[17] I have not included in these pages actual quotations from German authors illustrative of the national characteristics they so richly display. Such material may be found in abundance in the many books upon Germany which have appeared since the beginning of the war. The inclusion of it here would therefore have been superfluous, and would have tended perhaps to distract attention from the more general aspects of the subject which are the main objects of this study. During the process of final revision I am, however, tempted to add a single illustration which happens just to have caught my eye as being a representative and not at all an extreme example of the national arrogance I refer to above.
In an article on “The German Mind” by Mr. John Buchan I find the following quotations from a Professor Werner Sombart, of Berlin:—
“When the German stands leaning on his mighty sword, clad in steel from his sole to his head, whatsoever will may, down below, dance around his feet, and the intellectuals and the learned men of England, France, Russia, and Italy may rail at him and throw mud. But in his lofty repose he will not allow himself to be disturbed, and he will reflect in the sense of his old ancestors in Europe: Oderint dum metuant.”
“We must purge from our soul the last fragments of the old ideal of a progressive development of humanity. . . . The ideal of humanity can only be understood in its highest sense when it attains its highest and richest development in particular noble nations. These for the time being are the representatives of God’s thought on earth. Such were the Jews. Such were the Greeks. And the chosen people of these centuries is the German people. . . . Now we understand why other peoples pursue us with their hatred. They do not understand us, but they are sensible of our enormous spiritual superiority. So the Jews were hated in antiquity because they were the representatives of God on earth” (“The German Mind,” Land and Water, November 6, 1915).
These passages are almost too good to be true, and give one some of the pleasure of the collector who finds a perfect specimen. Here we have the gusto in childish and banal metaphor, the conception of the brutal conqueror’s state as permanently blissful—the colonizing principle of Prussia—the naïve generalizations from history, the confident assumption of any characteristic which appears desirable in morals or religion, the impenetrable self-esteem, and I think we should add the intense and honest conviction.
If we judge from the standpoint of our own feelings and ideals such utterances as these, we cannot ignore the maniacal note in them, and we seem forced to assume some actually lunatic condition in the German people. Indeed, this is a conclusion which Mr. Buchan in the article from which I quote does not hesitate definitely and persuasively to draw.
When we remember, however, that the definition of insanity is necessarily a statistical one, that in the last analysis we can but say that a madman is a man who behaves differently from the great bulk of his neighbours, we find that to describe a nation as mad—true as it may be in a certain sense—leaves us without much addition to our knowledge. In so far, however, as it impresses upon us the fact that some of that nation’s mental processes are fundamentally different from our own it is a useful conception. The statesman will do well to carry the analysis a stage farther. The ravings of a maniac do not help us much in forecasting his behaviour, the howlings of a pack of wolves, equally irrational, equally harsh, even, in the original sense, equally lunatic, betray to us with whom we have to deal, betray their indispensable needs, their uncontrollable passions, the narrow path of instinct in which they are held, enable us to foresee, and, foreseeing, to lay our plans.
It is important, however, not to judge the functional value of these phenomena of herd arrogance and herd irritability and convulsive rage from the point of view of nations of the socialized gregarious type such as ourselves. To us they would be disturbants of judgment, and have no corresponding emotional recompense. In the wolf pack, however, they are indigenous, and represent a normal mechanism for inciting national enthusiasm and unity. The wolf, whose existence depends on the daily exercise of pursuit and slaughter, cannot afford {178} to be open to external appeals and criticisms, must be supremely convinced of his superiority and that whoever dies he must live, and must be easily stimulated to the murderous rages by which he wins his food.
Another difficulty in the understanding of the German mind is its behaviour with regard to influencing non-German opinion. There can be no doubt that it desires intensely to create impressions {179} favourable to itself, not merely for the sake of practical advantages in conducting the war, but also because of the desire for sympathy. In considering the latter motive it is important that one’s attention should not be too much attracted by the comic aspects of the searchings of heart, publicly indulged by Germans, as to why they are not regarded with a more general and sincere affection, and of the answers which they themselves have furnished to this portentous problem. That they are too modest, too true, too self-obliterating, too noble, too brave, and too kind are answers the psychological significance of which should not be altogether lost in laughter. That they are honest expressions of belief cannot be doubted; indeed, there is strong theoretical reason to accept them as such, when we remember the fabulous[18] impenetrability of lupine herd suggestion. In default of such an explanation they seem to be utterly incomprehensible.
[18] The use of this adjective may perhaps call to mind how often the wolf has appeared in fable in just this mood. Usually, however, the fabulist—being of the unsympathetic socialized type—has ascribed the poor creature’s yearnings to hypocrisy.