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THE
STRUCTURE OF MORALE

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: DENTLEY HOUSE

NEW YORK TORONTO BOMBAY

CALCUTTA MADRAS: MACMILLAN

THE

STRUCTURE OF MORALE

By
J. T. MAcCURDY, Sc.D., M.D.

Fellow of Corpus Christi College and
University Lecturer in Psychopathology

CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1943

PRINTED IN ORE AT BRITAIN

CONTENTS

PART I FEAR

PREFACE PAGE vij

CHAPTER i : Passive Adaptation to Dangers i

Defining fear; irrationality of fear; emotions are conditioned reactions; relevant
laws of conditioning; fear of bombs as a conditioned reaction; near-misses and
remote-misses, morale with different types of bombing; learning the signals of
danger; superstitions.

CHAPTERS: Active Adaptation to Dangers 2 7

The artificiality of analysis ; thought of ineffective action an occasion for fear ; the
possible instinctive reactions to danger; immobility and fear; novel weapons and
panic ; the function of drill and specialized training ; the modern German army ;
anticipation of danger in training; temperamental fitness and unfitness; the German
recognition of such problems; panic thinkiner.

PART II MORALE

CHAPTER3: Basic Principles of Social Life - 50

Man is a social animal; biological significance of herd life; differentiation of
function and integration to form new units; a society a new unit; the 'herd voice';
morals; 'reality'.

CHAPTER 4: Variable Morale 62

Group Control of individual attention; imitation; dominance of communal judg-
ment; leaders as sentinels; characteristics of leaders; discipline versus resourceful-
ness.

CHAPTER 5: National Objectives 7 2

Morale as endurance unto death ; religion and patriotism ; what is the core of a
nationalism? national unconscious ideals; the evolution of group ideals; group
danger a signal for loyalty; immortality of groups; dispersal of nationals in time
and space; belief in survival after death and fatalism; Japanese morale; Chinese
morale; Russian morale; German morale; Italian morale; British morale.

CHAPTER 6 : National Scales of Value 1 10

Human nature not the same everywhere; individual scales of value; the evidences
of value; emotional response; activity; direction of loyalty; moral standards;
feeling of reality; religious character of nationalism; the German tribal god; over-
valuation of force ; British undervaluation of force ; the conditions for collapse of
German morale; British scale of values; tolerance; Democracy*; imperialism;
the future of the Empire; India; anti-imperialism; Utopianism; our problems.

vi CONTENTS

PART III SOME PROBLEMS
IN ORGANIC A TION

GHAPTER7: Dictatorship and Democracy 1 4 1

Morale and organization; dictators determine policy; hierarchical organization;
specificity of hierarchical goals; efficiency and specialism; the meaning of 'demo-
cracy'; inefficiency and liberty; the democratic leader an interpreter; dictatorship
and privilege; the prophet of a democracy.

CHAPTER 8: Inherent Difficulties in Organization 152

Impersonality of large organizations; interdependence of ends and means; the
problem of liaison; vertical liaison; peripheral liaison; 'papers'; liaison officers;
'rationalization'; physiological organization; cutting red tape.

CHAPTERQ: Departmentalism and Careerism r 68

Focalized loyalties; good; and bad; the departmental conscience; obstruc-
tionism; ambition; loyalties in civil and military services; ambition for money or
power.

CHAPTER 10: Leadership and Public Service 177

Leadership and privilege; inevitability of a ruling class; selecting the rulers;
universal free education ; minority party rule ; a traditional ruling class : economic
privilege; social prestige; national stability and snobbery; the public school system
praised or blamed on prejudice; education and character training; the future of
public schools; lower middle-class 'security' and departmentalism; liquidation of
the upper classes and its results; squirearchy and emergency organization; caste
system inimical to bureaucracy.

CHAPTER n : Science and Authority 208

Neglect of scientists ; the technician in business or the services ; second-rate official
scientists; incompatibility of hierarchy and science.

CHAPTER 12: Liaison and German Man-Power 2 1 4

Limited supply of technicians and Gestapo ; liaison officers first sacrificed ; crippling
of home front; discrimination against civilians; German civilian collapse.

INDEX 221

PREFACE

FOR some two years there have been sent to the Psychological
Laboratory in Cambridge groups, first of officers and training regi-
ments and then of A.T.S., to receive instruction chiefly in technical
methods of selection and training of personnel. I was asked to
lecture to them on subjects of a more general nature and, at first,
I gave them talks on the subjects they proposed. It soon appeared
that they were all interested chiefly in the same problems and the
lectures became a routine discussion of the same topics. From the
first, it was asked by members of the classes that the lectures should
be published and the demand was sufficiently consistent for me to
consider it. But pressure of other work made the task of writing them
up impossible until some time could be stolen for this purpose during
the past few months.

There is but one excuse for stating these facts. The general prin-
ciples laid down in this book are the same as those given in the earliest
lectures. The illustrations used refer, chiefly, to experiences we have
had since those first lectures were delivered. What were then pre-
dictions are now a matter of history. This, of course, does not
constitute proof in any proper scientific sense, but it at least creates
a presumption of validity for the theories propounded.

Finally, I wish to express my deep thanks to Mr Herbert Jones for
his tireless skill in the dull task of editing and correcting the typescript

for publication.

J. T. M.

21 April 1942

Part I. FEAR

CHAPTER I

PASSIVE ADAPTATION TO DANGERS

THE logical way in which to begin a discussion of fear would be to
say just what fear was. That, however, is beyond me and, I believe,
something that no psychologist can do at least to the satisfaction of
other psychologists. No more can he define 'love'. The layman may
be surprised at this because, of course, he knows. But the specialist
is often at such a disadvantage. In his famous lecture on The Name
and Nature of Poetry Professor Housman said : ' Poetry indeed seems
to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common
with others, I received from America a request that I would define
poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier
could define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object
by the symptoms which it provokes in us.' We all of us know what
it is to be frightened.

But are there different kinds or grades of fear? Our language
would seem to indicate that there are. ' I am anxious to have a good
holiday ' implies no thought of danger and so must be merely some
kind of a metaphor, a reference to strong feeling. ' I am afraid it will
rain ' again indicates no apprehension of peril, only an anticipation
of discomfort unless protective action be taken. Something much
more poignant is experienced by the rider who says 'I am always
afraid of the first fence'. Does he envisage broken bones or is it just
the 'needle', a state of unpleasant tension while waiting for any kind
of an ordeal? This kind of apprehension is certainly compatible with
unimpaired efficiency; it may even be a prelude to exceptional per-
formance. On the other hand, who has not had to confess after some

IRRATIONALITY OF FEAR

emergency, 'I was too frightened to do anything'; or a similar
inhibition may prevent one from 'taking the plunge' even when
judgment tells one there is no danger.

Clearly, then, the term fear covers many different kinds of sub-
jective experience and a range of efficiency in action extending from
zero to the maximum of which the individual is capable. The
psychologist is interested in all of these and in the ways in which they
are interrelated but the soldier or the air-raid warden is not. Only
one form of fear is important for him the terror that paralyses or
leads to panic. So we shall concentrate our attention on it.

What is the occasion for this terror? To this the layman can make
a ready answer, particularly if he has never pondered the problem.
Fear is the natural, and therefore a reasonable, response to danger.
But is it? Let us consider some common examples. If the formula is
correct fear ought to be proportionate to knowledge of the danger,
to a realization of the risks involved. Who know so well as nurses and
doctors the dangers from infections? But how many of them are
afraid of patients with contagious diseases ? Is the policeman or the
private citizen the more frightened of burglars, the fireman or the
householder of fire? Except during a Blitz season motor cars kill
many more people than bombs. But who is afraid of traffic? These
are all of them real dangers. But there are also what are, technically,
called phobias, fears of agencies that are merely potentially, not
actually, dangerous. Shew me a man or woman who is not afraid
of high places, of open spaces, of enclosed places, of fire, drowning
or lightning stroke, of cancer, tuberculosis, or some other disease of
which he exhibits no symptoms, or of animals large or small, with
no legs or many legs, or loud noises or the sight of blood shew me
such a man and I will shew you a very rare creature. So everyone is
a coward. But each of us admires the courage of others who are
indifferent to the terrors that assail us. So we must all be courageous.

It does not look as if there were any standard degree of danger
correlated with a standard degree of fear; the extent to which a given

IRRATIONALITY OF FEAR

danger affects a man seems to be an individual affair. But even here
we get into difficulties. How many people in this country can say
that they are neither more nor less afraid of bombs than they were
before the Blitz began? Yet a bomb is, potentially, just as dangerous
as it always was. We know that we always have but with ex-
perience our fear goes up or down. During the last war practically
every soldier was frightened when first exposed to bombardment, but
the vast majority grew accustomed to it quite quickly. They did not
cease to regard shells as lethal agencies, they merely ceased to be
frightened by them. These are dramatic examples. But for genera-
tions it has been proverbial that the countryman was terrified by the
traffic when he first came to town. If habituation did not abolish,
or at least reduce, fear, we should have fewer traffic accidents.

It is thus clear that fear is not proportionate to the actual risk of
injury. Moreover, those who know the danger best are, as a rule,
those who are least frightened. Who knows better than the tamer
how vicious a lion can be? So it looks as if fear was illogical,
irrational. But is it therefore lawless? Here is where psychology
comes in.

Psychology recognizes that there are two great divisions, or cate-
gories, in human mental life. There is the conscious rational mind
of intelligence and the unconscious illogical mind of instinct or
emotion. All available evidence seems to support the view that
consciousness, with its critical analysis of the environment and its
capacity to reason about cause and effect, is a prerogative of the
human species. Some of its attributes may appear sporadically and
in rudimentary form among the higher animals, but their lives are
governed by appetites, instincts and habits. This does not mean that
they cannot learn by experience. They do; but only to behave
differently, not to have * knowledge' of the environment in anything
like our sense of the term. Man has gained some measure of know-
ledge of the universe about him with a commensurate control over it
of which he is arrogantly proud in virtue of consciousness and

EMOTIONS ARE CONDITIONAL REACTIONS

the capacities that go with it. We like to think that our minds can
compass the universe and that our reason the conscous knowledge
we can summon and the behaviour we can control dominates our
mental life. These are illusions. We like to think that we have left
the animal behind, whereas we have merely developed a reason that
may be employed in the service of the animal that survives in us and
calls the tune we dance to. True this is, relatively, a very superior
animal, one capable of transforming crude lusts into lofty ideals, but
the loves, hates and fears which direct our energies do not come from
a reasoning consciousness but from our 'animal' minds. The intel-
ligence of our greatest philosopher cannot tell us why we want to
live or escape death, he cannot explain to us what happiness is that
we should pursue it. If the emotional side of our lives belongs to the
mind that we share with animals, then the most favourable field in
which to discover the laws which govern emotions should be animal
psychology. Our findings there will not be confused by the com-
plications which consciousness produces.

Fear (except in pathological cases that do not concern us here) is
always associated with some sign or thought of danger. It is not the
suffering which injury causes but an anticipation of it. It is a kind
of crying before one is hurt. But we have seen that, emotionally, we
behave both as if we were certain to be hurt and that we never could
be. Do animals have similar anticipatory reactions? Do they learn
to respond to signals or come to neglect them? They do and, indeed,
there is no aspect of animal mentality that has been more thoroughly
explored. This learning and unlearning is what is called the 'con-
ditioned reflex' or, better, the 'conditioned reaction'. It was first
reported by the great English physiologist Sherrington, but a
thoroughgoing exploration of the field was begun by the Russian
Pavlov and his colleagues. During the past quarter-century it has
been intensively studied in all laboratories engaged in animal
psychology. Our present knowledge of the conditioned reaction is
extensive and highly detailed, but I shall do no more than describe

EMOTIONS ARE CONDITIONAL REACTIONS

some of the basic findings which are as well established as the
phenomena on which the atomic theory in chemistry is founded.

Here is a typical example. Some neutral stimulus is given to a
dog, say the blowing of a whistle. The dog looks up and around.
While in this attitude of attention he is presented with a bit of meat.
He approaches this, he seizes it in his mouth, saliva flows, he bites
it into pieces small enough to swallow and swallows it. Nothing
remarkable in this, one would say, and it seems to be a complete
enough description of what has happened. Yet it is incomplete.
Something has happened that inevitably escapes detection, something
that betrays itself only later. The dog has begun to associate in his
mind the sound of a whistle with being fed. The sequence whistle-
meat is repeated a number of times and then the whistle is blown
without any meat being offered. One would expect on the basis
of human behaviour that the dog would now go about looking,
sniffing for the meat he had a right to expect. Not a bit of it. Instead
of such reasonable behaviour he proceeds with the total behaviour
he has previously rehearsed: he looks up when the whistle blows,
waits for the same number of seconds as he has previously waited for
the meat and then goes through all the pantomime of eating meat
that is not there! This is the conditioned reaction. The easiest part
of the response to measure is the watering of his mouth and, indeed,
that is the most constant and enduring symptom : a sound has become
the stimulus for salivation, an association between sound and food
has been built up; it is irrational, but it is compelling.

All animal learning seems to be fundamentally of this nature, but
before we superciliously dismiss the poor animal as a stupid brute
we should pause to ask ourselves what the difference is between this
canine performance and the baby who opens its mouth when it sees
a bottle or our own behaviour when we go to the dining-room when
a bell is rung. Careful observation and experiment fail to reveal any
difference in nature between the baby's and the dog's behaviour;
they are on the same mental level. The dog stays there, the baby does

RELEVANT LA WS OF CONDITIONING

not. The latter grows into the man who goes to the dining-room and
this behaviour records a big advance. There is the same basic con-
ditioned response, but it is dealt with in a human way. Instead of
behaving as if he saw the food in front of him the man realizes that
he is merely thinking of it, that he has been reminded of it; he
remembers (thanks to another conditioning process) that the bell
means food in a distant place to which he repairs. It is man's con-
sciousness which enables him to discriminate between his memory
of something and the thing itself; with the memory thought or
image consciousness can deal critically, accurately, logically. But
if the conditioned response is a strange, unlocalized feeling, con-
sciousness cannot grasp it and so cannot control it. Man's mental
evolution is incomplete, he cannot yet exert conscious scrutiny of his
instincts and emotions they 'just happen'. However, we must
examine more of the phenomena of conditioning before we can
appreciate its full significance for human emotions.

Having trained the dog to salivate whenever he hears the whistle
blow we might imagine that this would now constitute a permanent
change in him. But this is not the case. It is found that, if the
experimenter keeps repeating the noise without ever giving the dog
any meat, his mouth waters less and less; finally, there is no response
and, indeed, the disillusioned animal may shew his boredom by
going to sleep when the whistle blows. This is called 'extinction' of
the conditioned response and it occurs whenever the signal is given
repeatedly without 'reinforcement', i.e. the periodical presentation
of the meat which will keep the conditioned response going. l

With reinforcement and extinction we can make or unmake con-

1 Extinction and reinforcement shew how the conditioned response is useful to an
animal. Purely accidental conjunction of unrelated stimuli do not recur repeatedly
outside the psychological laboratory or when the animal trainer is at work. If a
dog is fed regularly in the kitchen that is not an accident and, if he is thus con-
ditioned to go there whenjhiungry, he has learned something that is useful. Similarly,
if he frequently picks up the trail of a rabbit in a given field he is conditioned to hunt
there. If, however, the rabbits are all killed off there, the response will soon be
extinguished.

RELEVANT LA WS OF CONDITIONING

ditioned responses at will and this makes possible an experimental
achievement of great theoretic importance. This is what is called
'differentiation'. A wealth of evidence shews that the dog responds
originally to the ' alltogetherness ' of the surroundings, including
what we should at once identify as the specific stimulus or signal.
It is not just the whistle: it is the whistle in that room, blown by that
man and so on. An apparently well-established conditioned reaction
may not appear in unfamiliar surroundings. Moreover, although a
particular whistle may always be used, any other whistle will do as
well. He can be trained, however, to respond to one, highly specific,
stimulus. This is accomplished by a combination of reinforcement
and extinction, the specific stimulus is followed by feeding while the
attendant or similar stimulus is not. The dog then is confirmed in
his reaction to the specific stimulus, while he loses response to others.
For instance, a whistle having a pitch of the middle G in a piano is
blown, the animal fed and thus conditioning to a whistle is estab-
lished. If, now, a whistle having a pitch one octave higher is sounded,
the dog salivates. But if no meat is ever given when the higher note
has been heard response to that stimulus will die away. Clearly the
animal can discriminate between notes an octave apart, but can he
do better? So two whistles only half an octave apart are chosen.
Again the differentiation is made. Then to a third, a twelfth and so
on until the limit is reached. Thus the differentiation experiment
gives us a method of determining what are the sensory capacities of
animals, animals who cannot tell us directly what they see, hear or
smell. In this way it has been shewn that a dog can tell the difference
between two musical pitches at least as well as the average man, that
he can discriminate between a circle and an ellipse that is nearly a
circle with equal ability. Similarly, he can distinguish between two
greys the brightnesses of which seem to the human eye to be
identical. But when he is tried with colours he is a total loss. The
dog is colour blind, a fact to which we shall have to refer later. For
our present purposes, however, we need only note from these differ-

FEAR OF BOMBS

entiation experiments that originally the linkage of the salivation
is with a large generalized situation out of which the appearance of
any one of its elements might serve to liberate the response, but that,
after appropriate training, any element may be made the sole
effective stimulus while the others are treated with indifference.

Thus we learn that animals learn to obey arbitrary signals, that
they can lose the habit, and that they can be made to discriminate
only one out of a large number of possible signals. Are these pheno-
mena exhibited in the occurrence, or absence, of human fear? They
are, and they are exhibited with clearness in the reaction of civilians
to bombing.

The story of our being taught to have terror of bombs, to cry before
we were hurt, begins a long way back; during the last war, in fact.
During that war a considerable portion of our total population gained
considerable experience of shell-fire and bullets, enough for it to have
developed a fatalistic attitude towards them it took 1400 shells to
kill a man (or so it has been stated) and as 1400 to i is long odds on
escape, why worry? But few people, either in or out of uniform,
experienced heavy bombing. However, the war ended with the
bomber becoming fast a weapon of considerable significance. How
far would this development go? Aeroplanes were developing higher
speeds and longer effective ranges; bombs were becoming heavier.
Civilians were practically all agreed that when and if another war
came, the bomber would be a major weapon, regardless of whatever
international conventions to ban them might be adopted in the
interval. (If the military mind had been similarly moved, anticipa-
tion of German tactics might have been more accurate and effective.)
Further, there was universal expectation of bombing of civilian
targets in order to break morale on the Home Front. But how serious
a matter would this be?

Left to themselves the great British people like others tend to
assume an ostrich attitude and to minimize, rather than magnify,
remote dangers. But they were not left to themselves. Two agencies

AS A CONDITIONED REACTION

(at least) were unwittingly operating to rivet the mere thought of
bombing with terror. The first of these was pacifist propaganda. Not
content with preaching the wickedness and futility of war the pacifists
made an appeal to fear. The argument ran : war will kill you, maim
you or ruin you; if you don't care about what happens to your own
carcase, what about your wife and babies? Bombs were made the
symbol of war's wanton carnage and women and children the symbols
of the innocent. 1 This propaganda reinforced whatever anticipation
there may have been as to civilians being targets for enemy bombers.
The second agency was Hollywood aviation films. Many of these
included shots of bombing. For obvious dramatic reasons this
bombing had two characteristics. Every bomb hit its target and,
when it did so, destruction was complete. Here was vivid, realistic
proof of what was feared. To be in a target area would mean certain
death or hideous mutilation. The only possible means of survival
were absence from the area or shelter so deep underground that even
these seismic explosions could not reach one. Otherwise there would
be nothing one could do and, as we shall see later, there is nothing
so conducive to fear as not knowing what to do.

This, then, was the background, the psychological preparation we
all had for bombing. So firmly was the association bomb-immolation
fixed in our minds that we paid no attention to countervailing
evidence. We read in the press that peoples as different as Spaniards
and Chinese had adapted themselves to bombing; were they braver
than the British? No one asked that question and the Government
(I understand) made such preparations as it could to deal with mass
panics. No more attention was paid to the significance of the reports
of repeated bombing of the same areas. Did the first air-raid com-
pletely destroy Barcelona or Chungking? How did it come that there

1 On the night before this war began I was present at a discussion in a mixed
gathering about what was going to happen. Someone asked, would we bomb
Berlin? Another stated that he had heard the women and children were already
evacuated from Berlin. Then a good lady, intelligent, wife of a cabinet minister,
asked : * What would be the use of bombing Berlin if there were no women and
children there?' Ab uno disce omnes.

FEAR OF BOMBS

were either buildings or people left after many heavy raids? The
statement was even published (although not prominently) that during
its worst year there were more people killed in Barcelona by motors
than by bombs. We went on believing, or at least feeling, that an
air-raid meant a holocaust. As the war clouds gathered, prepara-
tions, both public and private, were made to meet possible air-raids
and we were told that sirens would be sounded when enemy bombers
approached. So the sfren not the mythical seductive maiden but
a sound as of lost souls being dragged to hell the siren was estab-
lished as a signal for what? Not for retreat to a place of security but
to a flimsy shelter; as a rule, a shelter that would give little protection
against a direct hit, and our imaginations had been nurtured on
visions of direct hits.

We all remember what happened when the war did come and the
sirens first sounded. There was little panic, it is true, but the great
majority of the populace scurried to their shelters with little con-
fidence of ever seeing daylight again; not with the expectation of
safety but in a spirit of obedience to Government orders. As one
friend of mine described it : ' When the first siren sounded I took my
children to our dug-out in the garden and I was quite certain we
were all going to be killed. Then the all-clear went without anything
having happened. Ever since we came out of the dug-out I have felt
sure nothing would ever hurt us. 5 Her conviction of imminent death
was probably deeper than that of the average and her swing to a
belief in invulnerability was certainly more rapid, but otherwise her
case is typical. With most people the swing was gradual. When the
siren had sounded a number of times, no bombs had dropped and
no planes had even been heard, there was boredom in the shelters
and curiosity appeared. More adventurous spirits ventured out to
have a look, soon to be followed by their companions. Then even
curiosity vanished until eventually if warnings were frequent
many, perhaps the majority of the population could not say whether
a warning was in operation or not.

AS A CONDITIONED REACTION

What is the explanation of this change? The intelligent layman
would say: 'Oh, it's just a case of " Wolf! Wolf!".' The psychologist
explains it cumbrously as the extinction of a conditioned reaction.
Has the latter formula any advantage that might compensate for its
academic turgidity? It has. Fables and adages embody many
psychological truths, but they do not express them as general prin-
ciples which could be applied in prediction the touchstone of science.
' Out of sight, out of mind ' and c Absence makes the heart grow
fonder' are both truisms, but does either assist one in making a
prediction as to the result of some parting? So, clumsy though it may
be, we will stick to our psychological formula. The signal was
repeated without reinforcement and, inevitably, the conditioned emo-
tion was dissociated from the signal. The formal significance of the
siren, 'There are enemy bombers in the region', was precisely what
it always had been; Government instructions had not been altered;
the one difference was an emotional one, which is an excellent
illustration of meaning being, pragmatically, as much an emotional
as an intellectual matter.

Months went past and no bombs fell. During this period a new
mental attitude developed. Superficially, at least, the pre-war
apprehension of bombing disappeared. An ostrich philosophy grew
up, A.R.P. and fire services were neglected while Home Security
cudgelled its brains in an effort to find some way of injecting into
citizens the need for eternal vigilance. Then some real, albeit sporadic
bombing began. The results of this are important to consider, for
they were a surprise to the layman although predictable on the basis
of the laws of conditioning of emotions and, indeed, were thus
predicted.

Whenever a bomb explodes in a congested area it divides the
population who can hear it or see its effects into three groups. The
first is those who are killed. The morale of the community depends
on the reaction of the survivors, so from that point of view, the killed
do not matter. Put this way the fact is obvious, corpses do not run

'NEAR-MISSES' AND 'REMOTE-MISSES'

about spreading panic, but the fact, important though it is, is rarely
stated or reckoned with. We are concerned with the survivors, and
they can be divided into two groups, which may be called the
' Near-misses ' and the 'Remote-misses'.

The near-misses are the people who are in the immediate vicinity
of the bomb; they feel the blast, they see the destruction, are horrified
by the carnage, perhaps they are wounded, but they survive deeply
impressed. 'Impression' means, here, a powerful reinforcement of
the fear reaction in association with bombing. It may result in
' shock ', a loose term that covers anything from a dazed state or actual
stupor to jumpincss and pre-occupation with the horrors that have
been witnessed; or there may be merely in tougher specimens
a vivid reminder of the reality of bombs. (The numerical size of this
group will depend, naturally, on a variety of factors, particularly
communal morale, which will be discussed later.) In the near-miss
group are those who have been mentally incapacitated by bombing
or are, at least, shaken. Their attitude is: 'The next one will get me' ;
or, 'Will the next one get me?'

In marked contrast are those in the remote-miss group. They hear
the sirens, they hear the enemy planes (possibly identifying them as
such), perhaps they hear some A. A. fire and then comes the thud
(or sometimes crack) of a bomb explosion. This, at last, is the real
thing. There is tense waiting for the next ones will they come nearer?
They don't. The all-clear sounds and it seems to be all over. Psycho-
logically it has not ended ; indeed the experience was just the begin-
ning of a new mental attitude. The survivor goes through such phases
as the following: 'It has happened and I'm safe.' Then there is
curiosity as what has actually happened, eager questioning and
speculation. Often there is a visit to the scene of destruction.
Frequently this is found to be no more than a hole in a cabbage field.
In that case the old fear that all bombs would find their mark is
dissipated. Or there was some damage done. But the bodies have
been removed, the sight is singularly like the pictures one has seen

'NEAR-MISSES' AND 'REMOTE-MISSES*

of Spanish houses after a bombing attack. That was a remote
catastrophe and so, emotionally, is this. There is a contrast between
the actuality of the destruction of others and one's own scathelessness.
Of all the signals of danger the sound of the bomb's explosion is the
most vivid and with it has been associated not the previous anticipa-
tion of destruction but the actual experience of successful escape.
The emotion now conditioned with the signal is a feeling of excite-
ment with a flavour of invulnerability.

This latter component is most important in the development of
individual morale. It is elaborated in two directions. The first is
fatalism either as a conscious philosophy or merely as an attitude of
resignation to the vagaries of fortune that are so unpredictable, so
beyond understanding or control, that it is futile to worry about
them. 1 The second is an elaboration of the feeling of relief at escape.
We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be
afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilara-
tion hence the joy of adventure. When we have been afraid that
we may panic in an air-raid, and, when it has happened, we have

1 A general principle seems to be that we doubt our powers of resistance to shocks
we have never known but are progressively less and less frightened as we continue
to survive a series of such shocks. This is probably the explanation for the geographical
distribution of fatalism. Eastern peoples, having advanced less than Westerners in
material culture and its attendant opportunity for individual expression, have
repeatedly experienced the ravages of flood, famine, frost and pestilence, as well as
the oppression of tyrants. Nothing can be done about it, so far as they know, so
the survival they have achieved is consciously or unwittingly assigned to the vagaries
of fortune. Therefore they are fatalists. But they have another characteristic as well.
The trial we have endured is less terrifying than the one we have never met. The
average Westerner may have known what it was to be hungry or to be cold ; he may
have seen floods but something was done to control them, he has seen epidemics
but medical science knows how to combat them. The Easterner has, impotently,
suffered and survived. What one has experienced and escaped is no longer terrifying.
Hence the fatalistic oriental is not so frightened of misery as we are. Hitler should
have thought of this before he attacked the Russians, who are largely Asiatic in
origin and outlook. They are not to be frightened by the carnage of a Blitz or the
destitution that follows in its wake. Strange though it may seem, every war shews
that the majority of people can quickly learn to face the prospect of death. But
Westerners cannot face the prospect of misery. The Russians can : they do not
imagine its worst because they know it.

'NEAR-MISSES' AND 'REMOTE-MISSES'

exhibited to others nothing but a calm exterior and we are now safe,
the contrast between the previous apprehension and the present
relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the
very father and mother of courage. If we have been told that the
enemy's purpose was to throw us into panic and there is public
praise for our fortitude, then the unexpected discovery that we are
heroic is confirmed. A not unimportant factor contributory to the
glow of heroism is the knowledge that merely by not panicking we
have foiled the enemy and therefore hit back.

If the remote-miss person has more courage after a raid than before
it, if courage, like fear, is contagious, and if the near-miss group in
any community is small, it follows that a light, a 'token' bombing
must improve morale in that community. Innumerable Home
Security reports attest the truth of this conclusion as I have been told.
The borough that has been panicky and troublesome with its
demands for deep shelters to house the whole population and so on,
after having been visited by the Luftwaffe, sticks out its chest and
says: 'We are on the map now; we can take it.' The same pheno-
menon is, of course, a military truism. Troops that have never been
under fire cannot be relied upon with confidence. But when they
have had a few casualties they are steadied and, interestingly enough,
discipline improves.

All of this is, of course, of one piece with the general irrationality
of emotions. As we have seen, fear, if rational, should be in propor-
tion to the risks encountered. The future chances of survival of any
individual are not affected by his proximity to, or distance from,
a bomb that has exploded. So far as any single individual is con-
cerned a miss is, mathematically, as good as a mile. Emotionally it
is not. But if one is hit while others escape, it is not a total miss for
the group, which suffers in proportion to the number of hits scored.
So, if the casualty rate be taken to measure risk which is not
irrational the proportion of fear to courage in the population will
correspond to the relative sizes of the near- and remote-miss groups.

MORALE WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF BOMBING

The size of these groups varying with the weight of bombing, it
follows that the morale of the community only so far as it rests on
this passive adaptation, of course is a rational emotional reaction,
which is a queer paradox.

These phenomena have considerable significance for the strategy
of bombing in so far as psychological considerations enter therein.
We owe much to German ignorance in these matters. They believe,
rightly, in the potency of terror and exploit it with characteristic
thoroughness. But they have not studied or studied sufficiently
the ways in which various peoples may adapt themselves to danger
or respond to its threat. The Luftwaffe spent months in building up
morale here by its 'token' bombing before it launched the real Blitz.
And as for threats. . .well, the British are the proudest people in the
world : never since Norman and Saxon were welded into one nation
have they known permanent defeat, while they are accustomed to
initial reverses; a threat to them is either a silly joke or a challenge.
Conditioned by his history, the Englishman relies slothfully on the
myth of invincibility until he is hit and hit hard. What is for less
happy peoples the symbol of subjugation and the signal for terror is
the one effective stimulus to him. Here is where the 'war of nerves'
was playing our game. The stimuli of Dunkirk and the air Blitz were
reinforced by telling us to be frightened. The ' We can take it ' attitude
became a defeat for the Hitler-Goering-Goebbels combine.

It is possible to formulate two principles about the psychological
efficiency of bombing based on conclusions so far reached. First,
since morale deteriorates chiefly in the near-miss group, it should be
made as large as possible. This is accomplished by repeated heavy
attacks on one area the size of which is determined by the number
of bombs available. The more nearly the local destruction is to being
complete, the more certain is it that every survivor is a near-miss.
Second, the reduction of morale consequent on this type of attack
will vary with the size of the bombed area relative to that occupied
by the population which considers itself a unit. If the area is so large

MORALE WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF BOMBING

or the community so small that all its members are affected, then
everyone is either a near-miss or exposed to the contagion of fear
from the shaken victims. On the other hand in a large city, if there
is a feeling of civic unity and if morale is otherwise good, the task of
turning the majority of the population into near-misses is prodigious.
London is, perhaps, better situated to resist psychological bombing
than any other city in the world, because its area is so huge and yet it
is a unit in its esprit de corps. Wipe out one borough and the gap is
hardly seen in a bird's-eye view of London and its suburbs. Neither
economically nor socially is that borough a self-contained area,
which means that even if every burgher were a near-miss his contacts
would be largely with remote-miss people. The futility of the attacks
on London morale are known to the world. In October 1940 I had
occasion to drive through South-East London just after a series of
attacks on that district. Every hundred yards or so, it seemed, there
was a bomb crater or wreckage of what had once been a house or
shop. The siren blew its warning and I looked to see what would
happen. A nun seized the hand of a child she was escorting and
hurried on. She and I seemed to be the only ones who had heard
the warning. Small boys continued to play all over the pavements,
shoppers went on haggling, a policeman directed traffic in majestic
boredom and the bicyclists defied death and the traffic laws. No one,
so far as I could see, even looked into the sky.

One is tempted to make some guesses as to the moral effect on
Germans of R.A.F. bombing raids. They had the worst of all possible
preparations in having been assured that no enemy aeroplane could
penetrate their defences. According to a number of authors who
were in Germany in 1940 disillusionment on this point caused a good
deal of disquiet. Although this may have planted the seed of a
defeatism that will germinate later, it is probable that the average
citizen thinks little now about how he was deceived. All of our
bombing has been ostensibly of purely military objectives and has
probably been so actually in a degree sufficient to demonstrate our

MORALE WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF BOMBING

intention. This means that there has been a great density of bombs
on the selected targets, so we can be sure there are in them a majority
of near-miss subjects. This must mean shaken morale in those com-
munities that are purely industrial in the sense that the buildings are
preponderantly factories and adjacent workmen's dwellings. It will
be difficult to recruit labour for these areas. On the other hand, there
will be in large cities like Bremen and Hamburg a condition not
duplicated in Britain at all. A relatively small part of the total urban
area must have been largely destroyed. If the dock workers live
chiefly close to the docks, we may be sure that their morale is at least
shaken. If, however, they live some distance away, we should be
unwise to count on any material weakening of their zeal in doing
their bit to win the war. So far as the non-dock areas are concerned,
the more accurately the R.A.F. accomplish their mission the more
will the near-miss zone be geographical as well as psychological. The
Hamburger who lives a mile or more from the wharves will have had
his fear reactions extinguished except for such apprehension as there
may be of a change in R.A.F. policy. That threat will have been
intensified by demonstration of what British bombs can do. Berlin,
however, is in quite a different position. No area of considerable size
has been pulverized so as to serve as an object lesson, while the total
number of bombs which it has been possible to transport such a long
distance is small as compared with the total area of Berlin and the
largeness of its population. It is, I believe, practically certain that
Berlin morale has been improved by such attention as the R.A.F.
has given it. 1 One important factor must be borne in mind. The

1 The treatment of R.A.F. raids by German propaganda is perhaps worth
attention. There is a consistent denial of destruction of military objectives with
occasional admission of loss of civilian life or property. If we presume that the
Germans believe what Goebbels tells them the wiser presumption the effect of
this information will be good so long as morale on other grounds is high. Human
loss is preferable to military loss. But, in so far as rumour spreads stories of military
damage having been accomplished, faith in Goebbels will be undermined. On the
other hand, if the average German is beginning to worry about his own skin, then
propaganda is assuring him that what he fears is happening.

MC c 17 2

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

more complete is any destruction the better story it makes. We may
be sure that gossip is carrying about Germany tales of how terrific
R.A.F. bombs are. These stories are going to people who, probably
by the million (thanks to R.A.F. policy), have never heard a bomb
explosion. The untouched have not had their fear reactions extin-
guished and rumour will reinforce them. It is sound psychological
policy not to hit until you can hit hard.

We have considered the relevance of the principles governing the
establishment and extinction of conditioned reactions to the nexus
of fear with bombing. There remains the principle of differentiation
of stimuli. As has been explained, conditioning at first is to a general
situation in animals. This phenomenon is not so marked in human
conditioning because the human mind is iiiveterately analytic and
tends to link specific causes with particular effects. As a result of
this analysis of the environment man tends quickly to attach his
emotion to some single stimulus, or some small group of them, and
makes this a signal. Thus his differentiation is more of a movement
from one stimulus to another each being conditioned and then
extinguished than simply a matter of slowly discovering what is the
essential and invariably recurring stimulus to which the emotion is
finally attached.

It is important to recognize that the invariable appearance of one
phenomenon before another does not mean that the first causes the
second. The shaft of sunlight which comes into a room when a blind
is rolled up does not produce the dust that is then seen, although
many housewives think so. But this post hoc ergo propter hoc is the only
logic known by an animal and it also governs our emotions. On the
other hand it is a better logic than none at all, for there may be some
causal connection between the two events. On the whole differentia-
tion of stimuli which excite fear is useful. If only one signal is
differentiated from a mass of sensory impressions, there is less fear,
because the specific stimulus recurs infrequently. If a series of such
stimuli are conditioned and then extinguished, there is a considerable

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

probability that the emotion will be aroused by something that is a
real and not an accidental signal. Two examples of emotional adapta-
tion to danger by means of differentiation of stimuli will make these
points clear.

The first is one already referred to that of the soldier under shell-
fire in the last war: he was frightened at first but soon got used to it.
The most important element in this habituation was the discovery
that the shell that was coming close made a characteristic noise.
Often this was a conscious observation, but frequently it was merely
a matter of involuntary behaviour. In either case the soldier took
what protective action he could when the ' near-miss ' was heard but
became indifferent to all other noises. (The value of this differentia-
tion was shewn, negatively, in those who developed anxiety states.
An early symptom was the loss of this adaptation. The victim then
felt that every shell he heard was coming right at him so that, on an
active front, his life was one long nightmare.)

The second example is of the changes that have occurred in
effectiveness of various bombing signals. They have all been sounds
heard and have originated from home defence measures as well as
enemy activity. The first was, of course, the siren and we have already
seen how it lost its emotional significance. Then came the sound of
aeroplanes. This was, psychologically, an interesting phase. There
were many disputes between those who claimed to be able to identify
enemy planes and those who denied that they made any distinctive
noise. The reason for this conflict of opinion is not far to seek if one
remembers the basic principles of differentiation. Discrimination of
stimuli is effected by reinforcement of one stimulus with absence of
reinforcement for another similar but not identical stimulus. In this
case reinforcement could come from the additional sound of bombs
when German planes alone had been heard a rare occurrence with
so many of our own machines in the sky or from official information
as to the presence or absence of enemy raiders in a particular part of
the sky relative to the observer. The members of the Observer Corps

19 2-2

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

alone have enjoyed this latter advantage and they have learned the
characteristic noises made by enemy as well as friendly aeroplanes.
Another way of achieving the identification is to learn the silhouettes
and sounds of our own aircraft and then to recognize the strangeness
of the noise made by the enemy who is usually in the dark or flying
at such a height as to be invisible or unidentifiable. Small boys,
whose interest is intense and whose sensory faculties are more educable
than in later life, are particularly good at this kind of performance.
The vast majority of people, however, lack the time, interest and
sensory acuity needed for this route of differentiation and so have
failed to achieve any. As a result nervous subjects have heard an
enemy bomber whenever an aeroplane or even a distant motor
bicycle was audible, while the average citizen has become emo-
tionally inert to the sound of aeroplanes. I should expect, however,
that in some particularly coastal areas a considerable number of
people have witnessed enough low attacks from visible bombers to
have learned to identify their characteristic sound.

Another signal of imminent bombing is anti-aircraft gun fire. The
emotional meaning of this must necessarily be complicated because
it is primarily a sign of retaliation and only secondarily, and unin-
tentionally, a warning. Again, as an indication of the nearness of
the enemy it must vary with the type of gun. Fire from a light A. A.
battery that guards a vulnerable point necessarily implies a likelihood
of bombs falling in a restricted area and anyone who neglects that
warning does so at his peril. On the other hand heavy batteries, such
as are used in barrages to protect huge areas like that of London,
may be firing at aeroplanes whose course is many miles away. The
first discrimination learned in connection with the noise of A. A. guns
in action is between the crack of the gun and the thud of the bomb
and this is quickly acquired. Will the recognized sound of the gun
then produce fear or not? This will probably depend chiefly on
earlier experience. If there is already some familiarity with air-raids
when defence has been purely passive, the sound of guns is reassuring.

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

At last A.A. is doing something about it. On the other hand, and
particularly if the subject is not hardened to bombing, the sound of
gun fire is apt to take the place of the siren as a signal for fear. The
sirens often sound and nothing happens but, if the guns are at it,
there must be planes near. In a * Blitz season', however, the con-
ditioning of fear with the sound of guns is quickly extinguished
because the sequence gun-nearby bomb is so rare as compared with
the experience of gun fire followed by only distant bombs or none
at all.

Finally, 1 there remains the most urgent of all signals, namely the
sound of a falling bomb. The swishing, whistling noise it makes is
quickly learned and is unmistakable. Data as to the actual relation
between this sound, the direction of flight of the bomb and the
localization of its ultimate destination might prove of great value,
but they are so far as I know quite unknown. The problem is
much more difficult than that of the observation of the sound of
shells, for two reasons. Shells are always coming from the direction
of the enemy positions which are known, whereas the location and
direction of flight of the bomber is rarely known on account of its
height in daytime or invisibility in the dark. Secondly, the observer
is rarely in an open place but is among buildings the walls of which
obscure and distort sound or may, by echoing, change its direction.
So all that the ordinary person ever learns is the association of the
sound of a falling bomb with one that will alight somewhere near.

If there has been an extinction of all fears conditioned with signals
apart from those of light A.A. fire and the sound of a falling bomb,
the appearance of fear will be rare. (If the subject learns to take
protective action on hearing these signals, there will be little or no
fear, as we shall see shortly.) Differentiation of signals is thus a
valuable adaptation because it reduces the occasions on which fear

1 I am not discussing ' crash warnings ' because they are given, almost exclusively,
to personnel who are under orders and not left to exercise discretion as are the great
bulk of the public on whose behaviour rests the morale of the community.

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

will arise. Further, if the final signal with which the feeling of danger
is associated is one that gives one time to seek shelter, that knowledge
gives comfort.

More than a decade ago I was asked by an armaments expert in
the Royal Air Force whether, from a psychological point of view, it
would be advisable to attach to bombs a mechanism which would
produce a shrieking or howling noise. My reply was that, although
this might initially enhance terror, it would almost certainly defeat
its end before long. The reason given was that the bomb would be
noisier than without the attachment and thus audible throughout a
longer period of its flight. This would give the intended victims time
to get into shelters and thus give them a feeling of security. It is
waiting for something that will give no warning of its approach that
is most trying. The Germans, with their facility for exploiting the
obvious in matters psychological, tried shrieking bombs in this war.
One anecdote will illustrate their usefulness to us. At the time in
1940 when attacks on British aerodromes were beginning, the enemy
spent a large part of one night in bombing a certain aerodrome from
a great height with smallish, shrieking bombs. After each salvo
sappers went on the landing ground and filled in the holes. When they
heard more bombs coming they ran to their shelters. By dawn all the
holes had been filled in, the aerodrome was serviceable and there had
been no casualties. 1

This discussion of adaptation to signals would be incomplete
without mention of an important consideration. In military organiza-
tions, or in others where a similar authority over personnel exists,
orders can be given as to action in response to signals that become
commands. But this is not possible for the rank and file of the civilian
population except in a regimentalized dictatorship. People who will

1 This story came to my ears only after it had been in circulation for some time
and I cannot vouch for its accuracy. But even if it had no basis in fact it would
still serve as an illustration of a given signal changing from something which evoked
fear to something which gave a feeling of security. Those who told the tale believed
that the louder noise of a shrieking bomb could be used to ensure safety and that
is what matters.

LEARNING THE SIGNALS OF DANGER

accept orders from the Government in regard to service for the
country will insist on using their own judgment in regard to measures
designed to save their lives. Practically, regulations become merely
recommendations, not orders, and there is no popular support for
the use of force in securing obedience. It follows that arbitrary
signals for taking cover, such as sirens, are obeyed only if experience
confirms the association of danger with the signal. As we have seen,
bombing has to be on an extremely heavy scale if it is not going to
produce a larger remote-miss than a near-miss number of survivors.
In Barcelona people would not leave food queues when air-raid
warnings sounded, and deep shelters were not filled. On at least one
occasion a large queue received a direct hit. Early in 1941 I was
motoring through the town of X in an army vehicle so noisy that I
did not hear a siren that blew. The population were going about
their business normally. Then a bomb fell about a quarter of a mile
away. Within a few seconds people were leaving the shops to look
into the sky. I related this incident to a Regional officer who said:
'I know, I know; the damn fools; the trouble with X is that it has
never had a real Blitz, but they'll learn one of these days. 5 This kind
of foolhardiness seems a needless waste of lives valuable to the com-
munity and, indeed, it is. Yet when one thinks out the implications
of the coercion that would prevent it, the price paid for personal
liberty may not seem too high. But such reflections would probably
bring small comfort to the Home Security officials who have, para-
doxically, to rely on the Luftwaffe for enforcement of their regula-
tions.

So much for the modification of behaviour in the face of danger
that rests on the emotional adaptation to signals. But there is one
other, and a not unimportant, aspect of passive adaptation to be
considered. When fear that has been conditioned with some danger
is extinguished, it does not leave a vacuum. There remains a less
dramatic feeling, one of courage, confidence, or merely security. If
we were in our emotions rational and logical, we should ascribe our

SUPERSTITIONS

escape to luck, Fate, or Providence in accordance with our philosophy.
But \ve don't. We condition such feelings with the situation we were
in when we escaped, or with some outstanding feature of it which
may be the action we took. If one goes to a shelter, the shelter
becomes an effective protection, while the workman who stays by
his lathe is confirmed in his tendency to take chances. The survivor
who was in the open may rationalize his safety by saying that walls
could not fall on him; the one who stayed indoors was protected
from falling shrapnel or bomb fragments. They were both remote-
misses. Contrariwise, the near-miss victim will condition his fear
with coincident situation. From the neurosis point of view evacua-
tion may, through this conditioning, become the starting-point for
an anxiety state. Particularly when it involves some abandonment
of duty or responsibilities, evacuation is a running away. If safety is
conditioned with running away, then that is the one emotionally
valid method of escape from a danger that is difficult to evade
anywhere in this small island. There are more neurotics among
evacuees than the stay-at-homes. Of course this is natural because
the neurotic is apt to begin with more than the average timorousness.
But evacuation has increased neurosis while sticking at the job has
tended to reduce it; moreover, many of the evacuees whose morale is
none too good have been evacuated under orders.

