In her negotiations with other peoples, and her estimates of national character, Germany shows the characteristic features of her psychological type in a remarkable way. It appears to be a principal thesis of hers that altruism is, for the purposes of the statesman, non-existent, or if it exists is an evidence of degeneracy and a source of weakness. The motives upon which a nation acts are, according to her, self-interest and fear, and in no particular has her “strangeness” been more fully shown than in the frank way in which she appeals to both, either alternately or together.
This disbelief in altruism, and over-valuation of fear and self-interest, seem to be regarded by her {180} as evidence of a fearless and thorough grasp of biological truth, and are often fondly referred to as “true German objectivity” or the German “sense for reality.” How grossly, in fact, they conflict with the biological theory of gregariousness is clear enough. It is interesting that the German negotiators have been almost uniformly unsuccessful in imposing their wishes on States in which the socialized type of gregariousness is highly developed—Italy, the United States—and have succeeded with barbarous peoples of the lupine type, with the Turk, whose “objectivity” and appetite for massacre remain ever fresh, patriarch among wolves as he is, with Bulgaria, the wolf of the second Balkan War.
There is strong reason to believe that defective insight into the minds of others is one of the chief disadvantages of the aggressive as compared with the socialized type of gregariousness. This disadvantage is so great, and yet so deeply inherent, as to justify the belief that the type is the most primitive of those now surviving, and that its present resuscitation in man is a phenomenon which will prove to be no more than transient.
It would be of little value to enumerate the well-known instances in which failure of insight, and ignorance of the psychology of the herd, has been misleading or disadvantageous to Germany. It is relevant, however, to note the superb illustration of psychological principle which is afforded by the relations of Germany to England during the last fifteen years. That England was the great obstacle to indefinite expansion was clearly understood by those whom the conception of a consciously directed and overwhelmingly powerful German Empire had inspired. I have tried to show how great a conception this was, how truly in the line of natural evolution, how it marks an epoch even on the biological scale. Unfortunately for Germany, her social {181} type was already fixed, with such advantages and defects as it possessed, and amongst them the immense defect of the lupine attitude towards an enemy—the over-mastering temptation to intimidate him rather than to understand, and to accept the easy and dangerous suggestions of hostility in estimating his strength.
There is in the whole of human history perhaps no more impressive example of the omnipotence of instinct than that which is afforded by the reactions of Germany towards England. An intelligent, educated, organized people, directed consciously towards a definite ambition, finds its path blocked by an enemy in chief. Surely there are two principles of action which should at once be adopted: first, to estimate with complete objectivity the true strength of the enemy, and to allow no national prejudice, no liking for pleasant prophesying to distort the truth, and secondly, to guard against exasperating the enemy, lest the inevitable conflict should ultimately be precipitated by her at her moment.
Both these principles the instinctive impulsions to which Germany was liable compelled her to violate. She allowed herself to accept opinions of England’s strength, moral and physical, which were pleasant rather than true. She listened eagerly to political philosophers and historians—the most celebrated of whom was, by an ominous coincidence, deaf—who told her that the Empire of England was founded in fraud and perpetuated in feebleness, that it consisted of a mere loose congeries of disloyal peoples who would fly asunder at the first touch of “reality,” that it was rotten with insurgency, senile decay and satiety, and would not and could not fight. Even if these things had been a full statement of the case, they must have been dangerous doctrines. They were defective because the {182} observers were unaware that they were studying different instinctive reactions from their own, and were, therefore, deaf to the notes which might have put them on their guard.
At the same time, Germany allowed herself to indulge the equally pleasant expression of her hostility with a freedom apparently unrestrained by any knowledge that such indulgences cannot be enjoyed for nothing. She produced in this country a great deal of alarm, and a great deal of irritation, an effect she no doubt regarded as gratifying, but which made it quite certain that sooner or later England would recognize her implacable enemy, though, inarticulate as usual, she might not say much about it. . . .
Another feature of Germany’s social type, which has an important bearing on her moral strength, is the relation of the individual citizens to one another. The individual of the wolf pack is of necessity fierce, aggressive, and irritable, otherwise he cannot adequately fulfil his part in the major unit. Apparently it is beyond the power of Nature to confine the ferocity of the wolf solely to the external activities of the pack, as would obviously be in many ways advantageous, and to a certain extent therefore it affects the relations of members of the pack to one another. This is seen very well even in the habits of domesticated dogs, who are apt to show more or less suppressed suspicion and irritability towards one another even when well acquainted, an irritability moreover which is apt to blaze out into hostility on very slight provocation.
Most external commentators on modern German life have called attention to the harshness which is apt to pervade social relations. They tell us of an atmosphere of fierce competition, of ruthless {183} scandalmongering and espionage, of insistence upon minute distinctions of rank and title, of a rigid ceremonious politeness which obviously has little relation to courtesy, of a deliberate cultivation by superiors of a domineering harshness towards their inferiors, of habitual cruelty to animals, and indeed of the conscious, deliberate encouragement of harshness and hardness of manner and feeling as laudable evidences of virility. The statistics of crime, the manners of officials, the tone of newspapers, the ferocious discipline of the Army, and the general belief that personal honour is stained by endurance and purified by brutality are similar phenomena.
Nothing in this category, however, is more illuminating than the treatment by Germany of colonies and conquered territories. To the English the normal method of treating a conquered country is to obliterate, as soon as possible, every trace of conquest, and to assimilate the inhabitants to the other citizens of the empire by every possible indulgence of liberty and self-government. It is, therefore, difficult for him to believe that the German actually likes to be reminded that a given province has been conquered, and is not unwilling that a certain amount of discontent and restiveness in the inhabitants should give him opportunities of forcibly exercising his dominion and resuscitating the glories of conquest. Although this fact has no doubt been demonstrated countless times, it was first displayed unmistakably to the world in the famous Zabern incident. Those who have studied the store of psychological material furnished by that affair, the trial and judgments which followed it, and the ultimate verdict of the people thereon, cannot fail to have reached the conclusion that here is exposed in a crucial experiment a people which is either totally incomprehensible, or is responding to the calls of herd instinct by a series of reactions almost {184} totally different from those we regard as normal. When the biological key to the situation is discovered the series of events otherwise bizarre to the pitch of incredibility becomes not only intelligible and consistent, but also inevitable.