ganda, while the bloodthirsty Turks and 
 Bulgarians have espoused the Teutonic 
 cause. ^ He finds as a national characteristic, 
 pervading all classes, a naive arrogance 
 usually displayed in florid and banal meta- 
 phors. The simple, honest conviction of 
 being God's chosen people furnishes a great 
 stimulus in attack. He claims they are 
 incapable of grasping the idea that other 
 people may be differently constituted from 
 themselves; that they are incredulous of 
 altruism ever being a real motive, and rely 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 67 
 
 on intimidation rather than understanding 
 in their relations with other nations. It is 
 to these tendencies that he ascribes the series 
 of diplomatic blunders which resulted in 
 Germany facing a coalition of tremendous 
 strength. Xot unusually he views the ap- 
 parent determination of the General Staff 
 to keep constantly on the offensive as an 
 evidence of aggression being the keynote of 
 their union. He even risks the prediction 
 that there will be a collapse so soon as 
 offence is no longer possible. There are 
 certain traits shown in their internal rela- 
 tionships which Trotter regards as distinc- 
 tive of the lupine type. He speaks first of 
 the flagrant cruelty and harshness exhibited 
 by the individual German in times of peace 
 as well as in war. The same habit he 
 observes in the treatment of their colonies. 
 As a corollary to this the individual German 
 shows a subserviency to his superior and a 
 favourable reaction to rigorous, even phys- 
 
68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 ical discipline, that would to other peoples 
 be intolerable. This is likened to the 
 behaviour of the dog, who reacts so much 
 more satisfactorily to a whipping than does 
 a horse, for instance. Finally, Trotter makes 
 much of the German tendency to adopt war 
 cries and shibboleths {e.g. "Gott strafe Eng- 
 land'' ) , any attempt to implant which on the 
 English meets with failure. This successful 
 bolstering up of the national morale with 
 catch phrases he cosiders directly anal- 
 ogous to the howl of wolf pack, which 
 inspirits and unites it in hunting. 
 
 From a scientific rather than a national 
 standpoint it is regrettable that Trotter 
 writes with this partisanship, for it tends, 
 a priori, to prejudice the validity of his 
 arguments. Before speaking of England 
 and Germany explicitly, he mentions that it 
 is open to man to develop his gregariousness 
 along either the wolf, the sheep, or the bee 
 plan. Man, then, is potentially capable of 
 
GKEGARIOUSNESS 69 
 
 all three types and, it is safe to assume, has 
 all three latent in him. We can get much 
 from Trotter if we accept his aggressive 
 type as expressing those elements in the 
 gregariousness of man which tend towards 
 war. Sheep never fight, bees sting merely 
 to repel attacks. It is only in the develop- 
 ment of the bee type that mankind can 
 progress. The swarm has the focus of the 
 hive, in which all interest is centred, and the 
 co-ordination of function is such that no 
 individualism is possible. What Trotter 
 terms "intercommunication" among the 
 units is developed to its highest point. This 
 he aptly compares to the cell colony that 
 develops into the metazoic type of animal. 
 No one thinks of the welfare of the indi- 
 vidual cell in a multi-cellular animal. The 
 advance of the bee-hive is not determined 
 by subjugation of other hives or species, but 
 by more effective industry. This would 
 make an ideal national type. 
 
70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 It is now a fairly well recognised fact that 
 in the study of psychopathic states the 
 observation of the conduct and utterances of 
 the patient will betray much of his innate 
 mental constitution, and also show what was 
 the underlying personal significance of the 
 events which disturbed his balance. Our 
 material on the psychology of war is, there- 
 fore, not complete until we have made more 
 of a survey of the phenomena of war. These 
 are, of course, legion, and only a few can be 
 considered here and, at that, in generalities. 
 The external changes in the life of the mass 
 and of the individual do not demand com- 
 ment — ^that is the sphere of the economist. 
 Our problem is to discover the mental 
 changes of the nation and the citizen. 
 