Finally, the conditioning of emotion can explain one regularly
recurring phenomenon, namely the spread of superstition during a
war. The human mind seems reluctant to accept chance as a cause
of any event. In a phenomenon which he does not directly control
himself the savage sees as explanation the work of a spirit, friendly,
malevolent or merely capricious. This theory leads naturally to magic
through which material objects can be dowered with properties that
have no relevance to the intrinsic physical nature of the object. These
objects then become vehicles for the transmission of weal or woe.
Western civilization at least since the seventeenth century tends
to a similarly exclusive causality but the exact opposite. Material

SUPERSTITIONS

forces are the only ones admitted by this philosophy. Conscious
intelligence may accept this dogma but unconsciously, emotionally,
we dispute its universality. In times of peace we may toy with the
notion of a broken mirror, spilt salt, or a black cat being the ante-
cedent cause of some accident. We half believe it although we scoff
at superstition. But the accidents of civilian life are, relatively,
trivial. In war, however, when survival depends more on good luck
than good management, the manipulation of chance through magic
receives an emotional support strong enough to overcome the critique
of peace. There is usually development of the superstition.

N, who is going into action, is given some talisman rabbit's foot,
lucky penny, saint's image, or what not by his friend M. N may
demur but M asks him as a favour to try it anyway. Perhaps as a
mere act of politeness N agrees to carry it on his person, perhaps he
says to himself: c It's no trouble to me and there might be something
in it.' At any rate he takes it. The next day a man beside him is killed
but he escapes without a scratch. The conditioning of security with
the talisman has begun. There are more such experiences and the
conditioning is reinforced until it becomes fixed as a belief in this
particular magic which may exist in spite of an avowed disbelief
in magic. N compares notes with his companions and finds that they
too have their charms or potent rituals. Social sanction for this kind
of superstition now fortifies the practices. If this development is to
be understood it is only necessary to remember that dead men tell
no tales. In all but rare actions of the forlorn hope type the majority
of combatants survive. If every one of these has had a talisman, the
efficacy of the magic is proved to be 100 per cent, because no atten-
tion is paid to the corpse who fails to complain that the magic did
not work.

Anything which gives comfort to one beset with peril is," perhaps,
worth while, silly though it may be. But the talisman sometimes does
harm. If morale is conditioned with its possession, its absence is
necessarily unnerving. The pilot who goes on patrol and discovers

SUPERSTITIONS

only when in the air that he has left his lucky bit at home is unnerved.
His confidence is lost and, with that, his skill in combat. So he is
shot down. When his companions go over his effects they find the
talisman further proof to them of how essential magical protection
is. In spite of our easy assumption of intellectual superiority to the
savage, the majority of us stick to the logic of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
The superiority of our culture rests on our having a group not a
large one of specialists who are trained in controlled experiment
and have some notion of statistical method. Yet even these savants
will shew a naive empiricism in matters lying outside their field.
How many non-medical scientists are there who do not believe that
the last kind of medicine taken cured the illness that was going any-
way to run its course to spontaneous recovery?

CHAPTER 2

ACTIVE ADAPTATION TO DANGERS

WHILE reading the first chapter the reader has probably made a
serious criticism. He has said : the author is like all these academic
people; he seems to think that all people are alike, just puppets;
doesn't he realize that some are cowards and some brave, that a
coward may act bravely in company with the courageous, that we
don't take danger passively but do something about it? These are
valid criticisms and require an answer. The reply is that I recognize
the artificiality of what I am doing perhaps even better than does
the critic, but that artificiality is the inevitable result of any analysis
of any biological phenomenon. All the factors producing it cannot
be considered at the same time, it is too confusing. The best one can
do is to take one factor after another, endeavouring to discover how
it would work if in isolation ; if different factors can be seen to produce
complementary results, well and good. If, however, two factors
seem on analysis to be working against each other, then the problem
arises of discovering, if possible, what the resultant of their conflicting
activities will be. In this analysis of fear I have begun by indulging
in two gross artificialities. The first is that man can be considered as
if he were a solitary individual, whereas actually he is constantly
being influenced by those about him at the moment, by what he has
had impressed on him by them in the past and by what he expects
of them in the future. The second artificiality is the assumption that
man in the presence of danger may be a purely passive agent, whereas
actually danger is a powerful stimulant to action and what he does
is likely to affect the appearance or absence of fear. The neglect of
this important fact is now to be remedied by another artificiality, the
assumption that man is an actor and not an observer. We shall see
that results of action do not conflict with conclusions drawn as to the

THOUGHT OF INEFFECTIVE ACTION

effects of passive experience. On the other hand, when we come to
discuss the social factor we shall learn that there is conflict between
social and individual influences.

It has been stated that we all know fear in the sense of recognizing
it when experienced. But that does not mean that we therefore
scrutinize the experience so as to discover what the stages are in its
development, the conditions under which it appears, or, equally
important, what is present or what happens when, in a situation of
danger, we feel no fear nor exhibit its symptoms to others. We tend
naively to think that we are frightened when danger threatens but
then, in practice, call situations dangerous only when we have been
frightened. A simple example will illustrate how illogical this is.

You are crossing a street and hear the horn of a motor car. You
look up, see the car bearing down on you, quicken your pace and
reach the footpath in safety. There was no fear, there may not even
have been a break in your talk with a companion. Yet you escaped
being mangled or killed. If the imminent possibility of such a fate
does not constitute danger, what does? Let us consider in contrast
another and, fortunately, rarer occurrence. You are again crossing
the roadway, the horn blows, again you look up and quicken your
pace. But this time you step on a patch of grease and come down
sprawling right in front of the car; with a desperate scramble or roll
you reach safety or the driver with adroitness manages to swerve
past you. You pick yourself up relieved at finding yourself only dirty.
Soon you find yourself thinking about the escape and this thought
is accompanied by fear. For some days you may be timorous in
traffic, but that soon wears off when you return to your normal
implicit denial of the danger lurking on roadways. What are the
differences between these two kinds of experience? One, you will
say, was a narrow escape while the other was not. But what does
* narrowness' mean? It cannot be just a physical distance, because
the terrifying car may not have passed so close to you as did the one
which produced no emotional shock. The difference lies, rather, in

AN OCCASION FOR FEAR

the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the action taken. In the first
case there was, quite unreflectively, a movement of avoidance and
no thought of its failure ever appeared. In the second case the same
unreflective movement was attempted but miscarried, in the resultant
emergency unpractised movements were made and so soon as there
was any reflection on the escape the symptoms of fear appeared.

Assuming that this is a typical example of what occurs when a
danger leads to fear, we can see that there are two quite separable
factors involved in the making of a danger into a 'narrow escape'.
The first is that the immediate, unreflective action taken in the
emergency is effective or ineffective. In the former case the emergency
ends arid the incident is closed without any emotional reaction and,
probably, leaves no memory behind it except perhaps for a few
minutes. In the latter case the ineffective action lingers in the
memory and there are thoughts about what would have happened
if the final scramble had been unsuccessful. So, for the production of
fear there must be not merely danger but ineffective action to meet
it followed by a rehearsal of the events in memory, an inaccurate
memory for it includes an element not really experienced, namely
the imagination of an injury that never occurred. The same formula
applies to fears that are conjured up in fancy. There is always a
thought of ineffective action. The thought of danger countered with
effective action is the formula for the pleasant fantasy of adventure.
Thus it would seem that fear results from thoughts of ineffective
measures to meet danger.

But is the example I have chosen really typical? A little reflection
will probably convince anyone that what is terrifying about any
danger is inability to cope with it. Almost everyone of us deals
habitually with animals, machines or materials that are potentially
dangerous and that do terrify those unfamiliar with their use. We
too were frightened, or at least timorous, before we acquired our
technique. The most universally operating cause of fear is the con-
vulsion of nature against which man can do nothing. But what about

THOUGHT OF INEFFECTIVE ACTION CAUSES FEAR

the necessity for rumination before anxiety appears? Most people
are sceptical about that: it is contrary to common experience they
submit. Is it? Ask a big game hunter if he was frightened when the
buffalo or rhinoceros was charging at him and he will tell you that
he was not. Rather surprisingly, his fear came later. Even people
mauled by lions report a kind of numbed calm. A mountaineer friend
of mine told me how he once climbed a long chimney without any
emotion. But when he reached a ledge where he could rest in
security he became so frightened that he was sick. There is often an
apparent exception when a danger is protracted; but it is then found
that, when fear appeared, attention was withdrawn from efforts to
combat it and turned to thoughts of failure. The reason why most
people think they were frightened at the moment of escape from
some danger is probably that they confuse the false memory that
includes failure with the real sequence of events both subjective and
objective. Before the reader excludes this explanation or denies the
truth of the generalization, let him postpone decision until he has
some opportunity to introspect once more on his feelings during
some narrow escape. One confusing phenomenon is a sudden beat
of the heart or similar bodily disturbance on being startled. But
* startle' is a different phenomenon from fear, it is a sudden reflex
response to an unexpected stimulus. It is true that it often merges
into a fear reaction, but it may also merge into a state of pleasurable
excitement.

For these reasons I am going to assume the truth of the statement
that fear appears when there is thought of danger that cannot be
adequately evaded or countered. This makes action, and action that
commands all the subject's attention, the preventive of fear. So,
naturally, we must turn to examine the nature of possible actions.
Our task is simplified by knowing that the only relevant activities
are those that will appear spontaneously in an emergency, that is to
say, behaviour that is instinctive or deeply ingrained by habit.
Dramatic fear, the paralysing terror we are interested in, is something

THE POSSIBLE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS TO DANGER

that occurs only in the immediate presence of danger, real or
imaginary, when something has to be done and done at once. The
use of the term fear as a motive for long-term planning is really
metaphorical.

Rivers, in his interesting book Instinct and the Unconscious, has given
five possible types of behaviour that may appear unreflectively and
involuntarily in the presence of danger, and his list is, I think, com-
plete. They are, flight, aggression, 'manipulative activity', immo-
bility and collapse.

Flight is an avoiding reaction which may extend from a simple
ducking or dodging movement in avoiding a blow to impetuous and
prolonged running. The nature of flight behaviour is too obvious to
need any description of its various forms and intensities. We need
only note that, when it is effective or believed to be, it is not accom-
panied by fear. The guerrilla fighter who strikes and runs knowing
that his speed is superior to that of his enemy is not frightened, he
probably enjoys his flight as proof of his prowess. What does terrify
is running while one feels that one is not escaping. This is what is
characteristic of nightmares the very paradigm of terror.

Aggression is an attempt to remove danger by destruction of the
noxious agent or agency. It may be no more than slapping at an
insect or the most energetic charge at, and pursuit of, an enemy. The
range and nature of such activities are, again, matters too obvious
to require any description. Successful aggression precludes fear,
although prevention of adequate expression for it will lead to anger.
('Pent-up' is the time-honoured adjective to go with rage.)

Manipulative activity is more complicated. It is not instinctive in
the sense of being inborn but is the product of prolonged training,
particularly in the use of weapons. There is a combination of
aggression and flight actions with a change from one to the other as
the exigencies of the situation develop. But the details of this
kaleidoscopic activity are not thought out; they occur with too great
speed for that and, indeed, the combatant may have so little aware-

REACTIONS TO DANGER

ness of what he does that his memory of the conflict is hazy. One
thinks of the boxer who is dazed by a blow early in a bout but fights
on to victory having throughout very little awareness of what he is
doing. These skills that can be exhibited in automatic, unreflective
behaviour are the product of habits built up during many hours of
practice, habits for countering various types of blow and for attacking
when various types of opening are presented. There may be a general
policy that is directed by consciousness, a policy of going slow this
round or of being aggressive, but consciousness is not directing how
each emergency is to be met as it arises. There seems to be no fear
with manipulative activity when it is undertaken whole-heartedly,
indeed there is little emotion of any kind beyond a feeling of tenseness
that is either slightly unpleasant or slightly exhilarating. It is the
combatant who cannot trust his skill, who cannot 'lose himself in
the fight, who substitutes cumbrous conscious thinking for rapid
automatic action, who gets frightened.

Manipulative activity explains professional immunity to danger.
The doctor or nurse knows something about the habits of bacteria
and how they travel. With any reasonable luck there will be no
infection provided one follows the proper technique. The doctor
knows this technique and employs it by habit. The layman, ignorant
or not practised in the methods of protection, does not know what
to do in the presence of contagious disease and so is frightened. The
same principle applies to all dangerous occupations, even including
bomb disposal. The layman does not know what is safe to touch in
a bomb and so does not dare even to approach it. The trained sapper
knows how to manipulate a bomb and not detonate it. Of course the
bomb may be of a, new type. What then comes to the aid of his
courage is fatalism born of his having been a remote-miss many
times ; bomb disposal squads are composed entirely of men who are
remote-misses there can be no near-misses among them. What is
courage? That is a question as difficult to answer as what is fear?
The layman thinks the bomb disposer intrepid because he faces the

REACTIONS TO DANGER

possibility of instantaneous destruction calmly. This hero, however,
says there is no reason to worry because, if he made a mistake, he
would never know it. (This is not made up ad hoc; it is an explana-
tion given by a modest possessor of the George Gross.) That the
bomb-disposal expert should feel this way follows inevitably from
the principles we have been discussing. The psychologist can explain
away the courage of the experienced practitioner, but there was a
time when he was not experienced. The apprentice is the man before
whom the psychologist bares his head in humility.

Collapse need be described only to disregard it, for it is merely a
rare and abnormal response to danger observable in both man and
animals; it has no adaptive value and anxiety states can be accounted
for without invoking it as a factor. When collapse occurs the man or
animal sinks to the ground incapable of voluntary, or indeed any
co-ordinated, muscular action. There are coarse tremors or jerkings
of the limbs. Blood pressure probably falls and the condition may
be so extreme as to lead to death from 'shock'.

So, finally, we come to Immobility. This is a form of protection
employed frequently by animals, particularly the smaller rodents
who, in the presence of danger, become motionless, ' freeze', or 'sham
death'. To you who see the rabbit crouching by the path it seems a
foolish creature in remaining so close to peril. When your dog walks
past the rabbit, almost stepping on it, you think he is strangely
inattentive to normal canine interests. You are wrong on both counts.
The rabbit had made himself invisible to the dog because the latter,
as we have seen, is colour blind, as are all the four-footed enemies of
the rabbit. You detected the rabbit because its body made a grey
patch of characteristic shape against a green background. The dog
saw or did not see blobs of grey against a background made up
of more blobs of grey. The dog sees only variations in the scale that
runs from white to black through innumerable shades of grey, which
is just what we see in the ordinary photograph. Every amateur
photographer knows the picture of the animal that seemed to be

MCC 33 3

IMMOBILITY AND FEAR

posing conspicuously shews the animal only if one knows where to
look for it. That is precisely the position of the predatory animal. 1
Like you he can see the rabbit when his attention is directed to it
but not otherwise. On the other hand the dog is extremely sensitive
to movement; a mere flick in any part of his visual field is enough
to draw his eyes to that point. Thus immobility is a useful protective
reaction provided it is complete.

This, the reader may object, is perhaps interesting as a bit of
natural history but what has it to do with man? We do not practise
immobility in meeting danger. Is this an accurate statement? If it
means that civilized man does not consciously employ immobility,
it is certainly true. But we are now studying the recesses of the
human mind, that part of it which he shares with the lower animals.
Man might have an instinctive immobility tendency which is not
usually exercised merely because in our present state of civilization
the dangers we habitually encounter do not emanate from wild
animals with no colour vision. They arise more from the direct or
indirect activities of other human beings. There is evidence that
instincts which are not cultivated by man may survive unconsciously.
As to the likelihood of this happening in the case of immobility, it
should be remembered that, in his total evolutionary history, man
has been homo sapiens and civilized for a very short time indeed. We
should therefore expect that a widespread and basic animal instinct
would survive at least as a potential tendency ready to express itself,
to exert its influence, when circumstances were favourable for its
exhibition. This expectation is further justified by the fact that actual
immobility is practised by some savages. The purpose of immobility
is to escape notice and this is as valuable for the predatory creature
that lies in wait for its prey as it is for the prey that shrinks from
observation. The hunters of some mountain Malays can, according
to an anthropologist friend of mine, remain motionless for hours
apparently regardless of terrible heat or the stings of insects. For
1 An exception is that many, if not all, birds have colour vision.

IMMOBILITY AND FEAR

these reasons, then, it seems not unreasonable to assume that immo-
bility is one of the possible forms of involuntary behaviour in the face
of danger.

If we make this assumption our first problem is to see how the
immobility tendency would be likely to exhibit itself in man. Mani-
pulative activity is first exhibited by monkeys and apes when they
use sticks or stones as weapons, but its extensive development is
essentially human. May not immobility have its peculiarly human
form? The Scylla and Charybdis of psychology are the theories that
man's mind includes only what is known to his introspection and the
opposite view that all his mental operations can be regarded merely
as elaborations of the animal mind. Steering a middle course we
should expect human instincts to be expressed in forms that were
characteristically human. Now animal behaviour is dominated
by appetites, internal bodily events largely chemical, that furnish
various drives and by instincts which are responses to what the
creature encounters in his environment. Man has achieved his
unique control over his environment by thought and the more
civilized he is the truer is this statement. Crude appetitive and
instinctive actions are, of course, common, but the vast bulk of man's
behaviour is prompted by thought. He considers what he ought to
do and then does it. It would therefore be not unnatural if the
immobility tendency exhibited itself in man as an inhibition of
thinking.

When would this be most likely to occur? Danger demands
immediate action, action taken on the spur of the moment, that is,
something instinctive, or expressing an ingrained habit, or a new
type of behaviour thought out in the twinkling of an eye. The last is
something to be expected only of a genius. So we are left with the
' ready to serve ' responses. If, now, flight is obviously impracticable
or banned by authority, if aggression is similarly unfeasible, and if
there is no manipulative activity already trained, what is there, so far
as innate or ingrained responses are concerned, except immobility?

35 3-2

IMMOBILITY AND FEAR

As to this there is, indeed, some direct evidence. Earthquakes,
heavy shell-fire, bombing all produce in the near-miss groups occa-
sional cases of stupor. This is a definitely pathological reaction merely,
perhaps, because it is prolonged. For hours or days the patient, who
has received no physical injury, lies motionless, mute, apparently
quite apathetic and unresponsive even to such stimuli as pin-pricks.
The numbed paralysis which momentarily robs a normal individual
of feeling, thought or movement in the presence of catastrophe is
very likely a brief stupor, that is to say, a direct exhibition of the
immobility response. It endures, however, only for a period mea-
surable in seconds. The subject then ceases to be an animal and
becomes a man: he tries to think of some way of escape. If the first
plan he can fabricate is not feasible, he is back where he started;
again there is an automatic tendency to attempt flight or aggression
that is obviously futile and again the immobility reaction tends to
appear. This time, however, it does not take complete command
stopping all mental or bodily activity, it appears rather as an inhibi-
tion of what is the newest and most vulnerable of human capacities,
namely the ability to think. There is paralysis of thought, at least of
effective thought. There is thus a deadlock; the urgency of the
situation promotes impulses to escape that will not be denied, while
the immobility tendency prevents the thinking out of means of
translating these impulses into feasible plans.

This is what makes fear; perhaps it is what fear is. It should be
noted that this analysis covers a wide variety of situations in connection
with which we use the word fear or one of its synonyms. When there
is a deadlock between a striving to do something and an inhibition
which keeps it in check there is a queer feeling that we classify as
belonging to the fear family of emotions. When the inhibition is
voluntarily imposed, as when waiting to compete in a game or an
examination, we get * the needle 5 . At the other end of the scale is an
inhibition that is completely unconscious and the terror appears in
which paralysis is a prominent and invariable component. This is

NOVEL WEAPONS AND PANIC

exemplified in the stock descriptive phrases such as * rooted to the
ground', 'frozen with terror', 'paralysed with fear', 'struck dumb',
or, when the inhibition affects thinking alone, 'I could only think
of running'. There is obsessive concern with the fate inevitable if
nothing is done, a compulsion to do something, and an inability lo
think of any adaptive action a vicious circle.

In passing it would be well to note one stage in the development
of fear as thus analysed. When the initial numbing shock of a great
danger lapses, there ensues a tendency to think of some solution of
the problem presented. There is no more effective incitement to
quick thinking than this and, if the immobility reaction does not
step in, the subject may fabricate a plan more quickly than he ever
could without such a compelling reason for thinking hard and
thinking fast. The same emergency may bring out the full capacity
of one man while it paralyses the abilities of another. We shall return
to this topic shortly.

According to this analysis it would appear that everything turns
on the subject doing something in the presence of danger to which he
gives his attention. It is the quandary as to what to do that generates
fear. There are several corollaries of military significance that follow
this formulation.

The first is that we have here an explanation for the fact that
throughout military history, with extremely few exceptions, a novel
weapon or a novel method of using known weapons produces panic
in the enemy. Army training and prior experience have provided
troops with methods of dealing with the known and expected. This
may be the way to defend and counter-attack or it may be merely
habituation that has generated a fatalistic attitude 'sit tight and
take your chances, they are really not so bad'. The novel form of
attack is something to meet which there is no defence ready as an
automatic response and, failing that, attention is turned exclusively
to the danger which seems to threaten complete and universal
destruction. The example of the dive bomber is fresh in our minds.

THE FUNCTION OF DRILL

We have seen how, initially, it produced widespread panic, but we
have also learned that it is really nothing like the devastating weapon
it was first regarded as being and that troops can be adapted to it.
In this connection one guess as to the morale of the German army
may be hazarded. Their infantry has received a highly specialized
training with modern weapons and so far they have been able to
dictate choice of weapons. Because they have met only what they
have been prepared for, their courage has been high. But, if we
either produce a new form of attack or can attack them at close
quarters with the old-fashioned bayonet, they will be the more at a
loss because of the specialization of their training.

The second corollary has to do with the rationale of military
training. This should be considered under the two heads, drill in
general and drill in special manoeuvres.

To the sceptical civilian (and often to the recruit) the hours spent
in the barrack square in forming fours (or threes) and marching in
formations completely inappropriate for modern warfare are so much
waste time if, indeed, they are not stupefying. Similarly the punc-
tilious etiquette of saluting and so on is silly. Military services are
notoriously hag-ridden by traditions; are these customs maintained
because they arc traditional or have they any psychologically justi-
fiable basis? My answer would be that they are not merely useful,
they are essential. No one has as yet devised any other system which
will so quickly inculcate the habit of automatic obedience. (The
feeling of corporate unity thus engendered is also valuable, but that
is a topic belonging to our next section.) Automaticity is here the
key word. When suddenly confronted with peril the automaton will
do what he is told and not try to think for himself and so long as he
so continues he will have no fear because there is for him no quandary.
Decision, and therefore the maintenance of morale, is thus left to
the officers and N.G.O.'s, who are selected for that capacity.

If there is any time-worn principle that psychology has repeatedly
to underline it is as we shall see many times before we are finished

AND SPECIALISED TRAINING

with these discussions that there is no virtue that does not carry
with it the seeds of vice, of vice that appears so soon as the virtue is
cultivated exclusively. Automatic obedience is essential, yet if it be
inculcated exclusively there is produced an army of robots completely
useless in the versatile manoeuvres of modern warfare. This brings
us to specialized training.

Specialized training is, in the jargon we are now using, learning
manipulative activity. Its role in the prevention of fear may, perhaps,
be most easily explained by consideration of one simple, but typical,
example. It is bayonet fighting. A bayonet wound is a nasty thing
and there are few ordeals more horrid to contemplate than having
a bayonet stuck into one's belly and twisted around. A soldier afraid
of this is afraid to get to close quarters; if afraid of this he will either
avoid it by running away from the enemy when the latter draws
near, or he will not charge with enthusiasm. How can this fear be
conquered? Certainly not in actual combat, for it is said that
practically every bayonet fight is settled before it begins: the soldier
who has the greater self-confidence shews it in his bearing; his
opponent becomes frightened, is paralysed and puts up no resistance.
This formidable bearing can be learnt, as was proved during the last
war when it was found that the most important element in training
was the practice of aggression. The soldier who automatically begins
a bayonet fight with an impetuous rush terrifies his more wary
opponent unless the latter is a practised competitor with skill like
that of a veteran boxer. It is not possible to train all soldiers to this
pitch of efficiency. The ones who do achieve this skill are, of course,
not frightened when they take up a pose of defence. Their attention
is focused on the actual manipulations and not straying to thoughts
of failure. This immunity to fear is not something that can be incul-
cated by any kind of purely verbal instructions or even by demon-
stration. The soldier must have so practised the movements that they
have become habitual. Then, in the moment of trial, the sight of the
enemy's bayonet calls forth the various manipulations that have been

THE MODERN GERMAN ARMY

conditioned therewith; the soldier fights automatically and without
the reflection which engenders fear.

This is a simple example of the role of training in the prevention
of fear in battle. Mechanized warfare involves the use of many
specialized techniques and they have to be learned not merely in
theory but practised until, with all their variations, they can be
reproduced automatically. This is why it takes a long time to make
a real soldier, longer now than ever before, probably. No matter
how high his courage, the civilian cannot be efficient in the face of
a novel catastrophic danger. He may not run away, he may exhibit
externally no sign of panic, but he will really be paralysed if he
cannot automatically perform the correct manipulations.

Here again one is tempted to make a psychological comment on
German morale. Before the present war it was based essentially on
aggression and mass action (to be discussed soon). But we are now
facing quite a different army, one whose training is essentially in
manipulative activity. This will involve two real differences. He
who is by habit aggressive does not know how to retreat, is confused
and lost when he has to withdraw. That was speaking very broadly
the German army of the last war. But manipulative activity is as
much a matter of defence and withdrawal as it is of offence and
advance. The present-day German soldier has, in his manoeuvres,
been retreating as much as he has been attacking. There is nothing
novel about this and no 'withdrawal according to plan' will upset
his morale. (What it may do to the morale of the Reich as a whole
is another matter.) The second difference follows from the vul-
nerability inherent in specialized training. A boxer without his
gloves can always use his fists but a swordsman without his sword is
lost. German morale has been bound up with equipment. If that
runs short, German morale should be expected to crumble perhaps
with a speed that surprises the opposing forces. The situation is
simply exemplified in connection with one weapon the hand
grenade. The Germans decided, if my information is correct, that

TEMPERAMENTAL FITNESS AND UNFITNESS

the bomb was a more effective weapon at close quarters than the
bayonet. Even school boys, we are told, have been practised in
throwing dummy bombs. No amount of practice will compensate
for poor co-ordination and it is unlikely that they have thus produced
a greater number of soldiers who can lob a bomb exactly where it
is wanted than are to be found among the cricket-playing lads of
Britain. But the German soldier will have, in his psychological equip-
ment, automatic behaviour to be exhibited at close quarters
provided his supply of bombs holds out. So soon as that supply is
exhausted, it is certain to be ' Kamerad ! '

Under the heading of individual adaptation to danger there
remains one more topic to discuss, namely the role of imagination in
anticipation of the hazards lying ahead. Novelty in a situation calling
for instantaneous action leaves one at a loss as to what should be
done. A theoretically complete description of the sights and sounds
to be encountered, understood by a subject and translated by him
into adequate visual and auditory images, would rob the actuality
of novelty. Such complete anticipation is, of course, impossible, but
that does not mean that description of dangers and horrors may not
give the auditor a considerable degree of immunity.

This is a place where psychology and 'common sense' part com-
pany. Common sense says this will frighten the victims in advance
and thus make them enter the arena already un-nerved. This view
is based on the intuitive recognition that imagination is the precursor
of fear but a failure to realize that imagination need not be solely of
the direful but may also include behaviour that copes with the danger.
Imagination can be adaptive. It is true that realistic descriptions
may produce anxiety, but is it not probable that those thus incapaci-
tated are the very ones most liable to crack in the real trial, the ones
who ought to be excluded from service in the front line? Common
sense has not reckoned with the indisputable fact that children taught
fire drill will shew no panic when a real fire breaks out. Are children
not imaginative? There is no camouflage of the object of the drill.

TEMPERAMENTAL FITNESS

Or there is the case of analogous drill on board ship. Passengers who
embark in a liner do not learn then for the first time of the dangers
of fire, collision, or, in time of war, torpedoes. It is a rare passenger
who is frightened, or made more frightened, when he is required on
hearing so many blasts on the ship's whistle to get his life-jacket and
then proceed to a particular station on one of the decks. There an
officer inspects his jacket and, very likely, points out that if it be left
loose it will hit his chin when he jumps into the water and knock him
out. A terrifying prospect, this business of jumping into the sea!
Surely, common sense would urge, imagination of such an ordeal
ought to be discouraged. Yet it is notorious that such preparation
does prevent panic, if the emergency arises.

But how can adaptive imagination be fostered? This might be
done by combining description of perils with that of the means that
may be taken to circumvent them. The most effective form of this
would, presumably, be a sound film accompanied by instructional
comments. The same event should be depicted with and without
protective action. For instance modern cinema technique is capable
of shewing the same dive-bombing attack with different sequels.
There could be first ei successful attack on a machine-gun crew. Next
could come the crew throwing themselves flat and escaping injury.
Third would be of the gunner waiting till the bomber was within
range and then shooting it down. If the successful attack was shewn,
with many men in the picture, most of whom survived, and the
comment * He never knew what hit him ' was made in reference to
an isolated victim, the audience would have impressed on them that
the chances of survival were large. This should be supplemented by
statistics as to the actual rate of casualties in dive-bombing attacks,
which must be available at least from the preliminary phase of the
Battle of Britain when aerodromes were attacked heavily. 1

1 A serious defect of our publicity is that absolute numbers of casualties during
some period from air-raids, for instance are given without any comment that
would enable the ordinary man to evaluate them. For example, it should be stated
that the casualties were so many killed during the last month. The population

AND UNFITNESS

Finally, it should be explained how anticipation of ordeals may
lead to proficiency in them. Thought of failure is what prompts fear,
but if a man is constantly preoccupied with the causes of failure and
accompanies this with plans for meeting all the emergencies he can
think of, then he reduces the number of accidents for which he is
unprepared. Thus we arrive at the paradox that what a man is most
afraid of (in one sense of that term) may be the one that finds him
coolest in actuality. This is well illustrated from the earlier years of
aviation when engines were not so reliable as they now are. Forced
landings were a commonplace. The good pilot was never a moment
in the air without thinking of a forced landing: he kept looking for
the best place to land at that moment; he moved, so to speak, from
one forced landing field to another in making a cross-country flight ;
if he had to cross a plantation or other inhospitable bit of land, he
would climb so as to have a longer gliding range. When the engine
did cut out, there was not an instant's hesitation, down went the nose
to get the proper gliding angle and course was set to approach the
chosen field up wind and an easy, untroubled landing was made.
Those who trusted their engines and relied on their quick wits to
meet such emergencies were nearly all killed in those days.

This leads us to consideration of a problem important in all services
when men have to be chosen for special tasks. We have, let us say,
two men A and B. So far as all ordinary tests can shew they are
identical in intellectual and physical capacities, yet A cannot learn
to fly an aeroplane while B does so with facility; at the same time B
cannot instruct a squad of men while A does so admirably. The
problem is labelled, not solved, by saying it is a matter of tempera-
mental fitness. A good games player needs stern competition to bring
out his best possible performance, whereas a rabbit can never do

exposed in the bombed areas was so many. Therefore the rate was so many per
thousand of potential victims. (According to my memory it has rarely been so
high as one in a thousand.) This rate should be compared with other causes of
death. It would surprise most people to learn what a small series of years of motor
accidents supply the same number of deaths as that produced since the present war
began by bombs.

TEMPERAMENTAL FITNESS

himself justice under just those conditions. The easiest way to spot
temperamental fitness or unfitness is to observe behaviour in the face
of emergencies. One man seems then to think more quickly, the
other to become stupid and confused. This gives us a clue, for we
have seen that successful behaviour on the spur of the moment
depends on earlier preoccupation with problems belonging to the
field in question. But why should A think of instruction while B
dreams of flying? The answer takes us a long way back in their
histories.

We shall take as an example a problem in temperamental unfitness
that frequently concerns an infantry commanding officer. A soldier
who is intelligent, who does well in all other aspects of training, seems
incapable of learning to handle a bayonet; he is clumsy, he makes the
same mistakes over and over again, the sergeant says he doesn't try,
while the poor wretch protests that he is trying. Many officers have
asked me for advice about such cases or analogous ones. It probably
began early in childhood. The small boy got into a fight and was
beaten. His opponent gained kudos while he was disgraced. Very
probably he wept and was called a cry-baby. Then he is bullied. If
he tries to fight back he has against him not only another boy but
also his memory of previous defeat, so thus handicapped he is beaten
before he begins. The more repetitions there are of these experiences,
the more he is conditioned for failure. The mere thought of physical
conflict is distasteful and he avoids it. If it be obtruded on him it is
the signal for fear and its paralysis : he just doesn't know what he
should do if set upon. He may face a visit to the dentist with equa-
nimity but the thought of being struck is disabling. He may have
good co-ordination and excel in golf or lawn tennis but avoids the
rougher games. Very possibly he has developed a horror of violence,
particularly of bloodshed. The days when fisticuffs mattered are long
past, he has made his place in the community and is not lacking in
self-confidence, he is not neurotic, he is not a pacifist. Then comes
the war and he is called up perhaps he volunteers. He learns his

AND UNFITNESS

drill easily, he learns to shoot quickly, he is an apt soldier until it
comes to the bayonet. The more realistic the practice is, the more he
is upset ; when the sergeant talks about sticking the bayonet into the
enemy's guts, he is sick. The thought of being attacked by a bayonet
himself paralyses him. The ancient conditioned fear reaction has
reasserted itself, the immobility response stops him from even under-
standing the instructions properly.

What does one do with such a case? No single answer is adequate,
it must be conditional except in one particular. Objurgation, threats,
coercion, punishment will only increase the trouble. That kind of
treatment is useful indeed essential when the defaulter is lazy,
indifferent or consciously unco-operative. But when the trouble is
beyond the voluntary control of the delinquent and rests on anxiety,
such procedures merely increase the anxiety. The first thing to be
done is to interview the culprit in as informal a way as is compatible
with discipline. He should be asked about the occurrence of similar
difficulties in the past. It is surprising how often symptoms of this
order originate in unpleasantnesses of relatively recent date, arid the
conditioning of the deleterious emotion can be quickly extinguished
during a sympathetic talk which results in the association being made
fully conscious, thus enabling the patient to deal with it in a human,
rather than an animal, way. This should be followed by re-education,
by what in an animal would be called differentiation. He must learn
that a bayonet will not punch him on the nose, which is what he is
unconsciously afraid of. He should practise jabbing his bayonet at
an archery target or. something similar which does not resemble* a
human body. A sympathetic instructor should teach him the parries
and thrusts with wooden implements that manifestly could not make
penetrating wounds. Above all the instructor should allow himself
to be defeated in such mock combats, putting up just enough resistance
to prevent the unreality from becoming ridiculous. If the pupil can
learn to make the various movements automatically and without
fear, he can be brought gradually to use the real weapon confidently.

TEMPERAMENTAL FITNESS AND UNFITNESS

Now it is quite obvious that the interview (or interviews) and the
re-education will take a good deal of time, time that will have to be
taken from something else. This is a nice problem for the commanding
officer to decide and it may be well to mention the factors to be
weighed.

First, there is the importance of the individual himself. One of the
cruelties of war is that individual comfort or happiness must always
be a consideration secondary to that of the value, actual or potential,
of the individual to the group. If the man is a weak, feckless creature,
decision is easy: he should be either discharged from the army or
transferred to some non-combatant branch of the service. If, how-
ever, he seems to be in other respects a good soldier, and particularly
if he wants to conquer his trouble, the time taken to rehabilitate him
may be worth a good deal more than the value of one unit of cannon
fodder. In the first place the process is highly instructive for both
officers and the N.C.O.'s who carry out the re-education. The situa-
tion is much like that in the teaching of games. An indifferent
professional can train anyone who is a born games player into being
a tiger but it takes intelligence and patience to make a rabbit into
a cat. There are many more rabbits than tigers among recruits and
the success of a training regiment is to be measured by the number
turned out as competent soldiers and not by the number of champions.
An N.C.O. who is proud of his ability to deal with difficult cases is
worth ten whose pride is in a stentorian voice or a vocabulary of
vituperation. Secondly, the reclaimed soldier is worth more to his
unit than one whose status was never in question. Instead of being
a focus of discontent he becomes one of respect and affection for those
in command above him. Of course it may be that these considera-
tions do not justify the time required. Then a decision has to be
reached as to whether the technique that seems beyond the ability of
the soldier to acquire is really essential to his future duties or not.
If it be unessential, the defaulter should be excused this training
although given some other that is more rigorous so that he makes

GERMAN RECOGNITION THEREOF

nothing out of his weakness. If it be essential, he must be transferred
to some other branch of the service where the disability will not
matter.

I am sometimes asked whether it would not be a good thing to
have psychiatrists or clinical psychologists in charge of the rehabilita-
tion of these misfits. Practically, the question can be dismissed because
there are not enough to go round. But should the Services agitate
for a supply of specialists that would eventually form part of the
normal establishments? This would be desirable on many counts
but, so far as this specific problem is concerned, I should deprecate
it. It is true that his judgment would be superior to that of the com-
manding officer as to the general capacity or worthlessness of the
individual, simply because the psychiatrist has a better knowledge of
tell-tale signs of severe neurosis or actual mental disease. But in all
else a psychologist should be employed only faute de mieux and then
kept as much in the background as possible. It is bad enough to be
an odd man; it is worse to be a marked man, one who needs a
psychological nanny, or, on the other hand, to gain indulgence (as
it may seem) in consequence of a disability. It is better that officers
should be given instruction in general terms as to how difficult cases
should be treated, but that treatment, so long as it goes on within the
unit, should be administered by those who will eventually lead the
troops to action. There will be no psychologist to hold the soldier's
hand when he goes into battle and, if the officer has insufficient
intelligence and insight to practise such simple psychotherapy as is
here suggested, he is a poor officer anyway. It is interesting to note
that the present German army has (in theory at least) dropped the
old Prussian idea of officers as Olympians and soldiers as helots and
now selects officers for the 'ability to command' coupled with the
ability to deal with personal problems on a friendly basis, and the
latter is prescribed as an essential part of an officer's duties. Psycho-
logists a numerous and highly organized part of the army function
in selection of recruits and cadets and in advice behind the scene.

PANIC THINKING

One other corollary of this theory of temperamental fitness should
be mentioned. We can all remember examples of actions taken by
officials, particularly during the first few months of the war, that
seemed to us stupid. We loyally assumed that they must have been
based on information denied us or that they were part of some general
campaign the nature of which would eventually be clear. But time
manifested that we had been too charitable: the actions were stupid,
not merely in demonstrating an intelligence lower than what ought
to operate in these higher circles, but stupid in comparison with the
intelligence of the average artisan. So we have been tempted to say,
'Are our officials and rulers feeble-minded?' or 'I'm no genius but
I certainly shouldn't make a mistake like that ! ' Actually the blunders
were not the product of stupidity but of panic panic like that of
the examinee who can work out the answer with ease when seated
at home but is confused in the examination hall. What was the
official (or minister) afraid of? Of bombs? Perhaps, but by no means
certainly. The urgency of war and the power entrusted him under
the emergency legislation gave him responsibilities such as he had
never before had laid on him. So much rested on his decision the
very fate of the Empire, perhaps. Yet something must be done, and
done now. His powers were unaccustomed and the situation novel,
so routine procedure was inappropriate, something new must be
done and done at once. Thus he was driven to c get busy'. Now there
is no way of impressing others with one's industry so certain of
exciting attention as interference. The other fellow knows you are
there if you put a spoke in his wheel. To the critic there was always
an easy reply: 'You don't seem to realize that there's a war on.'
The poor examinee is stymied more by what hangs on the result of
the examination than he is by the difficulty of the questions : rationally
directed imagination and critique are paralysed and he writes reams
of disordered memories in the vain attempt to impress with bulk, or,
perhaps, just to relieve the compulsion to do something. The official
who is geared temperamentally to meet small responsibilities is panic-

PANIC THINKING

stricken by a large one and produces a maximum of action with a
minimum of thought. 'Business as usual' may serve as a cloak for
sloth or a maintenance of selfish interest, but at least it means a
maintenance of the basic life of the community, the production of
the wealth of the country on which it has to live, peace or war.

Before we are too ruthless in our criticisms of the follies of those
in authority let us remember how inconsistent we were during the
first months of the war. We said it was going to be a long war and
then set a pace of activity that could not possibly be maintained for
more than a few months. Holidays were taboo and everyone was
unhappy unless he was rushing round being busy. Except for the
fatigue it caused this frantic activity did little harm among the rank
and file. The stupidities we criticize were the product of similar
tendencies among officials who were intelligent enough for their jobs
but too small in character to meet added responsibility with equa-
nimity. It takes a big man, be he general or executive, to remain
inactive in an emergency until he has quietly thought out what should
be done. If we complain that our governors should not have been
small men, the reply is that we put them there. * Safety first' was the
watchword for many a long year after the last war; it demands 'safe'
men in office and big men are not safe.

Part II. MORALE

CHAPTER 3

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL LIFE

So far we have considered the thoughts, feelings and actions in the
presence of danger of a creature who does not exist, that is a man who
lives by and for himself alone. Man is a social animal and as such
has a nature different from that of a solitary animal. This means not
merely that he naturally consorts with and co-operates with his
fellows; it means as well that his values are social as well as selfish
and these values affect his behaviour whether he is in contact with
his fellows or as isolated as a hermit. We can have a synthetic view
of man's courage or cowardice only when we have considered the
implications of his social character. Are man's social reactions merely
the product of his habitual co-operation with his fellows, activities
followed as a matter of expediency, or has he any deep-seated
emotional and instinctive bond uniting him to others of his species?
If the former we should not expect them to survive long in any
conflict with the elemental passions aroused by the instinct of self-
preservation. On. the other hand, if social behaviour is based itself
on something instinctive, the latter might be as powerful as self-
interest or even more potent. The lay observer of human nature has
long tended to be sceptical of motives that are logically and con-
sciously elaborated : they are either camouflage or a flimsy structure
that cannot endure a storm. Perhaps there are rare individuals who
may be prepared to go to the stake rather than renounce a philo-
logical theory, but if such exist they are highly specialized products
of an artificial civilization. Fundamental motives are those we share
with the cave-man. This not necessarily a cynical view is held by

BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HERD LIFE

the modern psychologist who looks for the ultimate source of action
in instincts or 'drives' that are 'biological'. A biological urge is one
that man shares with his cousins the animals, even though in the
course of evolution it may have made clothes for itself, clothes that
hide its naked brutishness. Are man's social tendencies thus 'bio-
logical'? If so, what are the psychological implications of the
primitive tendency to run with the herd?

These problems have been fruitfully discussed by W. Trotter in
his book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. I shall follow his
argument in laying a basis for our consideration of the influence of
the social factor in morale.

It is difficult to imagine any deeper foundation, biologically, than
that which Trotter builds for his 'Herd Instinct'. There are, he says,
two great phases in the evolution of animals from the stage in which
the unit was a single cell to that we see in man who has won such an
enormously greater control over his environment than that enjoyed
by the primitive unicellular creature. In the first stage, separate
cells have united together to form the complicated bodies of the
animals we see with our naked eyes. (Unicellular animals are, of
course, microscopic in size.) As a result of this union the function of
the individual cell is vastly altered and the aggregation to which it
belongs has a competence that not one of its elemental components
could ever have achieved by itself. In the second stage individual
multicellular animals band together in groups Trotter uses the
collective term ' herd ' develop functional capacities as social animals
and, as parts of another new unit, the herd, achieve a competence
impossible for any solitary animal no matter how strong or how
clever he might be. The analogy between the two evolutionary phases
is compelling and we must see what the implications are of the two
similar integrations.

If we analyse the life processes of even the smallest unicellular
plant we find something that is to the unsophisticated a bit sur-
prising. Every function that is found in our bodies is represented in

51 4-2

DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTION AND

this minute creature. There is eating, digestion, assimilation, building
up of chemical substances peculiar to the species and excretion of
what is not needed; there is circulation and respiration; there is
movement of parts of the body or all of it; there is conduction of
excitement from one part of the body to another; and there is repro-
duction. There is even mental activity, for it can form conditioned
reflexes. Yet it has no special organs for the performance of these
functions or at least there need not be (some unicellular animals
have some degree of differentiation in structure of specialized parts).
In an Amoeba, for instance, it seems that the same bit of its body may
act now as a foot, again as a mouth or a stomach, and so on. It is
a Jack of all trades. When it bunches itself together to ward off a
particle in the surrounding water that is not good to eat, it exhibits
a toughness that interferes with its contractility when it is acting like
a muscle or with its competence as a digestive gland. So, although
it can do all the jobs required of an animal's body, it can do none
of them well. Improvement can be achieved only through division
of labour. When several cells unite each can specialize, developing
a structure better fitted for its particular task but, inevitably, its
capacity for other functions deteriorates. Important principles are
involved in this union.

In most general terms we can say that the integrated aggregation
of cells has become a new unit biologically. But what does this imply?
It means that the more perfect the integration, the more does the
individual cell lose its individuality and the more is its function
something useless to itself but valuable to the organism of which it
is a minute component. It has become, so to speak, a mere slave
condemned to perform one task ceaselessly. On the other hand this
so-called slave may be equally well labelled a parasite because,
except for its exercise of one function, it does nothing for itself.
Consider the cells on the surfeice of the body which are toughened
so as to protect the body. They do nothing towards feeding them-
selves, they do not hunt, they do not even bite, swallow or digest,

INTEGRATION OF NEW UNITS

for their nourishment comes to them in pre-digested form. They do
no 'work', for they have no muscles to contract. What a picture of
slothful parasitism; yet where would the body be without its skin?
'And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee.'
Why can't it? Simply because it has no voice. When it was a uni-
cellular organism it had its own individuality, its life, its 'self to
defend or to pamper. These are now gone: it has ceased to exist as
an independent entity. Its functions, once directed towards main-
tenance and aggrandizement of a single cell, are now working
towards the maintenance and aggrandizement of a new unit, that of
the total integration. There has been a complete re-orientation; any
terms which refer to its activities as if they were individual have
become meaningless. It does not strive for c self-preservation ' because
it has no longer any 'self. It has no instincts, no appetites, no drives,
for all these directing agencies belong to the new unit. This is the
meaning of integration. Through specialization of parts nature has,
in the course of evolution, produced the marvels of bodily adaptations
we can see among animals living in different environments, the scales
of fishes, the fur of polar bears or the feathers of birds, the fins of
fishes, the wings of birds or the hands of man.

