They'd Not Forgotten How to Cringe
It is well-nigh irresistible to read time-period pieces, to travel back in time, tainted though the essays might be by prejudices of the moment. Read part of "The Causes of the War" by Charles Horne, written in the 1920s (the war in the title being, of course, WWI). The prescience, written before Hitler took power, is astonishing. One is tempted to say, "Mr. Horne, you ain't seen nothin' yet":
The world has never before seen such astounding examples of mass-hypnosis, the instant uprising on command of a fervid and genuine emotion in an entire people. Ther German government had only to give its order, "Hate the Britons, they have suddenly snared our straightforward goverment in a trap long prepared!" and the German people swung to the new emotion with the smoothness of a pendulum and the regularity of a military platoon.
Why?
For centuries Germany had been divided into hundreds of little semi-independent states, seldom united in actions either of peace or war. In consequence, the land had been repeatedly ravaged by victorious foreign armies; the people had learned their helplessness, and had learned, alas, to cringe and bend before the storm. Then under Prussian leadership, quite suddenly after 1866, they became strong in a military sense, the strongest nation in the world. Had such strength come to them slowly, with the training in pity and in kindly tolerance that should go with strength, the German people might have grown worthy of their high position. But alas, power had come too swiftly to allow of that gradual development of racial character which requires many generations. The Germans had not forgotten how to cringe....The coward knows no law save that of brute force. Give him the upper hand and he will surely use it like a brute.
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