 Of the national changes the added cohe- 
 siveness and unity is a commonplace. What 
 has been a vague conception of flag or king 
 becomes a living entity. The herd crowds 
 closer together. All the departments of 
 
GKEGARIOUSNESS 71 
 
 Government become more co-ordinate; the 
 claims of smaller groups, such as labour, 
 capital, and political parties are allowed to 
 lapse in the presence of the need of the large 
 groups. A much-needed reform, long 
 blocked by the obstinacy of some small class, 
 can be instituted without opposition. In 
 short, internal problems almost cease to 
 exist, not merely in relation to the magni- 
 tude of the external problems, but abso- 
 lutely. The factors of sectional rivalry and 
 jealousy have disappeared, or, at least, tend 
 to do so. National conscience is both quick- 
 ened and perverted. The action of the 
 enemy or of individual enemy citizens is 
 judged to be wicked regardless of the merits 
 of the case, while individual frivolities and 
 indiscretions of fellow-citizens come to be 
 looked on almost as treason. The people 
 press a debt of the individual whose payment 
 is never expected in times of peace. Trotter 
 observed in England some less obvious signs 
 
72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 pf a quickening of the herd instinct. The 
 first reaction was of vague fear. This did 
 not necessarily confine itself to fears for the 
 safety of the country as a whole, but was 
 transferred to ridiculous, petty anxieties. 
 With this was an intolerance of isolation. 
 Men could not bear to be alone, and, follow- 
 ing the instinct for members of the herd to 
 ( be in actual contact, class barriers were 
 \j3roken down. Most interesting was the wild- 
 fire spread and credulity of rumours, that 
 form of mental contagion which owes its 
 existence to herd suggestion. Finally, every 
 foreign-looking person was looked on with 
 suspicion. This last, coupled with the open 
 hatred of individual foes, gives us a beautiful 
 analogy with the psychosis. The uncon- 
 scious idea that the foreigner belongs to a 
 rival species becomes a conscious belief that 
 he is a pestiferous type of animal. 
 
 All the above, with the exception of 
 rumour, fear, and senseless suspicion, are 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 73 
 
 gains for the nation as siicli. National con- 
 sciousness is a large part of that vision with- 
 out which the people perish, and it is quite 
 possible that the essential victory rests with 
 that people whose national morale emerges 
 intact from the war. I once had occasion 
 to meet one of the most noteworthy of the 
 Boer generals, and took the opi)ortunity to 
 ask him why the Boers had not yielded to 
 the British demands instead of attempting 
 the impossible. He replied that they all 
 knew their relative impotence, but that to 
 have capitulated would have meant the for- 
 feiture of their national self-respect, so they 
 chose to fight against impossible odds. We 
 can now begin to see the result of this de- 
 cision. Their individual losses were enor- 
 mous, but nationally they are probably 
 better off. They have as good a Government 
 or better; they are part of a larger civilisa- 
 tion (to which they owe ready allegiance) ; 
 they are not a subject race in fact or feeling. 
 
74 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 One thing is altered: the Vierkleur is re- 
 placed by the Union Jack. But that of which 
 the flag was a symbol has not been destroyed. 
 In fact, it has probably grown. Had the two 
 States capitulated a Boer would not now, 
 in the eyes of Europe and America, be a citi- 
 zen of the world, but only a semi-savage 
 frontiersman. Did the Boers really lose the 
 war? 
 
 The effects of war on the nation as a whole 
 have still more interesting results on the 
 mental reactions of the individual. We are 
 accustomed to think of energy being largely 
 a product of personal ambition. The in- 
 dividual in war time couples self-abnegation 
 with unwonted energ}^ His interests change : 
 his pride tends to be centred less on the 
 eminence of himself and family, but more on 
 what he and they can do for the country. 
 A man no longer strives to outwit his neigh- 
 bour in business, but rather to outdo him in 
 patriotism. An exhibition of generosity or 
 
GEEGARIOUSNESS 75 
 
 altruism that merits a sneer from many 
 quarters in times of peace becomes an incen- 
 tive, an example to copy. Herd suggestion 
 constantly reinforces the spirit of self-sacri- 
 fice in the interests of the herd. These 
 statements must not, of course, be taken as 
 indicating constant results. If all the citi- 
 zens of any country responded to the full 
 along these lines, the concerted energy of 
 that herd would probably make it infinitely 
 stronger than any other nation. As in all 
 psychological matters, we can only consider 
 tendencies. It is frequently stated that war 
 awakens a feeling for the essential realities 
 of life. In the face of the astounding per- 
 versions of truth which characterise every 
 war, this statement must be delimited. More 
 accurately one could say that a vaguely felt 
 standard of conduct — to act in best inter- 
 ests of the herd — becomes a vital, conscious 
 rule of life, and keener criticism is directed 
 by each individual to see if his conduct fol- 
 