These are, however, only tools, so to speak. How can they be
used? The individual multicellular animal, like the unicellular one
its predecessor, must strive for its life in an environment that is
unfriendly or at least neutral. It must therefore not merely find its
food and produce its young but also protect itself from the elements
and all the creatures that would destroy it. So it, too, must be a Jack
of all trades. However, by entering into league with others of its
species it may achieve an efficiency in attack or defence that is quite
beyond the capacity of any individual. At the same time there is a
possibility for specialization of function in work that is useful for the
group as a whole, or tasks can be essayed that would be beyond the
scope of individual endeavour. An example of the latter is the
engineering of the beaver. Insects and man have developed division

A SOCIETY A NEW UNIT

of labour with specialization, other kinds of animals shewing only
traces of it. Among insects there is bodily differentiation among the
* castes ' and their highly organized societies seem to divide duties on
the basis of these physiological specializations and on instinct, for
individuals shew extremely little modifiability of behaviour. In
insect colonies the orientation of the functions of the individual solely
towards the weal of the group approximates the specialization of
cells in the mullicellular body, for bodily change may be so extreme
as to make it incapable of independent existence. A female termite,
for example, may grow till it is a thousand times the size of an ordi-
nary worker, cease to move, be fed by the others and in return secrete
from its skin a liquid that is licked by its brood and the workers. It
has become a stomach for the group.

Trotter points out a fundamental difference between the union of
cells to form a new unit, the body, and the integration of individuals
to form a herd. In the former case the mechanisms for effecting
co-operation of the parts are physiological nervous connections and
circulating chemicals whereas in societies the bonds are psycho-
logical. The separate units are not in physical contact with each
other and therefore must communicate by signals of some sort, the
meaning of which has to be perceived by the members, which is a
psychological performance. Trotter calls the system of signals the
'herd voice'. What its nature may be even in one species is a
problem concerning which we know very little indeed. Many
animals undoubtedly use cries which we too can hear, others use
movements, gestures, which we can see but do not discriminate.
Smell signals may be passed which we are completely incapable of
sensing. Ignorant though we may be, we can be certain of this : in
concerting their movements animals must communicate with each
other either telepathically or through signals that are perceived; in
either case the bond is psychological rather than physiological. Since
among all social animals except insects there is no bodily specializa-
tion for different tasks, it would follow that what an individual does

THE 'HERD VOICE*

in his service of the group is the result of his education. The herd
voice instead of being merely a system of signals for the co-ordination
of instinctive responses among the members of a group has evolved
into a body of traditional group experience.

This is perhaps Trotter's most important contribution to the theory
of society. Among the lower animals the herd coerces a unanimity
of action because it dictates to each member which one of all its
various potential kinds of instinctive behaviour it will follow and,
when one instinct is in operation, stimuli for other kinds of behaviour
do not lure it from the quest it is following. As we have seen earlier,
it is characteristic of man that his conduct is determined more by
thought than by crude instinct. So in human society the herd voice
is translated into a system of rules which become part of the thinking
equipment of the individual and are accepted by him as blindly as
the yelp of the wolf leader is followed by his pack.

The rules can be grouped under two headings, two categories for
which it is difficult to find terms that are not misleading. The trouble
is that we are now considering generalities about man both past and
present, both savage and civilized, and although we classify our
motives and beliefs with labels that are fairly specific, primitive
peoples have not and do not. For instance alchemy was originally
an attempt to attain the highest virtue (in the moral sense) by trans-
muting baser metals into the purest (morally), which was gold. Was
this a matter of practical ethics, of magic, or was it science because
it was an application of the theories of the ' physics' of that day?
Alchemy evolved into chemistry and is now a 'science'. But our
descendants may call much of our chemistry folk-lore. The two
headings we shall use really express directions in which the group
tends to influence the individual in action and thought. These are
unanimity in opinion as to what is fit and proper and unanimity in
belief as to what are the effective agencies in the production of
whatever man can observe in the universe or in himself. The former
comprises standards of dress, deportment and so on, as well as canons

MORALS

of morals and aesthetics that merge into each other. It is ethical in
the widest sense, it determines what 'is done' or 'isn't done' in any
society. The latter covers theories that at one moment seem to be
myths, the next science, the next philosophy and the next religion.
These might be summarized under the one word reality. The objective
critic may call the alleged causes mere hypotheses or theories, but to
those who hold them they are ultimate and indisputable: they are
realities not open to question simply because they are never ques-
tioned.

The various peoples of the earth differ obviously in physique and
colouring, yet they vary more in custom. There is no reason to
suppose that our forefathers in the early stone age were not white,
yet the difference between them and us is, probably, at least as great
as that between us and the Zulus. A greater difference than that of
colour is reflected in moral standards. As Stevenson says: 'The
canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look abroad,
even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with every
climate, and no country where some action is not honoured for a
virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in
our experience, and find no congruity in the wisest rules, but at best
a municipal fitness.' To those who have not examined the evidence
these sound like wild, as well as cynical, generalizations. They are,
however, not cynical because Stevenson uses them in an argument
for man's nobility in devotion to whatever ideals he may have. They
are not wild because it is difficult to find an example of what is with
us a vice that is not elsewhere a virtue. Murder? Wherever there
are feuds illegal killings are praised; duelling is hardly extinct; and
there are many savage communities where homicide is essential to
establishment of honourable citizenship. Incest? It was obligatory
on the rulers of ancient Egypt, and the theory of keeping the blood
pure on which that inbreeding was based survives in the intermarriage
of royalty in modern Europe. What more 'natural', we should say,
than the jealousy of a husband for the faithfulness of his wife? Yet

MORALS

there are tribes where the duty of hospitality forces a host to give his
wife (or his favourite wife) to a guest for the night. These topsy-turvy
variations do not prove there is no absolute right and wrong; they
merely demonstrate that man has yet to discover them or to agree as
to the validity of the discoveries. Indeed the willingness with which
man accepts rules which curb his natural lusts may be used as a proof
for his moral nature. But when it comes to specific laws or conven-
tions we are forced to admit that they are based on 'municipal
fitness'.

If further proof of this were needed it could be found in the way
in which a group need will force moral re-orientation on its members.
The man who is the soul of honour in his private life will descend to
sharp practices in the service of his club, his charity or his church.
Duty to the 'gang' starts many a lad on the road of crime. But war,
of course, yields the most complete development of the change in
moral outlook dictated by the exigencies of the group, because here
the changes are made not merely by common consent but are actually
formally ratified by a declaration of war. What was yesterday murder
becomes to-day justifiable homicide and praiseworthy to boot, and
so with arson, forgery, swindling and theft. One could go on
tediously enumerating examples of this kind of moral coercion which
the community exerts on the individual. The list would seem to be
formidable enough to convince any open-minded, objective enquirer.
But who is open-minded? That introduces another problem. I may
admit that what I learned at my mother's knee influenced me pro-
foundly and that my moral outlook reflects in some measure the
many group contacts of my life. But, from deep within me, comes an
insistence that it is only in some measure. Blackmail, I feel, is a mean
and horrid crime not because the law says so or my neighbours so
asseverate, but because it just is. Something within me tells me so.
That something I call my conscience and I am certain it is something
personal not merely because it feels to be such but because I know
my standards of conduct are different from those of my neighbours.

'MORALS 1

Some actions which I regard with loathing are viewed more tolerantly
by others and vice versa. How can these conflicting conclusions be
reconciled? The solution is derived from one of Trotter's most
important principles. The influence exerted by the group on the
individual is not recognized consciously by the latter as an external
mandate which he obeys, but is unwittingly adopted and incor-
porated into the individual's personality: he 'makes it his own'. In
this process of adoption there is a fusion of the various herd influences
under which the subject may have been, but there is also a com-
promise reached between the rival claims of the herd and of the
individual's selfish lusts. Thus 'moral development' is a complicated
business, never the same in two people, and a never-ending process.
With the waxing and waning of appetites and changes in social
contacts conscience is gradually evolving, although it retains a certain
consistency throughout. Such consistency is much more subjective
than objective. The man who is tempted is aware of conflict and
whether conscience triumphs or falls its attitude suffers no violent
change. The sinner knows he is sinning. But put him under strong
social pressure and he allows group judgment completely to oust his
conscience. Without a qualm he indulges in actions that, in other
situations, he would condemn roundly. An aggregation of kindly
polite individuals may together form a rowdy audience that is not
merely rude but may be actually cruel to an actor or speaker who
does not amuse. More dramatic, and horrifying as an evidence of
latent barbarism, is the brutal fury of the lynching mob. Kindly
fathers, tender husbands, philanthropic citizens whose 'moral sense
is outraged' by some crime will torture and kill the alleged victim,
indifferent to his suffering or, perhaps, actually enjoying it. Where
has individual moral judgment gone?

The answer takes us to the core of Trotter's theories. Man, be he
never so individual, can never escape his biological fate of being a
herd animal. As such he feels happy, secure and efficient when he is
in contact with his fellows and, conversely, is disquieted, timid and

'REALITY'

ineffective when cut off from them. Among animals the contact is
immediate, is sensory. Among men, however, contact is translated
into the field of ideas, of intellectual and moral judgments. We all
know the panicky behaviour of the sheep separated from the flock.
The man who would attempt to maintain the dictate of his conscience
against mob fury finds himself an isolated pariah he might even be
attacked as an accomplice of the alleged criminal. He wants 'moral
backing' an4 can find it only by joining the pack. He then gives
himself up to that peculiar abandonment of self in a joint activity
which yields an almost ecstatic pleasure, the pleasure of perfect drill,
of singing in true unison, of rowing in a crew that has become one
man. Conflict between individual and group standards no longer
exists simply because there is no individual left. All that was peculiar
to himself is gone: he has become an undiffcrentiated unit in that
insensate monster we call a mob.

The second aspect of the pressure of society on its members is in
the intellectual field. We can see, hear and feel for ourselves, and
what we thus learn may be truly said to be individual knowledge.
But when we try to work back from direct sensory experience to what
may have caused the observed phenomenon we arc in another field
altogether. We now rely on what we are taught and this is a social
heritage. Let us consider a typical example. Ever since man has
been able consciously to observe anything he has seen the sun appear
at one side of the little world he knew, travel across his sky, and
disappear on the other side. There have been no changes in the
phenomena observable by anybody a flat, stationary earth and a
moving sun. But what of explanations? What made the sun move,
what was the sun, anyway? There have been innumerable myths
about the god who rode his chariot across the heavens and so on.
As observation of the stars and their courses improved, their move-
ments were noted, but they too were deified or at least personified
and they lived in a universe based and centred on an earth that, as
everyone could see for himself, was flat and stationary. But there

'REALITT'

were occasional geniuses, men who rebelled against the herd intel-
lectual domination, who were prepared to trust their reason even
when it came into conflict with the evidence of their senses. These
men, who were heretics and who did exhibit one of the earmarks of
insanity, gradually built up an esoteric theory, a new faith for which
they were prepared to suffer persecution and martyrdom. Little by
little, progressing from generation to generation, the heresy gathered
more adherents until it became the orthodoxy. At this point it
became a new faith : the earth was round, not flat, and it moved both
turning on its axis and travelling round the sun while the sun and
other fixed stars stood still. Why should this be called a faith rather
than a theory? Because it is accepted unquestioningly by the ordinary
citizen on the basis of authority and not on the basis of his own
observation and reasoning. There is not one among a thousand of
us who has made the observations on which astronomical laws are
based or who has the mathematical training necessary for the de-
duction of those laws. Yet each of us does not say, ' It is authoritatively
stated that the earth moves and not the sun'. He says, rather,
*I know that the earth moves and not the sun'.

It is with the difference between these two statements that we are
concerned. As can be shewn in a myriad of examples, we accept the
herd dictum uncritically but do not regard its adoption as an act of
loyalty, we are not even aware of having adopted it. It is personal
knowledge, we think, in spite of the fact that it conflicts with daily
experience. What has happened is that the herd voice had made
a pronouncement that is received uncritically by the individual
member. It is not hard to memorize words, it is hard to think for
one's self, particularly when the independence will be interpreted by
one's fellows as eccentricity, lunacy or disloyalty. The pressure
towards conformity is tremendous because nonconformity robs the
individual of that feeling of security which contact with the herd
brings. On the other hand we all prize the ability and right to think
for ourselves. A comfortable compromise is reached by the process

'REALITY*

which Trotter has called rationalization. The herd formula is accepted
on purely emotional grounds but is not regarded as such by the
individual, who treats it rather as the product of his own reasoning.
He is able to do the latter because he bolsters the opinion up with a
lot of other second-hand formulae, this 'thinking' justifying him in
the conviction that the matter is something he has worked out for
himself. The capacity for objective observation and elaboration of
the data thus secured into original theory is, as a matter of sad fact,
an extreme rarity; so, in that sense, individual knowledge is also a
rarity. The 'scientific truths' which we espouse, like the morals we
hold, are herd formulae. Before we accept this as a cynical conclu-
sion, we ought to answer the question, ' What would be the state of
affairs if there were no such intellectual bondage?' Remove this
individual acceptance of authority and substitute scepticism for
everything that is not individually observed and woven into a personal
theoretic fabric and then the only possible science is that which one
mind can compass. It is better to advance through a series of
heresies and orthodoxies than to have no corporate science at all.
At the moment we are beginning to emerge painfully from an age
of materialistic philosophy that has been invaluable as the inspiration
for applied science but has led to a neglect of other values, a neglect
that is, perhaps, the ultimate cause of the present war. Our present
problem, however, is concerned with more specific application of
Trotter's principles than with such necessarily vague speculations.
The important thing to note is that the group dictates to the indi-
vidual what he is to observe and how he is to interpret it, although
he is unaware of the coercion.

CHAPTER 4

VARIABLE MORALE

WE are now in a position to consider an application of the principles
enunciated in the last chapter in explanation of some of the simpler
phenomena of morale. In discussing fear there was made, implicitly,
an unjustifiable assumption. It was presumed that, in the presence
of danger, a man was interested primarily in his own safety, that his
'instinct of self-preservation ' was the sole, or constantly dominant,
instinct controlling his behaviour. Actually, however, in the case of
disciplined troops the very reverse is true. The soldier behaves, rather,
as if he had lost all regard for his personal safety; or he may suddenly
act as if sauve qui pent was a divine command which he must obey;
or he may alternate between these two extremes. Such variability
does not occur among isolated soldiers: it is a group phenomenon.
This is morale in one of its aspects, but there is another one as well.
There may be a loyalty that outweighs all personal considerations,
a loyalty exhibited by whole regiments or by a single soldier in a
lonely outpost or by a martyr at the stake. We must first deal with
variable morale.

Morale that is either strikingly good or glaringly bad means that
there is unanimity of action in the group which is exhibiting gallantry
or cowardice. We are constantly presented with an enormous number
of stimuli which might evoke an equal number of different responses,
but, actually, we normally neglect those irrelevant to the purpose in
hand. When hastening to catch a train we do not stop to look in a
shop window no matter how attractive the display. On the other
hand, if someone were to throw a bomb in the street we should turn
and run the other way. So, clearly, concentration on one kind of
behaviour does not make us incapable of observing incitements to
actions of a different kind. Any stimulus attracts our attention and

GROUP CONTROL OF INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION

controls our behaviour in accordance with its meaning for us at the
time. For a solitary animal the meaning is invariably one that con-
cerns its welfare alone. But in herd animals another factor enters:
an infectious imitation runs through the group which coerces atten-
tion to those stimuli that fit in with the activity adopted by the group
as a unit. Reciprocally, sensitivity to stimuli for behaviour different
from that on which the group is engaged is reduced, perhaps to the
vanishing point. An illustration may make this clear. Every motorist
has had the experience of seeing a bird flying directly towards his
wind-screen and swerving off in a miraculous way just when it seems
certain that it will crash. Now once, when I was driving on a country
road, a large flock of starlings wheeled over the road, the formation
being such as to bring the path of the innermost and lowest bird
directly into my car. This bird then flew directly into my screen
without making, apparently, the slightest effort to save itself, although
the collision was predictable during at least fifty feet of the flight
before impact. The direction of its flight was controlled by the forma-
tion, not by stimuli from the environment. This phenomenon may
be generalized, in psychological jargon, by saying that social animals
have a lowered threshold for stimuli arising within the group and a
heightened threshold for all environmental stimuli not connected
with the activity dictated by the group.

This formula enables us to understand what happens when a pack
of wolves or wild dogs, or a swarm of ants, attacks a foe vastly more
powerful than any one of the individual animals. They shew what
we call 'reckless courage', and that is a good description, for the
individual is so concentrated on attack that nothing irrelevant to the
assault is visible or audible to him. He is courageous because he is
unaware of danger. Animals are the creatures of their appetites and
instincts. A bull moose who is 'wild ' in the sense that he avoids man
will during the rutting season not merely be indifferent to man as a
possible enemy but, as an expression of his general bellicosity, charge
at the man he meets accidentally. Animals are not 'brave' or

IMITATION

'cowardly' as men may be, they merely give themselves exclusively
to aggressive or flight behaviour in the face oPdange*r.

Because the mental life of man and of the animals dilfcrs so greatly,
it is a risky matter to transfer principles applicable in one of the
evolutionary levels to another. In so far as it is permissible it can be
done only by translating the instinctive type of mental operation
into its human equivalent which is more or less intellectualized. That
is to say, man, although he may do it with great rapidity, tends
always to be conscious of what he does, his action is not just that of
an incredibly complicated machine but of a machine that is directed
no matter how faultily by some conscious judgment of the nature
of the situation facing him and some prevision of the results of his
behaviour. So our problem here is to see how the fact that a number
of excited people form a group will affect the thinking of the indi-
viduals in that group.

As we havejsocn, an emergency does not allow of protracted plan-
ning, the only possible activities being those that aie deeply habitual.
These, however, may be of quite different natures and incompatible.
If the individuals were alone when faced with the emergency, one
might fight, another flee, while another coolly combined these
methods in some manipulative activity, each acting in accordance
with his temperament and prior experience. But the individuals are
riot alone and they are all herd animals. Therefore, during the
inevitable period of indecision as to what programme each ought to
follow, imitation comes into play determining the choice. This
imitation is of one or the other of two kinds. If the situation is such
as naturally to call forth one rather than another kind of emotion in
the majority, that majority display this emotion instantaneously,
the minority imitate them and the majority decision becomes a
unanimous one. On the other hand, if there is no spontaneous
majority, the group takes its cue from leaders. Before examining the
phenomena of leadership we should note how imitation operates in
the control of conscious mental processes.

DOMINANCE OF COMMUNAL JUDGMENT

It has already been argued that society exerts pressure on the
individual in both the moral and intellectual fields so that he develops
a 'conscience 5 and an intellectual judgment that are essentially con-
ventional although consciously regarded as personal; and certainly
what the individual has incorporated into his personality is what
governs his behaviour no matter what its origin may have been. That
statement holds, however, only in so far as the individual remains
isolated from his fellows or immune from their influence. The moment
imitation sets in, conscience and independent intellectual judgment
are weakened or submerged. The man who indulges a primitive
blood lust when included in a lynching mob, or the man who
tramples down children or weaklings in trying to escape from a
burning building, is accepting the moral sanction of the immediate
group. The sacrifice of individual critical judgment is exemplified in
the credibility of rumours, the ridiculousness of which is apparent
so soon as imitative response to an emergency has passed. A
clever conjurer exploits mass judgment when he makes the in-
dividual, who thinks he sees how the trick is done, ridiculous.
When a theatre catches fire and all the audience tries to escape
from one exit, the crowd's judgment inhibits individual exploration
of other routes to safety, while, at the same time, the mass assump-
tion that the smoke means inevitable holocaust is unanimously
adopted.

Variable morale on the field of battle is thus produced. It is not
cowardly to run away because everybody is running. The attack of
the enemy is so overwhelming that none could survive if he remained
on the field and of what use to his country is a dead soldier? Con-
trariwise, the enemy will run away if we all make a charge and none
of us will be hurt. If an odd man should make a stand, what fun it
will be to run him through with a bayonet ! Instead of fear there is
exhilaration and a pleasurable indulgence in blood lust. If my com-
panion falls at my side, that is just a bit of bad luck; we are winning,
we are going forward which means that the enemy are prospective
MC c 65 5

LEADERS AS SENTINELS

victims, not monsters who will destroy us. The pack is attacking and
the problem of individual security does not arise.

In so far as we are dealing with variable morale that rests on
imitation the function of leaders is essentially that of sentinels. Many
birds and some mammals have sentinels. While the mass of the
animals is engaged in feeding or other activity the sentinels watch
for signs of danger. Whatever appears within the horizon of their
watch is scrutinized. The behaviour of the sentinel consequent on
this scrutiny acts as a signal for a common group activity. The scrutiny
of a human leader may be brief and uncritical or it may involve hard
and accurate thinking, but in either case he gives a signal that deter-
mines what all the members will do, imitation within the group
inhibiting all tendency towards individual decision.

What makes a leader? If the answer could be given in a compact
formula and one that could be used for the selection of leaders one
of the most difficult and urgent social problems either civil or
military could be met out of hand. Unfortunately the problem is
so complicated that nothing short of a volume could contain the
answer and no psychologist would dare to claim his solution was
complete. One, perhaps the chief, source of complication is that
leadership is qualified both by the nature of the leader and by the
nature of the followers. The qualities which fit a man to lead a
meeting in prayer may not be those required by the captain of a
football team. These are clearly two quite different kinds of group;
yet they might be composed of the same individuals, which means
another complication. There is the character of the leader, the
character of the followers and, thirdly, the nature of the problem
which the group has to face. Leadership is not a simple, unitary
capacity and so it cannot be simply described. Fortunately, however,
the qualities possessed by the man who acts as a sentinel, who deter-
mines the choice between various imitative activities, can be described
with relative completeness.

The most essential characteristic is conspicuousness. In an unor-

LEADERS AS SENTINELS

ganized group this rests on his being physically an outstanding person
in appearance or voice, or by his making himself the object of regard.
The latter comes about in one or both of two ways. During the
period of indecisive inactivity occasioned by an emergency one man
may begin to act in a single-minded determined way and the others
follow like sheep. This man may have no thought of being a leader;
he is simply quicker than his fellows in finding or losing his wits.
Or the leader-to-be may deliberately assume that role and make
himself conspicuous. This is in a group that is quite fortuitous. Then
there is the case of the group that is composed of people who know
each other but have congregated for some purpose quite different
from that which must actuate it when the emergency arises. For
instance, a fire may break out in a school or a club. Gonspicuousness
may now rest on some one member in virtue of his being prominent
in the activity which is the occasion for the gathering. If this man
now accepts the role of leader by doing something decisive, he will
be followed. Finally, there is the case of the leader who is made
conspicuous artificially. This is a product of organization, and speci-
fically of organization designed to control behaviour in emergencies
of the kind which arises.

One of the features of all kinds of military organization is an
artificial conspicuousness given to those who have been chosen to
lead. This is accomplished on the one hand by special uniforms and
insignia worn by all in whom authority is vested and on the other by
training all ranks to turn for guidance to those of higher rank. Being
thus appointed as sentinels, officers function as leaders when they
make quick decisions and these decisions lead to group imitation of
action thus initiated. If the signal given, in this case an order, be
for an action that fits the emotional bias in the majority of the group,
the order is popular and this leader performs a function that really
does not extend beyond that of an animal sentinel. It is when the
officer can enforce the adoption of behaviour that does not fit the
spontaneous inclinations of the majority so that he is imitated in the

67 5-2

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADERS

first instance and, with the infection of joint action, all the soldiers
imitate each other, it is then that the officer exhibits true leadership.
On what does his prestige rest?

The greater part of an officer's prestige is derived, of course, from
the system within which he works. If the habit of automatic obedience
did not dower the officer with authority in an emergency, the morale
of raw recruits would be as good as that of a well-disciplined army.
Now, however, we are concerned with the personal characteristics
that reinforce (or diminish) his prestige as an officer. Only the factors
that make the good officer need be mentioned, for it is the mere
absence or weakness of them that makes the poor one. In the first
place he must be temperamentally ready to accept responsibility.
This may be an inborn trait or it may be the result of his education,
using that term in its broadest sense. This readiness is exhibited in
quickness of decision and incisiveness in giving orders; no matter
whether these orders are transmitted from higher command or
fabricated after consultation with juniors, they must appear to
emanate from the officer himself and be given with an assurance that
assumes obedience. This self-confidence is exhibited vastly more in
general bearing than in the verbal form of an order. A ' will you
please' quietly spoken by the true leader commands a more imme-
diate response than a bellow from one who is uncertain of himself
and afraid of his own authority.

The second qualification of the good leader is complementary to
what makes docility in the led and may be best understood by
approaching it from that angle. It must be borne in mind that in
this chapter we arc dealing solely with variable morale which, as we
have seen, may be traced to imitativeness within a group. The man
who imitates another has abrogated his right, or inclination, to think
for himself. Although we prize the right and are prone to vaunt (to
ourselves at least) our exercise of the capacity, making up our own
minds is burdensome. Most of us, most of the time, prefer to have
decisions made for us and to grumble at our bondage rather than
direct our lives continually for ourselves. Self-direction is impossible

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADERS

without fully developed and persistently operating consciousness.
This is absent in children, whose lives are controlled by appetites and
habits built up by conditioning. On this basis there is gradually
developed the conscious superstructure which enables the adult to
plan his life. Children have to have their lives planned for them and
they are unhappy when that regulation is absent. The fretful petu-
lance of the undisciplined child is notorious. Not unnaturally the
child craves guidance, a craving that is no less acute because of its
inability consciously to recognize what it wants. This guidance is
secured from parents or from those who stand in loco pareniis. Few of
us ever grow up completely and certainly the majority crave direction
from someone who will play father to us. A good officer accepts and
exploits this role. The exploitation is achieved by a nice adjustment
of the two most important of a parent's duties, discipline and pro-
tection.

Ask any soldier about an officer whom he respects and whom, it is
clear, he would follow and he will always speak of two characteristics.
He is a strict, but fair, disciplinarian and he looks after his men.
' You know where you are with the captain ', he will say. ' He's hard,
you can't get away with anything with him, but he's fair.' Then he
will balance this with anecdotes: how the captain will never eat or
sleep till all his company are fed and billeted, how he once spent all
one night looking for a soldier who was lost, and so on.

At every level of the military hierarchy there is this desire for
authoritative direction and protection. Naturally at each level the
kind of orders that are wanted and the kind of support that is sought
changes. Lower down the men need bodily care and comfort and
it is the heart, rather than the head, of the immediate commanding
officer that matters. As one ascends, however, it is the reputations
and careers of the junior officers that must be protected, while the
higher the rank the more intellectual does the task of the senior
officer become. (We are concerned here solely with the actual com-
mand of men, not with the qualifications of the purely staff officer.)
Throughout the whole scale, however, the same principle holds : the

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADERS

good officer is one who fulfils a demand for direction, not one who
simply imposes his personality on those beneath him. Common sense
is apt to recognize only the latter, but that is because childlike
dependence is not consciously recognized by those who exhibit it.
To admit it would be to deny one's right and capacity to think for
one's self, so it remains an unconscious craving. Being unconscious
it becomes the basis of a mutual relationship that is labelled by the
soldier not as one of dependence but as of respect for the officer's
virtue as an officer, or respect for the system which the officer
represents. But there is a more important result of its being uncon-
scious. In any emergency there tends to be an abandonment of
conscious guidance of behaviour and a reversion to instincts and
habits that are automatic, that arc unconsciously incited. The graver
the emergency, i.e. the less consciousness is able to grapple with the
problem, the greater is the tendency to fall back on earlier and
primitive tendencies ; in other words the more does the man become
the child. So in grave danger the average individual will look about
for someone who is prepared to play a parental role. The immediately
commanding officer has all eyes turned on him inevitably; his actions
are the ones that will be imitated. If he is made of the right stuff the
emergency will, just as automatically, induce in him a tendency to
guide and guard those under his command. Morale will then be
good. On the other hand, if he is not a true leader, the emergency
will make him too one who looks for direction. His indecision will
then indicate to the group that nothing effective can be done, and
confusion will be worse confounded.

By way of postscripts to this argument two comments may be
worth recording.

The first is that a system of training and discipline which produces
automatic obedience to commands and, ipso facto, reliance on officers is
one that inevitably favours variable morale. If there were a sufficient
supply of good officers and if they never became casualties in battle,
such training would produce perfect troops, particularly in operations
involving large formations. But, of course, contemporary warfare

DISCIPLINE VERSUS RESOURCEFULNESS

demands versatility and resource in very small units, while the
supply of invulnerable officers is limited. Therefore any training
which tends to automatize soldiers must be deliberately balanced
with exercises that neutralize that tendency. At the same time every-
thing possible should be done to foster the spirit of willingness for
sacrifice which is the foundation of the highest, and unchangeable,
morale.

The second postscript is a mere mention at this point of an in-
teresting change in German military theory. Under the combined
influence of National Socialism in the political field and of total
warfare and mechanization in the military, theory as to the relations
of officers to men has been revolutionized. On the one hand the
class system has been abolished (on paper at least) and on the other
hand the necessity for initiative even among privates has been
recognized. To meet these changes two policies have been adopted.
Training now includes a variety of manoeuvres in which individuals,
or very small groups, are required to exercise independent judgment
and resource. But this, it has been realized, is not enough. The old
Prussian system which made the officer into a demigod and the
private into a slave, fixing a social gulf between them, was one, it is
now thought, which tended to make the soldier into a robot. So the
private soldier has been given a personality by decree and it is
ordained that his officer shall be acquainted with this individual as
a person and not as a number. There is a large corps of highly (or at
least lengthily) trained psychologists who aid in selection and give
advice as to treatment of neurotic difficulties, but the bulk of responsi-
bility in dealing with personal problems is placed on the shoulders
of the officers, who are required to interview all problem cases
informally and in 'man to man' talks. We are entitled to some
scepticism as to the thoroughness of such a revolutionary change of
attitude, but it would be folly for us to neglect it in our estimate of
probable enemy morale. We may at least be certain that, if the
revolution has been accomplished, the German company or platoon
will now fight more like a family and less like a machine.

CHAPTER 5

NATIONAL OBJECTIVES

As we have seen, variable morale is due to a state of excitement in
which the individual is forgetful of self when morale is 'good' or,
when it is 'bad', a mental contagion encourages him to think of
himself alone. But the morale which has been the one enduring and
consistent asset of the British people throughout their wars in the
past is not this mercurial emotional display but a capacity to endure
tribulation undismayed. Indeed the tradition has even grown up
that Britain can be stirred to victorious effort only by a series of
defeats. This is not just forgctfulncss of self. It bespeaks, rather, an
orientation away from pure self-interest to an alliance and identifica-
tion with a cause so momentous that the mundane fate of the
individual becomes insignificant.

A cheerful renunciation of life is a commonplace of history and
anthropology. Among many savage peoples there is a readiness to
die, to be a human sacrifice in the performance of some ritual, that
is extraordinary to us because we assume that life must be dear to
everyone. If we lived in a culture where belief in survival after bodily
death was completely unquestioned so that 'death' was but an
incident in the course of life, such abandonment of the body would
not seem remarkable. Similarly vivid belief has undoubtedly sup-
ported martyrs in our own culture. So we might, perhaps, suppose
that it is religion which enables man to be indifferent to death. There
arc, however, too many cases of such abnegation among those with
no avowed religion. Public honour has been given to medical
investigators who have inoculated themselves with fell diseases. Then
there is the explorer who, like Scott, Qyaesivit arcana poll videt dei. 1
The list is long and it is glorious but it is of distinguished names.

1 This is the motto over the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge and
may be translated: 'He sought the mystery of the pole and sees God's.'

MORALE AS ENDURANCE UNTO DEATH

These heroes, we might assume, had a secret religion, perhaps even
a faith that was unconscious. At the very least they were avowed
idealists. But what of the myriads of peasant folk who have been
faithful unto death, people too dull, too unlettered even to grasp the
meaning of ' A peerage or Westminster Abbey ' ? What upheld them
in the day of trial?

Again, what was the trial? In glib journalese we talk about 'the
supreme sacrifice', but is the mere maintenance of life what we value
most highly? It would seem not, but rather that death is a conven-
tional symbol for what is most undesirable. Suicide is by no means
uncommon and for one person who achieves that end there are,
perhaps, a score who consider it at one time or another. William
James remarks somewhere that no man is truly educated who, has
not seriously contemplated suicide. Although we all know that, one
day, we shall die, fear of this remote end is actually a sign of abnor-
mality. What does frighten us is the prospect of imminent death.
That is, we are, so to speak, not afraid of dying but we are afraid of
being killed, killed by injury from without or by some particular
disease from within. In other words thought of death, i.e. death as
an idea of ceasing to be, is not terrifying. It is the situation, real or
vividly imagined, of being struck down which excites the so-called
instinct of self-preservation. As we have seen, danger may excite
various activities and there is no fear so long as the activity chosen
absorbs attention; it is when attention is turned to the ineffectiveness
of what is done that fear appears. Ineffectiveness means death,
therefore the thought of death in an emergency is inevitably asso-
ciated with fear. But if death is regarded as the last event in a
programme of action deliberately adopted it no longer means an
ineffective struggle. If, further, the programme involves suffering
deliberately endured, the prospect of death is a vision of release,
perhaps of paradise. It is important in connection with morale,
which is patience in adversity, to realize that noble death involves
prior suffering and cannot be a euthanasia. Hence suicide according

WHAT IS THE CORE OF NATIONALISM?

to bushido ethics had to be by hara-kiri : the object of death could be
accomplished only if the hero disembowelled himself.

Endurance of this kind is completely inexplicable on the basis of
self-interest unless there is an unquestioned belief in the suffering
being a small price to pay for a certain translation to paradise. Many
religions incorporate such beliefs, but the phenomenon is not con-
fined to the avowedly religious. So we must look for something that
operates as does religion to fortify, uphold and inspire man in the
hour of adversity. The phenomenon is observable among creative
artists and scientists, but such people are exceptional. The rank and
file of an army or of a civil population may shew it, however, and
for their inspiration we have a name patriotism. But what is
patriotism and where does it come from? Is it a universal human
virtue or is it something appearing only in some countries? Are the
patriotisms of Englishmen, Chinese, Russians, Germans or Japanese
all the same? Each represents co-operation in national endeavour.
If the endeavours are different does that reflect on patriotism and
therefore produce different types of morale? Again, what is it that
the patriot serves? A national flag is only a symbol and so, largely,
is a king under a limited monarchy. To what are we referring when
we discuss whether France has, or has not, lost her soul or when we
say that, to save her soul, France must revolt against the power that
occupies her territory? What is it that makes the typical Englishman,
German and Frenchman different? They have, of course, been
moulded by different laws and conventions, but what has so guided
the morals and customs of a nation as to make them into a system
sufficiently consistent to produce a type? A complete answer to any
one of these questions is impossible but, if it could be shewn that an
answer to one would provide an answer to the others, then it would
be demonstrated that there is only one unknown factor, not many,
and that this X was capable of description even though it was as
impalpable as, say, gravitation.

During the course of its evolution a people develops gradually a

NATIONAL UNCONSCIOUS IDEALS

feeling of nationality, of being a folk different from its neighbours.
This is not just the difference which an objective savage might observe
between the customs, morals and beliefs of his own and neighbouring
cultures. It concerns, rather, a way of living, jealously guarded as
a national asset and believed to be something that it would be well
for the rest of the world to enjoy. It is a 'chosen people' kind of
belief. It is, if you will, a scale of values (of which more later). It
may grow quickly as the policy of a series of dictators whose success
endures long enough to become traditional, and is then apt to be
something well enough defined to be enshrined in a more Or less
accurate formula which becomes a shibboleth. Or it may evolve
slowly, insensibly, in custom and tradition as a point of view that is
rarely and fitfully expressed in legislation or the comment of some
political philosopher. At first there is just a general social conscience
as to what is, or is not, done, a reference to a morality that is superior
to that of the benighted foreigner. Then there emerges slowly a
feeling of direction in it all, something that is a striving towards a
perfecting of the national virtues as they are being discriminated
and towards a universalizing of these benefits if the people are of an
aggressive, missionary type.

This X we might label the soul of the people, as is done in common
speech, but such a name carries with it an implication of the mystical,
of something spiritual, and therefore outside the field that can be
studied scientifically. I therefore prefer to call it an unconscious ideal.
There are two interrelated reasons for its being unconscious. First,
the objective is more of a process than a static goal, so that it is
betrayed in a feeling of rightness or wrongness that qualifies proposals
for national action rather than in a formulated code. Secondly, the
ideal is a possession of the group as a whole and the only consciousness
of which we have direct knowledge is an individual one. Individual
consciousness can have awareness for the customs, rituals, emblems
and so forth that symbolize the group spirit but it cannot cognize
directly what is a diffuse, social influence.

EVOLUTION OF GROUP IDEALS

How a national unconscious ideal grows up may be understood
by considering some examples of the same process in smaller groups.
Every group that is not just a fortuitous crowd of people comes
together for some object which constitutes the conscious raison d'etre
of the organization, but, in addition to this, it may develop an esprit
de corps. For instance, a number of people witli small savings pool
them in order to raise capital sufficient for the purchase of a manu-
facturing plant. The primary object of the association is purely
economic: each member hopes to get a larger return on his capital
than would be possible if he employed it in a one-man business.
Initially the management is instructed to buy in the cheapest market
and sell in the dearest, while the quality of the product is to be such
as to ensure its sale: motivation includes nothing that could be called
cither philanthropic or patriotic. Similarly, the employees are lured
into selling their labour by an offer of wages higher than they can
get elsewhere; their hire is, on both sides, a bargain based on labour
being a commodity the price of which is governed by the laws of
supply and demand. But this simple motivation docs not remain in
exclusive possession of the field. Indeed, if it does, the life of the
business is apt to be only a fair-weather one.

Management and labour form together a group that becomes more
closely knit as time goes on. Hand in hand various group loyalties
grow up and cut across the primary economic motive. The manage-
ment develops an interest in the workmen both individually and
collectively; the employees reciprocate v/ith an interest in the firm
as such : both unite in having a pride in the quality of what the
factory turns out. If times are bad the management may continue
to run the business, even at a loss, so as to continue employment; at
the same time the work-people may accept lower wages during the
emergency may, indeed, even propose this makeshift. Or, when
the firm's product has gained a reputation, there may be a refusal to
trade on that by reducing the quality and selling at the same price.
The pride of both masters and men may rebel against what would,

GROUP DANGER A SIGNAL FOR LOYALTY

obviously, be 'good business'. It is clear that such loyalties are most
apt to develop in small companies where personal contact between
employers and employees is possible and are increasingly limited as
the concerns grow into 'soulless corporations'. It is probably for
this reason that our oldest businesses, that have endured for genera-
tions, are almost entirely family ones. But it is equally clear that
there is a definite limit to the development of non-economic ideals
in a business. Philanthropy eats into profits and, if profits disappear,
the business fails and ceases to exist. No economic organization can,
therefore, go very far along this road of idealism.

But that limitation does not operate with groups that are formed
for social, charitable, educational or religious purposes. We have our
clubs, City companies, hospitals, schools and colleges that are cen-
turies old, while the Roman Catholic Church shews a virility that
has outlasted that of mighty empires. When one examines these
ancient institutions they are seen to present two features that are
important for an understanding of morale.

The first is that the loyalty of its members is proportionate to the
needs of the organization and not to whatever benefit might be
available to individual members. It is true that membership may
in some cases offer something of snob value, but that is secured once
for all on entrance, and subsequent service can benefit the giver only
indirectly, the primary and obvious beneficiary being the group as
a whole. Enduring institutions offer no reasonable, material reward
for services rendered. This is borne out by observation of the occasions
which promote the greatest exhibitions of loyalty. They are either
opportunities for expansion of philanthropic efforts or more effective
a threat of curtailment or cessation of these activities. We all of
us belong to many groups each one of which asks us periodically to
give 'all you can afford'. How are rival claims satisfied? Almost
invariably, I think, one of two factors is decisive. If the organization
is threatened with extinction that one will get a generous contribu-
tion. If, as during a depression, two groups are in similar plight, we

IMMORTALITY OF GROUPS

give to that which is the more philanthropic. Most men would prefer
to see their golf club go under to seeing their old school disappear.
The phenomenon of loyal sacrifice is, of course, most signally repre-
sented in national affairs. During peace patriotism may seem to be
dead, with individualism and sectionalism apparently disintegrating
the country. But let the nation be threatened and these interests
melt away in patriotic zeal. The danger need not be that of war.
Hitler thought (or at least said) that this country was degenerate
and, indeed, some of his gibes have been proved to be only too
tragically justified, but he ought to have read the moral of the 1931
general election. Communities that were living on the dole voted
for its reduction. It sometimes seems as if our politicians would never
learn that patriotic service can never be secured by bribes but that
it will be offered freely if a demand for sacrifice is made. So significant
is this phenomenon that I believe a nation that does not respond to
such an appeal is moribund.

The second feature to be noted in ancient institutions has to do
with what is felt to be its membership. The traditions of a society
have been established and been maintained throughout many
generations and at the same time its goal, its quest, its ideal has been
gradually forming, being in each generation modified, fortified or
diminished. The membership of such groups is, therefore, not con-
fined to those who are alive and can communicate with each other
at any point in time. It is felt, rather, to extend from the distant
past to the remote future. This is betrayed in an interesting habit of
speech, the use of the first person plural in reference to the actions
of people long dead or not yet born. We defeated Oxford in the boat
race a century ago (or was it the other way round?) and we hope
to beat them in the year 2000. If I say to a member of another
college, * What happened to your Royal Arms during the Common-
wealth?' he does not reply, 'I wasn't alive then' nor does he refer
to the action of the seventeenth-century Governing Body. Without
any sign of there being anything remarkable in his choice of words

DISPERSAL IN TIME AND SPACE

he says, { Oh, we hid them'. Similarly, if I ask, 'How will you be
investing your money in the year 2000 ? ' he may answer, ' I expect
we shall be switching from land to Consols'. Such remarks might
reflect merely the obvious continuity of a Governing Body. But
when { we' is used nationally it seems to refer to those past, present
and future who have upheld the national tradition. Those who adopt
the tradition, not being born into it, have a right to claim its founders
as ancestors; one who breaks away, regards himself as disinherited.
For instance, a Scot, whose nation was foreign in the sixteenth
century, has no hesitation in saying, 'We defeated the Spanish
Armada'. A Canadian or Australian might make the same state-
ment but an American could not, although he might be a direct
descendant of one of Elizabeth's captains.

The significance for national morale of these features of organiza-
tions dispersed in space and time should be fairly obvious. Biologically
it would seem that morale is bound up with the compulsion of herd
animals to orient their lives to activities serving group rather than
individual needs. In human society the group tends to be identified
with what it stands for collectively. Then the member has to ally
himself with this ideal : when he does so he enjoys the security of a
sheep within the flock; if he fails to do so, he is a pariah and is
bewildered as a sheep separated from its fellows. In this alliance,
however, there is a re-orientation of survival values. It is the group
that must be preserved, the individual lives in and for it, having (so
far as the alliance is complete) no separate existence. In return the
member gains title to the power and the glory of the group, winning
a share that is proportionate to his service. The Etonian feels superior
to the Wykehamist (or vice versa) in proportion to the superiority he
attributes to his school. This may be trivial, but an arrogant attitude
towards foreigners is a serious matter, being one of the most important
factors in producing and maintaining international friction par-
ticularly when the feeling is mutual. It must be borne in mind, of
course, that such developments are not the product of conscious

BELIEF IN SURVIVAL

reasoning. They are emotional attitudes and such reasoning as there
may be is unconscious or else a rationalization justifying a bias that
originates unconsciously.

It will now be seen that, according to this argument, there can
develop in a civilized and sophisticated man an unconscious belief
that is analogous to the faith of his more primitive brother who will
be translated directly to paradise if he dies fighting the infidel. An
animal running with the pack acts as if its security, its invulnerability,
was equal to that of the whole pack; a soldier in a charge is unaware
of personal risk or neglects it while he is exhilarated by the prospect
of imminent victory; the patriot sacrifices selfish interests in service
of an ideal in return for identification with an ideal that is the sign,
symbol, the very incorporation of a huge group, larger than any he
can ever know in person. Primitive herd instinct operating through
simple imitation thus evolves at the human level into an idealism
that surmounts the instinct of self-preservation. This formulation
carries with it two important corollaries. The first is that the payment
for self-abnegation being the prestige and power of the group which
invests the individual, the larger the group the more will sacrifice be
worth while. No man would beggar himself in the service of his
bridge club, but his fortune or a life-time's service may seem small
payments for the feeling of Tightness, of moral security, which he
enjoys. The only groups large enough to justify complete abnegation
are religious and national ones. 1 It is therefore inevitable that
patriotism and piety should resemble each other in many features.
In times past vastly more study has been given to piety than to
patriotism so that the former has a vocabulary which the latter lacks.
It is natural, then, that a psychologist in discussing the phenomena
of patriotism should use terms belonging originally to religion, even

1 This statement holds for the general run of common folk. Those who devote
themselves to art, learning or research with a similar selflessness may provide an
exception. But it is legitimate to argue that they are men specialized for particular
services to the same groups. Their analogues in the animal world would be the
insects whose bodies are specialized for tasks of value to the colony,

AFTER DEATH

to theology. This is unfortunate because, to the uncritical, it may
seem that problems are being solved by the invocation of mystical,
spiritual agencies, whereas there is no such intention.

The second corollary is that, since a group ideal belongs to a
succession of generations and not to any one alone, the individual
has his day and is gone, the generation too is mortal but the group
as a whole is, by contrast, immortal. It follows that the patriot who
through his service participates in the glory of his nation can, if he
dies in that service, achieve the immortality enjoyed by the nation
or even that of all nations that subscribe to a common cause: it is
a passage from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant.

There's but one task for all,
One life for each to give.
What stands if freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?

If this argument is sound, national endurance must be as sturdy
as the nation is felt to be extensive. There are two dimensions for this
extension, time and space. A nation may, on the one hand, base its
morale on the immensity of its population or the world-wide distribu-
tion of those who worship its ideal; or, on the other hand, it may rely
on its ancient tradition of victory; or, of course, a nation fortunate
enough to enjoy wide range both in numbers and history may draw
its inspiration from both. Two conclusions could be drawn from
these principles. The first is that a small group with no traditions,
a group that is purely political and not religious, should be expected
to have poor morale. Can history give an example to disprove this ?
The second is that nations varying in possession of these assets should
have morales that differ in vulnerability. The nature of the uncon-
scious ideal will affect a people's fortitude, and that is a problem to
be discussed in the next chapter, but we may glance now at the in-
fluence which the size and age of political groups have on their morale.

