If one had been content to estimate the moral condition of England at that time by the utterance of {228} all ordinary organs of expression—public speeches, leading articles and so forth—one could scarcely have failed to reach the gloomiest conclusions. So common were ill-will, acrimony, suspicion and intrigue, so often was apparent self-possession mere languor, and apparent energy mere querulousness, so strong, in fact, were all the ordinary evidences of moral disintegration that an actual collapse might have seemed almost within sight. As a matter of fact, from the very necessities of her social type, in England the organs of public expression were characteristically not representative of the national mood; probably far less than were those of Germany representative of the German mood. Thus it came about that the actual driving force—the will of the common man, as inflexible as it was inarticulate—remained intact behind all the ambiguous manifestations which went forth as the voice of England. This is the psychological secret of the socialized type of gregarious animal. As evolved in England to-day, this type cannot attain to the conscious direction of its destiny, and cannot submit to the fertilizing discipline of science; it cannot select its agents or justly estimate their capacity, but it possesses the power of evolving under pressure a common purpose of great stability. Such a common purpose is necessarily simple, direct, and barely conscious; high-flown imperialism and elaborate policies are altogether beyond its range, and it can scarcely accomplish an intellectual process more complex than the recognition of an enemy. The conviction that the hostility between England and Germany was absolute and irreconcilable, and the war a matter of national life and death, was just such a primitive judgment as could be arrived at, and it gave rise to a common purpose as stable as it was simple.4 {229}
The relatively complex national consciousness that is necessary to evolve a positive movement of national expansion or a definite policy of