POSTSCRIPT OF 1919

The confrontation in war of two types of social structure differing so radically and by such clearly defined characters as did Germany and England was, as has been already suggested, a remarkable instance of statecraft being forced into a region of very much greater reality than that in which it usually operates. The historical scale of events, with its narrow range, its reckoning by dynasties and parliaments, its judgments in terms of tribal censure and approbation, was found momentarily to march with the biological scale where events are measured by the survival or extinction of species, where time acquires a new meaning, and the individual man, {232} however conspicuous historically, takes on the insect-like sameness of his fellows. Here was an experiment set out in Nature’s laboratory, and for the first time the issues were so narrowly focussed as to be within the apprehension of the very subjects of the research. The matter to be tested concerned the whole validity of gre­gar­i­ous­ness. Two types were confronted. In one the social habit had taken a form that limited the participation of the individual in the social unit; a rigid segregation of the society made it impossible to admit the moral equality of its members, and resulted in the activities of the social instinct being available solely through leadership; it was a led society where internal cohesion and integration were replaced by what we may call external cohesion—a migratory society developing its highest manifestations of the herd when it was being successfully led. In the other type the social habit had tended, however slowly and incompletely, towards the unlimited participation of the individual in the social unit. The tendency of the society was towards integration and internal cohesion; it was therefore unaggressive, refractory to leadership, and apt to develop its highest herd manifestations when threatened and attacked. The former enjoyed all the advantages of a led society. It was tractable, and its leaders could impose upon it a relative uniformity of outlook and a high standard of general training. The latter had no advantage save the potentiality—and it was little more—of unlimited internal cohesion. It was intractable to leadership, and in consequence knowledge and