Asiatics, as compared with West Europeans, breed prolifically,
have a majority of the population living precariously near the starva-

MC C 8 1 6

FATALISM AND

tion level, and are accustomed to the loss of thousands, even millions,
by pestilence, famine or flood. This has resulted in an indifference
to death that is astonishing to us. It can, perhaps, be traced to two
general factors: individual experience and communal belief.

As we saw in the first chapter, we are more afraid of dangers we
imagine than those we have experienced and survived. If the hazard
is from forces beyond human control, the survivor tends to adopt a
fatalistic philosophy. Thus we find that, roughly, fatalism is com-
monest in those parts of the world where material culture has been
least successful in protection against the perturbations of nature. The
fatalist sits with folded hands awaiting the blow that is to end him or
that will miss him according to the vagary of fortune. Nothing that
he can do will save him so he does not try and, making no effort, is
not subject to the immobilizing of urgent impulse which is so essential
a component of the fear reaction. This negative attitude docs not of
itself produce courageous resistance, but it may contribute to it. As
has been mentioned, it is more difficult to face misery than death.
That may be because the misery which is intolerable in imagination
is that to which no end can be seen except death. We can screw up
our courage to visit the dentist for a brief session of agony, but who
would not rather let his teeth rot than undergo treatment the pain
of which would eventually kill? The people of China are familiar
with flood, famine and pestilence. For many years, too, they have
known what invasion means invasion in this case being by bandits
or the armies of the War Lords. The situation in Russia is not
dissimilar, and we must remember that Russians are largely oriental.
They have known famine, forced migrations and 'liquidation' of
whole economic groups. An invader can terrify neither of these
peoples with a threat of the unknown. If resistance to an army of
occupation is going to bring only retribution such as has already
been survived, why not resist? Japan should have considered this
simple psychological principle when she invaded China in 1937.
Untaught by this example, Hitler made an even greater blunder when

IMMORTALITY

he invaded Russia in 1941. He ought to have realized that it takes
a larger army to hold down a vast, widely dispersed and hostile
population than it does to capture the key-points of its country. That
was why, with no expectation of effective opposition by the Red army,
I was sure that Hitler had started on the downhill path when he
turned East.

The communal faith which co-operates with fatalism is belief in
immortality, particularly when death means a translation to life with
the spiritual group, meaning by 'spiritual' the members with whom
actual contact in this life is unthinkable. Unimaginable contacts are
those with men of similar patriotic fervour who arc dead or not yet
born, on the one hand, or those who live so far away that they could
not be all visited. If the magnitude in numbers and dispersal of the
national population is such as to make it a world in itself, its total
destruction is not imaginable. In this small island we can imagine
all the inhabitants being wiped out by a tidal wave; but such a
catastrophe is unthinkable for the denizens of a large continental
area, particularly if it is densely populated. The suggestion of such
a disaster is inevitably countered by the conviction that there would
certainly be a lot of people left.

The dispersal of the group through time is, however, much more
important because it is so prone to be associated with either a
patriotism that is actually a religion or with one that is, psycho-
logically, of a religious character.

The best example of this is in Japan. Its recorded history extends
for about 1500 years but, by tradition, the Japanese have been a
nation for a much longer period. Other peoples may be able to
claim some kind of a continuity of culture for as long, or a longer,
period, but none can shew anything like such a protracted, conscious
nationalism. This is bound up with, and symbolized in, the divinity
of the Emperor. The belief is not a mere metaphor in the minds of
modern sophisticated subjects, a relic of the primitive belief in a
tribal god. It is an active, conscious faith, it seems. Although for

83 6-2

JAPANESE MORALE

some centuries political power was wielded by hereditary * prime
ministers', there has been at no time even a suggestion that the
Emperor's office could be dispensed with or that his person could be
violable. In modern times and among peoples who are civilized (at
least in material culture) there may be a tendency to subordinate
ecclesiastical to temporal power and, as we have seen, patriotism is,
psychologically, analogous to religion. But in Japan the two are
literally one. The primitive religion was Shintoism, of which
Sir Charles Eliot says: 'Shinto makes no appeal to reason or emotion
. . .it has no moral code; its prayers and sacrifices aim at obtaining
temporal prosperity and indicate no desire for moral or spiritual
blessings. Yet these strange lacunae arc somehow filled by its intensely
patriotic spirit. For it Japan is the land of the Gods; the greater
preside over the Empire, the lesser over towns and hamlets ; the noble
or humble dead have their due place in the cult of the state, city or
family.' The spirits of the dead are not in any heaven or hell but are
potent to produce weal or woe for the living. These ghosts are
placated by offerings or are induced to favour the worshippers by
repetition of ritual prayers, which are, in effect, incantations. This is,
from our point of view, a primitive religion and its survival alongside
an advanced material and intellectual culture is so remarkable as to
make it of crucial significance in understanding Japanese character.
It was apparently submerged in Buddhism some 1300 years ago, but
the result was an amalgamation that gave the latter a national form,
that made it a national, rather than a universal, religion. But perhaps
the strangest phenomenon is that during the eighteenth century
there was a successful movement in favour of a return to a pure
Shinto, this at the time when Europe was becoming most sophisti-
cated. In 1927 there were in Japan some 16 million Shintoists and
46 million ostensible Buddhists. Such statistics might reflect mere
formal designations but popular demonstrations confirm the survival
of primitive religion. Within the last half-century a successful general
in Formosa has had a Shinto temple dedicated to him and it is one

JAPANESE MORALE

of the principal sights in that island. Very early in Japanese history
retainers committed suicide on the death of their lord in order to
follow him into the next world. At about the beginning of the
Christian era the burial of images of the followers was substituted
for actual death under imperial edict. But the custom was revived
during the feudal period, was forbidden in 1744, and has survived
in isolated cases. In September 1912 General Nogi and his wife
committed hara-kiri on the death of the Emperor. Since then this
couple has been venerated as an example to the youth of Japan.

It seems then that ridiculous as it may seem to us the Japanese
believe themselves to be a divine people. As such they are superior
to all other, merely human, peoples. This may account for an insu-
larity that is much more extensive than any to be expected as a result
of their geographic situation. England might never have succeeded
in developing its peculiar system of political and moral ideals if it
had not been through many centuries immune to invasion. But the
British people have regarded this system as something of value for the
whole world. Here the parallel between the two island peoples, that
is striking in several respects, changes to a marked divergence.
Foreigners are, to the Japanese, like members of another species.
Humanity is not in their vocabulary. Either they have excluded
foreigners, as they did during some centuries, or else they borrow
from them and return nothing. Their earlier culture in all its aspects
was derived from China. When contact with Europe was established
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was some attempt
to copy what could be learned from the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch
and English, but this was soon abandoned in favour of exclusion.
When in the nineteenth century contact with European culture was
sought it was only with the intent to profit by it. We have long been
familiar with the cheapness of Japanese goods, but has anyone ever
heard of their exporting something of a quality unobtainable else-
where? Quite possibly the Japanese lack of originality is correlated
with their insularity. They are not without idealism but their ideals

JAPANESE MORALE

are centred in their nationalism. They copy everything from theology
to engineering that can be used in the interest of Japan, while the
object of trade with the outside world is profit for Japan. The state-
ment that science and art know no national boundaries would be
meaningless to them. Perhaps it is this intense nationalism that
inhibits devotion to science or learning as objects in themselves and,
with this, cuts off the desire for originality at its source. At any rate
the discrepancy between their industry and intelligence on the one
hand and their originality on the other is phenomenal. Another
evidence of their self-ccntrcdness is their lack of a missionary spirit.
Japanese will emigrate to earn a living, to act as spies or fifth
columnists, but they seem to have no zeal for the conversion of
foreigners to Japanese ideals in either the religious or political fields.
This egregious insularity is naturally reflected in the manner of
their waging war. Tricking a potential enemy diplomatically is no
more immoral than snaring a rabbit is to us. To warn the enemy by
a declaration of war is as silly as to blow a horn when stalking a deer.
Japanese self-sufficiency has an equally important effect on their
morale. Their national faith teaches each citizen that his life in this
world is but an incident; lovers vow to be faithful, not till death, but
for seven incarnations. Death as such has no terrors for such people,
and indeed it provides an easy escape from intolerable situations.
Naturally the suicide rate is high, although lower than that in
Germanic countries. This may be because the honourable form of
suicide is a terrible ordeal. The important place in our culture which
morals hold is taken in Japan by aesthetics according to some
authorities. But they have produced one system of ethics, namely
Bushido, which was the code of the Samurai or warrior caste. It
eschewed money and all kinds of soft living while it extolled hardi-
hood, toughness, endurance. The Samurai are, officially, no more,
but their tradition particularly among the upper classes lives on
and supplies the moral element that is lacking in Shintoism. The
result of this is that the lust for self-preservation and aggrandizement

JAPANESE MORALE

concerns the status of a life persisting through mortal generations
and merged into a life that is vastly greater, namely that of the
national, immortal, even divine group.

It seems, then, that the Japanese character is such as to fulfil the
conditions for perfect morale which we have laid down. Single
defeats, even those that obviously presage ultimate disaster, should
not dishearten this warrior nation. If they surrender it will be for
purely tactical reasons and will not swerve them from their purpose.
I can see no cure for this cancer in the body of humanity except its
extirpation. Perhaps, because we are dealing with psychological and
not physiological factors, the 'cancer' will starve itself to death.
Certainly when defeated Japan will be impoverished; with the bank-
ruptcy of its ideology its people will revert to barbarism with a reduced
population or else, one must hope, self-preservation may encourage
first a formal, and later a genuine, spirit of humanity, a dropping of
their archaic isolationism in favour of co-operation with the rest of
mankind. Barring this conversion the extinction of Japan would
seem inevitable, for its ethos allows only of the alternatives of world
dominion or suicide. For the present, however, it would seem that
psychological considerations do not justify any hope of a breakdown
in Japanese morale but at least they indicate the possibility of their
tactics becoming suicidal. Once the A.B.C.D. Powers gain the upper
hand in equipment their enemy is unlikely to retreat, as would be
tactically advisable, but may well commit hara-kiri on a grand scale
by pitting mere bodies against machine guns. So the destruction of
their armed forces, when it once begins, may be rapid.

Wide dispersal of the national group is of similar importance in
psychological conjectures about Chinese morale. Here dispersal in
space assumes an importance denied to that factor in Japan, whereas
its culture has a conscious antiquity more extensive than that of its
upstart neighbour. Everything that has been said about oriental
disregard of death and misery is truer of China than of any other
country with the possible exception of India. So we may be confident

CHINESE MORALE

that the individual combatant will shew a fatalistic stoicism. But
how will hope or fear as to the survival of his country be affected by
reverses? The Chinese have seen whole provinces nearly wiped out
by famine or flood and learned that such cataclysms are but tem-
porary. China is so vast, both in numbers and area, that it must be
difficult for any of its inhabitants to envisage it as less than a world
in itself. It has no one capital, either political or economic, that is
essential for the maintenance of national life. It is like a sponge or
a jelly-fish that can be stabbed here, there, anywhere, without its
vitality being seriously reduced. No matter how many invaders
penetrate his country, the Chinaman sees many more of his fellows
than of his enemies ; he sees them in the streets, in the fields, in the
factories : Chinese life is going on as it has for thousands of years.
The enemy is an insect that can sting, not a wolf that can take him
by the throat, because China has, psychologically, no throat. It
hasn't that kind of a body. Indeed it is not a body at all; it is a spirit
as old as history and inspiring the Chinese wherever they are behaving
like Chinamen.

But what is this China, this idea of a nation? Here we meet with
another contrast in comparison with Japan. National consciousness
has been intense in the island but weak in the continent. Is there any
psychological reason why geography should have this effect? There
is. Every man owes loyalty to a number of groups which do not call
on him for service equally and continuously. He tends to devote
himself to whatever group is threatened or is presented with an
opportunity for expansion of its interests. When his business demands
his attention, he behaves as if he had lost interest in his family, while
if there is family illness he may neglect his trade or profession. What
excites national unity, what makes the citizen aware of his citizenship,
is contact with the outer world, i.e. international rivalry. Reminders
of this rivalry come to those who have contact with foreigners and
this contact takes place chiefly at the periphery of the state. (Facile
intercommunication between parts of the country naturally spreads

CHINESE MORALE

knowledge of the foreigner, but this never annihilates the primacy
of direct contact. Isolationism is as inevitable in the centre of the
United States as it is impossible in Switzerland.) Roughly, the length
of its borders increases arithmetically while its area increases geo-
metrically, when any country grows larger. It follows therefore that
the bigger a country is in area the larger will be its internal popula-
tion as compared with that in the zone of contact with foreigners.
Sea-borne pirates, traders and fishermen have kept a large proportion
of the Japanese aware of their own nationality. In China, on the
other hand, most of its millions have throughout the centuries had
no reason to regard foreigners as anything but legendary. China has
been for centuries the world of the average Chinaman and therefore
the consciously patriotic Chinaman has been as rare as is the true
' citizen of the world ' with us.

The focal point for Japanese loyalty has been the Divine Emperor,
but the Chinese emperor has not been divine he has even been a
foreigner, a Manchu, for example. The central national authority
has therefore been for the Chinaman a convenience or an irritation,
not anything it was a duty and privilege to serve. But this does not
mean that there has been no unifying agency in Chinese society. It
has been one most signally absent in Japan, namely ethics. Confucius
lived and taught some 2500 years ago, yet his name is still revered in
China. This does not mean that Confucianism enshrines the soul of
China, but it does mean that a community in moral outlook is, and
has been, held to be essential. People with unanimity in their views
of right and wrong cannot fight each other for long. Confucius
taught not merely that each one must play the part which his position
in society gave him but also that ceremony is essential in the main-
tenance of human relations. In our culture it may not be true that
' Manners maketh man ', but certainly manners maketh the China-
man. If ' China ' is unified by an ethical system as other lands are
by religious, economic, political or military ideals, then we must note
that the system is not labelled 'Chinese'. The ethics of Confucius

CHINESE MORALE

were for all mankind, not just for the denizens of Eastern Asia. This
would supply the element of universality which is so important in an
ideal on which morale may be based.

But mere similarity in custom and outlook does not of itself produce
loyalty, the latter has to be focused on and organized round some-
thing which can symbolize unity, that is, something which can be
consciously apprehended and consciously served. In China this has
been the family. Ancestor worship is universal, the various genera-
tions live together ruled by the head of the family of the moment and,
when he dies, it is only a matter of Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi. Business,
although it may seem to be that of an individual merchant, is really
conducted in the interests of the family and its policy is that of the
family. Most important of all, perhaps, is that the individual is not
held to be a free moral agent: his behaviour is governed by the family
code, the family honour. For instance, it is said that a bargain made
by an individual in his own name has not been considered to be
necessarily binding, whereas one made in the name of the family has
been sacrosanct ; to go back on that would be to disgrace the family
and therefore to call down on the sinner the wrath of countless
generations of forebears as well as the disapprobation of contem-
porary relatives. The Chinaman has therefore lived in communion
with an immortal group and his life has been part of its life.

This identification has not been only an habitual, and perhaps
unconscious, attitude; it has been conscious, expressed in various
precepts and reinforced by daily worship of the ancestors who have
their home in a shrine that is part of the family compound. Equally
conscious has been the relegation of patriotism to a secondary posi-
tion. How can a people who have for centuries regarded fighting as
being beneath the dignity of the well-born, who rated soldiers with
dustmen in the social scale, now become not merely patriotic but
belligerently so? If we were dealing only with conscious factors there
could be only one answer. Superficially viewed China is only as old
as its Republic and, when attacked by Japan, it was still rent by the

CHINESE MORALE

rivalries of the War Lords and the almost equally bitter conflict of
ideologies. The country was a political experiment not a unified
nation; it was governed largely by a lot of young hot-heads whose
chief qualification seemed to be a conviction that they knew better
than their fathers, who seemed bent on the destruction of just those
institutions which guaranteed stability. But time and an external
influence have wrought essential changes. The turbulent youths of
the igso's are becoming middle-aged and have been chastened by
experience. More important for the revolutionary students were,
after all, only a handful among China's millions has been the
influence of Japan.

The original ferment which leavened the inert complacency of
China came from the contact of students in Europe and America
with Western culture. There they became acquainted with the
triumphs of applied science, with highly conscious nationalism, and
with the disdain of unthinking Westerners (the majority) for a people
who used hand-barrows instead of motor-trucks. These students
returned to China resentful both of their country's backwardness and
of the foreigners' attitude. So they were resolved to imitate machine-
made culture, which was easily done by wearing European clothes,
drinking cocktails and dancing to jazz, and more tediously by intro-
ducing 'science' wherever they could. On the other hand they too
had become consciously patriotic and expressed this in anti-foreign
agitation which was focused on the Treaty Ports and Foreign Con-
cessions. To the vast bulk of Chinese, lacking conscious patriotism,
these evidences of foreign intrusion were no more degrading than
are a few fleas to a dog, while those in contact with the foreigner
found the concessions refuges in times of riot and sources of profitable
trade. Had there been no external influence to turn the scales, it is
quite possible that the inertia of 400 million conservatives would
have been too much for the riotous students. But there was Japan.
Had the Japanese been patient, had they fallen in with the China-
for-the-Chinese propaganda and disclaimed any ambition conflicting

CHINESE MORALE

with Chinese interests, they might have infiltrated the country until
it was completely in their hands economically. But they were in a
hurry. They grabbed Manchuria, they threatened North China, they
made a bid to capture Shanghai. The young revolutionaries picked
on Japan as the chief foreign aggressor and then the Japanese began
to demonstrate to the Chinese as a whole that the young firebrands
were right. Ancient families have long memories: they know that
the oppressor is an upstart who falls as quickly as he has risen and
that, if one is patient, the tyranny will pass; non-resistance is the best
answer to the tyrant. But here was a new problem, not a local or
a temporary threat but a universal one. Not one clan was menaced
but the very social system which made the clan organization a
possibility. What was unconsciously present as a unanimity of belief
in a way of living was made into a conscious nationalism by the
brutal aggression of a foreign power.

The Chinese social system has so subordinated individual interests
to an everlasting group that loyalty is second nature. Inured to
calamity, bred to the belief that any catastrophe is temporary and
identified by service with his ancestors, contemporaries and de-
scendants, and united in his devotion with four hundred million
comrades, the individual Chinese will struggle so long as breath is
left to him. In defence they are sure to maintain the magnificent
morale they have so far exhibited. On the other hand, not being a
warlike people, their nature would have to change profoundly before
they would have much heart for a war beyond their borders.

When we turn to the case of Russia we find at once analogies but
also great differences. There is the same wide dispersal of a people
4 so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which
is by the sea shore innumerable '. There is the same oriental disregard
of life and familiarity with misery. For these reasons we should
expect the Russians to be undismayed by threats of invasion and
unshaken by its success. But what ancient tradition, what way of
life, would they be defending? What is the historic Russian national

RUSSIAN MORALE

ideal? If there is one at all, it is difficult to discern. There is no
common language, no common religion, and what consistency in
form of government can now be seen is only a few years old. In fact
what seems at one time or another to have been the basis of unity
has given way to another. So kaleidoscopic has the history of Russia
been that prediction as to its future is fantastically guess-work. If we
regard the culture of Western Europe as adult and that of America
as adolescent, then we should have to say that Russian culture is in
its infancy, lusty though the infant be. Russia is anomalous in another
respect. European civilization has evolved slowly, little influenced
from without. The Americans and the Dominions of the British
Empire have developed from the traditions of Europe carried over-
seas by immigrants who displaced completely the savage cultures in
the lands they penetrated. But the Russian Empire is a true melting
pot of East and West, each has absorbed the other, while the elements
in Russian evolution that are derived from Western Europe represent
not so much the gift or imposition of immigrants or conquerors as
borrowings by a state that has resented foreign intrusion. Few people
realize how new a country Russia is. Of course if the age of a nation
is to be reckoned from the period when its existing political institu-
tions were established, Russia is not even twenty-five years old,
because it was some years after the 1917 revolution that something
like its present form of government was evolved. But we must pre-
sume that * country' refers to something in the nature of a people and
that it is not just a geographical term. What unifying principle, or
principles, can be detected in Russian history, elements carried over
from the Tsarist regime and thus providing such a continuity as
would fortify morale?

The cradle of Russia was in the wooded plains lying between and
around the Dnieper and the Don, particularly in their upper reaches.
Here roamed and fought tribes from the Baltic, Turks from the South
and Mongol peoples from the East. Northmen attained an uneasy
supremacy about the period when legend was turning into history.

RUSSIAN MORALE

At the end of the tenth century they espoused Christianity in its
* Orthodox' form and at the end of the fifteenth century the state
identified itself with the support of this faith, since Constantinople
had ceased to be the central home of the Eastern Church. The
situation had its analogy in the identity throughout centuries of the
Caliphate with the Ottoman Sultanate. This religious factor was
important in the crystallizing out of a homogeneous political group
from among the kaleidoscopically changing domination of one or
another nomadic tribe in this region. But, since the incorporation of
huge areas of Asia into the later Russian Empire was not accompanied
by conversion of the new * Russians ' to a Russian religion, and since
religion has been discountenanced by the Soviet, this factor can
hardly be invoked now as tradition important for the unity and
morale of contemporary Russia.

Although a common faith was operating from the end of the
fifteenth century to give the Russians a consciousness of being a
people set apart, there were so many changes of rule until 1613 that
there was little chance of a political consciousness developing. Then,
however, the Romanovs came into power and with their autocracy
established and maintained a consistency of government that endured
until the Revolution of 1917. Like China and Japan, and perhaps
because of their being largely Asiatic, the Russians have always been
isolationists. In consequence of this exclusive policy their material
culture lagged behind that of Western Europe, in fact they had as
much or more an Asiatic civilization than a European one. Contact
with Europe began, however, to exert an influence in the latter half
of the seventeenth century and Peter the Great's victories and his
removal of the capital to St Petersburg in 1 703 made Russia part of
Europe. A regularized system of government, a 'constitution',
appeared only under Catherine the Great ( 1 775). Provision was then
made for the first time for local government both on its administrative
and judicial sides, power being vested in the hands of the local
nobility under the overriding authority of the central autocracy. In

RUSSIAN MORALE

a sense, therefore, modern Russia dates from this period. Although
Russia-in-Europe was a smaller country than the territory now thus
designated, it was made into a country with both a characteristic
religion and a characteristic political system, the latter being capable
of application to further territories. That Russia had a life of 142 years,
from 1775 to 1917. Since its form of government was superseded in
the Revolution, it can hardly be regarded as providing an ancient
tradition, such as could support morale.

Community of language is even more unsuitable as a factor in
morale. The U.S.S.R. contains (according to the Russian Academy
of Sciences) 169 ethnic groups divided into ten major divisions.
Diversity of language is almost as great. True it is that three-quarters
of the population speak Slavonic tongues, but only just over half
speak the * Great Russian' tongue. And even this, as a literary
language, is astonishingly new, dating only from the latter part of
the eighteenth century. Prior to this time there was an oral literature,
but written speech was the Greek of the learned ecclesiastics (analo-
gous to the use of Latin in the Middle Ages in Western Europe).
Then an indication of growth of a national feeling came a group
of writers who amalgamated Greek with the vernacular as well as
borrowing words from Western Europe. This process was roughly
analogous to the fusion of Anglo-Saxon with French and Latin to
form the English tongue more than four centuries earlier.

And what of imperialistic tradition? How old is it? This is a
difficult question to answer. While Spaniards, Frenchmen and
Englishmen were seeking adventure, trade, conversion of heathen or
relief from oppression at home in excursions overseas, the Russians
were pushing tentacles out towards the East. By the middle of the
seventeenth century some adventurers had penetrated to the mouth
of the Amur. Russian settlers and a few forts were strung across
Northern Siberia, but it was only in the middle of the nineteenth
century that the land was formally occupied. The Empire, then, is
of recent date. Centralized government held it together, of course,

RUSSIAN MORALE

but what sentiment was there, prior to the Revolution, to hold it
together? Only loyalty to the supreme autocrat, the Tsar. The myth
of the 'little father' was, throughout the nineteenth century,
vigorously propagated by church and state officials. The peasants
were largely illiterate and necessarily ignorant. So it was not difficult
to represent to them that it was the Tsar's soldiers who protected
them from Turk or Mongol and that, no matter what might be the
tyranny of the local landowners or potentates, the distant and God-
like Tsar was a kindly father thinking tenderly of the welfare of his
humble children : Russia was one family. This was probably a strong
motif in Russian imperial morale and, very likely, it still survives,
having been transferred first to Lenin and then to Stalin. Another
bit of propaganda panslavism may have been an important factor
in government circles under the old regime, but it is unlikely to have
much influence in the U.S.S.R., too many of whose millions are not
Slavs, merely 'comrades' in the Soviets.

So far, then, apart from the possible exception of the ' one family '
idea, there seems to be no tradition that can have survived the Revo-
lution. But this is to forget that that upheaval had its roots, and here
is a tradition at least as old as Russia in Europe as a regularized
political unit and much older than the totality of pre-revolutionary
Russia. The idea of political liberty is a luxury developing among
people who are not living at a bare subsistence level. Russia has
always been a backward country so far as material culture goes,
which means that the vast majority of its people have enjoyed a low
standard of comfort. Intellectuals from the end of the seventeenth
century may have resented autocracy, but the intellectuals have been
largely killed off. What counts to-day is the traditional aspiration of
the peasant. People who are hovering on the edge of starvation
resent having the fruits of their labour wrung from them to enrich
employers and landlords whose idleness, luxury and profligacy they
can witness for themselves. A distant autocratic ruler can be accepted
as part of the inscrutable and unchangeable ordering of nature which

RUSSIAN MORALE

is itself governed by an omnipotent God. But to see the fruits of one's
labour squandered while one starves is not to be endured. Conse-
quently the victims of such oppression cast their longings for reform
in economic terms. The serf who belonged to the soil yearned to have
the soil belong to him. The 'Reforms' of Catherine the Great gave
more power to the landlords and increased agrarian disquiet. As
early as 1773 there was a peasant revolt. Although its success was
local and temporary, the bitterness which fomented it survived. The
liberation of the serfs in 1 86 1 served actually to accentuate it. To
compensate landowners for the land transferred to the peasants they
were paid by bonds the interest on which had to be paid by the
latter, who could actually own this land (often too small a parcel to
support a family) only by retirement of the bonds. It has been said
that the peasants ceased to be slaves of the landowners only to
become 'serfs of the state'. Many of them migrated to the towns,
where their sweated labour was exploited in Russia's belated industrial
revolution. Economic frustration pursued them. Little wonder that
the masses seethed, that anarchism, nihilism, socialism and terrorism
flourished in spite of the efficiency of the secret police. To own not
merely land but all sources of production became the ambition, the
ideal of the masses. The Revolution was as inevitable as its basis was
traditional.

We strive to attain our ambitions, but when a goal is attained we
rest unless and until we erect some other ideal. Had the Russian
people attained the fruits as well as title of ownership, the urge to
concerted action might by now have been dissipated, or there might
be disillusionment had immediate prosperity been promised them.
But it was here that Lenin's psychological intuition came into play.
The proletariat were told that it was not enough to dispossess the
Tsar, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie ; the assets of the country
would have to be more efficiently exploited, agriculture and industry
would have to be mechanized on most modern principles. These
changes could not be made overnight, not even perhaps in one

MCC 97 7

RUSSIAN MORALE

generation. So the people must be patient, must work for their
children and their children's children, expecting nothing for them-
selves but the satisfaction of knowing they were building a brave new
world. Material gain is a poor basis for a permanent ideal, but to
those who live on the edge of starvation security is the most natural
of aspirations and, indeed, may be an exclusive one. The Russians
have seen the arrival of (to them) magical tractors and aeroplanes,
they have witnessed the miracles of modern engineering, a new earth
is visible and a new Heaven can be descried just beyond the horizon.
Material blessings that have to them an almost spiritual value are
now the object of an enemy's attack; worse than that, this enemy is
fighting with the avowed policy of enslaving whom he conquers.
Hate of the oppressor is no new phenomenon in Russia. Thus the
Soviets can call on loyalty to a group that lives through many
generations as well as one composed of inexhaustible millions.

The logic of emotions is post hoc ergo propter hoc, as we have seen,
and this seems to hold for societies as well as individuals. During
a war history is searched for precedents. Attention is turned to past
victories snatched from apparent defeat, to past heroism and to past
heroes, the last not merely as examples, for their spirits may be
invoked to join in the battle, usually metaphorically but sometimes
literally. It would be interesting to know what effect this tendency is
now having on the Russian outlook. The only unifying factor with
a truly long history is religion and it has already been reported that
state disapprobation of the church has changed to tolerance. Folk
beliefs die hard and may exhibit themselves in strange ways. A pecu-
liarity of Russian hagiology was that the body of a true saint never
knew corruption ; so to the Russians there was nothing grotesque in
having Lenin's body embalmed and exposed to the view of millions
of pilgrims. They have, of course, extolled the memories of revolu-
tionary martyrs, and they have made a film about a general who
rose from the ranks in Tsarist days. But will they, in search for heroic
precedent, revert to the victories of the Tsars and the prowess of

GERMAN MORALE

warrior aristocrats? My guess is that they will. The more nationalism
grows the more will the Revolution become an incident in the life of
a people whose age will thereby be greatly extended.

Germany and Italy are countries of recent origin in their present
political forms and both have relatively small areas. Each is aware
of these limitations and has striven with some measure of success to
compensate for the deficiencies by propaganda. Let us consider the
case of Germany first.

In one sense the country is as young as the Third Reich, but it can
legitimately claim an older tradition than that. There is a clear
continuity between Hitler, Bismarck and Frederick the Great, a
continuity visible to the outsider and claimed by Nazi ideology. This,
however, is the tradition of Prussia, not of all the German states until
they had, imperfectly, been brought under the sway of Prussia late
in the nineteenth century. Because Mem Kampfwas an autobiography
and a discussion of the problems and programme of the Party as well
as propaganda for all Germans, there are in it many, and surprising,
admissions of German weaknesses. One of these is of the lack of
moral resistiveness that belongs to a young country. On p. 52 7 we read :

. . .only three phenomena have emerged which we must consider as
lasting fruits of political happenings definitely determined by our foreign
policy.

1 i ) The colonization of the Eastern Mark, which was mostly the work
of the Bauvari.

(2) The organization of the Brandenburg-Prussian State, which was the
work of the Hohenzollerns and which became the model for the crystalliza-
tion of a new Reich. . . .

The third great success achieved by our political activity was the estab-
lishment of the Prussian State and the development of a particular State
concept which grew out of this. To the same source we are to attribute the
organization of the instinct of national self-preservation and self-defence in
the German Army, an achievement which suited the modern world. The
transformation of the idea of self-defence on the part of the individual into
the duty of national defence is derived from the Prussian State and the new 1
statal concept which it introduced. It would be impossible to over-estimate

1 My italics.

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GERMAN MORALE

the importance of this historical process. Disrupted by excessive indi-
vidualism, the German nation became disciplined under the organization
of the Prussian Army and in this way recovered at least some of the capacity
to form a national community, which in the case of other peoples had
originally arisen through the constructive urge of the herd instinct.

If the 'constructive urge of the herd instinct' produces natural and
spontaneous national unity which does not seem to be a distortion
of Hitler's meaning then he is saying that modern Germany is an
artificial creation and that it dates from Prussian hegemony. But
Hitler goes further than this, he even admits that this recency in
tradition implies a weakness in defensive morale. On p. 547 he says:

French war aims would have been obtained through the world war if,
as was originally hoped in Paris, the struggle had been carried out on German
soil. Let us imagine the bloody battles of the world war not as having taken
place on the Sommc, in Flanders, in Artois, in front of Warsaw, Nizhni-
Novgorod, Kovno, and Riga but in Germany, in the Ruhr or on the Main,
on the Elbe, in front of Hanover, Leipzig, Nurnberg, etc. If such happened,
then we must admit that the destruction of Germany might have been
accomplished. It is very much open to question if our young federal State
could have borne the hard struggle for four and a half years, as it was borne
by a France that had been centralized for centuries, with the whole national
imagination focused on Paris.. . .1 am fully convinced that if things had
taken a different course there would no longer be a German Reich to-day
but only 'German States'.

Closely related to age of tradition in promotion of morale in a
nation is the area it inhabits. The connection was by no means hidden
from Hitler, as the following quotations shew (pp. 524, 525, 526) :

Looked at from the purely territorial point of view, the area comprised
in the German Reich is insignificant in comparison with the other States
that are called 'World Powers'.. . .

We must always face this bitter truth with clear and calm minds. We must
study the area and population of the German Reich in relation to the other
States and compare them down through the centuries. We shall then find
that, as I have said, Germany is not a World Power whether its military
strength be great or not. . . .

. . . Without respect for * tradition* and without any preconceived notions,
the Movement must find the courage to organize our national forces and set
them on the path which will lead them away from that territorial restriction
which is the bane of our national life to-day, and win a new territory for them.

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GERMAN MORALE

The German people as a whole, lacking the right beliefs and having
the wrong ones, needed education to furnish them with a spirit to
match Prussian arms. All who have read Thus Spake Germany will
have had a surfeit of evidence to shew that propaganda to this end
began long before the Nazis undertook to rewrite history and
anthropology. The contemporary versions of the tale are merely
exaggerations and trumpetings of what went before. We are all
familiar with the theme and its argument. Western civilization is
Aryan; Aryan equals Nordic and the Germans are the great Nordic
power; the history of European achievement is German history and
wherever there are Germans there is, morally, a bit of Germany and
soon it will be German in actuality. (Ancillary to this is the 'bio-
logical' argument that the Nordics, i.e. Germans, are a superior
people, so, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the Third Reich,
which has purified its blood, has a biological right to any part of the
world it wants. Biological laws are inexorable. Q.E.D.)

To us this is grotesque; but we must remember that when we deal
psychologically with beliefs we are not concerned with their objective
validity but with the genuineness of the faith. We have no reason to
suppose that there is any mystic power in tradition to keep it alive
when there are none transmitting it. False history thoroughly incul-
cated and undisputed can manufacture a tradition. Given a com-
plete censorship excluding countervailing information from abroad
and suppressing it domestically for one complete generation, false
history would become accepted tradition. The difficulty is to make
the censorship complete. Parents or grandparents will talk and
citizens will travel abroad or offer hospitality to foreigners unim-
pressed by the censorship. The process must therefore be gradual and
to keep pushing the same doctrines consistently for a series of genera-
tions demands a continuity of policy by authority that is difficult to
maintain. In Germany propaganda in favour of the theory that
Germans are responsible for all main cultural advances has been
going on for more than fifty years. There would now be few Germans

101

GERMAN MORALE

who would dream of criticizing Hitler's statement : ' For centuries
Russia owed the source of its livelihood as a State to the Germanic
nucleus of its governing classes.' (He forgot, or was ignorant of,
Bismarck's theory that Prussians were superior to other Germans be-
cause they were half Slav.) To Germans to-day it is a fact that the first
telegraphs, telephones and wireless sets were invented in Germany
and there is nothing grotesque in the claim that Shakespeare's plays
are German classics. But to amalgamate this conviction of cultural
superiority with an acceptance of Prussian domination and a tradi-
tion of military invincibility is beyond the power of Goebbels and his
team. In Bavarian rural communities at least as late as the summer
of 1939 the Prussians were regarded as foreign intruders. So long as
Prussianism promises the rewards of conquest, its domination will be
acceptable, but it remains as a scapegoat on which blame for German
misery can be put, when those promises become a mockery. And
propaganda has set itself an impossible task when it tries to marry the
idea of German invincibility with tradition. The memory of defeat
is too recent and too bitter to be denied. In fact Mem Kampf is
concerned largely with an attempt to explain it away as due to
inherent weaknesses in the Kaiser's Reich that were to be swept
away by National Socialism. In other words victory could be secured
only by making a break with tradition. Again, the religion of blood
and soil might provide an invigorating inspiration if its worship were
pure. But Hitler compromised this faith when he trafficked with
Stalin in 1939 and now German allies are Finns, Hungarians and
Rumanians the latter two being previously marked down for
slavery as being inferior peoples. Of course such alliances can be
defended on grounds of expediency but they put a strain on faith in
the war as a crusade. Worst of all is the league with the despised
I talians and the hated Japanese. Was not the ' yellow peril ' a German
discovery and one of the most important factors in construction of
the Aryan-Nordic-German myth?

There is thus little ground for expecting the German in days of

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ITALIAN MORALE

trial to rely on his brotherhood with widespread millions of fellow
believers or on his mystical union with myriads of comrades now in
Valhalla. Such support for morale is not to be created by propa-
ganda, which at best can only build an image of the desired reality.
A god can answer prayers, an idol cannot. The weakness Hitler
recognized as inherent in the youth of any state is still there and cannot
be exorcised. But youth has its virtues. If fortitude rested solely on
tradition, history would be unable to record the rise of new nations,
of new powers. Nazi theory has introduced an inconsistency into
its ideology and one that may become glaring. It would have done
better to stress the virility of youth exclusively. But that would have
been difficult. When the majority of peoples in a confederation are
of a bourgeois mentality and are dominated by one warlike section,
they are bound to have a latent feeling of inferiority. This inferiority
leads inevitably to compensations one of which is a claim for a kind
of historical greatness that is palpably unjustified.

We may, perhaps, hazard the guess that the Nazis have put new
wine into old wine-skins. Such a statement is, however, fully justified
in discussing Fascist propaganda. Indeed Italy gives a signal proof
of the futility of an attempt to fabricate by artificial means the kind
of morale that normally is of gradual growth through a series of
generations. 'From the fall of the Roman Empire till modern times
the Italians have had no political unity, no independence, no
organized existence as a nation. Their history is not the history of
a united people, centralizing arid absorbing its constituent elements
by a process of continued evolution, but of a group of cognate
populations, exemplifying various types of constitutional develop-
ment.' 1 The present Italy was the work of Cavour's diplomacy,
Garibaldi's fire and Victor Emmanuel IPs common sense. The
fighting involved was hardly such as to write a glorious page in
Italian history. First there were the battles of Magenta and Solferino
in 1859. In the former all the fighting was done by the French. In
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica > I4th edition.
103

ITALIAN MORALE

the latter the Italian part of the allied forces was first defeated and
then advanced only against the Austrian rear-guard which was forced
to withdraw for tactical reasons. Lombardy was thus added to the
Sardinias. Next Garibaldi's filibusters assisted the revolutionaries in
the Two Sicilies to dislodge their Bourbon rulers. Fighting only
against Italian troops, he won a series of victories. Modern Italy was
completed when Austria in 1866 was forced to cede Venetia. This
was a peculiarly inglorious victory because the Italians were defeated
by the Austrians but the latter received such a drubbing from the
Italians' ally Prussia that they were forced to withdraw from the
territory they had successfully defended. This left only Rome outside
the confederation. Garibaldi and other Italian patriots attempted
in vain to take it so long as the French assisted in its defence; but
when the French garrison was withdrawn, during the Franco-
Prussian War, the Italian troops walked in. The foundations of the
Empire were not laid without fighting but none of it was glorious;
even the Italo-Turkish War of 191 1-12 was rather a desultory affair
in which no well-armed and disciplined forces were encountered.
During the Great War, when they were alone the Italians were
terribly beaten although later fighting well in company with French
and British support. This contrast has been repeated during the
present war, in which the Italians have always crumpled when by
themselves but have acquitted themselves more creditably when
shoulder to shoulder with the Germans. In their greatest unaided
struggle against the Abyssinians they apparently were able to
conquer only with the use of gas against an army and a population
totally unprotected against that weapon.

This is a strange history. Many individual Italians are courageous,
even intrepid, as their prowess in motor and air racing shews. Even
in the mass they can be brave, provided they have warlike allies at
their side. It would seem that they lack confidence in themselves
and, if the present analysis of national morale is sound, the reason is
not far to seek. Italy is a small country, whose people have known

104

ITALIAN MORALE

tyranny for centuries but never freedom. To them the word * Italian '
has meant a common language, a common culture, perhaps, but not
one that was peculiarly national, while of military tradition there
has not been a trace. (The innumerable wars between the various
states were fought chiefly by mercenaries and not by a citizen
soldiery.) What is of chief psychological interest here is the com-
pleteness of the failure of the Fascists to inculcate morale by propa-
ganda and regimentation. Italians are individualists and have a
degree of individual resourcefulness, imagination and originality that
is perhaps to be correlated with their lack of national cohesiveness,
since the latter tends inevitably towards conventionalization of
thinking. Such a people could hardly be expected to give anything
like spontaneous support to a totalitarian state organization; they
would turn more naturally to a democratic form of government.
Their acquiescence in Fascist domination would therefore indicate
a lack of group support for their natural democratic ideal; in other
words they lack such a patriotism as engenders the fighting spirit.
If cowardice has made Fascism possible, subservience to its dictates
ought to have confirmed that cowardice and actually to have pre-
vented the development of true patriotism. This is, perhaps, the
reason why the fighting qualities of the Italians seem to be even
poorer in this war than they were in the last.

Like his ally Hitler, Mussolini seems to have sensed the importance
for morale of a tradition of military greatness and of wide dispersal
of territory. Lacking either in actuality, Mussolini has borrowed
both. Proceeding from the indubitable fact that modern Italy houses
the ruins of the ancient city of Rome, he has announced that the
ancient Roman Empire is the natural heritage of modern Italians
all they have to do is to go out and take it. Probably there is as much
Roman blood in Italy as there is anywhere, although even there it
must be well diluted by now. But what Mussolini has forgotten,
wilfully neglects, or never has realized, is that it is continuity of
tradition and not blood that counts. Only a people who are com-

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BRITISH MORALE

pletcly docile intellectually could have such a tradition foisted on
them. The most frenzied oratory cannot make the Italian feel the
milk of a wolf-mother warm in his throat. King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table, accepted by the British people as a
myth, exert more influence on British morale than the 'history' of
Romulus and Remus on that of the Italians.

Finally, to exemplify the operation of the factors of space and
time, we may consider their operation in fortifying the spirit of the
peoples of the British Empire.

History records no empire that has ever been so widely dispersed
over the surface of the globe or contained so many subjects as that
ruled by King George the Sixth. As has been explained, a national
group includes all those who have adopted and made their own the
traditions peculiar to the people. These may include elements bor-
rowed, or inherited, by other nations. If such elements constitute an
ideal that is believed to be threatened, a whole group of nations
may temporarily be welded together in the struggle for main-
tenance of that ideal. This is particularly true of the bond uniting
the Empire with the United States. The cultures of Britain and
America are different, more different than is often supposed, but the
British system of parliamentary government coupled with an insistence
on individual liberty has been amalgamated with Americanism
through the magic of the phrase * Anglo-Saxon traditions'. Con-
sequently, when the Empire is threatened by powers upholding
contrary ideals, there is a relentless tendency in the States for sympathy
to grow until it is expressed in actual military co-operation. This
sympathy is expected in Britain and contributes its quota to morale.
We feel not only that we are fighting for the world but that, backed
by our cousins, we make up the major part of the world, something
much too big ever to be defeated. One of the strategic landmarks
of this war was the ' Dunkirk ' speech of the Prime Minister on June 4th
and one passage in it, which will probably go down in history as a
classic, is so direct an invocation of the principle I have been trying

1 06

BRITISH MORALE

to describe in clumsy psychological exposition that it may well take
the place of any further adumbration of this theme.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the
seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
in the air, we shall defend our island, no matter what the cost may be, we
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a
large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the
seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle,
until in God's good time the new world, with all its power and might, steps
forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

There is probably no country belonging to the Western civiliza-
tions that is so conscious of its long history as is Britain. This does not
mean that its people are historically minded in the academic sense:
far from it. Many are ignorant of what centuries saw the Armada
and Trafalgar, of the name of the king when Waterloo was fought,
and to many the statement that King Alfred fought at Agincourt
might occasion no surprise. But every proper Englishman knows
that for countless centuries Englishmen have fought against superior
odds in defence of 'liberty ' and have always won resounding victories
in the end, victories as important for the world as for the victors.
There are no storied campaigns of aggression; the Empire has,
somehow, just happened, perhaps as a reward from a discerning
Providence for the defence of liberty, perhaps it has been given -by
the same Providence to the only people in the world who arc capable
of ruling ' natives ' to their benefit. This is, of course, not history at
all but merely tradition; it is, however, a tradition that is regarded
as history, i.e. as a record of facts. The record extends back for so
many centuries that it represents one aspect of the general ordering
of the universe, and that the British should cease to be a chosen
people is a fantastical notion that no practical, commonsense person
would bother his head about.

It is some such myth that gives unconscious backing to British
morale, and why not? The proof of the pudding is the eating, which

107

BRITISH MORALE

is a most unscientific statement but is the essence of the post hoc ergo
propter hoc logic which governs emotions. For countless centuries
foreigners have been as maddened by this arrogance as the believers
have been fortified by it. It has never been disproved and, indeed,
it does prove something that there is a stubborn, conservative
vitality in the British ethos which has given this country its unique
position in the world to-day. It is the only great power that has
maintained throughout many centuries a consistency in its political
constitution and social institutions. Evolution has been constant but
revolution absent with the exception of the highly temporary Com-
monwealth in the seventeenth century. At no time has it been possible
to say that the country was essentially different from what it had
been a year or ten years before. Is there any other land in which the
citizen, in time of crisis, can open his history book, read of what
happened centuries before and exclaim, 'But this might have been
written of to-day ! '

Since precedent has never let the people down they turn to it
automatically when in trouble. The politician cites parallels while
the daily press prints racy anecdotes. Against the numbers, the
armament and the technical proficiency of the enemy we pit the
Armada and Waterloo. The folk-lore of Drake's Drum is half-
believed consciously, while unconsciously, symbolically, it is accepted.
When, as during the last war, Nelson is portrayed in a recruiting
poster as now asking Englishmen to do their duty, there is no aware-
ness of absurdity. It is all an appeal to the immortality theme. The
heroes of the past are not dead, they fight for us and we fight for
them; if we die in this conflict we attain to deathless glory. As usual
the argument, the claim, is better expressed in poetry because in it
there is no attempt at conscious logic which excites criticism and
metaphor is accepted as an expression of truths that are moral rather
than factual. Thomas Campbell's Te Mariners of England gives, indeed,
a sufficiently close summary of the immortality theme to justify
quotations from it:

1 08

BRITISH MORALE

Ye Mariners of England

That guard our native seas,

Whose flag has braved a thousand years

The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard raise again

To match another foe, . . .

The spirit of your fathers

Shall start from every wave !

For the deck it was their field of fame,

And Ocean was their grave :

Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,

Your manly hearts shall glow, . . .

The meteor flag of England

Shall yet terrific burn,

Till danger's troubled night depart

And the star of peace return.