76 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 lows this rule. As a corollary to this, self- 
 deceptions may tend to disappear. The more 
 or less conscious delusions of grandeur 
 which actuate so many people are apt to 
 fail in the emergency of war. Probably the 
 more fundamental of such ideas — the im- 
 portance of one's individual life — is the one 
 that is most conspicuously shattered. In 
 ^-^e article by Freud, already quoted, there 
 is considerable discussion of our attitude 
 towards death. He shows that normally we 
 are continually handicapped by our insin- 
 cerities about death and fears of it in our- 
 selves and others. There is no more beautiful 
 proof that a nation at war acts as a species 
 struggling for existence than the fact that 
 individual deaths do not matter either to the 
 mass or to the individual himself. Trotter's 
 comparison to the multicellular animal is 
 peculiarly apt in this connection. If we find 
 ourselves in a situation of danger we are not 
 conscious of any fear for hand or eye or 
 
GREGARIOUSNESS 77 
 
 body, but for ourselves as a whole. Neither 
 the wolf in the pack nor the bee in the swarm 
 has thought for its own safety. As Trotter 
 points out, mass formation gains psycho- 
 logically perhaps more than it does tacti- 
 cally. It seems to me not impossible that 
 the success of military training consists es- 
 sentially in the acquisition of the herd 
 spirit, the gain of a feeling that the herd is 
 always present, even if it be only in imagina- 
 tion. When this is accomplished the prodi- 
 gies of devotion and self-immolation, which 
 are a commonplace of mass formation, can 
 become possible individually. The essen- 
 tial victory in war rests with that nation 
 which has the largest number of citizens 
 unconsciously and constantly aware of the 
 presence of the herd, fighting or travailling 
 alone, perhaps, but hearing always the voice 
 of their choir invisible. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CORRELATION OF PRIMITIVE INSTINCTS WITH 
 GREGARIOUSNESS 
 
 We are now in a position to recapitulate. 
 In so far as one can generalise about such 
 a protean affair as war, there are two great 
 groups of phenomena. In the first come vio- 
 lence in the form of killing fellow beings, 
 purposeful destruction of property, injury 
 to the rival trade and deception of the 
 enemy. These are all "legitimate'' in war. 
 With these there always occur "atrocities" 
 in the form of wanton destruction, loot, and 
 the indulgence of brutal passion on the bod- 
 ies of the enemy combatant and non-com- 
 batant alike, phenomena more apt to pre- 
 ponderate in one country but probably pres- 
 ent in all armies. The latter are openly or 
 
 78 
 
COKRELATION 79 
 
 tacitly encouraged or, at least, condoned by 
 each belligerent. On the other hand, there 
 is a group of phenomena evidencing a stim- 
 ulus to the nation at war, causing greater 
 cohesiveness, greater energy, marvellous 
 self-abnegation on the part of individuals, 
 extinction of all that is a sham in life, but 
 with it all a loss of capacity to sympathise 
 with a foreign view-point that amounts to 
 an intellectual stultification. 
 
 There are, also, two schools of dynamic 
 psychology that attempt answers to this rid- 
 dle. One says that primitive, anti-social 
 human instincts still exist unconsciously in 
 the make-up of all "civilised'' beings, that 
 they are constantly striving for an outlet 
 which the conditions of war allow. The 
 second school say that man is by instinct 
 a herd animal, and that as such he forms 
 groups to which he owes a blind allegiance, 
 more complete than is generally thought and 
 always including an instinctive hostility to 
 
80 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 that which is outside the national group. 
 / When the group develops an aggressive type 
 (of gregariousness war is imminent. Signifi- 
 cantly, each school in its argument leaves 
 one set of phenomena severely alone. As far 
 as each goes, the argument seems sound ; can 
 they be reconciled, or are they mutually ex- 
 clusive? 
 
