VIII


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF, WAR AND RECRUITING

_November_, 1914.

I sometimes think the country-folk round about where I live the most
sensible people I know. They say with regard to the War--or said at its
outset: "What are they fighting about? _I_ can't make out, and nobody
seems to know. What I've seen o' the Germans they're a decent enough
folk--much like ourselves. If there's got to be fightin', why don't them
as makes the quarrel go and fight wi' each other? But killing all them
folk that's got no quarrel, and burnin' their houses and farms, and
tramplin' down all that good corn--and all them brave men dead what can
never live again--its scandalous, I say."

This at the outset. But afterwards, when the papers had duly explained
that the Germans were mere barbarians and savages, bent on reducing the
whole world to military slavery, they began to take sides and feel there
was good cause for fighting. Meanwhile almost exactly the same thing was
happening in Germany, where England was being represented as a greedy
and deceitful Power, trying to boss and crush all the other nations.
Thus each nation did what was perhaps, from its own point of view, the
most sensible thing to do--persuaded itself that it was fighting in a
just and heroic cause, that it was a St. George against the Dragon, a
David out to slay Goliath.

The attitude of the peasant, however, or agriculturist, all over the
world, is the same. He does not deal in romantic talk about St. George