Then, then, ye ocean warriors!

Our song and feast shall flow

To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow;

When the fiery fight is heard no more,

And the storm has ceased to blow.

IOQ

CHAPTER 6

NATIONAL SCALES OF VALUE

I HAVE previously said that there is no one morale, but that each
country has its own type, with aspects in which it is strong and points
at which it may be peculiarly vulnerable. This is like the statement,
to which there would be universal agreement, that individuals vary
in the objectives they strive to attain or for which they are prepared
to suffer. Indeed if there were not this analogy, the psychologist
would have no clue to follow in his search for the criteria he might use
in discriminating between the morales of different nations.

Most personal misunderstandings and most international conflicts
arise because everyone seems to insist on others thinking as he does.
The most pernicious of all popular psychological cliches is 'Human
nature is pretty much the same everywhere'. If it were true there
would be fewer divorces and fewer major wars. 1 The latter half of
that statement may seem extravagant, but a moment's reflection
will shew its justification so far as the present war is concerned. We
stubbornly refused to believe that the Germans were committed to
a second world-conquering programme: they were people like our-
selves. The Germans, on the other hand, thought we were degenerate
in our complaisance while they prepared for war because, had we
their nature and their Weltanschauung, such sloth would mean de-
generacy. So, believing that we would be supine for ever or cower
under the first blow, they committed themselves with confidence to
another world war.

The psychological background to the last war was similar, although,
perhaps, not quite so obvious. The sacrifices inevitable in the amassing

1 By 'major war' I do not refer to wars, no matter how protracted, waged
between rival princes with mercenary armies of no nationality but to wars involving
the co-operative effort of whole nations.

IIO

INDIVIDUAL SCALES OF VALUE

of the huge armaments which make great wars possible are such that
no nation would submit to them unless fired by an ambition for
reaching an objective attainable only through a major war. Such
armament is never accumulated in secret; it cannot be except in a
country as isolated from visitors as Russia has succeeded in making
herself. If there were an adequate realization of the opponent's
ambition before the armament was complete one would strike at the
potential enemy first and a small preventive war would be fought.
But before 1914 those in Britain who attempted to arouse their
countrymen to a sense of their peril were dubbed warmongers, even
as they were in the interval between the two wars. Was not the
Berliner who loved his Bach a civilized person, could Huns inhabit
Oberammergau, did not the Munchener family on its Sunday picnic
in the country present a perfect picture of contented domesticity?
They were no more cut-throats than we were.

How might we avoid errors like this? How can we escape from
the fallacy that human nature is the same everywhere? The answer
is to be found in a study of the scale of values of the individual, if the
problem be personal, or of the community, if the predictable response
is to be made by a social group. 'Value' refers to the preference of
the subject for one kind of activity rather than another, or, more
accurately, for one kind of interest as against others. Every interest
has, of course, its conscious aspect, for it is expressed in a group or
train of actions that are voluntarily directed. But why perform these
rather than other deeds? The answer that the average person would
give to this question is that he likes this activity better than another.
Now this is either pure tautology or it means that the subject antici-
pates pleasure from one rather than from another pursuit, which is
just untrue. Who would not rather play golf or go to the matinee than
attend to his duties at the office? The deliberate and specific choices
we make are rarely determined by a prevision of pleasure. A man
goes to his office because he has to, the compulsion is that of having
to earn his living, he will tell you, or because he has promised to do

EVIDENCES OF VALUE:

so; perhaps he has merely promised himself, you may discover, and
is fearful of being lazy. The further one's enquiries go into the
problem of motivation for habitual programmes of behaviour the less
satisfactory does the naive hedonistic explanation become. Psycho-
analysis, committed to a hedonistic theory, invents an unconscious
wish that is gratified symbolically in the interest, which is then called
a sublimation.

These terms bristle with terminological implications that cannot
be discussed here, but we may safely agree, at least, that the motiva-
tion of interests must be unconscious, simply because something must
be impelling them, and the subject is manifestly unable to give either
himself or others an adequate explanation of his conduct. The life of
an animal is, fundamentally, governed by instincts and appetites,
and habits built up in connection therewith. In marked contrast the
separate actions of man are always under direct conscious control,
but the general programme of his life is guided by his interests
(derived probably from instincts and appetites), that drive him or
lure him involuntarily on this or that quest.

All the people in one community, born with the same innate drives
and subject to similar social pressure, have similar interests but their
relative importance varies enormously, and that is what 'value'
means. One man is driven, enslaved, by his zeal for science, another
for art, or craftsmanship, money-making, religion, devotion to his
wife and family, and so on. The only explanation for his single-
minded passion that even approximates satisfactoriness is one derived
from psychological analysis. The subject himself cannot account for
his apparent preferences. He may even deny doing what, objectively,
he seems to have chosen as being the most desirable. In fact his scale
of values is something that can be drawn up only on the basis of
detailed scrutiny of his life history. Such study shews certain con-
sistencies that are characteristic of the personality in question, con-
sistencies that betray his scale of values. If this is known, it may be
possible to predict what a man's behaviour will be in various test

112

EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

situations. This is a kind of investigation and reasoning that is vitally
important in studying national morales, because it seems that national
communities have their scales of value just as have individuals and
they may be used for valid predictions. In either case the material
to study is not what the person and the people say or think of them-
selves, but history, history of the individual or history of the state.
A nation, like a man, has its personality and personality is a peculiar
and specific scale of values.

How may these values be detected? Whether it be an individual
or a people that is studied, there are five situations or types of
phenomena that are evidential.

The first of these is liability to emotional reaction in connection with
events that are significant for the success of a dominant interest.
Elation, anxiety or depression will occur when something happens
that offers an opportunity for the expansion of the interest, that
threatens its maintenance, or forces its abandonment. On the other
hand, similar events relevant to interests low in the scale of values
are responded to apathetically. Let us consider an individual and a
national example.

Day in and day out a man plods unemotionally through the routine
detail of his business, but when an opportunity occurs that promises
its expansion (and probably an increase in his routine labour) he is
excited and elated. If, on the other hand, there is a threat to pro-
fitable trading, even though it be in some quite subsidiary line, he
worries in an anxiety that would be justified by a threat to his
livelihood. Or, if he loses his occupation either through discharge
or voluntary retirement, he may become depressed. We are all
familiar with the case of the man who has been looking forward to
the leisure of retirement which he will devote to his garden or beetle
collection or what not. So soon as the leisure is available, he grows
listless and the hobby is neglected. I have been told that working
men who are eager frequenters of public libraries may shun them
when unemployed. They sit round dully, waiting for something to
MC c 113 8

VALUE: ACTIVITY

turn up. An excellent example of the potentiality of a national
interest to excite emotion is given by the devotion of the people of
the Empire to the Crown. Day by day we feel little about it, but
consider the gamut of emotions stirred by the Jubilee, the death of
King George the Fifth, the abdication crisis and the Coronation.
To describe them would be merely a literary exercise because the
psychological significance of the series is obvious. The Crown does
matter to the people of the Empire.

Paralleling emotional response is the second criterion, namely the
power of a dominant interest to promote activity. When novelty has
worn off the prosecution of a subsidiary interest is at first fitful and
then ceases. So much does personality consist of a stable scale of
values that a man who fails to follow one or a few programmes with
tenacity is held to be weak-willed or shiftless. That the scale of values
of an individual may be deduced from the amount of time and energy
he expends in various interests would seem to be too obvious' to
deserve more than mention. But what of nations? A ready measure
of the amount of labour expended on one or another kind of endeavour
is the amount of public money spent on it. This changes, naturally,
with national emergencies. The urgency of the struggle for survival
demands a preponderance of expenditure on military objects. Tem-
porarily, at least, national survival tops the scale of values. But this
would be true of any nation and hence is uninstructive as to national
peculiarity.

Where taxes go in times of peace, however, does provide evidence.
Does the nation spend its money on social services, education,
national support of trade developments, cultural and sporting facili-
ties, armaments, or what? The people's awareness of the state as
such may be reflected in the amount of taxes they may be prepared
to pay, or in the smallness of the demands they may make on it. In
I 93 l > when a national financial emergency was declared, many of
those with money queued up to pay taxes, while villages where the
majority of the population were on the dole voted for its reduction.

114

VALUE: DIRECTION OF LOTALTT

Here was writing on the wall to be read by any potential enemy of
Britain. To the German, however, patriotism was best expressed in
armaments. He skimped and saved and sweated to make more and
more guns and aeroplanes. That, too, was a writing on the wall, but
to our eyes it was hieroglyphics.

Thirdly, we find correlated inevitably with emotion and type of
activity as evidence of value a choice of fealty when there is a conflict
of loyalties. Only in Sunday school books or in Hollywood films are
there presented moral problems that can be settled by reference to
universally recognized canons. It is easy enough to see which way
one's duty lies when it is a choice between champagne at dinner or
the customary annual contribution to a local hospital. But when
there is a choice between the comfort and health of tenants and the
education of one's children, then what? The decision reached in the
latter type of quandary gives unequivocal evidence as to the scale
of values, which is all the more striking because the same words may
be used to justify opposite decisions. The man who squeezes his
tenants to educate his son does it for the sake of his family. The man
who sacrifices his son's education acts on the latter's behalf in up-
holding the honour of the family. The two decisions reflect different
family ideals. We all of us owe allegiance to many different groups
and their claims on us vary from day to day as the groups in question
have opportunities for expansion or are threatened. If his club is
facing a crisis, a man may leave his business for a few days to deal
with the club's difficulties. This involves no great conflict. But if the
club were to be saved only by his devoting all his time to it, and if he
elected to do so, his neighbours would, quite rightly, say he was more
interested in his club than in making money.

An excellent example of a significant national choice was given in
the spring of 1941. One does not know what the motives or calcula-
tions of the Government were when an expeditionary force was sent
to Greece, but the popular reaction thereto was observable. I heard
no one express a hope of victory but many who predicted failure.

115 8- 2

VALUE: DIRECTION OF LOYALTY

Yet few of these avowed pessimists failed to add : ' But I suppose
we've got to do it.' A minority said it was a mistaken policy, that we
lost more prestige through defeat than we should gain by demon-
stration of loyalty to an ally. When I asked any of this group what
he would have done had the decision been his to make, there was
either an evasion on the ground of insufficient information, or else
the statement : * Oh, I suppose I should have done what the Govern-
ment did.' It seems that the country did approve of this expensive
gesture not as a gamble that might come off, but as something that
had to be done disregarding its cost, desperate though our need was
of men and materials.

If a small country is attacked by our enemy, it becomes our ally.
If we see that it is going to be attacked, and it refuses to let us co-operate
in its defence, what ought we to do? Self-interest would urge us to
force our assistance on it. But this is to interfere with the independence
of another sovereign state. So we have (with the exception of Persia)
refrained from taking such action. Russia, however, is not inhibited
by this squeamishness. In its earlier years, when communism was
for the whole world, the Bolshevist regime made no bones about its
efforts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. When,
under Stalin, the swing was towards nationalism, self-preservation
justified invasions of the small Baltic states, Finland and part of
Poland. It is not for us to say whether actions of this sort are 'right'
or 'wrong', but they are not such as would be tolerated by us, if our
government proposed them. But to a government that, in the
national interest, will ' liquidate ' large groups of its own people, no
* morals ' stand in the way of expedience. Sensitiveness to the claims
of minorities and to the rights of small nations is all one.

The fourth indication of the scale of values is in its influence on
moral outlook. We admire endeavour towards the goals that we value,
recording such conduct as virtuous; we deplore behaviour that inter-
feres with such quests and regard it as vicious. Closely linked with
conflicts of loyalty is a moral scale, a scale hinted at in phrases like

116

VALUE: MORAL STANDARDS

'the higher morality', { a lesser evil' or * charity covers a multitude
of sins'. Changes in moral values from age to age or clime to clime
reflect the social scale of values directly. The nature of a man or of
a community may be judged from what is admired, condoned, or
considered to be shocking. If an author does shoddy work in order
to make money with which to discharge a debt, there will be some
who regard him as dishonourable because he has been untrue to the
standards of his art, while others will regard him as a model of
honesty. Thus the values that matter most for the critics are' revealed
in their judgments.

Is Robin Hood to be praised as a philanthropist or deplored as a
thief? In a plutocracy it is virtuous to be rich and wrong to be poor.
In the United States, until the great depression, it was a disgrace to
be without a job : there was something wrong with an unemployed
man, probably he was lazy, or he would not have failed to get another
job when he lost his last one. The falsity of this judgment was impressed
on the American public during the thirties. Unemployment was
widely recognized for the first time as a social as well as an individual
problem: accepted values were challenged and a revolution began
the ending of which I, for one, would not care to predict. In the old
United States (I speak now of the country I knew intimately until
twenty years ago) along with the plutocratic standard there went the
belief that life was real and life was earnest. The lives of those who
did not wish to make any more money, having inherited some, or
who had adopted no strenuous profession, were unhappy. They were
reprehensible people, they were lonely even if not actively ostracized.
Germans worship industry and efficiency with similar, or greater,
zeal and both are virtues. In this country, however, efficiency is
enviable, just as are good looks or money, but it is not a virtue, or,
if it be one, it ranks low in the scale. It is not a moral quality at all.
An Englishman who spends his money gracefully, who is considerate,
charitable and humorous, may be the most honoured and loved
member of his community even though he 'works' at nothing.

117

VALUE: MORAL STANDARDS

These variations in moral values from country to country have,
incidentally, an immediate bearing on propaganda. It may harden
our resolution to accuse Hitler of being dishonourable, but it gives
aid and comfort to the Germans to tell them so. Hitler was, ap-
parently, really moved by Chamberlain's accusation of broken faith.
He had never been dishonourable because he had broken no promise
to the German people. As a series of quotations in Thus Spake Germany
shew, it is traditional to regard a promise made to a foreigner as a
mere move in a diplomatic game. Not to make promises that would
fool a rival diplomat is to be derelict in loyalty and, therefore, dis-
honourable. The Germans, recognizing no moral standard that
would conflict with German weal, regard such an accusation against
the P^iihrer as, on the one hand, praise for skill in diplomacy and, on
the other hand, as an evidence of our preoccupation with trivialities.
We babble about 'morals' when we ought to be fighting; we fiddle
while Rome burns: we are degenerate.

I have argued that strength of morale will vary with the extension
of a group in space. A similar generalization may be made as to the
impregnability of a moral judgment. If a small group hold some
action to be vicious (or virtuous) and the members of this group are
in frequent contact with outsiders holding a contrary view, it will be
difficult for the members to maintain the belief that the action in
question is fundamentally wrong (or right). If, on the other hand,
the number of those imbued by this doctrine is large, and particularly
if they are cut off from their neighbours by censorship or the preven-
tion of travel, the development of an unquestioned, purely national,
standard of morals is inevitable. It is as likely that Russia would be
ethically a law unto herself as that Switzerland would not. If we are
to be intellectually honest we ought periodically to re-examine our
morals to see whether or not some of our moral judgments that we
regard as fundamental may not really be matters of expedience
expedient for Britain, for the Empire, for the English-speaking world.
This does not mean that we should therefore abandon such standards,

118

VALUE: FEELING OF REALITY

as some short-sighted critics are always urging that we should do.
Expediency is not immorality. But if we honestly recognize it as a
motive, we should less often justify the taunt of hypocrisy that is
inevitably hurled at us by critics who have a different set of moral
values from our own.

The last of the fields which may be surveyed for evidence of the
scale of values is that of the feeling of reality or, to put it in vulgar lay
terms, what gets under a man's skin and what doesn't. The psychia-
trist, who deals with mental disease, is familiar with ' reality ' in two
aspects. There is the sense of reality that is violated when a patient
develops delusions or hallucinations. But, without such loss of
judgment, he may complain that his feeling of reality is lost. He
knows the sun shines as clearly as it used, but sunlight is no longer
vivid, nor is grass as green as it used to be, music that was beautiful
last month is now only a noise, and so on. His intellect is alive but
his emotions are dead, his actions follow a laboured volition, he has
no spontaneous lust to do anything, he can no longer love or hate.
In a word life has lost its value and so all is unreal, although he can
recognize its existence as a phenomenon.

Now all this is just an exaggerated, and therefore instructive,
example of a general principle which might be expressed as : things
have a reality for us that is proportionate to their value. Happenings
feel real when they are tangible, visible, audible, when they stir us
emotionally or when they compel us to action. If they are experiences
that are not directly sensorial but appeal to us by their meaning,
they feel as real as the emotional reaction they excite is urgent.
Examples may make this statement intelligible.

If, as has just been argued, the strength of an emotion is a measure
of the value attached to the interest involved, then value will deter-
mine feelings of reality as well. We may several years ago have read
that 10,000 Chinese were butchered by the Japanese army, have
murmured, * How awful ', and gone on sipping our breakfast coffee.
But if we ran over a dog, that dog, dead or alive and squirming, was

VALUE: FEELING OF REALITY

much more real than the Chinese martyrs. This is not just a question
of the directness or second-handedness of the experience. It is not
just the remoteness of the poor Chinese. When, at about the same
period, a handful of Britons were insulted and threatened in Tsien-
tsin, the victims were real. We writhed in our temporary impotence
and hoped that the British Raj would have a long memory. We
wanted urgently to do something about it, because British prestige
was affronted. More recently outrages in Hong Kong and Singapore,
still involving many fewer victims than have suffered in China, have
been terribly vivid because they have shaken the foundations of our
empire. Tell a stockbroker that the experiments demonstrating the
existence of the neutron were faked, and he doesn't care whether the
report is true or false. Tell a physicist that consols dropped 20 points
overnight, he says, ' Well, well ', and goes on stalking a neutron that
no man has ever seen, nor ever will, but that is nevertheless very,
very real to the physicist. Tell a German, even prove to him, that
the actions of his government have made his people to stink in the
nostrils of the civilized world and you have enunciated a purely
academic proposition. The opinions of people who have such ridi-
culous ethical standards are trivial. Who cares whether a hen admires
him or hates him? The judgment of an inferior people destined for
slavery is as important as thistle-down in an air-raid. But tell a
German that the Royal Air Force considers the Junkers 87 B a bad
joke and he will either be bitterly incredulous or deeply depressed.
That is a foreign opinion that does matter.

In discussing the application of these criteria to the morales of
different nations, one is forced into the employment of a religious
vocabulary. Man seems to be inveterately religious; he will insist on
recognizing the existence of a Higher Power and depending on Him,
to paraphrase a well-known definition of religion. The decay of
religion, which has been proceeding for several centuries, has been
paralleled by a rise of nationalism. Presumably the phenomena are
not unconnected, but at any rate the worship of the majority in the

120

RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF NATIONALISM

past seems now to be loyalty to the nation, while the morals that
were once regulated by the church tend now to be measured against
a standard of patriotism. So we can almost say, ' What is the national
religion?' instead of, 'What is the nature of its morale?' The Nazis
have always recognized that their political theory is a creed, that its
essence is spiritual and, as such, can triumph only at the expense of
other (technically religious) creeds. Proof for this statement is
marshalled in Thus Spake Germany and need not be repeated here.
What then is this German * religion'?

There is a subtle but profound difference between the arrogance
of the Englishman and that of the German. The latter belongs to a
chosen people presided over by a tribal god. The former worships,
and is protected by, the one god. The Englishman is amused by the
pushfulness of the German, while the German is maddened by the
imperturbable superiority of the Englishman. With the skill of a poet,
who in symbols expounds moral and spiritual truths that are non-
sense when expressed in abstract terms, Winston Churchill explained
British morale in his famous 'We will fight them on the beaches'
speech, as has already been mentioned. The gist of it was that we
fought for, and could rely on, something that was bigger than our
petty lives or meagre acres, bigger even than our present Empire,
something that extended as far as our gospel had extended. And
what have the prophets of Baal to say to that?

It is, I believe, in the exactness of the religious parallel that we
may hopefully seek for our understanding of German morale and
detect its vulnerability. Since most of us have had no association
with any religion but Christianity, we tend to equate religion in
general with monotheism. The existence of a number of gods may
seem a bit absurd but, as historians and travellers tell us, it was not
always thus nor is it so now. We have, anthropologically, to reckon
with beliefs that are monotheistic, polytheistic, even daemonological.
The latter should be not unexpected in a people whose culture was
of a regressive order. The closest parallel to the current German

121

THE GERMAN TRIBAL GOD

political theology is that of the ancient Hebrews ; in fact the parallel
is so close as to make one think it is an unconscious imitation of a
religion that is consciously anathema.

The German god is a tribal one, the deity of a chosen people, but
there are rival gods. 'Either a German god, or none at all! The
internal God of Christendom is a patron of the Treaty of Versailles '
(Niekisch, 1929). 'We need a faith that prays to a national god,
not an international god of reward and punishment' (Bergmann,
r 933)- 'I believe in our divinity when millions of Germans are
grouped around one Leader. I know God to be in the power of our
blood alone' (Profession of Faith of the group Volkische Aktion, 1937).
The tribal god intervenes (when his people are faithful to him) in
their struggles against other peoples. The Prophets of the later
Hebrews made it increasingly plain that there was but one God and
that He was interested in moral and spiritual values, not in worldly
prestige. But faith in the tribal deity persisted, being incorporated
in the messianic hope of Jewish nationalism. It may encourage us
to remember that even the Disciples lost heart, apparently, when the
Master was crucified. They had looked for a Messiah who would
establish an earthly kingdom and when their Master was killed their
faith died too. They were still worshipping a tribal god, one among
other gods, and, if there are others, one's own god cannot be truly
omnipotent: his power must be relative.

This is the inherent weakness of German morale. Theirs is a pseudo-
religion that recognizes the existence of other nations and other gods.
Many references in Nazi literature shew that the deification of Hitler
is, essentially, the making of him into the mundane Messiah of crude
Jewish belief. Their theology admits of other gods: it is a deification
of force, and force is something that can, conceivably, be countered
by a still greater might. It may even one day be proved, for it is
something that can be proved, belonging as it does to this world
which is available for our inspection. So long as their force is,
seemingly, overwhelming, so long will their god befriend them,

122

THE GERMAN TRIBAL GOD

uphold their arms and reward their dead. But this god is really of
this earth, so the immortality he offers is subject to the maintenance
of German strength. 'I am tempted', says Goebbels, 'to believe
in a Germanic god rather than in a Christian one. We are not
working for the next world, but for this one' (1939). The plainest,
statement of all comes from an American Nazi: 'This time God
Almighty is not on the side of the hypocritical blasphemers. . . .
God Almighty stands and falls with the strong German arms
which clear the path for the whole Christian world' (The Free
American, 1940).

In contrast to this our patriotism, our morale, avoids any conscious
reference to there being a British god or to the God worshipped in
church being really British. We have irrational feelings of identifi-
cation with forces of cosmic range and permanence but they are
expressed only in the symbols of the orator or of the poet. We worship
our country, which is its tradition, its ideals; we do not make its soil
holy nor do we confine what is British to particular bits of territory.
Everyone is familiar with Rupert Brooke's The Soldier, how he begins :

If I should die, think only this of me :
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

and goes on to describe what a jolly, comfortable place England is,
with the implication that his spirit will be in that delectable land.
Once when quoting these lines to a class as an example of the
unlocalizability of 'England', I remarked that no German could
have written that poem. He would rather, I said, grant immortality
to the soldier who died in battle on foreign territory only if that
territory became permanently German. Shortly thereafter I came
across just this sentiment from the pen of a journalist written during
the last war: 'A vale which has been won by German blood! In
recent days the waters of the Meuse have often flowed blood-red.
Many a warrior has sunk into these depths. Longing and hope rise
in our hearts. May destiny determine that all the dead, after a

123

OVERVALUATION OF FORCE

triumphant war, shall sleep at rest in a German valley' (Heinrich
Binder in Mil dem Hauptquartier nach Westeri).

This German faith is an uneasy one because it is so materialistic.
To prove a spiritual claim in this world is impossible; but to prove
that a force is irresistible is feasible, for it requires only a demonstra-
tion of that degree of power. That, perhaps, is why the Germans will
interrupt a successful economic or diplomatic programme to sub-
stitute war. Their faith must be proved if it is to endure.

But there is another reason for their rushing into war. Force stands
first in their scale of values, so high, indeed, that it is deified. If
deified, it must be treated with respect and worshipped. Truth and
righteousness go with force; it is holy and must be treated sacra-
mentally. To mishandle it would be sacrilege. So it must be used in
such a way as to make its power most manifest; it must not be
desecrated by exposing it to conflict with a greater, or even an equal,
power. Hence the justification, nay the duty, of striking at the weak
and avoiding battle with the strong.

The whole business comes to pieces when proof of superiority is
exploited and exaggerated into a justification for the delusion of being
omnipotent. Paradoxically, it seems that Germany cannot conquer
the world because it is the greatest military power. It has that power
because it spends more on its arms than any other country is prepared
to do in times of peace. Initial victory, with preponderance of equip-
ment and trained forces, is inevitable. In the flush of victory calcu-
lation, which has been cool before, is supplemented by faith. The
God of Force is on their side. He is stronger than the gods of German
enemies, i.e. moral or spiritual factors that had previously been
craftily attacked through political warfare. Force is expected to do
what only patient education could accomplish: the inhabitants are
expected to fall down and worship force, to co-operate with the
conquerors. Before there is proof of such conversion to the New
Order, other territories are attacked, all of which means that a con-
siderable part of the army has to become a police force. Further,

124

OVERVALUATION OF FORCE

they believe that other countries will be as frightened of German
might as they themselves are enthralled by it. Peoples like ourselves
and the Americans are challenged, peoples that force has never
overthrown and who, therefore, underrate it. If force were not
overvalued, Germany might really conquer the world, although it
would be a slow process. She ought to nibble, consolidating each bit
of territory, really Germanizing it before moving on to the next
foray; and each bite should be not quite big enough to excite
lethargic, but potentially powerful, nations to fight a preventive war.
This would seem to be a feasible policy, but is it? The difficulty is
purely psychological. If Germany went slow, she would not be over-
valuing force, it would be balanced nicely with the moral factors.
This would mean a lesser enthusiasm for armament, a consequently
weaker army and therefore a lack of that overwhelming force which
can guarantee a bloodless victory. It might even mean the abandon-
ment of a predatory policy.

This is an illustration of the operation of a scale of values. No
merely human judge could estimate with nicety what the perfect
scale should be, which means that we all have more or less false
scales. The Germans, with a materialistic outlook, naturally put what
is measurable at the top of the scale. Thus force becomes an object
of worship and its accumulation the main incentive to action; it takes
on a moral quality and eventually gains magical attributes. This last
follows from the feeling of reality attached to what is most highly
valued. ' Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.' In other words by faith we see accomplished that
which we most desire. The day-dream which incorporates our dearest
wish has more feeling of reality attached to it than has any passing
fancy, and we all tend to allow the feeling to slip over into a sense of
reality. This error of judgment is not so much a positive aberration
as a negative one. Factors which stand low in the scale of values
have little feeling of reality attached to them : their existence is not
denied, but, being apathetic towards them, we just leave them out of

'25

BRITISH UNDERVALUATION

our calculations. The result is that we rely on our plans for the
attainment of a prized objective reaching their fulfilment without
opposition from the forces we ought to have reckoned on. This is
equivalent to giving our plans attributes of power not intrinsic to
their nature, and that is magic.

The Germans see only armaments. We see only * Right'. We,
relying on our moral strength, reduce our armaments and become in
the German eyes defenceless. If the German did not overvalue force
he would see in advance that morale may uphold a nation in adversity
until it can rearm. If force were truly omnipotent, this could never
happen.

As I have just indicated, our scale of values has resulted in thinking
that is just as awry as that of our enemy's. We naturally feel that if
one extreme or another must be sought, ours is the better; but surely
regard for self-preservation ought to keep us nearer to the golden
mean. Right makes might we are prone to think, and this is used
to rationalize sloth and avoid the sacrifices that reasonable armament
would involve. * Trust in God and keep your powder dry' is made
into * Trust in God and you will need no powder 5 . Even when war
has broken out, our peril is not properly realized and that is because
similar indolence in the past has not been disastrous. We have no
Sedan in our history and so we remember the last battle, ' which we
always win ', and forget the ignominies that preceded it the victory
is pleasant to recall and the prior defeats are repugnant. One of the
basic elements in our way of life is the code of games, so we fight our
wars as if they were games until it is forced on us that war is business
and a grim business at that. (An indication of preference for a
sporting engagement is the regularity with which reports of actions
are always so given as to indicate that the enemy was in stronger force
than were our troops. If true, that would mean appallingly bad staff
work: it is not good business to undertake any venture with insuffi-
cient resources.) Similarly no all-out effort is made, either in recruit-
ment and training of troops or in the supply of munitions until

126

OF FORCE

disasters have so crowded in on us as to make us wonder whether this
time we have not let things drift beyond the point of recovery. Only
then do we realize that the national deity helps them that help
themselves, that there is no magic in high ideals, that they are objects
of devotion and service, not agencies which will serve us because we
profess faith in them. Only when we begin to wonder whether, after
all, we might be defeated do we really become invincible.

Being invincible means being victorious only because the enemy
has to give up the struggle. It does not mean the positive kind of
victory that is won by an invading army. We are not a militaristic
country and so, perhaps, our triumphs will never be of that order.
At any rate, ever since this war began I have been unable to see how
we could win this war but have been serenely confident that the
Germans would lose it. This view has been based on the difference
between the morales of the two belligerents. It was the Napoleon
who said that God was on the side of the big battalions who also said
that the English never knew when they were defeated. 'Big bat-
talions' means a reliance on force, something that is measurable,
tangible, localizable. Such a leader knows when he is defeated
because he can make up a balance sheet and see whether his assets
are disappearing or not. But reliance on moral principles is a
dependence on something that cannot be found in order to measure
it, it is unrealizable, it has no 'vital centre'. London is the capital
of Britain, of the Empire, in a sense of the democracies of the world.
Here, surely, is the heart that might be stabbed. Stabbed it was by
the Luftwaffe, even the home of the Mother of Parliaments was
largely destroyed, yet the only effect on morale this had was to fortify
the spirit of resistance and to make Americans wonder if they ought
not to take a hand in the game. On the other hand the Germans,
fighting with specific objectives in view and with reliance on forces
that can be measured, must have a morale that is vulnerable in a
way that British morale is not. If its original inspiration was con-
quest, then a failure to achieve that conquest spells total failure. If

127

CONDITIONS FOR COLLAPSE OF GERMAN MORALE

force is worshipped and relied on, then morale will be high so long
as the odds are in Germany's favour, but it will inevitably sink when
those quite calculable odds are reversed. Even a stalemate de-
prives Germany of that on which reliance has been placed, namely
a superiority in arms. Germans can fight magnificent rear-guard
actions but only, except on the part of a few picked troops, when
there is a belief that reserves are coming up which will shatter the
enemy. German morale will break when there is a call to fight, backs
to the wall, without hopes being entertained of reserves coming into
action, when the people as a whole realize that the war is costing
them more than anything their conquests could gain them in a
measurable future. When their magic has failed, they will not fight
to preserve something that has stood low in their scale of values,
something unworthy of the single-minded devotion of a Nordic hero,
something that was only an hypocrisy of their enemy.

The factors of morale are intangible because they are psycho-
logical and nothing psychological is truly measurable (in spite of
useful fictions used in intelligence and similar testing). Consequently
it is impossible to make predictions that include a time element. We
cannot draw a curve of morale and predict when it is going to cross
the base line. But we can say that it is improving or deteriorating,
or we can with confidence predict that it will ultimately collapse
under certain conditions. If one can believe that, with the wealth
of Russia and the democracies against her, Germany can gain the
assets she needs to repay her expenses before she is exhausted, then
one may believe that her morale will last. But, if the contrary be
true, then, I hold, she will collapse and collapse, too, before her
powers of resistance in the field have melted away. That is to say,
she will either surrender before her armies have had to retreat to her
own borders, or, if there is serious invasion of her territory, the very
fact of its being an invasion will lead her to offer it a negligible
resistance. Where and how the break may come will be suggested at
the end of this book.

128

BRITISH SCALE OF VALUES:

But before leaving the theme of scale of values, its application in
the understanding of a grievous and urgent imperial problem should
be considered. Events in the Far East have shewn that the Empire
has not been in too healthy a state. The disease may not be mortal
(although our enemies would like to think it so and some pessimists
at home seem to fear it may be), but it is, at least, serious. Political
illnesses are not to be cured with a bottle of medicine any more than
individual neuroses can be. A psychological ill demands a psycho-
logical remedy. Can psychopathology help us here, and if so, how?

This century has seen a great advance in the knowledge of the
causes of mental diseases and neuroses and of how to treat them. In
the most general terms the following conclusions have been reached.
Patients suffer from symptoms because they have foiled to solve their
problems for one of two reasons, either they are too stupid or too weak
to cope with them (in which case their cure is impossible or partial)
or they do not understand the true nature of their problems. The
latter is because important factors are unconscious. Effective and
lasting cure can be accomplished only when what has been uncon-
scious is revealed, enabling the patient to tackle his problems with
whatever intelligence, courage and determination he enjoys. It
might be thought that the physician who turns up the lights, so to
speak, who reveals the bogies haunting the dark places of the mind,
could out of his wisdom tell the patient just what to do to be saved.
Unfortunately, experience shews this not to be possible: the cards
may be placed on the table for him, but the patient has to play the
hand for himself. If the psychologist can help in the treatment of
a national sickness, it will be by analysing the causes and not by saying
what ought to be done.

I have already tried to explain how national ideals are unconscious
and are expressed in a variety of political theories and practices that
are but symbols for what is felt rather than grasped with full conscious
understanding. In an individual the interests that are most potent
in his life spring from sources he cannot see and that are as powerful

MCC 129 9

BRITISH VALUES: TOLERANCE

as they are unknown. So do his symptoms if he has any. The same is
probably true of social groups that have been integrated together so
firmly as to form true units. The forces which inspire the group to
greatness may also get out of hand simply because they cannot be
seen. Hence there may be times when it is necessary for a country,
a nation, to ask itself why it is following a certain path and where
that path is leading, rather than just to follow an impulse to go in
the direction that feels right. In other words a national ideal may,
at times, be too unconscious, too much of a drift and not enough of
a quest. At such times there ought to be honest self-examination, so
that, so far as is possible, intelligence may be substituted for
instinct.

Let us try therefore to discover what elements operate to produce
our national ideal. We must remember that it is an integration of
forces, not a fixed structure. It is a fluid process that, like the course
of a stream, may seem to bend and twist and flow in many different
directions, although it is really always moving towards the sea.
Further, we should not expect to find any simple elements that are
characteristically British. All civilizations are compounded from the
same fundamental units; it is their grouping together in peculiar
combinations and the arrangement of these in a characteristic scale
of values that differentiates one people from another.

It is frequently said that the peculiar genius of British polity is
compromise. Less frequently it is pointed out that, perhaps, tolerance
is a better term. Conflicting parties do not unite to form a group
with ideals that are a true combination of what has been quarrelled
about : neither abandons its * principles ', but each draws in its horns
a bit and neither tries to dominate the other by force only by
conversion. This is well illustrated in the Church of England, where
for centuries 'High 5 and 'Low' have existed side by side and none
but rare fanatics ever seek the annihilation of opponents through
legislation. The overriding belief in tolerance has resulted in the
coexistence of many apparent incompatibles in both the social life

130

BRITISH VALUES: 'DEMOCRACY*

and the political institutions of Great Britain. Some of these may be
mentioned without any pretence of making the list complete.

First there is an ancient caste system, descended from feudal days
but now operating chiefly in a 'social 5 stratification. Its functional
significance will be discussed fully in the next section of this book and
need not be dealt with here beyond mention of the fact (or claim?)
that it is important. But it stands in flat contradiction with the
acknowledged principle of majority rule. The 'old school tie' and
the labour union's badge or button each represents a claim for
privilege. The former is often derided and rarely defended ; the latter
is often defended and rarely derided. Either is allowed to make a
claim for 'rights' but public opinion sees to it that neither is em-
powered to exercise them.

Next we may mention freedom of speech and law-abidingness.
Each of these is a prized British characteristic or institution. We are
allowed to attack in speech or writing even the fundamentals of our
civilizations but expected to obey laws (and conventions) that we
declare to be vicious.

Similarly, the right to private property is held to be sacrosanct,
yet parliament has the power through taxation of various forms not
merely to sequester that property but to take it from one class and
(through ' social ' legislation) to give it to another. If anyone draws
attention to this discrepancy he gets no hearing. It is assumed that
the numbers of those deriving benefit from discriminative taxation
is larger than the number mulcted and that, therefore, a plebiscite
would approve of the confiscation. That this, in turn, violates the
principle of the protection of minorities is never mentioned.

By 'democracy 5 is customarily meant government by the people.
Yet in practice the day-to-day administration is in the hands of a
bureaucracy the civil services ; policy is determined by an oligarchy,
the cabinet; and it is all done in the name of a single, supreme ruler,
the King. Clearly the meaning of 'democracy' requires some
analysis. In practice we find the word, like 'freedom', used as a

131 9-2

BRITISH VALUES: 'DEMOCRACY'

catch- word in debate. Either word is used as justification for up-
holding any one of the above-mentioned tendencies : the side first
invoking 'democracy' or * freedom' scores a point in debate. The
words are shibboleths. Yet millions of us are prepared to die for them.
No one will die for a mere word, it must be for what that word suggests
to him. So what do these terms really mean to us? Hitler claims,
and the Germans probably believe, that the Reich is fighting for
freedom. So they are. They wish liberty to exploit the world solely
in the interests of the Herrenvolk, the god-like chosen people. We
retort that this is a slavery similar to that already imposed on German
citizens. But no kind of social organization is possible without
restriction of personal liberty. What is the degree of individual, or
national, freedom that we wish to establish or maintain? Again,
democracy cannot be government by the people themselves for that
is anarchy; 1 it must be government by rulers chosen by the people
and working in the interests of the people. Hitler was elected by a
larger majority than any ever recorded in a 'democratic' country
and his policy has the enthusiastic support of nearly all Germans.
Yet Hitler derides democracy. It may therefore be that democracy
is differentiated from the authoritarian states in its treatment of
minorities. We do not believe that a minority should be allowed to
seize power by force or that a minority should be victimized by the
majority or, indeed, by the government. These ideals are explicitly
disclaimed by the Nazis. Similarly the freedom we cherish is that
of minorities, descending even to the minority of one. One individual
has the same right to protection and justice as any other citizen,
regardless of his political or religious faith.

Our national ideal would seem, then, to keep alive with mutual
tolerance a number of inconsistent principles. This tolerance is called

1 It is not generally realized that anarchism is not a destructive nihilism but a
Utopian political theory. The state as such should have no authority, laws and
law-enforcement being replaced by the voluntary co-operation of citizens. It is
held that if force were abrogated, the altruistic elements in human nature would
develop as they cannot do when fear of authority controls behaviour.

132

BRITISH VALUES: IMPERIALISM

' freedom ' for the individual citizen or the minority group, while the
resultant form of government is called 'democratic'. This, however,
represents only one aspect of the national ideal, it refers to the way
in which we want to live and move and have our being. But there
is an outside world towards which some kind of an attitude must be
adopted. External orientation inevitably contributes its share to the
national ideal and, indeed, inner and outer are but the obverse and
reverse of the same medal.

There seem to be three components in the British attitude towards
the world at large. First, our way of living is to be defended, even
to the death. This determines friendships and sympathies with other
countries as well as animosities. We are friendly towards other
'democracies' or at least tolerant; towards other powers who have
markedly different ideas of government we are hostile or at least
suspicious. Secondly, pride in our institutions is reflected in a
missionary attitude. It is a duty to spread throughout the world the
benefits of our democracy, a duty which is naturally most easily
fulfilled in such parts of the globe as are backward in material culture
as well. In practice the introduction of British justice goes easily
with economic exploitation and the latter constitutes the third
element in the ideal. It is our duty to civilize backward races in
every sense of the term. Inevitably we look for some reward. We
may be prepared to give our religion and our political ideas in pure
missionary zeal, but we cannot exploit the assets of undeveloped
territories without compensation. Even if we were so altruistic, we
simply could not afford it. So, as a rider to our ideal, there is
surreptitiously included a duty to defend the economic rights we
have established.

This is our imperialism, as curious a mixture of incompatibles as
is our democracy. In part it is genuinely altruistic many heroes
have given their lives while carrying the white man's burden in a
spirit of pure service; in part it is unquestionably selfish. But are we
correct in speaking of it in the present tense, or, indeed, would it be

THE FUTURE OF THE EMPIRE

wholly correct to say, this'was our imperialism? It is really a process,
an evolution that had developed a long way before it was recognized
as existing or as requiring any theory for its description. It was
sometimes crudely predatory, sometimes a matter of a straight bargain
with the natives of a territory that was to be settled, a bargain entered
into with no more desire to cheat than has any upright merchant.
But whether we have gained our possessions by fair means or foul,
their exploitation for purely selfish ends has never received public
support and has never been tolerated except for short periods.
Envious powers abroad and muck-rakers at home have both tried
to prove that the Empire is purely a system of selfish exploitation.
But that won't do: there has always been a strong feeling of responsi-
bility associated with the British Raj.

The evolution of this imperial responsibility and the ways in which
it has been met have brought about problems that will not be solved
by a policy of drift, or by doing what feels right to a conscience that
is either morbidly sensitive or easily soothed. Intuitions are not
enough, nor should any minority however vociferous be allowed to
settle what policy is to be followed. What is involved should be a
matter of public knowledge and discussion and some decision should
be reached, even though it has manifest defects. Perfect schemes
belong to the millennium and attainment of that blissful state will
not be accelerated by a rejection of everything that shews imper-
fections.

Imperial responsibility has been met in three ways: paternalistic
rule, the granting of local autonomy to what have been dependencies,
and the pursuit of a policy which represents a combination of the
first two. Under paternalism an effort is made so to educate the
people that they may become capable of self-government. During
the last war Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all
contributed in the fullness of their powers to the prosecution of the
war. After the victory, it was felt that equality of sacrifice justified
equality of status, an opinion that led to the Statute of Westminster.

134

INDIA

By it these countries received ' dominion status ' and the Empire was
divided into two different parts. One part became more of an
alliance of free nations than a confederation or an empire as that
institution had previously been conceived. The other part was Great
Britain with its dependencies, India and the colonies, ruled paternally.

In paternal rule there is the relation of the father to his family,
not perhaps so much the kind of family we now know as the ancient
family or the tribe that is ruled by a patriarch. The ruler has full
authority, makes laws, dispenses justice and leads in offence or
defence. In return for these services he is entitled to as much of the
wealth of the family or tribe as he chooses to collect or as it pays
to collect. This system probably worked as well as it did, and when
it did, because it was natural to a people habituated to squirearchy
with its similar mixture of responsibility to tenants and authority
over their lives. Although the fact is obvious, account is rarely taken
of dominion status being given to peoples who are either emigrants
from Britain or emigrants from countries with a similar culture and
political outlook. Arguments used in favour of dominion status for
India do not reckon with the possibility that education of people
who have never enjoyed self-government may be a tedious or an
impossible task. Undaunted by this consideration there has been for
a long time an effort made to train natives in administration and the
ideals of democracy, with the avowed intent of eventually turning
over to them the government of their territories and peoples. Since
the last war there has been an insistent demand that 'education'
should be assumed to have been complete or that ' freedom J should
at once be given on the assumption that the natives could complete
the education for themselves if they were once given responsibility.
This demand was made by many of the leaders of various parties in
India and it was echoed in Britain, the reverberations being audible
in the Dominions and even in the United States.

Why have the Indians asked for dominion status? The more
educated of them may well realize from visits to the democracies

'35

INDIA AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

what the blessings of freedom arc to a freedom-loving people. These
patriots, we may assume, are sincerely desirous of giving these benefits
to their countrymen. Do they realize the responsibilities that go
with freedom? Many native politicians, in India and elsewhere,
have frankly admitted that they seek power for themselves, power
that they cannot achieve under the British Raj : they ask for ' demo-
cracy 5 but hope to get an opportunity to enrich themselves with
money or prestige. Motives are everywhere mixed and it is a wise
judge who can say with truth what is in any man's heart. But at least
it is now demonstrated (April 1942) that no party can be found in
India that is prepared to guarantee that under a system of Indian
self-government there would be no attempt to victimize minorities
either by force or by the power of a majority vote.

For the moment the Indian crisis has passed, but what we are
chiefly interested in, if we are to understand imperial policy and
what determines it, is the origin of the backing there has been in
Britain for Indian self-government. Certain idealists have always
been for it, of course. These have been people who were unhappy
about some of the predatory activities in the past, the results of which
were still profitable to us, and who hated the mixed motives of the
missionary and the trader that seemed to actuate imperialists. Their
numbers were greatly augmented after the last war. Why?

In the first place we have to reckon with war weariness. We had
fought to make the world safe for democracy and we had won, but
we were tired; tired of sacrifice. We wanted quiet, we wanted to get
on with qur own jobs, we were tired of adventure. Colonial service
was an adventure and it was a responsibility. There was a period of
* safety first' that affected the entry into the colonial service adversely,
as was seen in the Universities. Undergraduates, who wanted to go
abroad, were dissuaded by their parents, who sought to keep them
at home. Another factor which became more important at this
period was a change in the social status of recruits to the services.
(The effect of this will be commented on in a later chapter.) We had

136

UTOPIANISM

fought to gain an untroubled peace and we found unrest everywhere.
So there began a great questioning. The young, who had inherited
a sad world, very naturally thought that their parents had made that
world and made it badly. They had made the war, so the young were
pacifists. Whatever was traditional came under fire. Imperialism
made wars, so imperialism was bad. It was also a responsibility.
If a responsibility can be shelved through the performance of a
generous act, here is obviously a way of getting the best of both worlds.
Nora Wain, in her book The House of Exile, reports that when we gave
up our concession at Hankow, some Chinese comments were to the
effect that we were tired of the responsibilities of Empire and were
using 'self-determination' as an excuse for evading them. It is cer-
tainly a facile rationalization. At any rate the period between the
two wars was one marked by a great deal of Utopianism. Fascism,
communism, socialism, any kind of ideology that represented a
system as yet untried was hailed as the solution of all our ills. Equally
any system based on experience and supported by tradition was
taboo.

