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own genius than that of the moral stimulus which has reached them from the nation at large, when the stimulus has been withdrawn with the cessation of danger, these men have almost invariably come to appear in times of peace of a less dominating capacity than their performance during the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]
[23] Anxiety has frequently been expressed since the armistice of November, 1918, as to whether Germany has properly assimilated the lesson of her defeat, and undergone the desired change of heart. In the face of such doubts it is well to remember that there is another conclusion about the assimilation of which there need be no anxiety. It is at any rate clearly proved that Germany’s enemies were able to beat her in spite of all the disadvantages of exterior lines, divided counsels, divergent points of view and inadequate preparation. The prestige of invulnerability need never be allowed again to accumulate about a social group of the aggressive migratory type, and to sit like an incubus upon a terrorized world.
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.
AFTER THE WAR.
The psychological situation left by the conclusion of the war is likely to attract an increasing amount of attention as time passes, and it may be of interest to examine it in the light of the principles that we have been making use of in dealing with the war.
It is a fact fundamental in psychology that the state of war furnishes the most powerful of all stimuli to the social instinct. It sets in motion a tide of common feeling by the power of which union and energy of purpose and self-sacrifice for the good of the social unit become possible to a degree unknown under any other circumstances. The war furnished many instances of the almost miraculous efficacy of this stimulus. Perhaps the most effective example of all, even by the side of the steely fortitude of France and the adventurous desperation of England, was the fact that the dying Austrian Empire could be galvanized for four years into aggressive gestures lifelike beyond simulation.