This pictorial pantomime brings us to the employment of formative arts in war. To some extent even painting, especially in its decorative branches, may be considered as a means of exhortation. The various decorations of the body which are usually adopted for fighting no doubt raise the courage of their wearers. A festival dress, when assumed for battle—for example, by the Khonds—must needs bring with it a light and festive mood.[448] The red colour, so often used in military dress, tends, on the other hand, to arouse increased vigour by direct physiological as well as by associative action.[449] Perhaps also, as some old authors suggest, the use of red may have had a negative importance by concealing the wounds and the blood, which else might depress the men and encourage their enemies.[450] Like every beautiful thing, highly ornamented weapons will afford their owners an invigorating feeling of pride, which, however,—to judge from the unheroic character of many tribes whose weapons are most gorgeously decorated,—does not seem to be of any great military advantage.[451]
Military ensigns, such as banners, standards, and the like, will naturally, as outward symbols of the tribe, exercise an exciting influence on the warriors. Even for barbarous nations, with their undeveloped feelings of patriotism, in the modern sense of the word, a flag may represent la patrie en marche. Well knowing the moral value of these apparently unimportant things, the Aztecs employed in their army men whose only task was “to remove from the eyes of the enemy every object that could heighten their courage and inflame their pride.”[452]
The importance of field badges is of course increased when, as generally is the case, they are adorned with some religious or magical representation. Be it a tutelar saint, a heathen god, or simply a totem animal, which is depicted, these images will always be relied upon as a strong support to the army.[453] The marvellous tales of assistance afforded by idols which have been carried in the front of battle may of course have some real foundation in the encouraging mental effects produced upon the warriors.
It thus appears that ornaments, painting, and sculpture have been of no small influence in enhancing the fighting powers of warlike nations. Among the lower tribes of man these arts are, however, on the whole much more appreciated as means of frightening the enemy. As was mentioned in a preceding chapter, some bodily deformations are, if we may believe the natives, undertaken solely for this purpose.[454] Other warlike tribes endeavour to make themselves dreaded by their enemies by staining their bodies with ghastly colours, blood-red, azure, or black. Tattooing may, of course, often aim at the same end. And among the detached ornaments there is an especial class—for which the German ethnologists have invented the characteristic designation “Schreckschmuck”—which are only worn in order to make the appearance more frightful. The war helmets of the Thlinkeets[455] and the curious tooth masks of the Papuas are the most typical specimens of this pre-eminently warlike decoration.[456]
The highest development of art as a means of terrifying is, however, to be found in the decorated shields of the Dyaks. No form of pictorial threat could be more effectual than the devices which ornament the face of these ghastly weapons. A grinning mouth, with sharp tusks in either jaw, is always to be found in the middle of the shield. Above it stand a pair of staring, circular eyes, usually surrounded by dark and light concentric rings. Sometimes also there is a highly simplified outline of the lower parts of the body. The trunk is completely ignored, and arms and legs are quite swamped in a bewilderment of entangled lines, which extend over the whole surface of the shield. But in this ornamentation the warlike motive is repeated over and over again. Tusks protrude from the scrolls, and big round eyes stare menacingly out between them. Thus even the decorative “padding” (Einfüllung) operates as a multiplied expression of defiant menace. As an eloquent commentary on this text the whole shield is furthermore hung with tufts of human hair,—trophies of vanquished enemies,—which partly conceal the brown, red, and black design.[457] The whole composition, which in a description may seem merely bizarre and brutal, is, however, executed with a severe symmetry and a wild grace which afford a most peculiar contrast to the weird motive. By these æsthetic qualities the ornamentation acquires an art-value which is quite independent of its supposed military advantages. One can indeed easily understand that the savage foes of the Dyaks may be paralysed with terror when confronted in battle with those glaring eyes and menacing jaws. But even the civilised observer who examines at his ease the shields which stand in the glass cases of ethnological collections must needs be impressed by their power. Though they do not frighten us, they are not, as might be expected, mere examples of ridiculous grimace. They still extort our admiration for that weird kind of beauty which, in primitive art as well as in animal warning colorationn, is so often found in close connection with the feelings of terror.
