The hypothesis was put forward that in the German people the reactions in which the herd instinct was manifesting itself were in accordance with the type to be seen in the predaceous social animals rather than the type which seems to be characteristic of modern Western civilizations. The next step was naturally to inquire whether the known characters of what we called aggressive gre­gar­i­ous­ness were able to account for the observed German peculiarities in reaction, and then to indicate what special features we might expect to appear in Germany under the developing stress of war if our hypothesis was sound.

Under the guidance of the hypothesis we found reason to believe that the morale of the German people was of a special kind, and essentially dependent for the remarkable vigour it then showed upon the possibility of continued successful aggression. This suggestion was borne out by the long series of offensive movements, increasing in weight and culminating in the spring of 1918, in the great attacks on which Germany broke herself. From the way in which these movements were announced and expected it became evident that during an enforced defensive the morale of Germany declined more rapidly than did that of her opponents. This was the essential confirmation of the psychological view we had put forward. Apart from all question of the strategic and merely military advantages of the offensive it was plain that Germany’s moral need for the posture of attack was peculiarly and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly great. That she continually and convincedly—though perhaps injudiciously—declared the war to be one of defence only, that she had {225} everything to hope from disunion among her enemies and little to fear from disunion among her friends, that she was in assured possession of the most important industrial districts of France, that she had successfully brought into something like equilibrium the resistance to the effects of the blockade, and had proved like her animal prototypes only to be more fierce and eager when she was hungry—all of these strong objective reasons for fighting a defensive delaying war were over-whelmed by the crucially important requirement of keeping the aggressive spirit strung up to the highest pitch. The fighting spirit must be that of attack and conquest, or it would break altogether. Our hypothesis, therefore, enabled us to foresee that she would have to go on torturing her declining frame with one great effort after another until she had fought herself to a standstill, and then, if her enemies but just succeeded in holding her, her morale would begin to decline, and to decline with terrible abruptness. We were even able to regard it as probable that for all the talk of the war on the German side being defensive only, for all the passionate devotion to the Fatherland and the profound belief in the sanctity of its frontiers, as a matter of cold and dry reality, if it came to invasion, Germany would not be defended by its inhabitants.

Another subject upon which the psychological method of inquiry professed to yield some degree of foresight was that—at that time—fruitful cause of discussion, the objects for which the enemies of Germany were fighting. Opinion at that time was much ruled by the conception of a Germany gradually forced back upon and beyond her frontiers, grim, implacable, irreconcilable, her national spirit energized and made resilient by humiliation, and clinging unconquerably to the thought of a resurrection of her glory through the {226} faith of her sons. Under the influence of ideas of this romantic type, it was not always possible for opinion to be very precise upon what was to be made the object of the war in order to secure from Germany the safety of the civilizations opposed to hers. Psychologically, however, the moral condition of a beaten Germany seemed relatively easy to foretell. If the behaviour of other predaceous types was of any value as a guide, it was plain that a sound beating alone and in itself would produce all the effect that was needful. There could be no fear of the national morale being invigorated by defeat, but an enemy successfully invading Germany would necessarily find the one essential condition on which any subsequent security must be set up—the replacement of the aggressive and predaceous morale by complete moral collapse. These were the considerations that enabled one to say that considered psychologically the mere beating of Germany was the single object of the war. The completeness of the moral collapse which accompanied her beating seems to have been found remarkable and astonishing by very many, but can have been so only to those who had not interested themselves in the psychological aspects of the problem.

In stating, in 1915, these conclusions as to the social type and moral structure of Germany and in formulating the indications they seemed to give of the course of future events, it was necessary to make considerable deductions from the precision and detail with which one made one’s small efforts at foresight in order to allow for the effects one’s pro-national bias may have had in deflecting judgment. Enough, however, was stated definitely to enable the progress of events very clearly to confirm or disprove the conclusions arrived at. The not inconsiderable correspondences between the {227} theoretical considerations and the actual development of events is perhaps enough to suggest that the method of speculation used has a certain validity.

In considering the psychological case of England we came to the conclusion that her morale depended on mechanisms different from those which were in action in Germany, and indicating that social development had in her followed a different type. We saw reason to suppose that this social type would be very much more resistant to discouragement and disaster than the aggressive type embodied in Germany, and that if England won the war it would be by virtue of the toughness of her nerve. The form of social organization represented by England was seen to contain a germ of strength not possessed by her enemy, an intensely resistant nucleus of moral power that underlay the immeasurable waste and the inextricable confusion of her methods. If the moral structure of Germany was of its kind fully developed, it was also primitive; if the moral structure of England was embryonic, it was also integrative and still capable of growth. If it was very obvious at that time how immensely responsive to intelligent and conscious direction the moral powers of England would have been, if it was obvious how largely such direction would have diminished the total cost of the war in time and suffering, if it was obvious that such direction would not, and almost certainly could not, be forthcoming, it was equally clear that the muddle, the mediocrity, the vociferation with which the war was being conducted were phenomena within the normal of the type and evolutionary stage of our society, and were not much more than froth on the surface of an invisible and unsounded stream.

