[O] War in itself is by no means necessarily a maximal stimulus to herd instinct if it does not involve a definite threat to the whole herd. This fact is well shown in the course of the South African War of 1899–1901. This war was not and was not regarded as capable of becoming a direct threat to the life of the nation. There was consequently no marked moral concentration of the people, no massive energizing of the Government by a homogeneous nation, and therefore the conduct of the war was in general languid, timid, and pessimistic. The morale of the people was as a whole bad; there was an exaggerated hunger for good news, and an excessive satisfaction in it; an exaggerated pessimism was excited by bad news, and public fortitude was shaken by casualties which we should now regard as insignificant. Correspondingly the activity and vitality of rumour were enormously less than they have been in the present war. The weaker stimulus is betrayed throughout the whole series of events by the weakness of all the characteristic gregarious responses. The psychological significance of the enormous activity of rumour in this war is fairly plain. That rumours spread readily and are tenacious of life is evidence of the sensitiveness to herd opinion which is so characteristic of the social instinct. The gravity of a threat to the herd is shown by nothing better than by the activity of rumour. The strong stimulus to herd instinct produces the characteristic response in the individual of a maximal sensitiveness to his fellows—to their presence or absence, their alarms and braveries, and in no less degree to their opinions. With the establishment of this state of mind the spread and survival of rumours become inevitable, and will vary directly with the seriousness of the external danger. Into the actual genesis of the individual rumours and the meaning of their tendency to take a stereotyped form we cannot enter here. The potency of rumour in bearing down rational scepticism displays unmistakably the importance of the instinctive processes on which it rests. It is also one of the many evidences that homogeneity within the herd is a deeply rooted necessity for gregarious animals and is elaborately provided for by characteristics of the gregarious mind.