 To answer this we must leave the question 
 of war for a moment and turn to a considera- 
 tion of the fundamentals of dynamic psy- 
 chology. Freud and Trotter are probably 
 the only two psychologists who have initi- 
 ated hypotheses that are not essentially 
 tautological, so only psycho-analysis and 
 herd instinct need be seriously considered. 
 The teaching of Freud is that civilisation 
 has forced upon man a "repression'' of primi- 
 tive instincts whose operation is unconscious 
 but always the dominant, dynamic prin- 
 ciple of life. Trotter, on the other hand, 
 insists that man is by nature gregarious, 
 
CORRELATION 81 
 
 and impelled by instinct to serve the herd 
 and assimilate his conduct and thought with 
 that of his fellows. The irrationalities and 
 mental disabilities of man he ascribes to the 
 conflict between his actual experience and / 
 what the herd bids him believe. In short, 
 one may say that psycho-analysis deals with 
 individualistic motivation, while herd in- 
 stinct is a study of social instinct. From our 
 studies of the psychoses and the wealth of 
 psycho-analytic material that appears there- 
 in it has become increasingly plain that 
 what psycho-analysis terms "repression" is 
 the work of an instinct (or group of in- 
 stincts) only part of whose work is repres- 
 sion. The other task of this instinctive 
 force is to augment the individualistic un- 
 conscious instinct when it is symbolised in a 
 form that is socially acceptable. This is the 
 essence of the dynamic structure of a "sub- 
 limation.'' The proof of this cannot be 
 given here, but I might mention that the 
 
82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 elation and energy of the manic state seem 
 to be regularly accompanied by ideas that 
 represent a fusion of individualistic and 
 social tendencies. As I pointed out in re- 
 viewing Trotter's original papers,* his herd 
 instinct is probably nothing more or less 
 than the force behind the psycho-analytic 
 "repressions.'^ Trotter, in a sympathetic 
 critique of psycho-analysis in his book, 
 comes to the same conclusion. Presumably, 
 therefore, the two theories supplement one 
 another. Psycho-analysts (at least the 
 Viennese school) have always seen in con- 
 vention and education the influences that 
 cause repression, but have denied any dyna- 
 mic value to them. Trotter shows conclu- 
 sively, however, that man accepts tradition, 
 convention and ethical education because he 
 is instinctively forced so to do by his grega- 
 rious nature. There are, perhaps, some 
 moral repugnances that are common to all 
 
 ^Psychiatric Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 1 
 
COKEELATION 83 
 
 mankind, but the majority of them are es- 
 sentially tribal in origin. As Stevenson 
 says : ^'The canting moralist tells us of right 
 and wrong; and we look abroad, even on the 
 face of our small earth, and find them change 
 with every climate, and no country where 
 some action is not honoured as a virtue and 
 none where it is not branded as a vice ; and 
 we look in our experience and find no vital 
 congruity in the wisest rules, but at the 
 best a municipal fitness." This "municipal 
 fitness'^ determines (with all its accidents) 
 the moral standard. It may be a law at 
 which our intellect rebels, but we obey it, 
 because obedience to its mandates is what 
 keeps the herd together. What there is of 
 the "brotherhood of man'' in us determines 
 the fundamental consistency of moral 
 standards the civilised world over. One's 
 adherence to the standard of conduct of 
 ideal civilisation, national advantage, or 
 union expedience will depend on the relative 
 
84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 appeal each makes to tlie gregariousness in 
 the man. One's conscience is, then, not a 
 stable thing, but as variable as the exigencies 
 of the group to which allegiance is auto- 
 matically given. It is hardly necessary to 
 state that the man of real moral greatness 
 is he who is loyal to mankind as a whole, 
 rather than to some smaller group. 
 
