Instincts of the Herd in Peace and WarTrotter, W. (Wilfred)
Science
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War
Trotter, W. (Wilfred)
Collective behavior; Crowds; Social psychology; World War, 1914-1918 -- Psychological aspects
During the war itself the submission to leadership that England showed
was characteristic of the socialized type. It was to a great extent
spontaneous, voluntary, and undisciplined, and gave repeated evidence
that the passage of inspiration was essentially from the common people
to its leaders rather than from the leaders to the common people. When
the current of inspiration sets persistently in this direction, as it
unquestionably did in England, it is very plain that the primitive type
of leadership that has led so many civilizations to disaster is no
longer in unmodified action.
Germany has provided the most complete example of a culture of
leadership that has ever been recorded, and has gone through the
phases of her evolution with a precision which should make her case
an illustration classical for all history. With a people showing
strongly the characteristics of the aggressive social type, and a
social structure deeply and rigidly segregated, the nation was ideally
{250} susceptible to discipline and leadership, and a leading class
was available which possessed an almost superhuman prestige. The
opportunity given to leadership was exploited with great energy and
thoroughness and with an intelligence that by its intensity almost
made up for being nowhere really profound. With all these advantages
and the full uses of the huge resources science has made available
to intelligently concerted effort, an extremely formidable power was
created. The peoples of the socialized type towards whom from the first
its hostility was scarcely veiled were under obvious disadvantages
in rivalry with it. Their social type made it impossible for them to
combine and organize themselves against what was to them no more than
a vaguely hypothetical danger. Against peaceful conquest by Germany
in the industrial sphere England was therefore practically helpless,
and to it would probably in time have succumbed. Paradox as it may
seem, there can be no doubt that it was in war only that England could
contend with Germany on equal terms. Paradoxically again, it was war
for which England was reluctant and Germany was eager.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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