American essays -- 20th century; State, The; World War, 1914-1918
To the spread of herd-feeling, therefore, all these smaller herds offer
resistance. To the spread of that herd-feeling which arises from the
threat of war, and which would normally involve the entire nation,
the only groups which make serious resistance are those, of course,
which continue to identify themselves with the other nation from which
they or their parents have come. In times of peace they are for all
practical purposes citizens of their new country. They keep alive
their ethnic traditions more as a luxury than anything. Indeed these
traditions tend rapidly to die out except where they connect with
some still unresolved nationalistic cause abroad, with some struggle
for freedom, or some irredentism. If they are consciously opposed by
a too invidious policy of Americanism, they tend to be strengthened.
And in time of war, these ethnic elements which have any traditional
connection with the enemy, even though most of the individuals may have
little real sympathy with the enemy’s cause, are naturally lukewarm to
the herd-feeling of the nation which goes back to State traditions in
which they have no share. But to the natives imbued with State-feeling,
any such resistance or apathy is intolerable. This herd-feeling, this
newly awakened consciousness of the State, demands universality. The
leaders of the significant classes, who feel most intensely this
State-compulsion, demand a one hundred per cent. Americanism, among
one hundred per cent. of the population. The State is a jealous God
and will brook no rivals. Its sovereignty must pervade every one,
and all feeling must be run into the stereotyped forms of romantic
patriotic militarism which is the traditional expression of the State
herd-feeling.
Thus arises conflict within the State. War becomes almost a sport
between the hunters and the hunted. The pursuit of enemies within
outweighs in psychic attractiveness the assault on the enemy without.
The whole terrific force of the State is brought to bear against
the heretics. The nation boils with a slow insistent fever. A
white terrorism is carried on by the Government against pacifists,
Socialists, enemy aliens, and a milder unofficial persecution against
all persons or movements that can be imagined as connected with the
enemy. War, which should be the health of the State, unifies all the
bourgeois elements and the common people, and outlaws the rest. The
revolutionary proletariat shows more resistance to this unification,
is, as we have seen, psychically out of the current. Its vanguard, as
the I. W. W., is remorselessly pursued, in spite of the proof that
it is a symptom, not a cause, and its prosecution increases the
disaffection of labor and intensifies the friction instead of lessening
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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