Sept. 10.
And they will crack again. The reference is, of course, to the Germans. It is no mere expression of a wish, but is the considered opinion of psychologists for which reasons fare given, The Nazi system of government, tone of repression and strict discipline even times of peace, has the advantage of en-the dictator to act with speed and n time of war. It promotes enthus! sin and even heroism in the face of death, but it carries with it enormous dis-vantages which will prove its undoing, unless "Hitler gains another rapid success against those who are opposing him. And this, as things stand at the moment, he unlikely to do. The Nazi experiment has been followed with great interest and care by the class of psychologists known sociologists, since its inception, and they all agree that it is a form of government which is suited to the basic instincts of the German people, who can be beaten by their superiors and profit from the beating, and be downtrodden by their leaders and)
yme the treatment. Fundamentally, the position of the German people today is only 4 little worse than it was in 1914, under the average mentality. There is a definite decline in intellectual ability, which does not mater over much when' the intellectual ability of the leaders is sufficient to act as competent directing force. But with the repression of the conscious self, unconscious, or sub-conscious, reactions come to the fore, with a result that one who would be a cultured individual when isolated, becomes a barbarian, that is to say an animal guided by instinels, when in a crowd. The characteristics of the aggressive horde are spontaneity, violence, and ferocity; the horde is impulsive, changeable, irritable, impatient, and marvellously credulous. The horde thinks in images; its feelings are simple, not complex, and are always exaggerated. These characteristics are agreed upon by psycholoical schools as wide apart as those of Lo: Bon, MeDougall, Trotter, and Sigmund Freud, though each school has its reasons for the appearance of these characteristics. But with these reasons, which are in the academic sphere, the embattled world of today has little concern.
All three schools also agree that a herd or horde engenders the sentiment of absolutely invincible power, and is therefore bound by nothing except self-imposed restraint. Reason takes a back seat, and emotionalism reigns, with a result that members of the herd are open to emotional contagion to a marked degree, and suffer from a sugges~ ibility which amounts at times almost to hypnotism. The much regimented Nazi horde suffers from all these weaknesses. They believe in the invincible power of their armed forces. They suffer from extreme emotionalism, as their reactions to obviously false stories of atrocities first in Aust then in Sudetenland, and then in Poland, proves. The emotional contagion destroys the critical faculty of those who might ex-Dress scepticism over some of these atrocity stories, while those who have retained suffcient power of individual thinking to discredit the stories, are locked away in concentration camps, or rubber-truncheoned into silence. The suggestibility of his horde has been openly boasted of by Hitler, who hi declared that there is nothing to equal the mass meeting for swaying the German people, The leaders of primitive hordes governed their followers in the same way, by playing on their instincts and their emotions, and using suggestion as their trump card. And in many ways the Germans are psychologically little more than a primitive tribe. They have a genius for organization. They are probably far more advanced in political and philosophical theory than any other race. They were the first of the western nations to recognize the power of consciously directed racial effort, a realization that long preceded Hitler. But with all this," they are clever, but not wise. They have all the inherent spiritual weaknesses of the barbarian to whose level their rulers have reduced them.
The notion of invincible power is more a weakness than a strength, for the first time that their power fails to conquer, the illusion is shattered. And with the changeability of the horde, which has already been remarked, they are apt to swing to the other extreme. The emotional contagion which inspires them to heroic deeds can, in the hands of a skilful opponent, be transformed into a contation of panic in which the horde resolves itself simply into a mass of individuals. And the suggestibility which proves a sceptre in the hands of the Fihrer, might prove a cat-o'-nine-tails in the hands of an enemy. The Fuhrer must always have victories, and then more victories. A deadlock is as harmful to him as a defeat, as the impatience of his followers grows. The German High Command in the last war realized this fact, and oven when at their last gasp, fung offensive after offensive against the Allied lines. They knew that they had to have success, had to be aggressive, and when they were held up—hot necessarily driven back, but meroly making no progress—the moral of their men cracked. Remember, Germany was never invaded in the last war. In this war British bombers invade it day and night. Every Nazi claim to a great aerial victory is answered by a British aerial victory, to which the smoking ruins of factories are undeniable testimony. "The German people must even now be holding very slimly to their illusion of invincibility, if at all. Their moral is being steadily undermined. Only more victories can bolster it up, and thus it may. be as much for the purpose of preserving own people's moral as attacking the British people's moral through terrorism. that Herr Hitler is now making his desperate attempts upon London. heel of Prussian militarism and fierce class distinctions. Then the Prussian officer slashed subordinate across the face with his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.