 We are finally in a position to summarise 
 what suggestions can be made as to the psy- 
 chology of war. It is the natural outcome 
 of fundamental human tendencies. Man by 
 his gregarious nature is doomed to split up 
 into groups, and these groups behave bio- 
 logically as if they were separate species 
 struggling for existence. Thanks to his herd 
 instinct, which makes man accept the 
 opinions of those immediately around him — 
 herd, or "mob," suggestion — only that seems 
 to be right which is done by his group, and 
 an abnormal suspicion of the acts of other 
 groups develops. Thus a state of antagon- 
 
COHRELATION 85 
 
 ism develops which is much augmenteds^b^, 
 the aggressive tendency latent in human ^" 
 gregariousness. The antagonism is cumula- 
 tive, so that sooner or later a state of ex- 
 treme tension is reached. At this point. \ 
 when action of some sort seems imperative, 
 the primitive, unconscious instincts of man 
 assert themselves (as they constantly t-end 
 to do), and the herd, finding in this a ready 
 weapon, relaxes its ban, making of blood 
 lust a virtue. Suddenly the individualistic 
 and social tendencies find themselves worfe^ 
 ing hand in hand — essentially a sublimation ^ i 
 — and war with its tremendous energy is un- 
 leashed. The behaviour of both the mass 
 and the individual then demonstrates that 
 the herd is playing the role of a species 
 struggling for existence., It cannot be ob- 
 jected that war is merely the business of 
 soldiers. Every citizen, male or female, has 
 a share in the spirit of war. All suffer a 
 diminution of egoism, with an added con- 
 
86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 sciousness of the state, and all feel the satis- 
 faction of a blood lust, whether it be gained 
 by jabbing a bayonet or devouring descrip- 
 tions of carnage in the enemy's trenches. It 
 must not be thought that the repression of 
 these primitive tendencies is easily lifted. 
 There is a feeling of horror quite different 
 from fear when a nation is on the brink of 
 war, although with it, some thoughtful in- 
 trospectionists admit, can be detected a 
 "something" which seems to hope that war 
 will come. This "something," like the fas- 
 cination of a horrible spectacle, is, of 
 course, the unconscious wish. When it has 
 come as close to consciousness as this, its 
 shadow, as it were, being seen, war is truly 
 imminent, for now the herd antagonism is 
 mightily augmented by the primitive pas- 
 sion for violence. The repressing force 
 which colours war with horror, makes it dif- 
 ficult to kill the first man, and keeps the citi- 
 zen at home from relishing the tales of car- 
 
COKRELATION 87 
 
 nage until he is "used to it" — this force can 
 probably be related to that loyalty we have 
 to the larger herd, all mankind. At such a 
 time as this, with almost the whole w^orld 
 w^eltering in blood, it seems hard to believe 
 in the strength of this wider allegiance. Yet 
 it asserts itself with greater strength at the 
 close of every great war, as the revulsion 
 from bloodshed lasting through generations 
 bears witness.* 
 
 *An application of this principle of "sublimation" 
 in war may turn out to be of prime importance from. 
 a military standpoint. It is a psycho-analj^ic truism 
 that before every neurosis develops some sublimation 
 is broken dovi^n or its outlet denied by external cir- 
 cumstance. The intense strain of modern warfare 
 is an ideal agency for wearing down the natural 
 stability of a man, and so favouring the development 
 of a neurosis. To counteract this strain there must 
 "be a satisfaction in the work to act as a stimulus. 
 The sensitive individual who cannot develop pleasure 
 in killing — to put the matter brutally — is bound to 
 "be the victim of a double strain, and quickly devel- 
 ops an unconquerable hatred of his task that will 
 soon lead to fear. Once fear appears, surrender or 
 illness is the only escape. Before either refuge is 
 Bought, however, the soldier is not only inefficient 
 
88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 What of the future? As this essay shows, 
 psychology can give suggestions as to what 
 seem to be the factors underlying the phe- 
 nomena of war, and these only in generali- 
 ties. Naturally, then, more caution is neces- 
 sary in discussing remedies, and they can 
 only be given in vague hints. 
 