If one had been content to estimate the moral condition of England at that time by the utterance of {228} all ordinary organs of expression—public speeches, leading articles and so forth—one could scarcely have failed to reach the gloomiest conclusions. So common were ill-will, acrimony, suspicion and intrigue, so often was apparent self-possession mere languor, and apparent energy mere querulousness, so strong, in fact, were all the ordinary evidences of moral disintegration that an actual collapse might have seemed almost within sight. As a matter of fact, from the very necessities of her social type, in England the organs of public expression were char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly not representative of the national mood; probably far less than were those of Germany representative of the German mood. Thus it came about that the actual driving force—the will of the common man, as inflexible as it was inarticulate—remained intact behind all the ambiguous manifestations which went forth as the voice of England. This is the psychological secret of the socialized type of gregarious animal. As evolved in England to-day, this type cannot attain to the conscious direction of its destiny, and cannot submit to the fertilizing discipline of science; it cannot select its agents or justly estimate their capacity, but it possesses the power of evolving under pressure a common purpose of great stability. Such a common purpose is necessarily simple, direct, and barely conscious; high-flown imperialism and elaborate policies are altogether beyond its range, and it can scarcely accomplish an intellectual process more complex than the recognition of an enemy. The conviction that the hostility between England and Germany was absolute and irreconcilable, and the war a matter of national life and death, was just such a primitive judgment as could be arrived at, and it gave rise to a common purpose as stable as it was simple.22 {229}

The relatively complex national consciousness that is necessary to evolve a positive movement of national expansion or a definite policy of colonization and aggrandisement seems to be hostile to the development of a common purpose of the most powerful kind. Thus we find moral vigour and stability attaining their greatest strength in a nation that has no definite theory of its destiny, and that is content to allow confusion of thought and vagueness of aim to be common and even characteristic in its public life. In such a people national consciousness is of the most elementary kind, and only the simplest conceptions can be effectively apprehended by it. Negative judgments are in general simpler than positive ones, and the simplest of all, perhaps, is the identification of an enemy. The history of England seems to show with remarkable constancy that the national consciousness has been in its most effective action limited to those elementary conceptions which have been simple and broad enough to manifest themselves in a common purpose of great strength and tenacity. England has, in fact, been made by her enemies. Rightly or wrongly, Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Germany, impressed themselves on the elementary consciousness of England as enemies, and excited in response a unity of purpose that was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly as immune from the effects of discouragement, disaster and fatigue as it was independent of reasoned political theory. {230}

Each of these enemies, in contrast with England, had the definite consciousness of a more or less elaborate political aim, and some of them embodied principles or methods in advance of those which obtained in England in corresponding fields. Whatever loftiness of aim they had availed them no more than their respect for principle and the intellect, and they all came to regret the mostly inadvertent effect of their pretensions in exciting the hostility of a people capable of an essential moral cohesion. The power of England would seem to have resided almost exclusively in this capacity for developing under pressure a common purpose. The immense moral energy she has been able to put forth in a crisis has enabled her to inspire such leaders as she has needed for the moment, but she has been char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly infertile in the production of true leaders who could impose themselves upon her efficiently. Thus among her great men, for one true leader, such as Oliver Cromwell, who failed, there have been a score of successful mouthpieces and instruments of her purpose, such as Pitt and Wellington. The vigour of her great moments has always been the product of moral unity induced by the pressure of a supposed enemy, and therefore it has always tended to die down when the danger has passed. As the greatness of her leaders has been less a product of their own genius than that of the moral stimulus which has reached them from the nation at large, when the stimulus has been withdrawn with the cessation of danger, these men have almost invariably come to appear in times of peace of a less dominating capacity than their performance during the stress of war might have indicated. The great wars of England have usually, then, been the affair of the common man; he has supplied the impulse that has made and the moral vigour that has conducted {231} them, he has created and inspired his leaders and has endowed his representatives in the field and on the sea with their stern and enduring pugnacity.