Utopianism is so potent an influence in the determination of policy
that it demands some scrutiny. It seems to be conditioned by two
beliefs, one barely conscious and the other quite unconscious. The
first is that human intelligence can fabricate a set of regulations that
will modify not merely human behaviour but human motives. If
society is imperfect, this creed says, it is not due to defects in human
nature but in the system which regulates society: given a perfect
system, those who make up the society will like the system, adapt
themselves to it and thereby become perfect. Since the human mind
is at once as complicated a thing as is available for our study and
since we know little about it as yet, this confidence would seem to
rest on what the Greeks called hubris and moral theologians labelled
as spiritual pride. The second, and unconscious, belief is in magic.
The way in which this arises in connection with a scale of values has
already been explained. In this instance the desirability of a goal to

137

OUR PROBLEMS

be attained is so fortified by emotion that the goal acquires a feeling
of reality. Perfection is realizable. This is then transferred to the
means whereby the miracle may be accomplished.

The potency given to c democracy ' is an excellent example of this
unconscious reasoning. In our political thinking we rank ' democracy '
and 'freedom' they are largely equivalent terms at the top of
our scale of values. We would die for them; can anything be more
important ? If democracy can win from us this devotion it must be
the most valuable thing on earth, something that subject races yearn
for and would prize, if they had it, as highly as we do. Doubtless
they would, if they were capable of grasping it. But what we call
* democracy ' is a product of many centuries of political evolution,
a peculiar kind of tolerance; it is a state of mind, not a paper con-
stitution. The Japanese doubtless prize the institution of hara-kiri,
but, if it were legalized in this country, should we adopt it? No more
should we expect a people who for centuries have regarded govern-
ment as the duty, the trade, of a particular small class to prize some-
thing that carries with it a responsibility they have never shouldered.
Yet that is what the proponents of immediate self-government believe
will happen if a ' democratic ' constitution be given to peoples who
are from our point of view backward in political development.
These reformers believe in magic.

The cards are on the table, but how shall we play them? We must
realize that it is as idle to give subject races self-government with the
idea of their thereby achieving the kind of liberty we prize as it would
be to give boots to a fish. But mental evolution is not such a tedious
process as is the change of bodily form. There is no reason to suppose
that the natives of Africa or Asia could not gradually be educated
up to the point where not a few, but the majority of the people, were
politically conscious and saw in tolerance the secret of freedom. But
the process would necessarily be slow. What therefore should we do?

It is time to take stock: not only has the problem become a part of
war strategy, it will be even more urgent when peace comes. No

138

OUR PROBLEMS

matter whether the Empire was acquired by fair means or foul, 1 our
possession of it forces on us certain responsibilities. What are we
going to do about them? There are several conceivable solutions.

The first is that we should abandon our scale of values and modify
our national ideal. No longer should we regard the kind of liberty
which we have painfully evolved through centuries of conflict and
martyrdom as something that is good for any but ourselves. Let us
abandon the missionary spirit and make no more pretence of trying
to give backward peoples 'liberty'. We should thereby escape the
accusation of hypocrisy and we could judge the value of colonial
possession from the standpoint of pure expedience. This would seem
to be the Nazi or the Fascist type of policy. There is no nonsense
there about the white man's burden.

Or we can retain our ideal but admit we are too weak or too weary
to give it effect. In that case we have either to get out of our colonial
possessions and India or we have to give them to some other power
with ideals similar to our own but more virile. If we get out, we
should do so with our eyes open. We should leave in the expectation
that, when we are gone, tribe will fall upon tribe, a majority will
enslave a minority or that some other power will step in and enslave
the lot. It is no disgrace to fail in a task that is too big for one, but
it is morally degrading to make a virtue out of retreat.

Finally, of course, we might, in humility, with greater honesty and
with firmer resolve face the responsibilities with which we have, more
or less inadvertently, saddled ourselves. If we hope within our life-
time to see the goal achieved, we shall, of course, be doomed to
disappointment. But if we are prepared to forgo the hopes of magical
achievement and to regard the struggle for attainment of a lofty ideal
as better than a comfortable complacency, then something will be
gradually accomplished. Let me finish with an illustration that may

1 The irrelevance of history in this respect is shewn in one fact : most of the
territory now- occupied by the 'civilized' races is in possession of the descendants
of invaders. Is there morally, as well as legally, a statute of limitations?

OUR PROBLEMS

seem trivial yet is packed with deep meaning. Dogs and cats are
proverbial enemies. Yet who has not seen a puppy and a kitten
brought up together become life-long friends? If all dogs and all
cats were brought up together, would their automatic hostility be so
marked as it is? Admittedly the association in infancy would have
to be rigorously maintained, but dog and cat natures are poles apart.
All men, whatever their colour, are, biologically, of the same species
and their varying natures have been socially determined. This social
influence is not changed by revolution but it is capable of evolution.
Shall we attempt to guide this evolution or shall we 'sink back
shuddering from the quest ' ?

140

Part III. SOME PROBLEMS IN
ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER 7

DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY

MORALE and organization are intimately connected for two general
reasons. First, morale is meaningless, or at least ineffective, unless
it promotes action, even if that take the form of passive resistance
it is after all resistance. A most important expression of morale is
confidence in an activity to be undertaken and no communal
measures are possible without organization. So it follows that morale
is bound up with confidence in organization and may be shaken if
this faith is lost. Secondly, there may be a correlation between the
objectives or ideals of a community and the kind of organization it
adopts; its peculiar type of organization if it be political for
example may be an expression of its ideal. So, just as the outlook of
a country may determine its particular kind of morale, so may it con-
dition its organization. The three factors are constantly interacting.
Thus organization must be studied if one is to understand morale
but this is a difficult, if not hazardous, topic for discussion in a
psychological work. In the first place the data include some that
are not really psychological, so that the suspicious reader may charge
the author with attempting an invasion of fields to which he has,
professionally, no right of entry. The answer to this would be to
admit the impeachment but to claim that, if the psychologist cannot
contribute his. share to the solution of these problems, no more can
the sociologist, the historian, the economist, or the politician, each
working alone from the point of view of his craft; the study of
organization is nobody's business and it is everybody's. Secondly,
theories as to organization are, inevitably, the stuff of which political

141

NATIONAL POLICY

creeds are made. A theorist may be able to examine a criticism of
his views objectively, but the believer's attitude is invariably sub-
jective. So any one who tries so far as he is able to be dispassionate
in his analysis is likely to tread on everybody's corns and to be dubbed
a mere propagandist by all in turn. It is because I think there are
important psychological factors involved in this problem, factors that
are currently undetected or ignored, that I assume the risks of being
called either biased or unbiased. 1 But there is another reason why
this discussion must be undertaken.

Every aggregation of people who form a group do so in virtue of
their having some common objective, some purpose in their coming
together for a joint effort. In this co-operation individual actions
must be correlated and the correlation implies organization no
matter whether the latter consists merely of the imitation of leaders
or is codified in elaborate legislation. In national groups the activities
of the individual citizens are, fundamentally and inevitably, oriented
in two directions, towards co-operative efforts which through division
of labour increase the wealth of all, and towards the protection or
aggrandizement of the group as a whole. The way in which labour
and its reward are to be divided and what is worth struggling for in
competition with other countries are both matters of policy. The
former implies one type of organization or another, while the latter
usually entails it. Consequently, policy becomes inextricably involved
with organization and policy merges into the national ideal. It would
indeed be not grossly inaccurate to say that national ideals refer
largely to contrasting theories of organization.

There are two opposing principles in state organization either of
which, if followed exclusively, will lead sooner or later to disaster;

1 During the last war I wrote a slight volume on the psychology of war. One of
the most pontifical of English journals in reviewing it damned it for its objectivity.
Nothing, it said, should be written about war, during a war, that was not propa-
ganda. This is, of course, a defensible position although not one I should hold, for
I believe it to be an aspect of that kind of political outlook which may win a war
but will always lose a peace.

142

DICTATORS DETERMINE POLICY

nations differ in the degrees to which they go in following one or the
other method and in the kinds of compromise they adopt. These
principles may be called the dictator and the democratic types of
organization or ideal. In the former an autocrat, who may be either
an hereditary monarch, a soldier who has seized power, or the duly
elected leader of the nation, dictates policy and governs the machine
which gives it effect. In the latter the people as a whole determine
policy and appoint representatives to codify the policy and organize
its operation. It is nonsense to say that one system means slavery and
the other freedom, for it is impossible to have any kind of co-operation,
any kind of division of labour, without restriction of personal liberty.
It is rather a question of the degree of freedom attainable under the
two systems.

A dictatorship is a form of government in which the leader (he is,
rather, a driver) determines the policy of the state and how it is to
be carried out. Since differences in policy and organization are what
give character to states, it follows that dictator states gain their
differentiating peculiarities from the plans of their rulers. When
Louis XIV said, 'L'fitat, c'est moi', he made a statement that con-
tained as much truth as it did arrogance. France was not a mere
collection of provinces each controlled by some locally powerful noble
simply because it was the King who imposed what unitary objective
and effort there was. It was his policy that made the Burgundian or
the Breton a Frenchman, in so far as he was one. This identification
of the ruler with the state has an interesting psychological result, one
that is not without significance for morale. If the dictator does
succeed in imposing his will on the masses, then the power he wields
is the power of all the citizens whose efforts are thus correlated. This
is something vastly greater than the influence which any one of his
subjects can exercise. So it is superhuman and the step from the
superhuman to the divine is a short one. Dictators tend, therefore,
to be deified. It was seen in the case of the Roman emperors
quite literally; it occurred with Napoleon, perhaps as a metaphor,

HIERARCHICAL ORGANISATION

perhaps as a consciously accepted faith; it is certainly present
in what is attributed to Hitler to-day in the adulation of his loyal
followers.

Having decided on his policy the dictator must get it implemented.
This involves an intricacy of planning and a range of technical
knowledge and experience which is manifestly outside the capacity
of any one man no matter how gifted. He may sketch out a programme
but the details of both planning and execution have to be left to
others. So he appoints sub-leaders, each being given full authority
within the field assigned to him for exploitation. General policy,
strategy so to speak, is dictated to him but he has a free hand in
deciding the tactics to be employed. Liberty of action is as wide as
is the range of operation entrusted to him : he cannot change the
objective towards which he must work but he can choose by what
means he wishes to attain it. He, in turn, is posed with a problem
too big for one individual to handle, so he farms it out to a number
of assistants who, in their turn, employ officials of a still lower grade.
Thus there is built up a pyramid of hierarchical authority. At each
level there exists proportionate liberty of action, power and responsi-
bility. At the top is the dictator with liberty that is complete in
determination of policy and is restricted in action only by the capacity
of the whole nation and the power of rival countries. At the bottom
is the labourer who cannot choose where or how he is to work but
can still bully his wife and children.

It is important to realize that this is not merely a skeleton outline
of the kind of organization characteristic of dictatorships but that it
is the only possible scheme for the correlation of the activities of
large numbers of people activities that are to be concerted for the
attainment of specific ends. Hence it is the kind of organization seen
in all services, civil or military, and in all big businesses. It carries
with it two important implications.

The first derives from the pre-existence of the goal that is sought.
It is the organization of a group of people who are brought together

144

SPECIFICITY OF HIERARCHICAL GOALS

for, and co-operate in, a specific purpose. Officials are chosen for
their capacity to deal with the subsidiary tasks tKat contribute to the
particular end in view. Another objective would call for other tasks
and, therefore, other abilities. It can deal competently with all fore-
seen contingencies but is adaptable only within those limits. The
absence of one bolt of a particular size can hold up all assembly in
a quantity production motor works. A country organized for war,
either immediate or prospective, turns from pure science to applied
science; in so doing it cuts off the supply of truly novel principles and
will therefore lose in a long war against a country that has retained
the versatility flowing from pure research. That is the position of
Germany tor-day, where pure science has been abandoned in favour
of engineering. Russia has been organized for the exploitation of its
resources, human and material. The Kremlin can hand out to the
workers such amusements and 'culture 5 as it can imagine they want.
But, when wealth brings with it more leisure and therefore individual
cultivation of aesthetic and intellectual tastes, the success of the
' culture ' will produce an individuality of demand which no central
agency could satisfy. Then either cultural evolution will be curtailed
or it will drift out of the hands of the state, thus weakening its totali-
tarianism. It might be objected that a wise dictator or his equivalent
an oligarchy would plan not only for war but also for the develop-
ment of economics and the arts. Quite true, but what genius could
foresee the relative importance a generation later on of the various
objectives for which there would be specific organizations set up?
The very efficiency of the hierarchical system depends on the spe-
cialized training and knowledge and thinking in each organization.
The man switched from one quest to another would have not merely
to acquire a new technique but to unlearn his old one and its habit
of thought. In a word hierarchical organization is incompatible with
evolution.

The second implication has to do with a difference between what
are held to be civic virtues in dictatorships or democracies. In a
MCC 145 10

EFFICIENCY AND SPECIALISM

totalitarian country the road to honour is that of advancement in a
state service and this is gained through efficiency and specialized
knowledge. In Germany, for instance, Tuchtigkeit, 'efficiency 5 , is
regarded as a real virtue. In England, on the other hand, it may be
enviable just as a large income is, but it certainly is not a virtue.
Indeed, in so far as it is likely to be correlated with a hard ruthless-
ness, it is likely to be regarded as unlovely. Germany, again, is the
spiritual home of the specialist. Here he is distrusted, derided, or
tolerated as an unfortunate necessity. 'He knows everything about
his subject except its relative unimportance' is a gibe welcome to
English ears, while differences between specialists give the layman
a grim, I-told-you-so kind of pleasure. In Germany the specialist has
authority granted him by common consent, and this is a perquisite
of his office, so to speak. Hence, even in the academic world, prestige
goes with status in the academic hierarchy and this prestige validates
intellectual output. Not unnaturally authority is jealously guarded,
so polemics are protracted and bitter, a phenomenon which the
Briton or American finds shocking and amusing in turn.

It will be becoming clear that I am assuming, or implying by my
examples, that hierarchical organization is not in harmony with the
ethos of a democratic state; we should therefore pause to consider
why this might be. This necessitates a scrutiny of what we mean by
the term democracy. Literally, of course, the term is nonsensical,
for a people cannot rule themselves. They can, however, choose their
rulers and they can dictate to these rulers what the national aims are
to be. But Hitler is the duly elected President of Germany and there
is more to be said for the view that his policy is that of the German
people than can be urged against it. Yet Hitler spurns democracy
and we deny its existence in Germany. So there must be more to it
than that. It would seem rather that everything turns on the treat-
ment of minorities. As has been explained, in a democracy a
minority may neither govern nor. may it be persecuted and victimized.
Here is a fundamental difference. A totalitarian country is such

146

THE MEANING OF 'DEMOCRACT*

because minority opinion and action is disallowed. A prescribed and
accepted system governs the activities of all members in the com-
munity. No individual is allowed to use his own judgment as to how
he can best serve society. (He may express a preference, just as a
recruit might for some branch of service when he joins the army, but
he has no right of choice.) Nor is he entitled to publish views as to
changes in national policy, to make converts to his opinions such as
might bring into being a minority that might, in time, become a
majority. The state that is in theory paramount cannot in practice
countenance minority opinion which might agitate for an entirely
different kind of state. A democracy, which tolerates minorities,
admits the possibility of state policy being changed. It cannot,
therefore, have and hold any given policy with the consistency of the
authoritarian state. Consequently it does not encourage large-scale
hierarchical organization, particularly since this restricts individual
liberty, especially in the lower levels. Indeed, instead of the efficiency
of officials being admired, they are expected on the contrary to be
hide-bound, interested in the letter rather than the spirit of regula-
tions and officious if not actually stupid or self-seeking.

The raison d'etre of a democracy is not the plan of an autocrat but
an unconscious ideal cementing into one society a number of people
who co-operate for the furtherance of the ideal but cherish the right
to modify it as they go along. Formal organization can be established
only for clearly foreseen ends. Hence in a democracy, that does not
know where it is going but only feels its way, there are organizations
for the carrying out of the minimum essential services, civil and
military, but all else is left to private bodies and individual initiative.
There is a great loss in efficiency, but elasticity is maintained and,
above all, there is individual liberty. If we could only realize that
liberty and efficiency were incompatible we might accept more
philosophically the inefficiencies exhibited in our services. It is all
a question of what one chooses as more desirable. If I thought
efficiency to be the greatest of civic virtues I should long since have

147 10-2

DEMOCRATIC LEADERS INTERPRETERS

moved to Germany. But I, for one, prefer freedom even at the risk
of not muddling through.

In a totalitarian state those placed in authority are chosen for their
presumed efficiency in carrying out specific foreseen tasks and the
same principle holds within the various permanent services in a
democracy. But, as I have stated, a democratic country as a whole
has no formulated objective towards which it moves in accordance
with a preformed plan. Its policy is as fluid as its ideal is unconscious.
So its leaders, who are politicians rather than officials, have the task
of formulating the policy which may give actual expression to what
the people are vaguely wanting. This is their primary function and
secondary thereto comes the actual direction of affairs. It follows
that the leader in a democratic state is an interpreter in the first
instance and an executive as a kind of afterthought. The great states-
man is one with a feeling for his country's history, who discerns the
trend of its evolution, who knows what it will want in the future* and
legislates for that in advance of the emergency which makes the need
obvious. This is a true leader, neither a driver nor driven by popular
outcry. Unfortunately the aspirant to office who looks too far ahead
gets out of touch with the plodding multitude : he is held to be a
visionary and therefore not a * practical man'; there is always a
tendency to place responsibility in the hands of one who is merely
a time-serving politician. The man who formulates in ringing words
what the masses are already thinking but cannot articulate for them-
selves is obviously a practical man, while one who foresees what the
people will think to-morrow is one who has his head in the clouds.

Correlated with this is another feature of democratic politics that
is both petty and important. A dictator, as we have seen, personifies
the state and is therefore deified. As a superhuman being, he is
granted privileges that lift him above common men, privileges that
symbolize the greatness of the country. (Where there is a limited
monarchy the pomp of royalty expresses the majesty of the nation,
while its inheritance signifies that the Crown belongs to no one

148

DICTATORSHIP AND PRIVILEGE

generation. Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi suggests the group's immortality.)
In a democracy, while it is at peace, the successful politician must be
careful not to c put on airs', he must advertise his fraternity with the
common man. Thus Baldwin's pipe. On the other hand, when war
is declared, which means that an all-engrossing objective is clearly
seen by all, when action and not interpretation is demanded by the
people, then not merely the powers but also the privileges of a
dictator are forced on the leader of the government. Hence Winston
Churchill's cigar, that, when economy is a watchword and foreign
exchange is a vital need of the country, is regarded as a natural
appurtenance of his exalted office. This may seem to be a trifling
matter and, indeed, it is; yet such a trifle may seem to have monstrous
consequences. Modern history records one example of this.

In the autumn of 1916 the people of the United States were of two
minds or of no mind about the European war. There were two
bitterly opposed but non-party and unorganized factions, one of
which urged that the country should join the Allies while the other
argued that it was and should remain a foreigners' war. There was
a presidential election and the Democratic Party nominated Woodrow
Wilson for a second term. The two chief claims made for him by his
partisans were that he had favoured organized labour and ' He kept
us out of war'. His opponent was Hughes, an extremely able and
public-spirited man with an excellent record as an administrator.
The degree to which the people were of two minds was exhibited in
the closeness of the polls everywhere. After several days of uncertainty
and several recounts, it was found that the state of California had
given a majority to Wilson by a mere handful of votes, and it was the
decision of California that meant his return to the White House.
Now, on an electioneering trip through the state of California,
Hughes had, thoughtlessly, worn a top-hat (he belonged to a genera-
tion and a community in which that was natural official garb) and
he rode in a closed car. These were affronts to the 'democracy 5 of
Californians and made him many enemies. That top-hat sent Wilson

149

THE PROPHET OF A DEMOCRACY

to the White House and also to Versailles . . . the Fourteen Points
and the League of Nations. The rejection of the latter by Congress
is also interesting. So long as the United States was at war, Americans
did not question the dictatorial powers Wilson exercised they
merely criticized his efficiency but, the moment the war was over,
his assumption of the right to speak for Americans and to enrol them
in an international undertaking was bitterly resented. So the League
of Nations as much because it was Wilson's baby as for any other
reason was left to the half-hearted care of foster-parents. Momentous
events in the evolution of civilization are probably not really de-
pendent on trifling accidents, but, superficially and obviously, that
top-hat played a mighty role in history.

A prophet, when accepted, can move a people into a frenzy of
action and almost miraculous fortitude. Although morale is either
potentially present or absent in a people themselves, no one can
evoke and maintain it as can a prophet. A prophet is one who inter-
prets the will of God. As we have seen, patriotism and religion are
closely related psychologically. An inspiring political leader is one
who interprets a nation's soul to its people. Hitler derives his power
over Germans from the fact that he is their prophet. And so it is
with Winston Churchill. The moment a democracy goes to war, it
knows what it wants and therefore seeks a dictator who may co-
ordinate all the energies of the state in an effort to achieve victory;
one who will have the courage to crush all special interests, to deny
to individuals for the time being the very rights for which the people
are fighting. But how can he be selected? The common people have
no means of judging whether a candidate for leadership has, or has
not, the desired executive capacity, so they give their support to the
interpreter who can most nearly be described as a prophet. He is
one who, as his political record shews, has been identified with the
policy now in the ascendant, who like the persecuted prophet has
suffered for the truth, or who can evoke the spirit of the ages rather
than the merely ephemeral wants which the time-serving politician

150

THE PROPHET OF A DEMOCRACY

detects. Churchill combines these assets. For years he has repeated
his warnings that war was coming and now he speaks a language
that would not have been disdained by any of Elizabeth's captains
with an oratory that is the despair of rival politicians. Confidence
is based on feeling rather than syllogisms. If a leader is regarded as
a prophet, he is dowered with a might that is proportionate to the
people's determination. Clearly he is powerful; therefore he can
control and direct the energies of the nation ; therefore he must be
a good executive. The logic is shaky, but its effect on morale is
galvanic. If he has executive ability, he will make a perfect leader
and, so long as the war lasts, he may enjoy privileges denied the
common man, he may even assume prerogatives of royalty unchal-
lenged. But when the war is over he must become a common man
again, he must persuade and not command, or he will lose popular
support and receive the reward due for his service to his country in
its hour of need from historians and not from his fellow citizens.

CHAPTER 8

INHERENT DIFFICULTIES IN ORGANISATION

I HAVE said that hierarchical organization with its rigid division of
labour is imcompatible with evolution and this is a topic to which
we must now return. It is a principle well illustrated in the biological
field. Ants have highly specialized division of labour; ants are highly
efficient, so efficient, indeed, that they have survived since an age
millions of years antedating the appearance on this globe of our
mammalian ancestors. But, if the evidence of geologists is to be
believed, ants have not changed one bit during all these aeons of
time. Their efficiency in the performance of certain tasks has pre-
vented them from tackling any others. Since now-a-days, when the
country's peril has forced on us the adoption and extension of
hierarchical organization and its regulation of our lives, there is
frequent criticism of officials for faults that are, perhaps, inherent in
the system rather than sins of the individual, it may be well to
scrutinize the system in an effort to discover the roots of the evil.
Why is stratification of authority so prone to rigidity and resource-
lessness? We shall see that some of the causes are inherent in the
system as such and their effects might be minimized by modifications
in organization and practice based on insight into the evil, while
others are the product of little-mindedness and selfishness that are
given undue scope in officialdom, these being evils that could be
greatly reduced if some means were found (or extended) for making
them taboo.

When a small number of men are working together, either as equal
partners or as employer and employed, co-operation can be secured
through purely personal contacts; everyone has access to everyone
else. But as organizations increase in size this becomes more and
more difficult until, as in Government services or business combines,

'52

INTERDEPENDENCE OF ENDS AND MEANS

it is quite impossible. Inevitably, therefore, two substitutes for per-
sonal contact are adopted in the effort to translate policy into action.
One is hierarchical organization and the other is rules or regulations.
The same phenomenon appears even in the field of morals. In the
family instruction through advice and example as well as discipline
is on a purely personal basis. In schools rules and a disciplinary
hierarchy begin to exclude the consideration of moral problems
individually, while in the state as a whole there is a machine for
making laws and another for enforcing them both of which treat
citizens as if they were numbers and not human beings with per-
sonalities. The impersonality of the large corporation or service is
notorious, but few people seem to realize how inevitably that charac-
teristic is responsible for inelasticity and incapacity to deal with
unforeseen problems.

In a hierarchical organization policy is determined at the top
while subordinates have, within an ever narrowing range of choice,
to decide how the policy dictated to them will be carried into effect.
This is the contrast between strategy and tactics, between law-making
and law-enforcement, between capital and labour, or finance and
management plus labour. It is, even, the difference between the
state and the citizens that compose it. If these discriminations were
complete and therefore valid, the difficulties inherent in mere increase
of size would matter less. (Indeed when, as in an authoritarian state,
the citizen accepts depersonalization, is prepared to be a robot, and
regards the state as an objective reality, the system works much more
smoothly.) The trouble is, however, that the problems of policy
cannot be divorced from those of action, strategy from tactics, or
finance from management. This difficulty is particularly acute in
democratic government, where the ideal and therefore the policy of
the state is concerned so largely with the well-being of its citizens and
consequently with the activities most suitable for them as individuals.
As a matter of fact democracy is fundamentally at variance with this
basic principle of hierarchical organization because, in broad outline

'53

THE PROBLEM OF LIAISON

at least, policy is determined by the people and it is the job of the
government to formulate that policy and translate it into terms of
action. With this broad issue, however, I am not concerned except to
point out that it implies a necessity for profound modification of the
principle of stratified authority if democracies are to have workable
organizations. I wish rather to draw attention to the implications
of the fact that means must modify ends. It is as important that only
practicable policies should be formulated as it is that the tasks of
workers should be correlated towards the attainment of a common goal .
There are two difficulties in the way of this correlation, difficulties
that increase almost geometrically with increase of size in any organiz-
tion. They are liaison and the utilization of expert technical abilities.

If the commander-in-chief meets a private soldier who is on an
errand given him by a sergeant and gives him a contrary order,
confusion would result and, to prevent this, the general transmits his
orders only through a series of subordinates. Apart from possible
delays resulting from technical hitches in communications this system
works well enough; in its way down from the top to the bottom the
interpretation of orders at each level is, theoretically at least, within
the intellectual capacity of the officer concerned. But the flow of
information from the bottom to the top meets obstructions that are
theoretically predictable, as well as, perhaps, obstructionism that is
theoretically remediable. Let us take a hypothetical example.

A junior officer, commissioned or non-commissioned, in some
battery spots a defect in equipment or in the prescribed method of
using this equipment and has a suggestion to make as to improvement
in the device or the drill. This he communicates to the major in
command of the battery. The major, fully conversant with such
practical problems, endorses the proposal and sends it on to the
commander of the regiment. This officer is probably also aware of
what the gunner is called upon to do and he adds his approval when
it goes to the brigadier. The brigadier may have never used this
equipment himself because it was issued long after he ceased working

'54

LIAISON: VERTICAL AND PERIPHERAL

in a gun site. But we will give the devil his due and assume that he,
too, realizes the problem and supports the recommendation. It now
goes to the office of a major-general whose concern is not supposed
to be with the minutiae of operations, but who may be presumed to
have an intelligence corresponding to his rank. But does he ever see
the memorandum? His correspondence is large, much too big for
any one man to deal with and it has to be filtered. The selection of
what is to be passed on for the decision of the great man himself is
necessarily in the hands of an officer perhaps a non-commissioned
one who has, in theory, a weaker imagination and judgment than
those of the officers who have already sponsored the suggestion. His
job is definitely not that of determining policy, it is to follow regula-
tions, to find out what regulation is applicable and to apply it. It
would be a lucky accident if he had ever been on a gun site or used
the device in question. So his very ignorance forces him back on
regulations. On the face of it the memorandum contains a criticism
of supplies received, so he passes it on to some inspectorate of ord-
nance. After some weeks the reply gravitates down to the original
critic stating either that records shew that the supplies in question
had been inspected and passed so that any defect must have been
due to mishandling (written by a sergeant or corporal) or that the
memorandum does not come into the province of the inspectorate
(written by an officer, probably). At least a month has gone by. If
the proponents of the scheme have sufficient patience more months
are spent in finding, by trial and error, to what department the
memorandum ought really to go. The answer is, of course, that
there is no department that deals specifically with proposals coming
from operations as to modifications of equipment or technique. 1

1 If there were such a department its usefulness would be doubtful. It would
be inundated by suggestions coming from uncritical enthusiasts and these sug-
gestions would have to be filtered by stupid clerks. It takes a high degree of
intelligence to discern the germ of a fruitful idea in a clumsily worded, and perhaps
inaccurately stated, proposal. First-class minds are not economically employed in
reading a correspondence that is 99 per cent trash.

155

LIAISON:

Eventually, however, the proposal finds its way to an experimental
department. From this department the reply is more sympathetic
but is, perhaps for that very reason, the more depressing. What is
suggested is sound, it would mean improvement. But the device is
in quantity production (or the training manual is being printed by
the million) and the foreseen benefit would not be worth the time
and money that would be lost if the device or technique were to be
modified. This is final.

Now it is important to note that the ultimate judgment is not
good' or 'worthless' but is 'not good enough', i.e. relative. Who is
competent to make this estimate? In the first instance are those on
operations? No matter how imaginative and critical experimenters
and designers may be, ultimate proof of utility will always be in the
hands of the user. He, however, is incompetent to assess the cost of
any modification. If he could express enhanced utility in a percentage,
production engineers could also express the loss entailed by the
modification as a percentage and a child could solve the equation.
Unfortunately it seems that only those who have a specialized
laboratory training are competent to conduct controlled experiments
such as yield valid, numerical results. For lack of such training ob-
servations are improperly controlled and the conclusions are based on
impressions which vary with the sanguineness of the observer. Clearly
investigation ought to be made by trained experimenters who could
have the services of technically trained users. But how much weight
would the report of the trained experimenter carry? He is not
necessarily a man of high military rank or civilian reputation and the
decision rests ultimately with someone of cabinet or general's rank.
This, however, is the problem of utilization of the technician which
will be discussed shortly.

It should not be supposed that this hypothetical example represents
anything that is at all unusual. What I am trying to demonstrate is
that, although hierarchical organization may be efficient in the
planning of operations to give effect to some preformed policy,

156

VERTICAL AND PERIPHERAL

modification of policy in the light of experience must be slow and
uncertain, because accurate and detailed knowledge of the experience
is not in the possession of the framers of policy. This is not a defect
detectable in one service alone. It occurs in every service, civil or
military, of every country and it is present, inevitably, in every big
business as well. The reason is that reports of difficulties or sug-
gestions for improvements from the operational base of the pyramid
to its apex invariably have to pass through one or more 'filters'.
The deleterious operation of the filter may be explained in this
general statement: the wider the responsibility of any official the
wider is the range of information on which his decisions must rest ;
the larger the bulk of reports reaching his office the more impossible
it is for him to consider them personally, which makes inevitable a
selection of the data submitted and this selection must be done by
inferiors who are not supposed to exercise final judgment and yet
are, by this system, forced to do so whenever they handle corre-
spondence in accordance with set regulations or when they exclude
some data in making a synopsis. The junior officer in my hypothetical
example would probably end his crusade in a defeatist mood, cursing
red-tape, cursing his superiors, cursing the stupidity of the official
mind. (Which shews the relevance of this discussion to the problem
of morale.) But he would be wrong: there may have been no ob-
structiveness, but everywhere a sincere desire to do one's best. The
fault is inherent in all large-scale organization. Recently a friend of
mine, who came from private life to be second in command of an
office that soon reached large proportions, told me that at first he and
his chief could handle personally all the reports that came in but
soon it became impossible; juniors had to make digests; they knew
they were no longer in possession of all relevant facts but they could
do nothing about it; they knew the evil in advance yet they saw it
grow under their eyes, powerless to stop it. No wonder the word
'monstrous' has two meanings.

The critic is prone to exclaim, 'Gut the red-tape!' If that means

157

'RED TAPE'

to abolish officiousness, departmentalism and petty obstructiveness,
the value of such reforms is obvious. But if this means, as it so often
does, that regulations should be abolished, the suggestion is nihilistic.
Before effort can be concerted there must be organization, when
organizations become large they inevitably become inelastic. But
without organization there is chaos and it is better to have a rigid
system than none at all. If more people realized that large organiza-
tions were inevitably slow in changing to meet new conditions, that
the enemy must suffer from the same disability, there might be less
discouragement than evidence of slowness in our war effort now
produces. Similarly, those who discern that capitalism is a faulty
system for regulation of production and distribution and would seek
to abolish it are like those who would abolish red-tape. Russia tried
that experiment and had soon to abandon it and other doctrinaire
Reforms'. There are no short-cuts to the millennium.

There is another principle involved in the correlation of national
and large business activities. This is centralization, which can be
dealt with more briefly. Every government service, civil or military,
and every branch of a business combine is a pyramid ; the apices of
these pyramids meet at a centre where an ultimate authority that
rules them all resides. The problem here is to correlate the activities
within all the pyramids. It is another problem of liaison. Again in
theory it is possible to envisage correlation of activities as a result of
carefully prepared plans elaborated by the cabinet, a supreme war
council, or the central board of directors. But, again, this is an
organization adapted for dealing with what has been already foreseen
but not for coping with new problems. If a new need arises at the
operational periphery of one service and the means for satisfaction
of that need exist at the periphery of another service, centralization
of communication means that the central authority must contain a
clearing house for information as well as exercise direction in plan-
ning. Such a system is bound to be both cumbrous and inefficient.

158

PAPERS

In the first place there will inevitably be filters on the lines from the
periphery to the centre. If to avoid these there is no selection or
summarizing of data during their transmission, then a second diffi-
culty arises. There has to be a duplication at the centre of the records
made at the periphery as well as a central staff of experts to under-r
stand the data as knowledgeable as those at the periphery. Such
duplication is possible in a small organization when it resides in the
head of a manager who 'knows the business'. But when the business
grows to such a size that one man can no longer see everything that
is going on, there must be departmental sub-managers who act as
filters or there must be detailed paper reports that go to the manager's
office. In the latter case the filter is in that office and the selection
of material to be laid before the manager will be intelligent only if
the clerk who makes it has the technical knowledge and judgment
of the men who make the original reports.

One way of avoiding this central filtration, or of reducing its
labour, is to have reports sent in with a number of duplicates, the
latter being distributable to other departments whose operations
have to be correlated with that of the department making the first
report. This is the reason for the enormous volume of paper work that
burdens the lives of officers in all services. It is, naturally, resented,
but without it there could be no liaison at all. If the reader is sceptical
as to the necessity for paper records being so numerous, let him think
of a simple example. A housekeeper retains in her head a record of
her supplies in larder and linen cupboard, the wear and tear of
furnishings, the work she has already done and of the jobs still to do.
Now imagine that this housekeeper has to regulate the purchases,
the repairs, the cooking, the cleaning and so on for a thousand houses.
A thousand cooks and housemaids cannot report each day to her in
person, their activities cannot be correlated, nor their relative needs
adjusted, unless each makes a daily written report. Now, even if this
super-housekeeper has a technical knowledge of cooking, cleaning
and mending (which is improbable, for her abilities should be

EXPERTS

primarily those of a financier or executive rather than of an operator)
she will not know local conditions in the thousand different regions
where the houses are situated. Her central staff must therefore
include experts both in technical household duties and in local con-
ditions. Not only will the volume of paper reports be monstrous but
the staff that copes with it at the centre must well nigh duplicate
that at the periphery if it is to be handled intelligently.

An excellent example of the futility of centralized control is given
in the control by the Treasury of unusual expenditures by other
government departments. A novel expenditure is requested in order
to meet a real, or fancied, need that has arisen since the last budget.
The only possible judge as to the reality or the gravity of the need
is one conversant with the problems in the field where the money
would be spent, in other words, an expert. Treasury judgment is
therefore, either quite unintelligent or else it is made on the advice of
a Treasury official who is an expert in the field in question. So, to
make competent judgments, the Treasury must maintain a staff of
experts duplicating those working for all other departments, civil
and military. There is no escape from this dilemma if there is to be
centralized control and if the system is to be adaptable. Naturally
there is no such duplicate set of experts and, inevitably, Treasury
decisions on such requests are arbitrary and unintelligent. One
result is a departmental hostility that is, probably, an important
factor in the production and maintenance of the disease of depart-
mentalism which will be discussed shortly.

The obvious way out of this dilemma is decentralization, but then
another complication arises. Cumbrous though it may be, the central
authority nevertheless provides some possibility of liaison between
one department and another. With decentralization that possibility
ends and another must be found. This may be accomplished by the
appointment of a liaison officer, to communicate the experience and
needs of two departments which overlap in their activities, who has
sufficient technical knowledge in the field of each department to

1 60

LIAISON OFFICERS

interpret it to the other. This is the reason why an Army officer may
be seconded to the Air Force in order to learn to fly. Similarly,
although in an entirely different field, the successful research physio-
logist to-day is apt to be either an expert electrical engineer or an
expert chemist. In the world of economics the distributive services,
the middlemen and shopkeepers, perform the function of liaison.
One of the first mistakes which a democracy makes in turning to
authoritarianism, as it must in war-time, is to suppose that distributors
are less important than producers. They are redundant in primitive,
self-contained villages, but they become more and more essential as
the economic community grows. The reformer who would abolish
the middleman is simply myopic, but he who would regulate the
distributor's wages may not be.

The task of maintaining liaison between any two departments by
employing the services of a dually trained technician is simple. But
the trouble is that there are many more than two departments, no
matter whether we are dealing with government services or business
combines. The activities of each are bound sooner or later to overlap
those of all the others. If, then, liaison is to be accomplished through
special officers, the number required will mount, as the number of
departments increases, according to a formula which a mathematician
could furnish but which I am incompetent to give whatever it may
be it represents a dizzy rate of progression. In the field of economics
a servant appears, lured by money that can be made when a service
is required. Thus the more complicated is the economics of any
country or, indeed, of the world, the larger is the number of those
engaged in financing liaison.

There is a myth that will probably take a lot of killing, namely that
of the efficiency of * big business '. Competition between many small
firms is held to be wasteful and this waste may be eliminated by the
'rationalization' of combined management. Certainly the wasteful-
ness of competition is excluded (as is also its incentive), but the
weaknesses of large-scale organization then appear, for the simple

MCC l6l II

TION J

reason that they are inevitable. An attempt is made to obviate the
evils of hierarchical organization by compromising with decentraliza-
tion. Then liaison between subsidiaries is absent. Two examples will
illustrate this. Two subsidiaries tendered against each other for a
foreign contract for more than six months before this ruinous rivalry
was discovered. It was not in the interest of the foreign consumer to
disclose to either subsidiary the name of its competitor or even the
country of its domicile. The competition could have been avoided
only if every subsidiary made detailed reports to every other sub-
sidiary of the activities of its sale department, which would involve
an exasperating, if not intolerable, amount of paper work. The other
example is of a not too scrupulous middleman who made a tidy profit
by buying a commodity in one office, walking downstairs and selling
it in another office of the same company, and all in a matter of twenty
minutes. He performed a liaison service but he was overpaid.
A friend who was for years in one of our military services and then
joined the staff of one of the biggest businesses in England or indeed
in the world told me that, so far as he could see, the government
service was the more efficient. Their faults were the same but,
presumably, the will to serve was stronger when it was the country
that was to gain. Loyalty is a stronger motive than is money.

If big business has this inefficiency, why is the fact not notorious?
The answer is that a wrong measure of efficiency is applied. Big
business makes money when the small business fails. But this profit
comes from monopoly. If a business is big enough it can, legally or
illegally, control the price at which it buys and at which it sells.
With its reserves (including credit with the banks) it can during a
period of depression carry on business at a loss and outlive its small
competitors, thus perfecting its monopoly. The Post Office is fre-
quently cited as a case of a large organization that is efficient and is
a government institution to boot. Its success could really be taken
as an example to illustrate the argument I have been making. In the
first place the vast bulk of its problems can be accurately foreseen and

162

' RA TIONALIZA 770 JV"

therefore it performs just those functions which can be efficiently
executed by a centralized hierarchical organization. When it took
over telegraphy it did not have to substitute the transmission of
telegrams for that of letters. It could cope with the former by mere
additions to its staff and similarly with the adoption of telephone and
wireless services. Secondly, the Post Office is a monopoly which,
through the government, can control the price of its services abso-
lutely and, owing to its size as a consumer, can very largely control
the price at which it buys materials and labour (the latter getting
none too much).

It seems then that large organizations are necessarily inefficient.
But should this shock us, make us despair of our own intelligence or of
that of mankind in general? 1 The function of organization is so to
correlate the activities of a group of people as to weld them into a
unit. This is nothing more nor less than the correlation of functions
within a body which makes it into an organism biologically. Indeed
some biologists have claimed that social units ought to be called
organisms. The first problem solved by nature in the course of evolu-
tion was an organization (through the mediation of a nervous
system) which was capable of unifying bodily functions to meet a
limited number of routine circumstances. If a new situation was
encountered, so much the worse for that animal. This simple creature
is governed by instinct, but, being slowly educable, may have deeply
ingrained habits added to his equipment of routine capacities. The

1 We may derive some comfort from the following. It is generally, and probably
rightly, stated that the German machine is more efficient than is ours in many
respects. But at what cost? Germans fit more slickly into a hierarchical organiza-
tion than do we. That is the price of individual liberty. In their zeal for efficiency
they have discovered the need for liaison officers more than we have; or, at least,
they have many more officials. At a German bankers' congress, held some years
before the Nazis came into power, it was stated that there were twice as many
government officials in Germany as in Great Britain although the German popu-
lation was only half as large again. Since the government under the Nazis has
encroached more and more on private enterprise it is safe to assume that the
disproportion is now even greater. If an organization is large enough and if liaison
is complete a top-heavy structure is bound to develop, as is mathematically demon-
strable.

163 II-2

PHYSIOLOGICAL ORGANISATION

capacity to modify behaviour quickly to meet the exigencies of new
emergencies with new methods of attack or defence is something that
appears only among the monkeys and apes and reaches what we
naturally regard as its complete development in man alone. It took
many millions of years for the central nervous system to develop to
the point where co-ordination of hand and eye such as monkeys enjoy
could appear. More millions of years went to evolution of the brain
which is the mechanism of man's intelligence the intelligence which
is signalized by versatility. Nature, in the course of this evolution,
has plumped for centralization as against decentralization, although
indications of the latter are apparent to the physiologist. The central
nervous system, whose function is fundamentally that of intercom-
munication, operates on the hierarchical basis, with a pyramiding
of controls from the spinal up to the brain level. It is in the brain
that liaison is localized, but it takes a lot of 'officials' to accomplish it.
There are 12,000 million cells in the average human brain and of
these 9000 million are in the cerebral cortex with which we do our
thinking. The total 'office staff' is therefore six times the population
of the world (2000 million). If these cells were interconnected only
in pairs, there would be about io 2 , 783 , 000 different pathways. 'During
a few minutes of intense cortical activity the number of interneuronic
connections actually made (counting also those that are activated
more than once in different associated patterns) may well be as great
as the total number of atoms in the solar system' (Brains of Rats and
Men, C. Judson Herrick, p. 9).

The voluntary muscles of the body may be compared to the work-
men in a factory or the soldiers- in the field if the brain is the office
or the staff. When, as a result of taking thought, we make a movement
involving all the voluntary muscles of the body, approximately
twenty-six times as many brain cells are involved as there are muscle
fibres (the ultimate muscle unit) to perform the task. This is like
twenty-six staff officers to one soldier in the field or twenty-six
managers to one workman.

164

PHYSIOLOGICAL ORGANISATION

Civilized man has been engaged on the task of making a social unit
only for a few thousand years. He can expect to fabricate a social
organization that will be adaptable, as the individual man is
adaptable, only when he has developed a liaison system comparable
in its intricacy with that of the individual human brain. Biologically
his progress along the line of social evolution is really prodigiously
rapid. The moral of it all is that we should not be disheartened by
the stupidities of large organizations, we should make the best of an
imperfect world and not make matters worse by trying to solve over-
night the kind of problem which, in another field, it has taken nature
millions of years to master.

Nevertheless nature does give us one hint about organization which
might be used to hasten social evolution. As I have said the organiza-
tion of the central nervous system for routine responses is purely of
the hierarchical type. But,paripassu with the appearance and evolu-
tion of versatility in response, another principle becomes evident.
There grows down from the cerebral cortex of the brain a pair of
pathways into the spinal cord which by-pass the higher levels one by
one. In the lower mammals these pyramidal tracts, as they are called,
just get into the spinal cord and no more, but, paralleling increase
of intelligence, they extend farther and farther until, in man, they
run right to the bottom of the spinal cord. This means that one of the
mammals may be able to place his fore-foot in some position dictated
from the brain while his hind-foot is still controlled only by a general
reflex co-ordination. (Reflexly the hind-foot can follow the fore-foot
of that side accurately and this may be why the footprint of the hind-
foot in so many wild animals coincides with that of the fore-foot.
Discrimination (based probably on vision) can regulate the move-
ment of the fore-foot and the hind one follows its brother slavishly.)
A man can learn to hold a pencil with his toes and write, which
would be completely impossible without pyramidal tract control of
the legs. Just what the meaning of this allegory should be for him
who would improve organization I am not prepared to suggest, but

CUTTING RED TAPE

I feel confident it involves a valuable principle. Anyone hoping to
become an innovator in executive work might do worse than spend
a few years in studying the organization of the central nervous
system. If he pondered over the many principles there exhibited he
might gain useful hints.

So far I have discussed limitations in organization that are inherent
and, therefore, must be universal. We may rest assured that the
enemy has similar trials and probably takes them no more philo-
sophically than we do. In the novels and plays of all countries the
defects of the official mind are pilloried. But there remain to be
discussed other factors that are not inevitably operating to hamper
the efficiency of groups, factors which flow from the characters of
officials the virtues of the good official and the vices which the bad
one is prone to develop. Whether the psychologist (as a biologist)
has a right to talk about organization in the abstract may be
open to dispute. But there can be no doubt that the problem of
character belongs to psychology which does not preclude the intel-
ligent lay observer from drawing general conclusions of value.
(Trotter, whose work I have quoted so freely, was not a professional
psychologist.)