We have deemed it profitable to dwell at some length on these remarkable products of savage decorative art. The demon shields of the Dyaks, in spite of the fact that their motives have evidently been borrowed from Chinese and Indian art,[458] are eminently representative of the nation and its social milieu. These wild men of the woods have been able to express in their ornamental composition, better than would have been possible in any higher form of art, all the intense feelings of their wild romantic life. The terror and intoxication of slaughter, as they are experienced in a tribe for which furtive murder is the holiest of all religious actions, speak their violent language in the glaring patterns. But at the same time the elegant design, which is so characteristic a peculiarity of the shields, as well as of every other specimen of Dyak art, corresponds to the graceful and elegant personal appearance which, according to the unanimous verdict of all travellers, distinguishes these fierce savages.[459] And it seems as if this gracefulness, no less than the weird emotional content of the pictures, may be derived from the custom of head-hunting. The continuous insecurity which has given its own character even to the Dyak architecture[460] has of course not been without its influence on the physical development of the tribe itself. Where assault from insidious enemies is always to be expected, and where the type of fighting is single combat, lightness and suppleness of movement must be indispensable for the struggle for existence. We can, therefore, easily understand how these people have acquired that natural grace which similar utilitarian causes have developed among all mountainous animals, and among most beasts of prey.[461] Nor is it difficult to comprehend that this beauty of the human body, once called into existence by natural selection, must have awakened æsthetic attention to form and grace, and thus indirectly influenced even the manifestations of ornamental art.
If it be objected that such sociological explanations of decorative patterns are too far-fetched, we at once refer to the marvellous Maori ornaments, in which the temperament of another warlike tribe has found a most characteristic expression. Like the fantastic convolutions on the Dyak shields, the flaming scrolls of black and red which extend over the ceilings and walls of the Maori houses unmistakably attest their origin from a nation which war has made violent, vigorous, and intensely energetic.[462] Generally speaking, it may be futile to seek for any differentiated expressional qualities in such an impersonal and unemotional art as that of linear ornament. But in face of these powerful designs even the most neutral observer will be struck with the strong emotional exaltation which has here found a vent, not in words, or sounds, or images, but in pure lines and colours. Such mighty strokes, so full of life and agitation, could never have been drawn by any peaceful and quiet natives. The velocity and the wild inspiration of these patterns are only possible in a nation which has experienced in continuous fights an ever-repeated state of high-strung emotional excitement.
The more official Maori decorative art, the Moko, as well as the Maori sculpture, probably because of their close connection with religion, are too rigid in their traditional character to admit of any strongly pronounced emotional content. But the influence of warlike exaltation has instead made itself felt in the poetical productions of the race. And, as has already been pointed out, but for the military type of life dancing could not have reached so marvellous a degree of development. Owing to the more organised character of Maori warfare, military customs do not, as among the Dyaks, aim chiefly at producing suppleness and graceful movements in the individual. But one has only to read the enthusiastic descriptions of the painter Earle in order to realise the influence which military customs have even here exercised on the development of plastic beauty.[463]
The Dyaks and Maoris are but two of the most typical among savage tribes whose artistic productions have grown up under the auspices of war. For a complete account of art in its connection with war it would be necessary to dwell on the war songs of the North American Indians,[464] to give some account of the art-style which is found in the military despotisms of Western Africa,[465] and to describe in detail the poetry which has been called into existence by the continuous tribal feuds of the North African nomadic hordes.[466] In its broad aspects, however, the æsthetic importance of war will, we hope, appear with sufficient clearness from the cursory review which has been given above.
We have seen that war, as the hardest form of the struggle for life, has needed, more than any other kind of work, the support which æsthetic stimulation affords to practical activities. And the art which has developed under its influence has, to a greater degree than is usual in primitive production, fulfilled the conditions of emotional community and emotional intensity. Moreover, the requirements of fighting have called forth æsthetic qualities of power and gracefulness in the physical type which seem to be reflected even in artistic creation. Thus the art-production of military tribes has everywhere, independently of racial and climatic influences, acquired some common qualities; their decorative arts, as well as their poetry and dramatic dances, are always characterised by an intense and forcible life, which is often combined with dignified power and graceful elegance.