These conclusions have been confirmed by the way in which the war progressed and came to an end. The war became more and more fully a contest of moral forces until it ended in the unique event of a surrender practically unconditional that was not preceded by a total physical defeat. German morale proved throughout extremely sensitive to any suspension of the aggressive posture, and showed the unsuitability of its type in modern conditions by undergoing at the mere threat of disaster a disintegration so absolute that it must remain a classical and perfect example in the records of psychology. There can be no doubt that had there been among her enemies the least understanding of her moral type and state, her collapse could have been brought about with comparative ease at a much earlier date. English morale, on the other hand, seemed actually to be invigorated by defeat, and even remained untouched by the more serious trials of uninspired and mediocre direction, of ill-will, petty tyranny, and confusion.

The confrontation in war of two types of social structure differing so radically and by such clearly defined characters as did Germany and England was, as has been already suggested, a remarkable instance of statecraft being forced into a region of very much greater reality than that in which it usually operates. The historical scale of events, with its narrow range, its reckoning by dynasties and parliaments, its judgments in terms of tribal censure and approbation, was found momentarily to march with the biological scale where events are measured by the survival or extinction of species, where time acquires a new meaning, and the individual man, {232} however conspicuous historically, takes on the insect-like sameness of his fellows. Here was an experiment set out in Nature’s laboratory, and for the first time the issues were so narrowly focussed as to be within the apprehension of the very subjects of the research. The matter to be tested concerned the whole validity of gre­gar­i­ous­ness. Two types were confronted. In one the social habit had taken a form that limited the participation of the individual in the social unit; a rigid segregation of the society made it impossible to admit the moral equality of its members, and resulted in the activities of the social instinct being available solely through leadership; it was a led society where internal cohesion and integration were replaced by what we may call external cohesion—a migratory society developing its highest manifestations of the herd when it was being successfully led. In the other type the social habit had tended, however slowly and incompletely, towards the unlimited participation of the individual in the social unit. The tendency of the society was towards integration and internal cohesion; it was therefore unaggressive, refractory to leadership, and apt to develop its highest herd manifestations when threatened and attacked. The former enjoyed all the advantages of a led society. It was tractable, and its leaders could impose upon it a relative uniformity of outlook and a high standard of general training. The latter had no advantage save the potentiality—and it was little more—of unlimited internal cohesion. It was intractable to leadership, and in consequence knowledge and training were limited and extremely localized within it; it had no approach to unity of outlook, and its interests were necessarily concentrated on its internal rather than its external relations.

If the former type proved the stronger, any progressive evolution of society in a direction that {233} promised the largest extension of human powers would become very, improbable; the internal cohesion of social units would have appeared to be subject to limits, and the most hopeful prospective solution of human difficulties would have vanished. Conceivably accidental factors might have decided the issue of the experiment and left the principle still in doubt. As it happened, every element of chance that intruded went against the type that ultimately proved the stronger, and in the final decision the moral element was so conspicuously more significant than the physical that the experiment has yielded a result which seems to be singularly conclusive and unexceptionable.23

The result of the experiment has been decisive, and it is still a possibility that the progressive integration of society will ultimately yield a medium in which the utmost needs of the individual and of the race will be reconciled and satisfied. Had the more primitive social type—the migratory, aggressive society of leadership and the pack—had this proved still the master of the less primitive socialized and integrative type, the ultimate outlook for the race would have indeed been black. This is by no means to deny that German civilization had a vigour, a respect for knowledge, and even a benignity within which comfortable life was possible. But it is to assert that it was a regression, a choice of the easy path, a surrender to the tamer platitudes of {234} the spirit that no aggressive vigour could altogether mask. To live dangerously was supposed to be its ideal, but dread was the very atmosphere it breathed. Its armies could be thrown into hysterical convulsions by the thought of the franc-tireur, and the flesh of its leaders made to creep by such naïve and transpontine machinations as its enemies ambitiously called propaganda. The minds that could make bugbears out of such material were little likely to attempt or permit the life of arduous and desperate spiritual adventure that was in the mind of the philosopher when he called on his disciples to live dangerously.

This great experiment was conducted under the very eyes of humanity, and the conditions were unique in this that they would have permitted the effective intervention of the conscious human will. As it happened the evolution of society had not reached a stage at which an informed and scientific statecraft was possible. The experiment, therefore, went through without any general view of the whole situation being attained. Had such been possible, there can be no doubt at all that the war could have been shortened enough to keep the world back from the neighbourhood of spiritual and even material bankruptcy in which it finds itself to-day. The armed confrontation of the two types, while it has yielded a result that may well fill us with hope, took place at a moment of human evolution when it was bound to be immensely expensive. Material development had far exceeded social development, mankind, so to say, had become clever without becoming wise, and the war had to be fought as a purely destructive effort. Had it come at a later stage of evolution, so great a mobilization of social power as the war caused might have been taken advantage of to unify the nation to a completely coherent structure which the cessation of {235} the external stimulating pressure would have left firmly and nobly established.