In spite of all the reasons I have urged to prove that large-scale
organizations are rigid and unadaptable, the fact remains that they
can change their habits, can be modified; the miracle does happen.
How is this accomplished? It would seem that it is brought about
by individuals and in spite of the system. These are officials who
treat rules as vague guides for conduct of their duties but not as
regulations that should be followed to the letter. In other words they
cut the red-tape. They are inspired by zeal for the country they serve
rather than by loyalty to the traditions of the department in which
they work. They take orders, of course, but they are prepared to
make up others without consulting a manual and they have the
authority to see that these novel orders are carried out. In other
words they are ready to exercise leadership, risking loss of promotion

1 66

CUTTING RED TAPE

or facing the possibility of dismissal with equanimity. The problem
of the psychologist is twofold, to identify the factors which cause
deterioration in the character of those in the machine the diseases
of officialdom and to study the methods by which candidates can
be chosen and trained so that they may escape or surmount the perils
besetting the soul of him who enters government service, either civil
or military.

CHAPTER 9

DEPARTMENTALISM AND CAREERISM

THE diseases of officialdom are assignable to two general causes,
a perversion of loyalty and the temptations which service life offers
to those of weak character.

Departmentalism is a disease of loyalty. If a number of people are
working together at a common task they will inevitably tend to form
a group that has pride in itself, gathers what traditions it may and
seeks to make itself superior to other similar groups.. This esprit de
corps has always been held to be useful in bringing out the potential
energies and abilities of men, and in the Army the maintenance of
the regimental system is considered essential for the development of
morale. On the other hand the Royal Air Force has always shifted
its officers constantly about from station to station and from squadron
to squadron, and the morale of the Royal Air Force has become
legendary even during its short life. So the importance for morale
of focusing loyalty in a small group is probably greatly exaggerated.
(It is a good example of a lay psychological generalization, accepted
as axiomatic but based on no controlled observations.) So long as
rivalry between services is an emulation in service to the state no
harm is done and probably only good comes out of it. Similarly, if
there is a struggle for survival, its results may be valuable. But, when
there is competition for power and privilege, the evils of depart-
mentalism appear and may become disastrous.

A good example of the value of localized loyalty in a struggle for
survival is given by the history of the Royal Air Force. It was formed
out of units in the Army and Navy during the last war when it was
felt that aviation was sufficiently important to be centralized in a
service of its own. Another military innovation of that period was
mechanized warfare; it, too, had its special units within the Army,

168

FOCALIZED LOYALTIES: GOOD AND BAD

but they were not given the status of an independent service. And
what have been the results? After the war came disarmament and
an orgy of economy. All services, civil and military, struggled for
survival, squabbling over the pittances available. There was no
Mechanized Warfare Service to press its claims before the cabinet;
so there was available for the development of tanks only what could
be spared when the more conventional needs of the Army had been
met in a niggardly way. Is it surprising that, although we invented
the tank and, it is said, were the innovators in the tactics now used
by the enemy, yet we have followed the German rather than led
him in tank evolution during this war? The Royal Air Force, how-
ever, could speak for itself. Although it was reduced to a handful of
squadrons, there were sufficient appropriations for aeroplane design
to be encouraged. In this war the Germans have had to follow behind
us in further evolution, indeed it is doubtful whether even now they
have produced a fighter that is as good as that with which we began.
Service loyalty which shews itself in struggle for survival and in
emulation in service of the state is a good thing and, if there was a
sharp and obvious line dividing these motives from those which
operate for the aggrandizement of the department as such, this
loyalty would probably operate always as a virtue. After all, govern-
ment officials are not conscious traitors, they enter any service with
an ambition to serve the state and, when they gradually deteriorate
into departmentalists, they do not realize that their loyalties have
changed from being national to being parochial. This is because the
valuable kind of departmental loyalty is used as a rationalization to
cover those activities or actions which benefit the department at the
expense of the state. The argument is all too facile. The department
was established and operates for the performance of a function essential
in the life of the nation. (True.) The health of the body politic
therefore depends on the vitality of this department. (Also true.)
Our job is not to run the whole state but to perform the task assigned
to us, therefore the stronger we can make our department, the more

169

THE DEPARTMENTAL CONSCIENCE

patriotic are our efforts. It is here that the logic comes unstuck. If
the strength of the department is used only in greater efficiency in
service to the nation, the argument would be sound except in so far
as it might mean that a disproportionate amount of the national
energy might be drained into this particular service. But, unfor-
tunately, there is always a tendency for the aggrandizement of the
department to become an end in itself; the service in question is set
up as an imperium in imperio. Even when this tendency has become
obvious, another rationalization steps in, one the truth of which it is
difficult to gainsay. All departments are rivals : they have to compete
for appropriations and they have to compete for authority in fields
where the operations of different services overlap. If we claim only
our just share, the others will claim more and in the end we shall get
less than our just due. Therefore we must strive to get all we can.
Unless we obstruct our competitors, they will take to themselves that
which rightly belongs to us ; if we co-operate with them, they will
win the fruits of our labours. Liaison would be our undoing.

This is not, of course, a published system of ethics, it is riot even
a tradition which is explained to every neophyte when he enters a
service. It is, probably, never fully conscious in the mind of any
one official. It is more of an atmosphere, an ethical bias that is
developed and perpetuated by example rather than by precept.
Naturally it exists side by side with an ethic based on true patriotism
with which it is in conflict. None but wilful traitors assuming the
public servant to have a certain minimum of intelligence could be
a pure departmentalist any more than a brigand could be loyal to
his band without knowing that he was breaking the law. But, as has
been argued earlier, we all tend to adopt the morals of those with
whom we are in immediate contact, and perhaps the greatest weak-
ness of the system lies in the opportunity which departmentalism
gives small men to indulge the meaner sides of their characters.

The peccant public servant is not consciously dishonest nor is he
consciously a traitor, but the nature of his employment, and parti-

170

OBSTRUCTIONISM AND AMBITION

cularly the atmosphere of inter-departmental rivalry, facilitate a
self-seeking that easily gets out of step with public service. He enters
the employ of the state in order to make a living, within the limits
of his ambition to make a career, and with a more or less conscious
desire to serve the nation. The third motive is often in conflict with
the first two and, when the conflict is obvious, patriotism will conquer.
He will, for instance, not take bribes that are, unequivocally, bribes.
But rationalization is so easy. If he is lazy, it is simpler to look up
a rule and make the case fit it, than to think out a solution that can
fit the spirit of the rules while evading their letter. So he becomes
a willing slave to red-tape. If a citizen of greater wealth or of higher
social status than himself enters the department on business, he can
take to himself the authority of the department as a whole even
the power of the Crown to snub the man who is his superior outside
the office. Thus obstructionism, which feeds his vanity, is a main-
tenance of the prestige of the department.

This pettiness is an exhibition at a low level of what becomes
careerism at a higher one the seeking of power for the love of
exercising it rather than as an opportunity for greater service.
Promotion, particularly at lower levels, follows length of service
provided the aspirant makes no mistakes. The exercise of initiative is
always hazardous: one may make an error of judgment or one may
take a decision that, technically, is in the province of a superior who
is jealous of his authority. Here, again, a premium is put on following
rules rather than the use of intelligence.

Promotion, particularly at higher levels, rests on the importance
of the work which passes through the hands of the official. There are
three standards which may be applied in measuring its value. The
first, which ought to be the only one, is the usefulness of the work,
actually and potentially, to the whole community. Unfortunately
there are in practice two other foot-rules used. According to estab-
lishment regulations the rank of the official is connected with the
number of assistants he has ; if the bulk of work increases he must

171

LOYALTIES IN CIVIL AND MILITARY SERVICES

have more assistants and, automatically, his status, his salary and
the amenities of employment advance. This system, which operates
with the greater regularity in the civil services, imposes on the official
a great temptation. The more he complicates his duties, the larger
is the amount of paper work that must be done, the larger the number
of clerks needed to handle it, and, therefore, the more certainty of
advancement. This hardly puts a premium on simplification of
procedure in government offices. The other means of measuring an
official's usefulness is what he accomplishes for and in his department.
In working for the government he works for the department; in
working for the department he works for his immediate superiors.
It is they who recommend him for promotion. Would not a chief be
more than human if he failed to select for promotion the man who
had been most useful to him? Naturally this puts a premium on
subtle flattery, discreet servility and intrigue.

All these evils result from putting self-interest or departmental
interest before the national weal. They therefore tend to be more
flagrant in the civil than in the military services, because in the latter
direct service to the Grown is inevitably stressed. The fighting man
is prepared to die for King and Country, not for the Army, the Navy,
or the Air Force. His brother in a civil service, being asked for a
lesser sacrifice, is less apt to scrutinize the direction of the loyalty
that drives him to do more than merely earn his wages. When war
breaks out the conditions of employment of the soldier, sailor or
airman change radically; what were previously merely exercises
become actual battles. No matter how selfish or parochial his
interests were previously they are now inevitably directed towards
more distant and more inspiring goals. But the work of the civil
servant has no alteration in kind with the appearance of war : he
goes on doing just what he was doing before although he may have
to do more of it. If he had been a conscious rogue, the war might
bring reform. But he was not: he always thought he was doing his
duty. So, with the war, his conscience bids him merely to work harder

172

AMBITION FOR MONET OR PO WER

at what he had been doing before. Is it any wonder that the outsider,
unblinded by the civil servant's rationalizations, exclaims that White-
hall doesn't yet know that there is a war on?

We cannot arrive at any judgment about these problems that is
either charitable or accurate unless we realize that a crucial factor
is rationalization intellectual dishonesty, if you will, but certainly
not conscious treason or conscious cheating. It is difficult to camou-
flage a bribe of money, and it is hard to take cash out of the till
without knowing that one is stealing. But who is to say, except in
the case of rare, flagrant examples of one or the other, just where an
altruistic desire for larger opportunity of service ends and a purely
selfish careerism begins? The difficulty of answering this question
has a bearing on the problem of state control of capital as against
private enterprise.

The analogies between businesses and government services are
close. The raison d'etre of each is public service (the business which
performs no function in the community is predatory; it is either
illegal or laws are passed to make it such). British bankers, for
instance, are at least as conscious of their obligations to the nation
in their performance of a liaison function and the profits of banking,
when measured in terms of the turn-over taxed to provide the profit,
are so small as to be almost ludicrous. There is a similar secrecy and
obstructionism in competition between firms as between departments
whose fields overlap. Just as regulations are used to cloak such
operations in the latter, so in the former the word rather than the
spirit of contracts may be manipulated to cover sharp practice. But
with all these analogies, there is one big difference. The reward for
success in business is an obvious one money. In the services this
is a secondary consideration. A civil servant, by the terms of his
employment, has a guaranteed salary and pension which he is certain
to get so long as he spends a certain number of hours at his desk
going through the motions of work and disobeys no rules. No
initiative and no exercise of intelligence is required of him as a

173

AMBITION FOR MONET OR POWER

condition of his continued employment. He can even gain promotion
under these conditions on the basis of seniority. This spells security
but not affluence. Indeed large monetary rewards are impossible in
any government service. The rewards for getting on are increased
prestige and power. Which type of reward for successful service is
the better one?

This question should, I think, be put in another and less vague
form: Which type of reward is least likely to lead to uncontrollable
abuses? If human nature were perfect there would be no such
questions raised : given complete altruism and optimum intelligence
any system can be made to work and the actual operation of all
systems would probably be much alike. For instance, a wholly
benevolent despot, ruling his people in their interest, would allow
free speech, he would set up machinery for learning the state of public
opinion that was at least as efficient as the ballot, he would endeavour
in his legislation never to go materially ahead of public opinion
(otherwise the people would be unable to adapt themselves to it
comfortably and efficiently) and he would thus produce the functional
equivalent of a democracy led by an ideal statesman as prime
minister. So the question is: Is money or power as a reward for
public service the more liable to uncontrollable abuse?

The capitalist system, i.e. the system of private enterprise in
business as opposed to state ownership of all capital, may lead to large
amounts of money coming into the hands of private individuals who
can spend it as they like. How can they spend it? There are only
a limited number of ways. The rich man's capacity to raise his
personal standard of comfort is limited because purely personal com-
forts are limited in number and range. Quite a moderate income
will give a man everything that he can enjoy by and for himself alone.
Beyond this he can spend his money on hospitality, on charity or in
ostentatious display. All money thus spent goes into circulation,
supports those in his employ and eventually pays for its proportion
of national production. If the money were put into circulation by

174

AMBITION FOR MONEY OR POWER

a government agency it is unlikely that it would get there any
quicker. It might, however, flow through different channels and it
niight be more in the national interest for this channel rather than
that to be employed. Ought the capitalist to exercise this choice?
The same question arises in connection with investment of unspent
surplus. It is the capitalist who decides what industry will be
assisted, which one left to starve for lack of capital. In each case,
it may be held, a decision of national importance is left in the hands
of a private individual. This seems wrong, it feels 'undemocratic',
is it not the cause of our economic ills? Very possibly, but what is
the alternative?

Under a socialist system the allocation of this money would be in
the hands of civil servants. Instead of a board of directors with its
chairman there would be a group of Treasury (or other) officials
with its chairman. How will the characters of those in the capitalist
and the socialist bodies differ? The company director is chosen
because he understands management and finance, which he has
proved by making money. The civil servant will be chosen because
he understands management and finance, which he has proved by
getting on in the service. Now either there will be no essential
difference in the characters and abilities of the two groups in which
case a change-over from one system to the other has made no difference
or else one group will be better than the other because avarice is
a more, or a less, dangerous spur than careerism. In each group the
motive of public service would be the same in quality. Its quantity
would depend on the degree to which it might be subordinated to
avarice or careerism. Money is something that can be measured, it
can be taxed, there can be legislation to control the way it can be
spent or invested. But there is no one who can measure careerism
because it is a motive and motives are never pure. It is therefore
controllable by public opinion -just as the capitalist is.

The invulnerability of the careerist is demonstrated by the following
example. A friend of mine, temporarily employed in an important

AMBITION FOR MONET OR PO WER

government office which had to do with military equipment, said to
me that they could get nowhere in his department because at the
head of it was a permanent civil servant who was hoping for a knight-
hood. So he refused to back any proposal that might ruffle a poli-
tician. Of course I do not know whether it was true or not. But, if
true, how could it be proved unless the department head chose to
admit guilt? The motive might not even have been fully conscious,
being largely the outcome of an ingrained habit. If, however, the
allegation had been that the miscreant refused to allow the develop-
ment of a new type of equipment because he held shares in the
company making the existing type, proof or disproof of the existence
of this motive would be simple.

The diseases to which officialdom is liable may, in some measure,
be curbed by changes in organization and the rules of procedure.
Regulations should, indeed, be revised, or rewritten, much more
often than they are. But, essentially, the trouble lies in character
defects which are given a greater opportunity for development in
official than in private life. Public administrators should have too
broad a moral outlook to be loyal only to an immediate group or to
be governed by its moral sanctions; they should be eager to assume
responsibility rather than afraid of it ; and they should be intelligent
enough to realize the pitfalls and temptations they are liable to meet.
How are these qualities to be discovered and cultivated?

176

CHAPTER 10

LEADERSHIP AND PUBLIC SERVICE

IN discussing this problem one fact should be clearly recognized:
leadership always involves privilege, and attempts to divorce the two
lead to trouble. There are several reasons for this nexus. The first is
merely an example of the general principle of division of labour.
Only in a small community can a man leave the plough to attend
to public duties or perform such functions in his spare time. Because
in large communities the management of state business is a whole
time job, the livelihood of the official must be given him by the
labours of others. But, secondly, his needs are not so simple as those
of day labourers. His task is to think rather than to do, to direct the
labour of others rather than to work himself. Thinking cannot be
turned off and on like a tap ; it demands leisure in which one may
ruminate over problems. A good executive so arranges the work of
his department that there is absolutely nothing of a routine nature
left for him to do; he is therefore always free to deal with any prob-
lems that arise. If he is given insufficient staff such freedom is
impossible and he may be so harried by detail that he cannot give
sufficient attention to matters of policy. If he has the staff and
organizes his department properly a visitor may always find him
free and unthinkingly say he is lazy. I have never known a good
executive who was not accused of laziness by someone sooner or later.
From the point of view of either the manual worker or the quill-
driver, the good executive is a drone, a privileged loafer.

But privileges necessary for the efficient performance of his highly
specialized task do not end with freedom from routine. Physical
discomforts such as cold and noises may be unpleasant for a manual
or routine worker but, unless excessive, they do not grievously inter-
fere with his work. The man who is trying to think may, however,

MCC 177 12

LEADERSHIP AND PRIVILEGE

be seriously distracted by them. Similarly, fatigue should be elimi-
nated from the life of the important executive in so far as that is
possible. No one would have the prime minister waste time and
energy in travelling third class and possibly having to stand up for
a long journey. It is taken for granted that his private car is not a
luxury but a necessity. Yet it is not always realized that the same
principle must apply at less exalted levels of authority. Then there
is another not unimportant factor to be reckoned with. No two brain
workers think best in the same environment. One man may solve
his problem best when sitting at his desk, staring at his blotter and
'doing nothing'. Another may find his answer quickest if he goes
for a walk or takes it with him to a golf links. If either departmental
regulations or public opinion make this kind of liberty impossible,
his efficiency is in some measure reduced.

The optimum conditions for efficiency in the specialized labour of
high officials are of a kind that are popularly associated with the life
of an idle, privileged class. So, one would suppose, they would not
be seen in a ' classless ' society. But this is not true. In Russia it was
soon learnt that efficiency is securable only when responsibility is
coupled with privilege and an aristocracy of brain workers has grown
up. And the privileges of higher officials in Germany are notorious.
The contrast in standard of comfort between the governed and their
governors is striking; why is it tolerated? There is, perhaps, some
vague intuition of the connection between efficiency in thinking and
privilege. But there is a more important factor than this. A ruler is,
inevitably, a representative of those whom he governs, a statement
which holds for groups of all kinds and sizes. As a consequence of
this the appearance and style of living of the representative sym-
bolizes the importance of the group of which he stands as a symbol.
If a prime minister began life in a machine shop his union would be
outraged if he appeared publicly in a boiler suit. Pride is, rather,
taken in the fact that one of them now looks, acts and lives like one
of the nobs.

INEVITABILITY OF A RULING CLASS

That privilege is tacitly assumed to go with authority is illustrated
in the following anecdote. It was narrated (on the wireless? in a
daily paper?) by one who was an enthusiast for the present Russian
regime. It was told ostensibly to illustrate Stalin's humility. The
dictator wished to consult a book which was to be found only in a
public (i.e. state) library. He sent a messenger to get it. Now it
happened that there was a rule that such volumes could not be kept
out of the library overnight, a rule so absolute that it 'had never been
broken. Nightfall came and Stalin had not finished his reading, so
he sent his messenger to ask if he might keep the book out for one
night, a request which was duly granted. Now this story has no
point at all unless it is assumed that a dictator has the privilege of
being above the law. That Stalin assumed that he might at least
hope that he had this privilege is shewn by his making the request.
The anecdote illustrates politeness, not humility, and it demonstrates
that privilege is assumed to go with authority but that good manners
are not.

The importance for our problem of the association of privilege
with authority is that it leads inevitably to the formation of a privi-
leged ruling class. People who work, feed, travel, play and rest in
different ways and with different standards cannot associate with
each other socially except in emergencies. Routines of living deter-
mine the routine of social contacts, and differences in standards of
living inevitably lead to social layering. This layering need not be
rigid, there can be much overlap and filtering from one level to those
above and below, but the tendency, as a tendency, is relentless. The
more the ruling class becomes class-conscious, the more will it on the
one hand develop its own ethical standard such, for instance, as
playing the game according to the rules of the class rather than in
accordance with the rules that are printed, which may give the
official moral support in being patriotic rather than departmental in
his decisions and the more will it tend to regard its privileges as
rights belonging to the class rather than to office. These good and

179 12-2

SELECTING THE RULERS

bad tendencies being inevitable, the best system will be that which
tends to create a dominant feeling of responsibility to the state as a
whole with a minimum of belief in rights accruing to the class as such.

How is such a class to be recruited and trained? So far as I know
there are only three different systems that have ever been tried. One
is that of a purely hereditary ruling class. With this there is a rigid
caste system that is accepted like the weather : the cobbler thinks of
himself or of his brother as a possible official no more than with us
a lawyer thinks of making his own boots. This ruling class develops
its moral code noblesse oblige but, human nature being what it is,
it seems inevitably to stress its class 'rights' and so to extend them
that the resultant abuses are intolerable. Eventually there is revolu-
tion. When this has been successful the second system is tried, that is,
the recruitment of officials from all classes but the previously ruling
one. The third system is a compromise : higher officials are drawn
chiefly from a class that enjoys a certain minimum of economic
security, that has an acknowledged superior status socially (but with
no legal recognition of this superiority) and that gives its sons a
specialized ' class' type of education. The relative merits and poten-
tialities for evil in these latter two systems must now be discussed.

Since there is in no modern society any selective breeding for
intelligence and since, in the mutual attraction of the sexes, intelli-
gence is a secondary element, it is safe to assume that the potential
intelligence of children born in upper-class families is only slightly
higher than that in the 'lower' strata. If, therefore, the children born
in more favoured circumstances shew a demonstrably higher intel-
lectual capacity, their superiority must be due to their better educa-
tion, using that term in its widest sense so as to include family and
social influence as well as formal school teaching. At first blush it
would seem that the best system from the state's point of view would
be to have universal free education, send the brighter lads to, a free
University and then pick the candidates for the higher ranks of the
services from the graduating classes. The net being thus cast widely,

1 80

UNIVERSAL FREE EDUCATION

the standard of intelligence recruited should be that much the higher.
That has been, roughly, the French method, and experience in that
country has shewn that the problem is not so simple as it looks.
Remote results of the economic factor are chiefly responsible for the
defects of this system. It begins quite early on with the necessity of
poorer families to have their sons in gainful employment on reaching
working age. Free education is not enough under an economic
system that includes family dependence on the earnings of adolescents.
This means that even if more intelligent youths then or later enter
government service they must do so at the lower grades with little
prospect of ever rising above the level of mere clerks. Secondly, civil
service is, for the vast majority, a livelihood. This means that
independence in judgment is liable to be warped by that inverse
form of bribery, namely threat of dismissal by a hide-bound superior,
than which there is nothing more likely to assist in developing depart-
mentalism. Thirdly, the plums of office serve as temptations to those
who can distribute them. The successful official is prone to assist the
appointment or promotion of his son, his nephew, or the son of his
friend. Then, apart from the economic factor, there is an absence of
special education for what is going to be an official class, an education
which would tend to develop a sense of special responsibility, of
peculiar loyalty, national rather than parochial. These factors,
operating in the political as well as the service worlds, were largely
responsible for the tragic degeneration of French government.

In Germany and in Russia some of these mistakes have been
avoided. Each country began by setting up a governing class the
Party which exercised complete control, from which all officials are
selected and which enjoys many privileges. In each country the
Party membership represents a small minority in the total popula-
tion, its numbers being about the same as those of the upper and
upper middle classes in this country, or, perhaps, smaller. The
recruitment of this aristocracy begins in childhood. Particularly in
Germany, where the people are both great borrowers and thorough-

181

MINORITY PARTT RULE

going in their planning, what is essentially the English Public School
system has been adopted. Education is given a class differentiation.
Even in childhood those are selected who seem to have in them the
germ of leadership and they are given a special training, a special
discipline, so as to develop a sense of responsibility, initiative and a
class consciousness of superiority. In neither Germany nor in Russia
is there any nonsense about withholding privileges from officials.
(The Communists tried that briefly but found that it did not work.
Now not merely does the Soviet official have comforts denied to the
masses but his wife can go about in furs to which the working-man's
wife could never aspire.)

At the moment this system seems to be working well in each
country. But can it last? Against its success there is bound to come
into operation a factor that has not yet had time to shew itself, or at
least to develop its full effect. Whether it will wreck the system or not
time alone can tell. As I have explained, the inevitable privileges of
office force the association together of those who can enjoy similar
amenities. This cuts right across family life unless wife and children
can be brought into the circle. A naval officer, who visits his home
only when on leave, could return to the hovel where his wife and
children lived and join in their simplicity so long as he was on
holiday; he could live two different lives. But this would be im-
possible for any official, civil or military, who resided at home when
on duty. Give an official a sufficient salary and he can, of course,
purchase for his wife and children the luxuries which are com-
mensurate with his status. But what is to be the fate of the children?
The father has gained his eminence through outstanding ability,
which it is most unlikely will be inherited. (We must remember that
the whole point and virtue of this system is that it recruits just that
kind of ability which is rare and sporadic in its distribution.) He
brings up his family to be accustomed to a standard of living that
exceeds that of the average citizen by a big margin this standard
including all the reflected glory of the official as well as material

182

MINORITY PARTY RULE

luxuries. Are his children to be exposed to open competition the
result of which would almost certainly mean a slump to a much lower
level? It should be borne in mind that this problem presents itself
at the time when the official has reached the height of his career,
that is at an age when he is no longer producing offspring but is
thirsting for that kind of immortality that comes through the success
of one's children.

Inevitably the official will try to guarantee for his sons a per-
petuation of the status he has attained through one or both of two
channels. He may use his influence to have him entered in a special
school or he may see to it that on leaving school he is given some
kind of a service appointment. It is possible to imagine this kind of
influence being at work even though the father conscientiously
believes that he is upholding the principle of equal opportunity for
all. Examinations are such a notoriously bad single foot-rule for the
measurement of ability that they must be supplemented by other,
'psychological' tests and interview. Indeed the Germans to-day
have developed an elaborate system of such ancillary methods in
selection of personnel. They insist, quite rightly, on the results of the
psychological tests being interpreted, and both in this interpretation
and in interview subjective factors enter in. Now, in so far as
officialdom has become a class affair or has acquired class charac-
teristics, to that extent will there be a belief in the minds of the
scrutineers that the son of the worthy official is more likely to have
the required character than is a lad brought up in the home of a
wage slave. This belief is, indeed, well founded. The youth who comes
from a family that is used to the exercise of authority, who, in the
reflected glory of his father, has been treated with deference, as if he
had the qualities of leadership, is not so likely to be frightened by
responsibility as is one whose family has always been subservient.
But the members of recruiting boards will probably go farther than
this in favouring the candidature of the son of a friend. Everyone
believes in heredity and few know its laws. It will be assumed that

183

MINORITY PARTT RULE

the son has inherited his father's ability, and if the applicant does
not exhibit his father's intelligence, this can be glossed over as an
example of delayed development.

When order is emerging out of the anarchy which results from
successful revolution, from the destruction of a ruling class, it is
theoretically possible to have a classless selection of officials. But this
creates a body of rulers without traditions, guided only by some
doctrinaire theory. If the system survives, the original theory is
bound to be supplemented and modified, first by experience which
eliminates its impracticable features and second by the appearance
of traditions. Under the impact of experience every single funda-
mental tenet of its original Marxist theory has been abandoned by
the government in Russia. What were to have been basic principles
in the structure of government have become ideals towards which
the Communist Party now strives, or to which they mean to return,
when prosperity has been gained. Then it will be possible, they hope,
to abandon wages graded in proportion to service rather than in
proportion to need, to do without private enterprise, to disallow
trading in commodities, to ban private savings and the right to
bequeath them, and so on. These modifications have come about
quickly in the interests of survival: expedience had to displace theory.
The modifications which result from tradition are bound to be slower
in appearance but, perhaps, no less relentless in their operation.
Equality of opportunity and family life seem to be incompatibles.
This means either that one will destroy the other or a compromise
will be reached in which opportunity is really not equal, while the
ideal of service to the state will succeed in some measure in dis-
placing parental solicitude. If there is a compromise, my guess is
that the family will abandon less of its 'rights' than will the state
simply because the family is a much older and more basic unit
biologically than is the state.

Doctrinairism and rapid evolution belong to young states; com-
promise and stability belong to old civilizations. What of England,

184

A TRADITIONAL RULING CLASS

the oldest political unit in the world? Here we see a conflict that
has gone on for centuries between the principle of aristocracy and
the principle of equality of opportunity, with the latter slowly gaining
on the former but with the resultant change of outlook appearing so
slowly that in every generation the compromise existing at the
moment is accepted as the ideal by the vast majority of the people
who are distrustful of the extremists who keep the fight going. What
is the nature of the present compromise? This is a question that it is
impossible to answer in any simple formula because the compromise
is a process not a static constitution. The best one can do is to describe
where the moving object would seem to be if it were at rest and what
the forces are that seem to be determining the path of its movement.
Anything like complete, and therefore accurate, descriptions could
be given only by one who was at the same time an historian, an
economist, and a sociologist or social psychologist. I am none of
these, except, perhaps, the last. Further, any discussion of this
problem would demand a space disproportionate to the size of this
volume. So only a silhouette and not a proper picture can be given.
It is easier to reconstruct what the immediate past seems to have been
than to describe the present which, in its movement, contains an
element of the not yet discernible future. So I shall begin by giving
the outlines of what up to now has appeared to be the state of affairs
and then mention the factors tending to modify that picture.

Originally, that is to say in feudal days, the aristocracy had com-
plete legal control over the destinies of those subjected to them:
government was entirely in their hands. (I include the ecclesiastical
hierarchy with the aristocracy, perhaps improperly.) But this legal
authority disappeared a long time ago except for the remnant that
remains in the legislative power of the House of Lords. Never
entirely hereditary, the tendency to put fresh blood into the Peerage
has increased so that now those who have held their titles for many
generations constitute a small minority. In modern days the ruling
group, that is, the upper and upper middle classes, is a social and

185

ECONOMIC PRIVILEGE

not a legally recognized caste. This means that its superiority is a
matter of accepted tradition, not codified in any law, and that it
remains an actually ruling class so long as, and in so far as, it succeeds
in placing its sons in key positions in agriculture, industry, finance
and the various government services, civil and military. Competition
for these positions is open, but family backing gives an advantage to
candidates coming from the upper classes. This advantage can be
analysed into three factors which, naturally, interact in practice but
must be considered separately. They are: economic power, social
prestige, and the possession of a special educational system which is
designed to develop the qualities of leadership.

The economic factor operates in three ways. The l gentleman' 1
can afford a Public School and University education. He enjoys a
standard of comfort which signalizes his membership in a caste that
has social prestige, and, most important from the national point of
view, his financial independence enables him to enter government
service immune from the 'inverse bribe', threat of dismissal. So long
as it is placed under no handicaps, any group that begins with a
surplus of income over expenditure has a cumulative advantage in
competition. Investment of the surplus means eventually an increase
of income. If, on the other hand, there is a handicap imposed which
reverses the differential advantage as at the present time then
important social changes inevitably follow. These will be discussed
in a moment.

Social prestige affects leadership in two ways. If authority to
appoint the presumed future leader is in the hands of the governing
class, its appointees are selected preponderantly from that class. If
the selectors are reactionary die-hards, they will make social qualifi-
cation paramount and grant admission to a socially inferior candidate
only if his abilities are so flagrant as to constitute genius. If the
selectors are, or try to be, unbiased, they will tend to balance against

1 The fact that this is a legal occupation in Britain, while rentier would be the
nearest French equivalent, bespeaks an interesting difference between the two
cultures.

1 86

SOCIAL PRESTIGE

relative inferiority of intelligence superiority in that vague charac-
teristic 'leadership'. It is definitely their business to make this
estimate, although it must always be a subjective one because
1 leadership' cannot be measured. The traditions and special educa-
tion of the Public School candidate make it probable that he will
have this subtle quality in greater measure than will his competitor
from a state-supported school. This may serve as a rationalization
which excuses a judgment that is, as a matter of fact, a biased one.
Another type of selection board is that which is dominated by pushful,
lower middle class members whose presence on the board is of
political origin. These men react negatively to social superiority, they
tend to exclude the possibility that tradition and special education
can be assets and to plump for ' brains ' and pushfulness and, in their
nominations, to compensate for the tyranny that the aristocracy and
the plutocracy have exercised. Finally, of course, there may be
selection by those of the lower classes. This occurs, for instance, when
Regular Army sergeants choose men for cadetships from among the
recruits in a conscript army. Here there is no hesitation. In their
eyes the words c officer ' and * gentleman ' are indistinguishable syno-
nyms. They recognize the gentleman by his accent, his gait, by his
cheerful obedience and his recognition of authority that is unaccom-
panied by either subservience or a compensatory forwardness. After
all the young heir has been a fag and has called a junior schoolmaster
'Sir' and lost nothing thereby; why should he worry? Left to them-
selves the sergeants would pick magnificent subalterns but would be
apt to pass over the brains needed in future staff officers. Yet they
may be valuable members of a selection team because they do not
even know what schools the candidates came from; they have learned
to detect the external evidences of self-reliance: they will reject those
who lack these features and accept those who shew them regardless
of their schools. They would be prepared to accept orders from those
they choose and would dislike being placed under those whom they
reject: that is good enough for them.

SOCIAL PRESTIGE

Acceptance of leadership based on social prestige is a much more
important factor. As I have said, the persistence of a ruling class in
this country is based on its being part of a social structure upheld by
tradition. The stronghold of this tradition is in the working classes:
they like to be directed by the gentry and resent orders from upstarts,
from men belonging to their own class, who c do not know their
place 5 or 'think they are as good as their betters'. This is a statement
that would be disputed by many a left-wing intellectual but a pheno-
menon that is the despair of labour politicians, while it is a great
puzzle to observers from newer civilizations.

Social stratification runs throughout all English society, but is
strongest among the working population where the barriers between
adjacent levels are most rigidly maintained. The hierarchy of the
servants' hall is, of course, notorious. In industry social demarcations
go with crafts : the wife of the skilled mechanic may not consort with
the wife of the draftsman or the wife of the unskilled labourer.-
Investigation of the lives of factory operatives shews that there is a
traditional hostility between the rank and file on the one hand and
those of their numbers on the other hand who have been promoted
to be foremen and head-girls. Communication between the two
classes is reduced to the barest minimum: even saying 'Good
morning ' is resented as an intrusion. On the other hand any interest
evinced by the management in the work or person of an employee is
a matter of pride and boastful reminiscence. A young whipper-
snapper just out of school or University who is flitting his way through
the works in order to learn the business will, in spite of his technical
ignorance, gain a co-operation from the employees that the highly
competent foreman cannot achieve. The same tendency operates in
the military services, where its existence constitutes a serious problem
particularly in these days of rapid expansion when the demand for
officers is so much greater than the supply of 'gentlemen'.

Once, when I was commenting on this problem in a lecture, a
major in the Royal Artillery offered this example of the strength of

1 88

NATIONAL STABILITY AND SNOBBERY

the inbred tendency of the Englishman to accept the principle of
social stratification. He had in his battery a gunner who gave frequent
trouble because he was so 'Bolshie'. At the time of the abdication
crisis, he asked this gunner what he thought about it all. There was
only one comment: 'I always did think he was too free and easy
with the likes of us. 5 In spite of his vociferous political views and in
spite of his indiscipline, he accepted something which he professed
to despise.

This may not be so illogical as it appears to be. One may accept
something of which one disapproves because it is part of a larger
system to which loyalty is given. This is, of course, not thought out
consciously : it is merely felt that, for instance, social stratification is
of itself deplorable, but, if it is an integral part of the total national
fabric to which loyalty is given, then it too should be accepted if not
actively supported. Since, as I have explained, loyalty is quiescent
until the group to which it is given is attacked, it follows that this
apparent inconsistency will not appear until the country has to be
defended. This argument explains why reliance may be placed during
war on the loyalty even of those whose utterances have been trea-
sonable during peace.

The disadvantages of snobbery to call it by its meanest title are
too obvious to deserve comment. But has it any compensatory
advantages? I think there are two, both considerable and neither a
matter of general recognition. They are national stability and capacity
for spontaneous organization in the face of an emergency. Let us
examine each.

Whenever one is engaged in evaluating a national institution one
has to bear in mind the principle that the greatest good to the greatest
number is a prime consideration. It is like justice that can take no
account of how cruel it may be to some individuals. The national
stability accruing from social stratification is undoubtedly purchased
at the expense of those whose abilities drive them into continual
contact with people of a different level and with whom they can never

189

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

be comfortable. Since a ruling class gives form and expression to
what a country stands for, it follows that they are, par excellence, the
custodians of the national way of life. If mere ability can elevate a
man into the ruling class as money-making will in a plutocracy
and that man is not imbued with the national traditions so as to be
coerced by them, then his actions may be disruptive of the national
unity. How social stratification works to prevent this may be seen
in an example. An immigrant East London Jew, with the outlook
of a continental ghetto, makes a fortune. He may become a great
man in his little community of fellow Jews but he finds that, in spite
of his money, he does not count outside that community. There are
things, he discovers, that money cannot buy : he is, for instance, not
welcomed in Mayfair. But he is resolved that his children shall enjoy
that which he has been unable to achieve. So he sends his sons to
a Public School. There they have a thoroughly miserable time. Their
accent is peculiar and their manners deplorable. No instructors in
what is and isn't done are so cruelly efficient as the young. The rules
of the game are learnt but are only consciously memorized formulae,
not ingrained habits that assert themselves unreflectively. Their social
contacts are marked by alternate cringing and compensatory hates :
their ability may win them some respect but no friends, no affection
in the quarters where they would most like to find it. What kindness
they receive is prompted by pity or so they think. From this prison
house they never succeed in escaping. But the fate of their children
is quite different. They have had an English Nanny. 1 They go to
their father's school. They can say, ' My dad was in old Sproggin's
House, you know 5 and it sounds quite natural. Their manners, their
pleasures, their ethics are the same as those of their companions, and

1 What a book could be written about the Nanny who at the same time teaches
children what social distinctions are and at the same time gives them an affectionate
understanding of another class, different but equally human! Quite similarly the
American of the Southern states who has had a coloured * Mammy* has no trouble
in dealing with negroes. He calls them * Nigger ' and they sense the presence of a
friendly protector. When a Northerner uses that word, it is an insult.

IQO

CRITICISED

they are accepted. If their names and noses are peculiar and un-
English, those are inconsiderable trifles. They are English because
their habit of thought is English. Not only are they able to penetrate
Mayfair if they wish, they are also welcomed in the highest councils.
The avariciousness and sharp practice without which their forefathers
could not have survived have disappeared. But it took three genera-
tions to replace them with an outlook that was both English and
second nature.

The English Public School system, which has received an equal
amount of applause and abuse, shares therein the fate of the social
system of which it forms so intimate -a part. Both are attacked or
defended for the same reasons or from the same prejudices. All in-
stitutions that have evolved gradually and not been created denovo with
an organization constructed for the attainment of foreseen ends are
cemented by traditions that may be difficult to detect or describe and
features that are obvious but the value of which is by no means clear.
Their evolution has not been planned but has proceeded by trial and
error. According to this system or lack of it only that which is
directly or indirectly useful is retained. The element which is indirectly
useful is one, neutral in value senseless, if you will but attached
to something that is valuable by a mere process of conditioning.

But useful to whom? It can serve the ends of society as a whole,
justify itself pragmatically and thus eventually confound the critics,
or it can serve the ends only of the members of a class, constitute an
unmerited privilege, an abuse, and be indefensible. The reactionary
defender of a tradition takes his stand on the pragmatic test: the
institution as a whole has demonstrable value, the tradition is part
of the institution and therefore it must contribute its share of utility.
This is similar to the argument that every structure in the human
body has its function to perform, therefore the vermiform appendix
is useful. The possibility of its being a vestigial remnant of a structure
that has outlived its usefulness is excluded from consideration. The
reforming critic assumes that everything is a useless accretion which

CRITICISM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS

has not an immediately obvious function. He is like the physiologist
who would ?ay that the pineal body in the brain was only a function-
less relic of what, dim ages ago, was a third eye. But research in
recent years has shewn that the pineal body does have its use.

It will be seen that contrary assumptions are tacitly made by these
two types of observers. The reactionary assumes that we never can
know enough to have a planned evolution. The reformer assumes
that we already know all we need to know, that all that matters is
what can be consciously seen and understood, or that we must assume
our knowledge to be greater than our ignorance if we are to get on
with the job at all. Neither of these positions is logically tenable and
the dispassionate critic would like to take his stand midway between
the antagonists. But where is that point? One can measure what one
knows but not what one does not know. Where is half-way between
a known point and an unknown one? A truly rational approach is
therefore impossible. But the problem cannot therefore be aban-
doned. The physiologist may say, 'I know the human body is not
perfect, but I am not going to try to remodel it until I know all about
how it works', because his job is to explore and not to create or
remake. But society is forced to tackle the problem of making or
remaking its institutions.

Apparently the only way it can get on with this task is to oscillate
between the programmes proposed by the extremists until some kind
of an equilibrium is reached, in the hope that successive points of
equilibrium will lie along a path that leads towards perfection. There
are two types of progress in this evolution. One is with wide excur-
sions from the path: abuses under a reactionary system accumulate
until they are intolerable and there is a bloody, wasteful revolution;
when the revolutionary excesses have been pruned away, the country
may find itself much nearer to the goal. In the other type of progression
there is continual compromise going on with small divagations from
the central path, made at small expense, but achieving a corre-
spondingly small progress. This is the English type in which ' Freedom

192

EDUCATION AND CHARACTER TRAINING

slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent 5 . The English
Public School system, like the social system which it both represents
and fortifies, js a compromise and can only be understood as such.
It is a compromise that spells national decay to the reactionary and
abuse to the reformer.

An educational system has to be judged by the knowledge it
imparts, the training it gives to thinking powers and the way it
moulds character. Since the reformers would like to see the Public
Schools abolished or taken over by the state and since the present
economic trend would, if it continued, make one or other of these
alternatives inevitable, our problem is to see, if we can, what effects
these changes would have on the education now provided by the
Public Schools. The change-over would not come, we may presume,
under a reactionary government, so it would be reformers who would
dictate the resultant changes in policy : these would be in the direction
of substituting a planned system for a traditional one. What would
be the result?

As to the inculcation of knowledge there would be no difference,
or if there were any it would be in the direction of improvement.
Adolescents have receptive minds and the task of school teachers is
to teach facts more than it is to train boys to think. At the university
level training is (or ought to be) preponderantly in the direction of
thinking. Results of entrance scholarship examinations at the Uni-
versities shew that state-aided schools are if anything more efficient
in inculcating facts than are the Public Schools. More of their pupils
however, fade away under competition based on the ability to think
about these facts which is required more and more from the under-
graduate in the course of his University education. This would suggest
either that the clientele of the Public School is basically more intelli-
gent, which is doubtful, or that there is some subtle element in its
system which promotes independent thought. The latter is a much
more acceptable view psychologically because independence is a
temperamental, rather than an intellectual, quality. One has to have
MCC 193 13

CHARACTER TRAINING

courage to think for one's self as well as the intelligence to do so.
Training for independent thinking lies in the field intermediate
between those of education in the narrow sense and in the wider
sense which includes the development of character. So we may turn
to the latter.

Character building rests on the facilitation or inhibition of in-
fluences that are essentially imponderable and therefore impossible
to bring into any planned system with foresight of correct propor-
tions. In other words, tradition is a dominant factor, but, since
roughly the same ideal actuates all schools, they tend to conform to
a general type. Trial and error evolution has meant that what did
not conform to the ideal was eliminated, while whatever was con-
sistent therewith has been retained. The ideal is for the production
of an individual who should be able to assume responsibility, exercise
it as would a perfect Englishman, and have the manners of his class,
i.e. behave as would a gentleman in every sense of that term. A very
leftish friend of mine once remarked to me, anent a discussion going
on in the Press about the selection of Public School boys as cadets,
that the polemic was silly: whatever vices this educational system
might have, it ought certainly to turn out the officer type, for that
was just what it was designed to do; that should be accepted as a
fact and not argued about.

What is this system? In the first place it is communal. There is
little privacy and little time for it: corporate activities in work and
play and corporate discipline run for 24 hours in the day, in which
one important differentiation from a day school appears. Corporate
values rule rather than those belonging to life outside the school.
Pocket money being kept within small limits, the economic factor
produces no differentiation. There may be an extreme and adolescent
snobbery in the belief that only those belonging to this particular
school are decent people, but within the school itself rank goes with
achievement. The son of a duke or of a millionaire who is undistin-
guished in work, play or hobbies, and who is not amusing, is just a

194

IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

dull fellow and has no prestige. If he gathers to himself friends who
are impressed by his title or prospective wealth these sycophants are
stigmatized as toadies.

Within this little world there is always emulation, although the
degree to which it extends is variable. In some schools the competitive
spirit is strong and individuality is fostered; in others conformity is
more highly stressed. But in either case the status of a boy rests on
his performance. In a state-aided school achievement is restricted to
studies or to prowess in whatever games are played with the
facilities provided. In a Public School, however, where the school
day is 24 hours long, any kind of interest, any kind of hobby, may be
pursued so as to bring distinction even adventurous mischief. As
a result of compulsory games-playing, the reputation built up in the
class-room may suffer diminution in the field, or vice versa, so that
all-roundness is encouraged.

Most important of all, however, is the disciplinary system and the
moral code. There are, of course, school rules established by the
authorities plenty of them but with few exceptions their breaking
entails a beating and there's an end to it. Moral obliquity attaches
rather to doing 'what isn't done', an infraction of an unwritten,
traditional code. This code is not that of the masters except
secondarily but is that of the boys themselves. This, and the freedom
given to boys in the maintenance of discipline, constitute what is,
perhaps, the unique feature of English Public Schools. It is epitomized
in the institution of fagging, which was thus defined by Dr Arnold :
4 the power given by the authorities of the school to the Sixth Form,
to be exercised by them over the lower boys, for the sake of securing
a regular government among the boys themselves, and avoiding the
evils of anarchy; in other words, of the lawless tyranny of brute
force.' The fags have to run errands and perform various tasks for
their masters, but the traffic does not go all one way. The older boy
is not only the smaller one's disciplinarian, he is his adviser and his
protector, and is responsible for his welfare. If a small boy is being

195 '3-2

CHARACTER TRAINING

bullied, he appeals not to one of the school masters but to his fag
master. This system is, of course, supplemented by the supervision
and discipline exercised by prefects and so on, details varying from
school to school. In some schools the * head of the house J may exercise
a greater authority than he ever does in after life, even though he
attains an important executive position. ' I also am a man set under
authority' is the lesson learned by this training; one goes through a
stage where menial service is given in deference to the all-coercive
system rather than out of respect to the person of a senior boy:
adaptation to a hierarchy is learnt. Then comes a stage where there
is freedom from this service in virtue of mere seniority but privilege
is attained only because of achievement and the authority going
therewith involves responsibility for the house as a whole as well as
the care of the younger boys. It is a world in miniature, a world of
equal opportunity and free competition but controlled rigidly by a
set of unwritten rules and subjugated ambition for success of the
group as a whole.

Several comments may be made on this system.

In the first place, it is clear that it contains a potentiality for evil
that would be absent in a school where discipline was solely in the
hands of the teaching staff. Tradition rules, and traditions are fluid.
If a bad lot of boys get into a house or a school, the tone may so
deteriorate that nothing but drastic purging can save it if at all.
On the other hand, the freedom from external regulation is just that
which makes the system so potent for good.