 It is a doctrine of a psychology, as it is of 
 common sense, that things exist for the good 
 there is in them, not for the bad. Thera- 
 peutics must always take this into consider- 
 ation. Rational treatment aims at estab- 
 lishing stability by satisfying with substi- 
 
 himself , but serves as a focus of contagion ; infecting 
 his fellows with fear and breaking down the morale 
 of his group. A comparatively brief examination by 
 a competent psychiatrist of any soldier complaining- 
 of initial difficulties would often be sufficient to dis- 
 cover the measure of adaptability of the man to his 
 task. If that were thought to be limited, frequent 
 reliefs from active duty would enable him to continue 
 as a soldier indefinitely. It is a much easier matter 
 to prevent a neurosis of this type than to cure it- 
 By such means as these a psychologist can be of ines- 
 timable value to an army, for there is nothing more 
 vital than its morale. 
 
CORRELATION 89 
 
 tutes the need to which the baneful dis- 
 turbance was an answer. As far as man's 
 primitive cravings are concerned, the sug- 
 gestions of James, made more specific by 
 Jones, seem excellent. Our social constitu- 
 tions must be made more elastic, so as to 
 give more outlet to individualistic impulses, 
 in order that the latter may not be dammed 
 up and form a reservoir of potential vio- 
 lence always ready to burst its floodgates. 
 In times of peace we revert to the illusions 
 that hold individual lives to be supremely 
 valuable, and it is not impossible that hazard 
 is too far removed from us for permanent 
 national health. A national conscription 
 for the undertaking of dangerous engineer- 
 ing feats would probably never be instituted 
 by any democracy, yet the scores of lives lost 
 in such a way would be cheap in comparison 
 with the devastations of war. 
 
 In approaching the question of the future 
 of international relationships apart from 
 
90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 actual war, certain possibilities must be 
 kept in mind. If war is a struggle for exist- 
 ence between what are essentially rival 
 species, the preservation of what is most 
 vital to a nation — national morale — is the 
 correct criterion of success or failure in the 
 war. In comparison with the loss of this, 
 physical impoverishment may be almost dis- 
 regarded. Much antagonism to war on the 
 part of fervid "patriots" is the individual 
 fear or horror of personal loss or injury, 
 and, of course, in this case the imagination 
 of the horror is the potent factor. From the 
 standpoint of the nation, as such, war is pos- 
 sibly often a good thing. Some nations, e.g, 
 the German Empire, or the United States, 
 were born of war. We certainly know of 
 no other stimulus which can so vivify and 
 cement a nation. From the standpoint of 
 common humanity, however, war is an un- 
 mitigated scourge. The question, then, 
 should, perhaps, be put: "Do we want 
 
CORRELATION 91 
 
 nations?'' rather than, "Do we want to 
 abolish war?" It could be well argued that 
 there is little cohesiveness in any large 
 modern nation beyond the wars both pres- 
 ent, potential and in tradition. In the face 
 of man's inveterate tendency to form into 
 herds it seems folly to talk of a reconstruc- 
 tion of human society without national di- 
 yisions. A working conception of common 
 humanity to which loyalty could be devoted 
 is certainly too ambitious a program for 
 the human mind at its present development. 
 If nations were abolished by common con- 
 sent they would reappear with another 
 name, just as, if armaments were abol- 
 ished, people would probably fight with 
 clubs and stones. If nations are, then, to 
 exist, and not be a menace to all mankind, 
 some substitute for war must be found 
 which will give cohesiveness to the herd, but 
 at the same time not detract from the ley- 
 
2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 alty of its citizens to that larger group, the 
 human race. 
 
 It must be obvious from all that has been 
 said that war is an outcome of the deepest 
 ^' lying of human forces, and therefore some- 
 thing which cannot be altered by legislation 
 nor agreement any more than a man can be 
 kept sane either by force or by promise. In- 
 stinct is stronger than reason. And war is 
 not an isolated phenomenon unrelated to 
 other human tendencies.. It is the habit of 
 amateur statesmen to offer, by preference, 
 remedies for the largest problems. When 
 lynch law, class hatred, strikes with violence 
 and lockouts with starvation are things of 
 the past, then, and then only, may w^e hope 
 that man is becoming a peace-loving animal. 
 In the meantime, psychology can offer one 
 ray of hope. Instincts triumph over reason, 
 but largely because instincts act uncon- 
 sciously. When man is so educated as to 
 know himself and recognise the forces that 
 
CORRELATION 93 
 
 are within him, lie will be in a position to 
 see the way his footsteps lead, and change 
 his path — if he wills. 
 
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