We have been discussing crowds in which hostility is present in the form of overt destructive and homicidal acts or other unmistakable expressions of hatred. But are there not also peaceable crowds, crowds devoted to religious and moral propaganda, idealist crowds? Yes, all crowds moralize, all crowds are also idealistic. But the moral enthusiasm of the crowd always demands a victim. The idealist crowd also always makes idols of its ideals and worships them with human sacrifice. The peaceable crowd is only potentially homicidal. The death-wish exists as a fancy only, or is expressed in symbols so as to be more or less unrecognizable to ordinary consciousness. I believe that every crowd is "against some one." Almost any crowd will persecute on occasion—if sufficiently powerful and directly challenged. The crowd tends ever to carry its ideas to their deadly logical conclusion.
I have already referred to the crowds interest in games and athletic events as an innocent symbolization of conflict. How easy it is to change this friendly rivalry into sudden riot—its real meaning—every umpire of baseball and football games knows. As an illustration of my point—namely, that the enthusiasm aroused by athletic contests is the suppressed hostility of the crowd, I give the following. In this letter to a New York newspaper, the writer, a loyal "fan," reveals the same mentality that we find in the sectarian fanatic, or good party man, whose "principles" have been challenged. The challenge seems in all such cases to bring the hostility into consciousness as "righteous indignation."
To the Editor:
Sir,—The article under the caption "Giants Chances for Flag to be Settled in Week," on the sporting page of the Tribune, is doubtless intended to be humorous.
The section referring to the Cincinnati baseball public is somewhat overdrawn, to say the least, and does not leave a very favorable impression on the average Cincinnatian, such as myself. I have been a reader of your paper for some time, but if this sort of thing continues I shall feel very much like discontinuing.
W. L. D.
The extremes to which partisan hatred and jealousy can lead even members of the United States Senate, the intolerance and sectarian spirit which frequently characterize crowds, the "bigotry" of reformist crowds, are matters known to us all. Does anyone doubt that certain members of the Society for the Prevention of Vice, or of the Prohibitionists, would persecute if they had power? Have not pacifist mass meetings been known to break up in a row? The Christian religion is fundamentally a religion of love, but the Church has seldom been wholly free from the crowd-spirit, and the Church crowd will persecute as quickly as any other. In each period of its history when Christian believers have been organized as dominant crowds the Church has resorted to the severest forms of persecution. Popular religion always demands some kind of devil to stand as the permanent object of the believers hostility. Let an editor, or lecturer, or clergyman anywhere attack some one, and he at once gains following and popularity. Evangelists and political orators are always able to "get" their crowd by resorting to abuse of some one. Let any mass meeting become a crowd, and this note of hostility inevitably appears.
Notice the inscriptions which commonly appear on the banners carried in political or labor parades. On the day after the armistice was signed with Germany, when the most joyous and spontaneous crowds I have ever seen filled the streets of New York, I was greatly impressed with those homemade banners. Though it was the occasion of the most significant and hard-won victory in human history, there was hardly a reference to the fact. Though it was the glad moment of peace for which all had longed, I did not see ten banners bearing the word "Peace," even in the hands of the element in the city who were known to be almost unpatriotically pacifist. But within less than an hour I counted on Fifth Avenue more than a hundred banners bearing the inscription, "To Hell with the Kaiser."
That the man chiefly responsible for the horrors of the war should be the object of universal loathing is only to be expected, but the significant fact is that of all the sentiments which swept into peoples minds on that occasion, this and this alone should have been immediately seized upon when the crowd spirit began to appear. I doubt if at the time there was a very clear sense of the enormity of Wilhelms guilt in the minds of those laughing people. The Kaiser was hardly more than a symbol. The antagonist, whoever he be, was "fallen down to hell," our own sense of triumph was magnified by the depth of his fall. Just so the Hebrew Prophet cried "Babylon is fallen," so the early Christians pictured Satan cast into the bottomless pit, so the Jacobins cried "A bas les Aristocrats," our own Revolutionary crowds cried "Down with George III," and the Union soldiers sang, "Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree." I repeat that wherever the crowd-mind appears, it will always be found to be "against" some one.
An interesting fact about the hostility of a crowd is its ability on occasion to survive the loss of its object. It may reveal the phenomenon which psychologists call "displacement." That is to say, another object may be substituted for the original one without greatly changing the quality of the feeling. A mob in the street, driven back from the object of its attack, will loot a store or two before it disperses. Or, bent on lynching a certain negro, it may even substitute an innocent man, if robbed of its intended victim—as, for instance, the lynching of the mayor of Omaha. Such facts would seem to show that these hostile acts are really demanded by mechanisms within the psyche. Many symbolic acts of the person afflicted with compulsion neurosis show this same trait of substitution. If inhibited in the exercise of one mechanism of escape, the repressed wish will substitute another. Also anyone associated by the unconscious reasoning with the hated object, or anyone who tries to defend him or prove him innocent, may suffer from this crowds hatred. Freud has analyzed this phenomenon in his study of taboo. He who touches the tabooed object himself becomes taboo.
I have said that the hostility of the crowd is a sort of "defense mechanism." That this is so in certain cases, I think can be easily demonstrated. The following news item is an example of the manner in which such hostility may serve as a "defense mechanism" compensating the self-feeling for certain losses and serving to enhance the feeling of self-importance:
Charges Baker Had 57 Brands of Army Objector.
——, of Minnesota, Defending Marines Fathers Association Protest; Assails Freeing of "Slackers."
Washington, July 23.—A bitter partisan quarrel developed in the House today when Representative ——, of Minnesota, attacked Secretary Baker and the President for the governments policy toward conscientious objectors. The attack was the result of protests by the Marines Fathers Association of Minneapolis, Minnesota, representing between 500 and 600 young marines now in France, all from the Minneapolis high schools and the University of Minnesota, and many in the famous 6th Regiment of Marines that took a big part in stopping the Germans at Chateau Thierry.
Upon learning of the treatment accorded conscientious objectors in this country while their sons were dying in France, the association asked Representative —— to fix the responsibility for the governments policy. Representative —— fixed it today as that of Secretary Baker and President Wilson, charging that they extended the definition of those to be exempted from military service laid down by Congress in an act of May 17, 1917.
"One variety of conscientious objector was not enough for Mr. Baker," declared Representative ——. "He had 57 kinds...."
Representative ——, of Arizona, defended Secretary Baker, asserting that of 20,000 men who were certified as conscientious objectors, 16,000 ultimately went to war. The case of Sergt. Alvin C. York, the Tennessee hero, who had conscientious objections at first, but soon changed his mind, was cited in defense of the War Departments policy.
Let us pass over the obviously partisan element in this Congressional debate—a crowd phenomenon in itself, by the way—and consider the mental state of this Fathers Association.