Secondly, the scheme works, and only can work, if a sufficient
number of the boys come from homes where noblesse oblige and
assumption of authority are taken as a matter of course. No one can
adapt himself easily to Public School customs and traditions who is
sensitive about his social position and regardful of his dignity, nor
should he fear that he will be laughed at if he exercises authority.
Similarly, if there is not a similarity in accent, bearing and manners,
life in close and crowded quarters is apt to produce cliques of those

196

THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

who can get on well together. Inevitably, therefore, the authorities
who regulate the entry will try to have as socially a homogeneous lot
of boys as is possible. But there is a countervailing tendency. The
schools are all in competition; apart from a trifling number of athletic
fixtures, the relative status of the different schools in the eyes of the
general public is settled by the achievements of the boys, first in the
Universities to which they go and then in after life. So native ability
is sought and this may be secured more effectively if the net is cast
more widely. For this reason there are scholarships enabling those
of smaller means to compete with those who have financial backing.
If the Public School had been, as is often charged, just an institution
for the maintenance and aggrandizement of a class, scholarships
would be available only for the sons of old boys. But they are not.
Scholarships are, indeed, an expression of what is the peculiar genius
of English society : a class system but one that must be elastic.

At the present time, and since the last war, the upper classes are
in the process of liquidation. Death duties and confiscatory taxation
are seeing to that. The great majority of the people, that is the working
classes, approve of social stratification and of an aristocracy. So, if
the upper classes were subjected to a frontal attack, and decision
were left to a plebiscite, they would probably be secure. But it is a
flanking attack that is being made, deliberate in the policy of some
politicians but unobserved by the mass of the people. If the process
continues until its effects become obvious to everyone, there may be
a swing of the pendulum. If there is, when equilibrium is re-
established, conditions will not be what they were in the early part
of this century. So, whether the movement is small or great, an
evolution is in progress, and it may be worth while to speculate as to
what its results may be. This is not irrelevant to our general theme
because group behaviour in emergencies is determined both by its
organization and its morale and these two factors interact on each
other.

The liquidation of the upper classes is reflected in the bankruptcy

197

THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

of the Public Schools, threatened in all and already accomplished
in some. Two things may happen: only a few may survive, which
would break the system as a whole and probably leave the survivors
as almost purely snob institutions; or public funds will be used to
revive the moribund schools. The first would produce schools having
a status closely similar to the private ' preparatory schools' in the
United States. There, where there is no traditional upper class with
traditions of public service, the schools that have been established in
deliberate imitation of the English Public Schools have a deplorably
snob character that militates against their value to the community.
If the state, on the other hand, gives subventions and saves the Public
Schools, there will be in operation two inevitable tendencies. Entry
to those coming from the lower classes will be extended, which might
do good rather than harm provided the increase did not produce an
undigestible mass, with those of different social origin cliquing
together; and policy will be modified by state control: regulation
will tend to take the place of tradition. Both tendencies will affect
the character of the average boy who will be going to the Universities
in preparation for the direction of affairs either in business or in the
government services. They will, to a greater extent, be those whose
homes have provided them with too little of the tradition of authority
and responsibility for it to be engrafted on them in a few brief years,
while the schools themselves, governed more by an imposed educa-
tional theory than by ' playing the game ', would be a weaker influence
in the inculcation of the kind of spirit which makes efficient leaders.
Changes of this order are already occurring. After the last war,
contrary to the expectation of many, the enrolment in the Universities
did not diminish but increased. This was due, it was soon seen, to
two factors. There were more state-aided scholars and students, these
coming, of course, almost exclusively from the lower classes. The
Public School entry increased because parents began to educate their
sons out of capital instead of out of income as they had before 1914.
The effect of this is inevitable. The changed financial policy is justified

198

' SECURITY' AND DEPARTMENTALISM

on the ground that a University education is a good investment. If
an investment, it can only pay if the education means a better liveli-
hood. The latter is not to be gained in government service, so those
who previously chose that career have been going into business. The
result has been a reduction in the proportion of Public School men
in the services, a tendency aggravated by a policy that has deliberately
encouraged it. To what extent this has been the cause of a growing
departmentalism and slackness in administration will inevitably be
unprovable and remain a matter of prejudiced judgment. But that
it is a factor that has been in operation during the period between
the two wars is undeniable. To insist that this must be the cause of
the deterioration is to adopt post hoc ergo prop ter hoc logic. 1

The effect of reducing the relative number of upper-class entrants
to the services must be to increase the proportion of those coming
from the lower middle class. This stratum has some characteristics
that are deleterious. It contains those who have slipped back from
the upper middle class and are clinging grimly to gentility and those
who are rising, or trying to rise, in the social scale. Both groups are,
naturally, dissatisfied with their status and they constitute a sufficient
proportion of the whole to give to this class certain characteristics.
They are sensitive to social slights and aggressive because they con-
sider themselves superior to the status granted them: either their
families are ' better ' or their ambition for elevation makes them con-
sider themselves as deserving a status that is not accorded them. If
they are on the down grade, they fear destitution, if they are on the
up grade they have memories of the wage-earners' vicissitudes and
have a dread of returning to a state where livelihood is dependent

1 Another factor is, probably, a result of the 'war of nerves*. Members of
Parliament have not been totally ignorant of, or indifferent to, weaknesses of
administration, particularly in the Colonies. But Hitler was saying that the British
people had deteriorated and that its Empire was collapsing. So there was shyness
about the ventilation of scandals that would seem to justify Hitler's gibes. Besides,
the problem of direct national defence was obsessive too obsessive to be tackled
with sane resolution and too obsessive to allow of problems of internal fortification
to be considered.

'99

'SECURITT' AND DEPARTMENTALISM

on the whim of employers or the vagaries of trade cycles. They wish
to be ' independent ' and become obsessed with the need for security.
Security takes on for them a moral quality that is incomprehensible
to those who have never known real destitution or seen it just around
the corner. Loyalty, for instance, to the terms of employment,
implicit or explicit, is not allowed to compete with the necessity for
security. They are the rats who leave a ship whenever there is a leak
and without waiting to see if the ship will sink or the leak can be
stopped. They are not cowards in the physical sense and will make
as good soldiers as any others but they will never gamble with
livelihood.

So they make ideal timber for the construction of departmentalism :
they seek a civil service career for the sake of the security it offers
and eschew independence of action lest it should jeopardize liveli-
hood. 1 This fatal conformity to departmental routine is inevitable
among those who worship security. They wrap themselves in red-tape
as in a garment, not as in enslaving bonds. Closely related to this is
another, and definitely social, factor. The upper-class government
servant has a social, and therefore a moral, backing that lies outside
the department. He can afford to be morally independent so long
as what he does conforms to the standards of his class. But the lower
middle class, either of the * genteel' or the climbing type, has no class
with which he is in comfortable conformity. He has no moral backing
except such as he may secure from his fellow employees. So for this
reason too he is forced to fit himself into the departmental mould.

1 Self-abnegation in the service of moral ideals seems to be a kind of luxury that
develops in conditions of unchallenged security. The English people as a whole have
it in larger measure than their Continental neighbours because their country has
never been invaded: we can afford idealism because it has never threatened our
existence. This factor is most strikingly exhibited among Jews. The most violent
anti-semitism (of a kind) is to be found here to-day among those Jews, long
anglicized, whose pride it has been to demonstrate the probity of Jewry. Now they
find the good name of their race besmirched by the knavery of Jewish refugees.
But the latter are merely continuing in sharp practices without which for many
generations they could not have survived in the communities from which they have
come. The 'good* Jews are in terror of the development here of a real anti-
semitism.

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LIQUIDATION OF THE UPPER CLASSES

Finally, the ' climbers ' are naturally the very stuff that careerists
are made of. Of course there are careerists in every social stratum,
but the one who is not of, or of the class of, a Public School is more
likely to seek power uninhibited by a revulsion from 'what isn't
done'.

Some of the changes consequent on the liquidation of the upper
classes have already appeared. How far is the evolution likely to go?
In general terms the answer is simple and can be given confidently;
until the changes thus brought about become so striking as to appear
revolutionary. At that point the great British public, which hates
revolution, will call a halt and probably not only stop the direction
in which the pendulum is swinging but start it on a reverse path.
There is, however, a considerable chance that the change is a long
way off still and this for two reasons. First, there has not been, and
probably never will be, a dramatic confiscation of capital. It is
happening so gradually as to be imperceptible to those, the majority,
whom it does not directly affect. Secondly, there is no organization
for fighting against the dispossession of the upper classes. The Left
is organized for the fight but the Right is not, for the simple reason
that the Right represents a bias in general national policy and not
the interests of a class. The upper classes are not, individually, class
conscious: they accept their status unquestioningly, their code is
essentially one of national service and if it, in a vague way, includes
a bias towards maintenance of the status quo this is not formulated so
as to include defence of class 'rights'.

The other supporters of the aristocratic organization of society, the
working classes, are not consulted. They have their representatives
in Parliament, of course, but the whole principle of representative
government is that, apart from instructions given by the electorate
on specific election issues, the representative is supposed to use his
personal judgment. When a trade unionist enters politics, he ceases
to be a wage-earner and he inevitably enters a higher social class.
He will fight the battles of labour, but he tends to lose the wage-

2OI

LIQUIDATION OF

earner's attitude towards society as a whole. In Parliament he
assumes the attitude of his Party colleagues and, to defend the
interests of the working-man, joins in an assault on ' vested interests '
and becomes a protagonist in a class warfare of which his constituents
might disapprove. A coalition between the Conservative Party and
the Trade Unions might end all this and, indeed, inaugurate a period
of unfortunate reaction.

I say 'unfortunate', because all violent changes are painful and
expensive and because too much power in the hands of any group
leads inevitably to abuses of that power. Besides, the country probably
gets the maximum out of the upper classes when they are subjected
to pressure, are stimulated by economic need. A proof of this lies in
the fact that an extraordinarily large number of our leaders to-day
are sons of parsons. Why? It is highly improbable that priests of
the Church of England are more intelligent than other professional
men and transmit to their offspring an inheritable ability. But they
are, traditionally, gentlemen and they have, actually, stipends little
better than the wages of skilled mechanics. The combination pro-
duces a will to exploit what abilities they have to the limit. They get
their education through scholarships and they go not to the poverty
of the vicarage but to industry, the academic world, or government
service. Their careers shew at once the value of economic pressure
and that it can go too far. The problem of finding new clergy whom
the bulk of the parish will respect except for their piety is well-nigh
insoluble. In another generation the son of the parson will not be so
important a man because he will have come from a class that has no
tradition of public service.

Whither then, if this liquidation goes on?

One change will be a shift from voluntary to paid service, which
will involve more than is usually realized. One effect of the tradition
of service in the upper classes has been that a lot of work for the
community has been done for nothing or has been paid for by private
citizens. There are the non-stipendiary magistrates, the voluntary

202

THE UPPER CLASSES

hospitals responsible for all the clinical teaching of medical students,
schools which relieve the state of a considerable fraction of its
responsibility in universal education, innumerable charities which
share the country's burden in support of the unemployed. These are
organized private agencies. There are, in addition, numerous private
citizens who give their time and specialized abilities as consultants,
members of Royal Commissions and so on. If income tax and death
duties continue on anything like their present scale it will not be long
before there will be no more savings and making a living will be a
whole- time job for everybody. Then all these gifts to the state will,
perforce, cease and the services thus rendered will come under bureau-
cratic control. In some respects this may mean an improvement, but
it will certainly mean a considerable change in the structure of
government, for there is no other country in the world where civic
needs have been met so largely by private endeavour. This process
began, of course, some time ago with the payment of Members in
the House of Commons. How difficult it is to assess the relative gains
and losses in this socialistic drift is seen in the violently opposed views
that are expressed as to the results of that change.

As it goes further the civil services will be expanded and the number
of upper-class people available as recruits will be diminished rather
than increased. Inevitably, therefore, government departments will
come more and more under the control of those drawn from the
lower classes. This will not, as might be supposed, mean drawing on
a larger source of brain power, because already the system of scholar-
ships is on so generous a scale that any one with a bit more than
average ability can get a practically free higher education no matter
how poor he may be. There will be an increase of departmentalism
and careerism because the ethics of the upper classes tend to cut
across these tendencies while those of the lower classes do not. There
will also, of course, be a diminution of efficiency because, as I have
argued, organizations must inevitably become less efficient as they
grow larger and increased government work will mean larger

203

LIQUID A TION OF

organizations. All this sounds very pessimistic, but that may be due
to omitting from our survey the influence of other developments
which may mitigate the disaster.

Some of the unfortunate characteristics of the lower middle class
are due to a sense of inferiority. However, if not just one boy with
brains but no social backing wins his way into a circle that is f above 5
him but many do, if, indeed, the proportions are reversed, then the
feeling of inferiority will tend to lapse. This adjustment may begin
at the school level. Already many Grammar Schools are trying hard,
and with some success, to introduce the Public School system of
discipline. Further progress along this line would tend to make the
boy more self-reliant, less given to violent compensations. Similarly,
if 'levelling' takes place slowly enough in the state-aided Public
Schools of the hypothetical future, more of those from the lower ranks
who attend them will get their desirable character training. But
there is a still more important environmental change to be reckoned
with. The Englishman whose ability brings him into a higher social
level than that of his family is much more difficile than is his analogue
in Scotland, the Dominions or the United States. If the upper classes
diminish in number until they become little snobbish groups at which
one can afford to laugh, the no longer lower middle class success will
have less reason to brood over a (usually) delusional belief that
everybody is watching to see how he behaves and, behind his back,
is laughing at him.

There is one institution which might go a long way towards
reducing class antagonism. That hostility was born of the Industrial
Revolution and even now is relatively unimportant in rural districts.
The squire's family and the villagers do not eye each other like strange
dogs because they know each other and know they both belong to
a common community. It is urban life which has, inevitably, broken
the contact between employer and employed. When their sons meet
in a conscript army, they have no difficulty in understanding each
other. Why should not conscription continue, the conscripts forming

204

THE UPPER CLASSES

pioneer battalions engaged in public works ? A few months' manual
labour is an invaluable bit of education in itself, and if it did no more
than reveal the classes to each other as human beings, the solidarity
of the state would be greatly enhanced.

In one respect the lapse of the caste stratification of society would
mean a definite loss. Fluids of different specific gravities stirred up
in a vessel will, if immiscible, quickly separate out into different
levels. They spontaneously organize themselves, so to speak. And
thus it is with Englishmen. Obedience to authority because it is all
part of a system is bred in the Englishman's bones. In an emergency
a fortuitous group of Englishmen look about for the squire or for
somebody of the squire's class to be their leader. They do not imagine
that he is necessarily more intelligent or more intrepid than anybody
else, but somebody must lead and an accepted social system decrees
that somebody from the upper classes should do so. This is one of the
most important factors in the general orderliness of Englishmen. In
the Dominions, in the States, in fact in all countries where there is
no effective caste system, people follow those whose ability they
respect and tend to postpone obedience until the superiority has been
demonstrated. Dominion troops are gallant, they are resourceful,
but it takes a long, long time to make them into a disciplined body.
Months before the invasion of France, when discussing this problem,
I predicted that the French civilians at least would panic in the
emergency of invasion simply because they had a society lacking an
aristocratic organization. The French place a high value on intel-
ligence and are much more logical than we. They will follow an
intelligent man, but who can hold a competitive examination during
an invasion?

In summary, one might say that if the upper classes are liquidated,
bureaucracy will increase as the caste system declines. Whether this
will work for better or for ill, who can say? But at least we may be
sure that there will be less democracy in the proper sense of that term
the bureaucrats will see to that. The bulwark of democracy and

205

CASTE SYSTEM

the enemy of bureaucracy is an elastic caste system. The reverse
terms could be used of a rigid one.

That a rigid class system should be inimical to democracy is obvious

and that very obviousness is likely to mask the significance of the

qualification * rigid'. If democracy means the social equality of all

who live in the community, then either rulers and ruled will feel

themselves socially on the same level which is something not yet

observed in human societies or else there will be no rule at all.

Democracy in the latter sense is, as I have already noted, really

anarchy. But people are prone to forget these facts and to give to the

word 'democracy' the meaning of social equality. Democracy must

really refer to representative government or the word loses all utility.

If this be so the question is whether the choice of representatives

preponderantly from one social class facilitates, or militates against,

the expression of the people's will and the service of their interest.

If a ' governing class ' has a tradition of public service and demands

no more privilege than is a fair return for services rendered, then the

community is better served by representatives drawn from this class

than from others which lack that tradition. One must never forget

that the governing circles will always form a privileged class once

they govern there is no getting away from the tendency to social

segregation. The question is whether it is advantageous or not to have

segregation antedate the assumption of governmental function or to

follow it. If the former, the traditions of the ruling class prepare and

educate the governor for his responsibilities. If the class is rigidly

hereditary it will inevitably tend to regard its privileges as 'rights'

and become arrogant and tyrannical. But, if ability can always

secure entrance for the family if not for the individual into this

class, then such a system gives to the state the double advantages of

tradition and ability. Without tradition that is if the governing

class gains its social kudos merely because it is governing there is

no stability in policy. Consistency in expression of the country's

ethos is thus dependent on there being a ruling class. Its existence

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INIMICAL TO BUREAUCRACY

may imperil true democracy, but its elasticity will guarantee it. The
problem then is (or should be) not, should we have a ruling class, but,
how can we recruit new blood into it and exclude that which has
deteriorated? So far the pruning knife of discriminative taxation has
been the only device for removing the unfit. Surely some better
implement can be found.

CHAPTER II

SCIENCE AND AUTHORITT

THERE is another topic to be discussed in connection with organiza-
tion. This is the utilization of highly specialized training and skill,
particularly the exploitation of the country's scientists. For many
years we have heard complaints that our industries are not served
by science as those of other countries are and now that we are in a
war where inventiveness is at a premium the Government employ-
ment of scientists is an acute problem. The way that academic
scientists in Germany have worked hand in hand with her indus-
trialists in the past is well known, but it is not so well known that,
since the Nazis came into power, there has been no professorial
appointment made that did not involve part-time work for the
government. Here, however, industry has not profited as it might
have done from the scientists available to help it, while up to the
outbreak of the present war and even since then in many instances
a good many distinguished scientists who offered assistance were
snubbed or found their suggestions rejected by officials who were
incompetent to judge of their value. How can such things be?

There are two general causes which operate to produce this sad
state of affairs: one is a defect perhaps inevitable in organization,
while the other, an outcome of this, is the character of government
technicians. In any hierarchical organization those in authority are
administrators and the higher the level, the greater is the demand for
executive ability. Furthermore, as we have seen, policy is determined
at the top and liaison between the policy-makers at the top and the
ones who do the ultimate jobs at the bottom is a very difficult thing
to achieve. Exactly this problem complicates the exploitation of
science by any large organization.

Let us take the case of a bright young chemist who enters the service
of a large chemical firm. He is hired to do research and, if he sticks

208

THE TECHNICIAN IN BUSINESS OR THE SERVICES

at this, he may hope to get eventually 1000, perhaps even 2000
a year. To non-chemists his opinion is worth what is paid for it. If,
now, as often happens, the young man is seen to have executive
ability he is shifted gradually over into administration and is soon
wholly absorbed in it. As an executive he climbs and climbs, becomes
eventually a director, even the head of the company and earns, let
us say, .10,000 a year. His opinion is now worth five or ten times
what it was when he was acting as a research chemist, but, in the
meantime he has forgotten his chemistry, or at least has had no time
to keep abreast of the subject. So he may turn down a proposal the
potentialities of which he cannot realize or spend money on something
the value of which was disproved a year before. His fellow directors
have the benefit of his advice on technical matters, but it may be
dangerous advice. Inevitably, too, because this is only human nature,
he tends to confuse in his own mind his gain in judgment in adminis-
trative problems with the validity of his judgment in matters tech-
nical. Let us suppose, however, that he has little executive ability
and is offered no administrative responsibility, or, as is most likely
with a really keen scientist, that administration bores him and he
will have none of it. So he sticks to his work as a chemist and the
directors have no one to advise them on technical matters when
policy has to be decided and conflicting claims are presented to them.
He sticks and gets stuck. He is burdened with routine analyses or
is prevented in following up a promising line of research because his
superiors think it will not be profitable. He breaks his heart and
deteriorates, or he gets out, if he can.

The same kind of thing occurs with professional work in the
military services. A doctor, for instance, who is interested in clinical
work finds that promotion to any high rank means unavoidably an
abandonment of patients in favour of administrative work, and
which is the important thing from the point of view of utilizing
professional skill the validity of one's judgment is proportionate to
one's rank. Inevitably the most important decisions involving scien-
MCC 209 14

SECOND RATE OFFICIAL SCIENTISTS

tific discriminations are made by those who have lost touch with the
science in question. By the time an officer has become an admiral,
a general, or an air marshal, equipment he has never worked with
has come into service.

The result of this custom of putting scientists into a hierarchically
organized service or business is that, their fate becoming known, good
men do not want to suffer in the same way and the posts go to second-
raters. The prizes most sought are academic posts, then comes
industry which at least offers a possible financial reward if not an
opportunity for doing interesting research work, and as third choice
there are the positions in government service either civil or military.
There are, of course, exceptions. There are some firms which have
an enlightened policy in regard to research work and some govern-
ment laboratories where the atmosphere is quite 'academic'. But
as a rule the generalization holds.

What is the effect of the employment of second-rate scientists?
Here again the situations in industry and in the services are similar.
The less able a man is the fewer are the positions open to him and
therefore the more important it is for him to retain the job he already
has. He is therefore fearful of criticism and jealous of those whose
abilities make them more independent. A man is employed to do
research for a company or for a government service, but is also
expected to give expert advice to his employers. If, now, an outsider
offers some new device, some new process, what happens? The firm
or service naturally asks its technical expert for a report on it and he
is placed in a dilemma. If he says it is good, he may be criticized for
not having made the invention himself. If he says it is bad something
of value may be lost. A rogue will find various ways of solving this
problem, but we are not interested in rogues. There are too few of
them to matter and they are too easily caught. The menace is the
man whose conscience is clear but who cheats unconsciously, and
his name is legion. The scientist's problem would be much easier if
the proposed invention was impractical. Consequently his testing of

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INCOMPATIBILITY OF HIERARCHY AND SCIENCE

the device or process is biased : he misreads the directions or he does
not apply common sense in interpreting them; he is careless or clumsy
in his manipulations; he guesses that it may work on a laboratory
scale but not on a large one; it is something which might work in the
hands of an expert but is unfit for general use; it is too complicated
for quantity production; it would require materials that are not
readily available. There are countless excuses that can be found for
an adverse report. No amount of faith can turn a sow's ear into a
silk purse, but incredulity can accomplish the reverse.

The scientist recommends that the proposal be rejected and his
report is accepted by the department concerned. Then other factors
come into play. No longer is it just the reputation of the scientist
that is at stake, it is now the status of the department that is involved
in the decision. Review of the matter is blocked by all the ingenious
obstructiveness that departmentalism can evolve. If it is a govern-
ment matter and if the outsider who has made the invention is some-
body of influence, a full-dress investigation may eventually be made
and the invention adopted only when high officials have been sacked.
This, however, involves a delay that lasts at least a year while the
war goes on.

I have argued that departmentalism tends always to develop in
large hierarchical organizations. In Germany where executive and
scientific authority are combined in the Universities in a pyramiding
organization, departmentalism becomes a * school', a theory stub-
bornly held by one group of academics. Our Universities are, for-
tunately, almost entirely free from this vice, but it does appear in
large government laboratories. Corporate feeling inhibits scientific
open-mindedness even when the personnel is really highly competent.
Then the laboratory in question will pursue its own ideas with
enthusiasm but will eschew all those emanating from outside unless
they can be stolen and rechristened.

There is another way in which departmentalism may prevent the
public from enjoying the advantages of scientific advance even

2 1 1 14-2

INCOMPATIBILITY OF

when that has been made by the use of public funds. A government
laboratory may invent a new method or new device the use of which
would contravene regulations set up by another government depart-
ment. These regulations may not be relaxed even though their
modification would be advantageous and obviously so. Let us sup-
pose I purposely choose a wildly hypothetical example that
government bacteriologists discover a simpler, cheaper and more
efficient method of sewage disposal than that now in operation. Its
adoption would, however, mean a radical change in the specifications
for sewage disposal now in force. The Ministry of Health, or the
Department of Public Works, or whatever bureau is involved, will
refuse to modify its rules. Their regulations are the life and soul of
the department; they are sacrosanct; to modify them would be
derogatory to their authority.

There is another way in which an innovation may be suppressed ;
it looks monstrous when baldly described, but a little scrutiny shews
how apt it is to occur. Inventions are adopted if they cost a lot of
money but neglected if they are bought cheaply or received as gifts.
This is something that occurs with terrible frequency both in business
and in government services. It results from two tendencies. One is
just a natural human failing. We all tend to judge quality by price.
The other is the necessity, in any organization, of justifying expendi-
ture. An example will shew how these vicious tendencies operate.
Two inventors bring to a firm or to a government service two inven-
tions. Both represent a distinct advance on anything yet known, but
that made by Jones is undoubtedly better than that of Smith. Smith,
however, is more of a business man than is Jones. Jones offers his
device for a small price or for nothing if it be the government that
would acquire it. Each invention is too good for it to be allowed to
fall into the hands of rivals, commercial or national. So both must
be secured. Some individual or some subdepartment is responsible
for the decision to take both. There is no trouble about getting the
rights to Jones's invention: it can be bought out of petty cash. Smith,

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HIERARCHY AND SCIENCE

however, demands a price which can be paid only if higher authority
is secured. Application is made to the directors or to the Treasury,
as the case may be, and the circumstances necessitating the purchase
are explained. The invention of Jones may be mentioned casually or
it may not, probably not because it is likely to prove a red herring.
(If it is mentioned the authorities may become doubtful of the neces-
sity of keeping Smith's device out of the hands of rivals, although the
technical experts know how vital this is.) The expenditure is then
authorized and both are secured. Which will be actually developed?
That of Smith, and for a very simple reason. If a year, or five years,
later the directors or the Treasury learn that no use has been made
of Smith's invention and another one is being manufactured, they
turn on the luckless expert and say : ' You are wilfully extravagant or
you don't know your business; why do you spend vast sums of money
on things you just put down in the cellar? ' This kind of thing happens
so often that some of those who have had large experience give this
advice : if you have an idea for something that will help the country
win the war, don't give it to the government if you want to see it
adopted. With great immodesty make impressive claims for it and
demand a high price. (During an actual war the government can
take anything it likes without compensation. But there are forms of
payment in addition to that of immediate cash.)

What of remedies for these ills? The tendencies discussed are, of
course, inevitable and therefore ineradicable. But that does not
mean that operation of the tendencies cannot be curtailed. As always,
the major improvement will result when there is insight as to the
nature of the disease so that men of good will can fight it. But there
is also a possibility of improvements in organization. So far as is
possible technical, professional, scientific service should be divorced
from rank, at least from rank that is based on administrative authority.
The scientist whose value rests on his special knowledge and intelli-
gence ought to be able to talk with equal authority to the Director
or the workman, to the General or the private.

CHAPTER 12

LIAISON AND GERMAN MAN-POWER

THE general direction of all this discussion of organization problems
has been critical. Since most of the examples have been British and
since we are all more interested in local application of principles that
may really be universal, it may seem as if the discussion was likely
to spread alarm and despondency more than it would aid,, through
added insight, to a solution of urgent problems. But the story is not
all told. What matters in war is not the absolute but the relative
strengths of the combatants. We should be fools if we failed to realize
that Germany probably began the war with a superiority in organiza-
tion. But is she going to maintain it? I think not: not at least on the
home front. Changes in purely military organization I am incom-
petent to discuss for lack of facts. If I knew the facts, it would be
improper to disclose them. But certain tendencies in both this country
and in Germany which must affect internal organization are revealed
in data known to anyone who reads the daily press.

As we have seen, the inevitable evils in large-scale organization
may be mitigated in two ways : by an increase in channels of liaison
and by improvement in the character and intelligence of officials.
At the beginning of the war the enemy probably had the advantage
of us in both of these respects for reasons already given, but the
struggle has developed in such a way as to reverse this superiority.
How has Germany suffered on its home front?

First she must be suffering from a man-shortage. This results from
two drains. The more countries she has occupied, the more her
man-power resources must be strained in holding down the popula-
tions and exploiting the available assets. Leaving aside the regular
troops, this means that technical experts are withdrawn from home
production and the activities of the Gestapo are extended. The latter

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LIMITED SUPPLY OF TECHNICIANS AND GESTAPO

is important. The Gestapo was organized, quite frankly, for the
control by force of the German civilian population. At a time when
it was realized that modern warfare demanded a co-operation that
could not be achieved by coercion, the army system was changed but
the Gestapo was left in charge of civilians. The Gestapo to be efficient
must be composed of men who combine intelligence, ruthlessness and
incorruptibility. In any country there must be a limit to the supply
of those who combine these qualities. The more foreign territory
Germany has to organize and the more disaffection there is there,
the more Gestapo she has to export.

There is, however, another drain on her supply of officials. The
casualties in Russia are depleting the army and it has the first call.
Not unnaturally, more experts of various kinds are being taken from
civilian life to fill the ranks in Russia. Who will go first? Obviously
those who seem the least essential. If there are two units and three
available officers each one of whom is capable of command, there
can be two commanders and one liaison officer. If one has to be
deducted, the liaison officer will be the one to be withdrawn. His
absence will produce no immediately observable calamity, but the
activity of the two units can no longer be integrated. So Russia will
first take from the home front those officials who have had a purely
liaison function. But this is not all.

As I have endeavoured to shew, paper work is liaison work. We
are told recently (April 1942) that industrialists in Germany are now
complaining that their work is hampered by too much paper work
and that steps are being taken to reduce it. This is good news indeed.
Are we to suppose that the Germans with their genius for organization
who have been engaged on munitions production for a decade or
more and who have organized the whole country to this end for the
past six years, have only now discovered some fifth wheels? Not a
bit of it. It means that each industrialist is suffering from a man-
shortage and in his desperation wants to take men away from liaison
work and put them into direct production. If that goes on, it will

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SACRIFICE OF LIAISON OFFICIALS

only be a matter of time before the units in a highly complicated
system will get out of step. Bottlenecks will appear and factories
will be idle because of absence of essential supplies. The trouble is
cumulative.

A secondary result of man-power shortage is qualitative rather
than quantitative. The evils of departmentalism are curbed by men
of initiative who can override regulations and departmental tradi-
tions. The first line of defence is the army, the second is production
at home. The army personnel will be kept up to full strength no
matter what happens to the civilian services. So, as casualties mount
up, there will be repeated comb-outs of those not yet in uniform. Of
course key-men are left at their civilian tasks, but what constitutes
a key-man? The standard will inevitably be raised until it includes
only the very highest grade of executives and scientists.

Most important of all, however, is the effect on civilian morale of
these factors added to a strain which Nazi policy has placed pre-
ferentially on civilians. We are inclined to think that 'total war'
means the use of every possible weapon. But to the German it means
much more a totality of effort on the part of every man, woman and
child in the country. The distinction in theory between soldiers and
civilians goes: all are engaged in the same struggle. They should,
therefore, all be treated equally. But here is where Nazi theory and
practice part company. Inevitably the combatants have to receive
preferential treatment in some respects and will get it in any country,
but Hitler has decreed that this preference shall be exaggerated. One
of his rationalizations to escape the ignominious admission that
Germany suffered a military defeat in 1918 has been that the army
was let down by the home front. This, he has announced, will not
be allowed to occur again. So, if there are privations to be suffered,
it will not be by the soldiers. Was he not a common soldier himself,
does he not know? he has dramatically asked. What is this going to
mean for the German home front? We have already seen one aspect
of the discrimination in the appeal for warm garments : there was no

216

CRIPPLING OF HOME FRONT

pretence of taking what was not needed at home; that which was
needed must be given to those whose needs were greater. But dis-
crimination began a very long time ago indeed and had to do with
something more important than clothes.

As we have seen earlier, the Germans have realized that rigid
hierarchical discipline is inimical to the initiative that modern war
demands, so their military systems were altered, bringing 'human
contact' into a prominent place in the relation of officers to men. But
this was accompanied by no such sympathetic treatment of civilians.
Their organization was left to Himmler and the Gestapo. If I think
that this discrepancy will eventually disintegrate the German home
front, I am uttering an opinion that is not new. As long ago as 1936
a German psychologist, Pinschovius, wrote a book on The Power of
Mental Resistance in Modern War in which he said : c In view of the
terrible nature of total war, it has become impossible to enforce the
people's will-to-sacrifice indefinitely. It can be done, perhaps, in the
beginning, but later on it is foolish to threaten men with court-
martial. Men who have become demoralized under the stress of
total war are not afraid of courts-martial. . . . Total war is much more
likely to prove our curse than our salvation.'

Apart from the coercion applied to German civilians and not to
their soldiers, civilians must always be subject to a more uninter-
rupted strain than are soldiers and are less able to bear it. Soldiers
have to be fit, fit enough to go through most arduous physical exer-
tions and retain a capacity for rapid, powerful movements. Those
with physical blemishes cannot do this; they are excluded from the
army after medical examination. But an exhausted army is a beaten
one, and no battalion is kept in the front line indefinitely. It is given
periods of rest at short intervals. Civilian forces, however, which
include those who are physically not up to par, do not have to be kept
in the pink of condition, they may be worked steadily. As a result
they are liable to the effects of continuous strains rather than the
ardours of the battle-field. The results of protracted strain are not

217

GERMAN CIVILIAN COLLAPSE

shewn in sudden, dramatic collapse but in susceptibility to infection,
gradual loss of working capacity, invalidism, nervous breakdown and,
above all, in a longing for a relief from the strain that becomes
obsessive until it produces mutiny, revolt, or at least a defeatism
which makes loss of the war seem more endurable than a continuance
of the strain.

The majority of these symptoms are psychological in origin, occur-
ring first in those of a neurotic disposition and last in 'normal'
people. The liability of a population to these ills will therefore depend
in part on the proportion of neurotics it contains. Having had a long
time to prepare for this war, the Germans were able to give all their
recruits extensive psychological tests on the basis of which many
were rejected. Following this all those who did not fit into military
life were also thrown out. The army has gained by this while the
civil population has had to do its best with an increased number of
maladapted individuals. These will become malcontents, will immo-
bilize a fair proportion of Himmler's army in keeping them quiet, but
will have their revenge on him by clogging the war effort as only a
sullen neurotic can do. This is the population, over-driven, deprived
more and more of its comforts and harried by the Gestapo that is
now being bombed on an ever-increasing scale. They are too cowed
to revolt and have no leaders to engineer rebellion; but can they
maintain an organization so vast that it can function efficiently only
if it is regulated by intricate planning of skilful officials and is backed
by a frenzied zeal for co-operation on the part of all who participate
ink?

Now in respect to all these factors we are in a better position.
Granted that we began the war with a much poorer organization,
we may nevertheless claim that matters have improved rather than
deteriorated since then. We began, fortunately, with conscription
and the exemption from military service of those with many specialized
abilities. The tendency has been to withdraw more from the military
services back into civilian occupations rather than the other way

218

GERMAN CIVILIAN COLLAPSE

round. Experience much needed is being gained in organization
and there are signs that liaison is improving (although with a mad-
dening slowness) ; under the fire of criticism some pruning of un-
desirables has been done even some very high officials have been
sacked for obstructiveness. There is of course overwork, but people
are now beginning to realize that rest and recuperation are neces-
sities and the Government has re-learnt the lesson of the last war
that there are economic limits to working hours and has taken
appropriate action. Bombing is, for the moment at least, of a merely
casual kind and the people, having survived a good dose of it, are
not paralysed with terror at the thought of its recurrence. In a word
everything points in England as directly towards an improvement in
the activities of the civilian population as it does in Germany towards
their decay. Hitler's phobia of a breakdown at home is likely, as so
many delusional ideas are prone to do, to validate itself in a perverse
way. What was only part of a general collapse in 1 9 1 8 is, I think,
likely to be a dominant factor in this war. German civilian organiza-
tion will disintegrate before her armies have broken either physically
or spiritually.

219

INDEX

Abyssinia, 104
adventure, 13
aggression, 31
alchemy, 55

analysis, artificiality of, 27
anarchism, 132
ancestor worship, 90

* Anglo-Saxon', 106

* animal mind', 3, 35
anti-aircraft gunfire, 20
anticipation of danger, 41
anti-Semitism, 200

ants, 152
anxiety states, 19
arrogance, national, 79, 108
Aryan, 101, 102
Asiatics, 81
Austria, 104
authoritarian states, 132

Baldwin's pipe, 149

Bavaria, 102

bayonet fighting, 39, 44

Bergmann, 122

Binder, Heinrich, 124

biological organization, 163

Bismarck, 99, 102

* blood', 101
blood and soil, 102
blood lust, 65
bomb disposal, 32

bombing, psychological, 15 seq.; spo-
radic, ii ; strategic, 15; token, 14

bombs, shrieking, 22; sound of falling,
2 1 ; terror of, 8

brain cells, numbers of, 164

British Empire, 106, 107; future of,
129 seq.

British morale, 1 06 seq., 121

British * religion', 123, 126, 129 seq.

Brooke, Rupert, 123

Buddhism, 84

business and government service, 1 73

California, 149
Campbell, Thomas, 108
capitalism, 174

careerism, 171 seq.

caste, 131, 1 86; and democracy, 206

Catherine the Great, 94, 97

Cavour, 103

censorship, 101

centralization, 158 seq.

character building, 194

China, 82

Chinese, bombing of, 9

Chinese morale, 87 seq.

* chosen people', 75

Church of England, 130

Churchill, Winston, 106, 149, 150

civil and military services, 1 72

class, lower middle, 1 99 ; ruling, 1 79

class contact, rural, 204

class education, 180

class separation, urban, 204

class system and national stability,

189 seq.

code, traditional, 195
collapse, 33

colour blindness in animals, 7, 33, 34
communication through channels, 154
communism, 184
Concessions, Foreign, 91
conditioned differentiation, 6
conditioned extinction, 6
conditioned reaction, 4 seq.
conditioned reinforcement, 6
confidence, conditioned, 23
conformity, 60
Confucianism, 89
conscience, 57, 58, 65
conscription, 204, 205
Conservative Party, 202
crowd behaviour, 65

Death, as release, 73; indifference to,

7 2
decentralization, 160

deification, of dictators, 143; of force, 122
democracy, and caste, 206 ; meaning of,

I3 1 * J 32, 146
departmental rivalry, 1 70
departmentalism, 1 68 seq., 200
dictators deified, 143

221

INDEX

dictatorship, 143 seq.
1 differentiation', 6, i6seq.
dive-bombing, 42
doctrinairism, 184
dominion status, 135
Drake's Drum, 108
drill, 38 seq.
Dunkirk, 106

Education, class, 180

efficiency, 117, 146; and liberty, 147

Eliot, Sir Charles, 84

emotions, logic of, 18, 108; imitation of,

64 seq.

'England', unlocalizability of, 123
English social system, 184 seq.
ethics, 56 seq.
evacuation, 24
experiments, controlled, 156
'extinction', 6

Fagging, 195

Fascism, 103, 105

fatalism, 13, 82, 88

fear, definition of, i ; irrationality of, 3 ;

nature of, 36 ; after reflection, 28 seq. ;

and conditioning, 8; and impotence,

29 seq. ; and ineffective action, 29 ;

and unfamiliarity, 29
'filters', 157
Finns, 102
force, deification of, 122; overvaluation

of, 124; undervaluation of, 126
forced landings, 43
Franco-Prussian War, 104
Frederick the Great, 99
freedom of speech-, 1 3 1
French panic, 205
French selection of officials, 181

Garibaldi, 103, 104
* gentleman', 186
German army, 47
German civilian morale, 216 seq.
German collapse, 128
German liaison officers, 215
German man-power, 214 seq.
German military theory, 71
German morale, 40, 99 seq., 122
German officialdom, 163

German propaganda, 101
German 'religion', 121 seq.
German use of scientists, 208
Gestapo, 217
Goebbels, 102, 123
Grammar Schools, 204
Greece, campaign in, 115
group immortality, 78, 81

Hankow concession, 137

hara-kiri, 74

Hebrews, 122

herd formulae, 61

herd instinct, 51

herd voice, 54 seq.

Herrick, Judson, 164

hierarchical authority, 1 44 seq.

hierarchical organization and evolu-
tion, 145

Himmler, 217

Hitler, 82, 99, 100, 144, 199, 219;
deification of, 144

Hong Kong, 120

House of Lords, 1 85

Hughes, Charles Evans, 149

Hungary, 102

Ideal, unconscious, 75 seq.

imagination, adaptive, 41

immobility, 33 seq.; and inhibition of

thinking, 35

immortality of groups, 78, 81
imperial responsibility, 134 seq.
India, 135
inelasticity of large organizations, 153

seq.

inferiority, 204
inhibition of thinking, 35, 36
insects, 54
insight, 129
interests, in, 112
inventions, payment for, 2 1 2
invincibility, 15
invulnerability, belief in, 10
isolationism, 89, 94
Italian morale, 103

James, William, 73
Japan, 82, 90, 91
Japanese morale, 83 seq.

222

INDEX

King Arthur legend, 1 06

Labour unions, 131

law-abidiiigness, 131

leaders, democratic, 148

leadership, 66 seq.; and prestige, 186

seq.; and privilege, 177 seq.
'Left* and 'Right' prejudices, 191 seq.
Lenin, 97, 98
liaison, 154

liaison officers, 160, 161
Louis XIV, 143
loyalty, localized, 68
lynching mob, 58

Magenta, 103

Malays, 34

manipulative activity, 31

Marxism, 184

meaning, 1 1

means and ends, 154

Mechanized Warfare Service, 169

Mein Kampf, 99, 102

mercenaries, 105

Messiah, 122

military and civil services, 1 72

minorities, 132, 146, 147

misery, 13

missionary spirit, 1 33

monopoly, 162

moral backing, 59

moral self-sufficiency, 1 1 8

morale, 15; British, 106 seq., 121;
Chinese, 87 seq.; defensive, 100;
German, 40, 99 seq., 122; Italian,
1 03 seq. ; Japanese, 82 seq. ; Russian,
92 seq.; variable, 62 seq.; and
organization, 141

multicellular animals, 52 ; specialization
of function in, 53 seq.

Mussolini, 105

Napoleon, 143
national arrogance, 79
national endeavour, 74
national 'soul', 74, 75
national stability, 189 seq.
national time and space, 81 seq.
nationalism, conscious, 88
'near "misses', 12 ^

'needle', 36
Nelson, 108
Niekisch, 122
noblesse oblige, 180
Nordic, 101, 102
novelty in attack, 37

Oberammergau, 1 1 1

Observer Corps, 19

obstructionism, 1 70, 171; departmental,
211

officialdom, German, 163

old school tie, 131

organization, biological^ 163; spon-
taneous, 205; and morale, 141

Paid M.P.s, 203

panic, 65; French, 205

panic thinking, 48 seq.

Paradise, 74, 80

paralysis of thought, 36

parental role, 69, 70

party aristocracy, 181 seq.

paternal rule, 135

patriotism, 74; and piety, 80

Pavlov, 4

peasant revolt, 97

Peter the Great, 94

Pinschovius, 217

Post Office, 162, 163

'principles', 130

private service of state, 202, 203

privilege and leadership, 177 seq.

prophet, 150

Prussia, 99, 102, 104

Prussian arms, 101

Prussian system, 71

psychiatrists, army, 47

Public School system, 191, 193 seq.

pyramidal tracts, 165

Rationalization, 61, 161 seq., 173

'reality', 55, 56, 59 seq.

reality, feeling of, 1 19, 125; sense of, 125

reckless courage, 63

red tape, 157, 166, 171

'reinforcement', 6

'religion', British, 123, 126, 129 seq.;

German, 121 seq.
religious vocabulary, 120

223

INDEX

' remote-misses, ' 12

rentier, 186

research, 145

revolution, 180

rewards of money or power, 1 74, 1 75

* Right 5 and 'Left' prejudices, 191 seq

'rights', 131, 1 80, 20 1

Rivers, W. H. R., 31

Robin Hood, 117

Romanovs, 94

Rome, 104, 105

Romulus and Remus, 106

Royal Air Force, 168

royalty, pomp of, 148

ruling class, 179

Rumania, 102

Russia, 82

Russian hagiology, 98

Russian morale, 92 seq.

Russian revolution, 97

Russians, 13

Safety first, 49

'schools', 21 1

'science', 55, 91

science, applied, 145

scientists, in government service, 209

seq. ; in industry, 208, 209
security, 98
'self, 53
sentinels, 66
shell-fire, 19
Sherrington, C. S., 4
shibboleths, 132
Shintoism, 84
Siberia, 95
Singapore, 120
sirens, 10, 19

social demarcations in industry, 188
social prestige, *86 seq.
socialism, 175
Solferino, 103
'soul' of a nation, 74, 75
Spaniards, bombing of, 9
specialism, 146
specialized function, 53 seq.
specialized training, 39
Stalin, 179
starlings, 63

Stevenson, R. L., 56

stimuli, differentiation of, 18 seq.

strategy of bombing, 1 5

stupor, 36

suicide, 73

superstition, 24 seq.

Temperamental fitness, 43 seq.

terminology > 55

termites, 54

thinking, paralysis of, 35, 36

tie, old school, 131

token bombing, 14

tolerance, 130

total war, 216

Trade Unions, 131, 202

Trade Unionist M.P.s, 201

tradition, manufacture of, 101

traditional cod.e, 195

training, specialized, 39

Treasury control, 160

Treaty Ports, 91

tribal god, 122

Trotter, W., 51, 166

Unconscious ideal, 75, 147

unemployment, 1 1 7

unicellular animals, 51

United States, 106

upper classes, liquidation of, 197 seq.

Utopianism, 137

Valhalla, 103

value, and activity, 114; and emotion,
113; and fealty, 115; and feeling of
reality, 119; and moral outlook, 116

values, scale of, 75, 1 1 1 seq.

Versailles, Treaty of, 122

Victor Emmanuel II, 103

Volkische Aktion, 122

Wain, Nora, 137
war of nerves, 15, 1 99
war weariness, 136
Westminster, Statute of, 1 34
Whitehall, 173
Wilson, Woodrow, 149

Yellow Peril, 102

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY WALTER LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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