By the Same Author

In French.

RATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. Hermann, Paris, 1938.

In Russian:

ORGANIZATION. PRINCIPLES AND METHODS IN INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, AND POLITICS. State Publishing Department, Moscow, 1925.

EUROPEAN LITERATURE ON THE SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. N.K.R.K. I., Moscow, 1924.

In German

RATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF BIOLOGICAL INSTITUTES AND RATIONAL TECHNIQUE OF THE MENTAL WORK OF THE STUDENT. Urban und Schwarzenberg, Berlin, 1930.

Three Arrows VERBUS THE SWASTIKA (DREIPPEIL GEGEN HAKENEREUZ). Verlag Aktiver Sozialismus, Copenhagen, 1933.

THE METHOD OF ULTRA-VIOLET MICROPUNCTURE. Urban und Schwarzenberg, Berlin, 1935.

In Danish:

Three Arrows PERSUS THE SWASTIKA (TREPIL MOD HAGEKORS).
Frem, Copenhagen, 1933.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALITARIAN POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

By SERGE CHAKOTIN, D.Sc

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.4

LE VIOL DES FOULES
First published in Paris,
THE RAPE OF THE MASSES
published in England, 1941

To H. G. WELLS THINKER OF THE FUTURE

FERDINAND LASSALLE, in address on "Science and Labour".

Last sentence of H. G. Wells's "The Shape of Things to Come: the Ultimate Revolution".

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

The defeat of the democracies—Aims of human culture—The danger of its destruction—The way out—The revolutionary thesis

"The dagger is our best friend," declares Mussolini, and he has given the youth of the Italian universities a

"Peace, peace, peace" has been the constant refrain of the reply to these dictators' speeches from the opposing camp of the European democracies. And who does not want peace? But it has all been as ineffective as a procession of saints' images against an epidemic. It has led inevitably to the new catastrophe, amid which we cannot but ask, Whither humanity? Why is it heading steadily for destruction? Whence this incapacity to control its destiny when everything shows that the product of the human intelligence—Science—with its consequences in technical and cultural progress, has attained dizzy heights?

What is human culture? Is it not an evolution of Man toward his emancipation, his liberation from material dangers, his advance to a state in which all the sublime germs of which he is the chosen vessel may develop—Art, Science, the Social Idea, the Philosophic Idea? The pursuit of Liberty is the true course of human culture. In his dramatic broadcast on September 27, 1938, Mr. Neville Chamberlain well formulated that idea—

Yet we are faced with a current of growing strength which is destroying the little freedom that already exists scattered through the world, a current of ideas noisily proclaimed and manifestly false, since they are in contradiction with the biological laws of evolution—that there is a fundamental difference between the races of mankind, that natural selection ultimately produces pure races, that such races exist, that they have a right to deprive other races of their liberty, that a man can and may dominate other men, that he even has the right to dispose of the lives of his fellow-men.

Are not these theories resurrections from a lower stage already passed by humanity, are they not a retrogression to a period resuscitated in camouflage for the benefit of a few selfish usurpers—an attempt, foredoomed to failure, to reverse the course of history? The attempt is doomed because it is in flagrant contradiction with all the causes of human progress—science, technology, the idea of society. If a chance combination of circumstances should enable this misdirected effort to get the upper hand of normal healthy evolution, if it were not combated and overcome like a contagious disease, all humanity would be menaced with destruction.

makes its appearance. A true revolution is always a saving reaction against danger. A putsch, even a successful one, is not a true revolution. The so-called Fascist or Hitlerist "revolution", artificially produced by a "Duce" or "Leader", has nothing whatever in common with the great French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. Such men as Robespierre and Lenin played an important part in these revolutions, but they were themselves set in motion by the spontaneous force of a human torrent, with none of the calculated moves of the Fascist and Nazi coups. Counter-revolution is, indeed, always a movement organized by individuals, and for this reason it is much more logical to regard Fascism and Hitlerism as counter-revolutionary movements. A new and true revolution is now preparing, deep in the hearts of peoples, an unrest that is a collective reflex against the attempt to impose on humanity a reversal of its natural evolution toward liberty and material prosperity.

The possibility of this "dry" revolution exists. And its method is revealed by the deductions which may be drawn partly from our modern scientific progress and partly from a practical examination of

the antisocial movements of our time, Fascism and Hitlerism. We will use the term "Hitlerism" and not "National Socialism", a term which frames a logical contradiction; in any case, Hitler always speaks of the movement as his own unassisted creation: he is the "Trommler" (drummer), the prophet, the chosen one of the Germanic God. What is the secret of this man's success with his people and, until war came, against all the statesmen of his own country and of all the world? What is the Philosopher's Stone of this political alchemist of our day? His methods triumphed because he was the only one to use them: they were his monopoly, since his adversaries did not see through them, or, if they did, rejected them, deliberately and with abhorrence, as honest intellectuals—honest but behind the times.

Our task is thus to separate out the main ideas underlying the tragic course of events of recent years. Fascism rapes the mind of the masses with its baleful propaganda. What can we do to block its path? The first necessity is to understand the essential mechanism of its action—and this has become possible through the discoveries in objective psychology of my great master, Professor Pavlov. After comprehension must come action. Socialism, faith in human destiny, and enthusiasm, based on the data of modern science, are the second condition of action; H. G. Wells has admirably synthesized these elements. The present work, an essay in the basing of political action on a rigorously scientific foundation, aims at contributing to the fusion of these two essential forms of the thought of

S. CHAKOTIN.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The purpose of this book is to relate political action to the modern data of the exact sciences, to see whether, perhaps, political action is not primarily, like all human action, a form of biological behaviour. The book appeared in French a few weeks before the outbreak of war—unhappily, too late to lead those who direct human destinies to consider the laws and the new facts here expounded. The irreparable has happened: we are now at war.

cvii 1

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

Important events have occurred since this book was written, and for this English edition I have accordingly revised the French text

S. CHAKOTIN.

December 1939.

I

A SCIENTIFIC INTRODUCTION: PSYCHOLOGY, AN EXACT SCIENCE

I THINK I may begin usefully with an argument well formulated by Jean Coutrot in a letter of invitation to a collective research, published in Document no. 1 of Entretiens sur les Sciences de l'Homme [1]. He writes:

The disequilibrium which we observe today at the base of contemporary society is occasioned by a disquieting backwardness in the sciences of Man, which should give him power over himself, as compared with the sciences of Nature, which in three centuries have given him power over things. Since, after having transformed his environment, Man is beginning to be able to act upon himself, and, indeed, is so acting, we are faced with the question how to render this action harmless and, if possible, fruitful.

^<sup>1 The figures in brackets refer to the bibliography at the end of this book.

And since, we may add, human action is nothing but a consequence of biological processes, indeed, nervous processes, which take place in each individual, it is clear that the question of human activities, their forms and their promptings, belongs to the domain of the science known as Psychology.

Our concern, then, is with the problems of objective or physiological psychology, the one task of which is to examine the reactions of living beings, animal or human. These reactions are manifested in the form of activities of every sort, spontaneous or responsive; activities in general of a motive nature, that is to say,

This science is known in America as Behaviourism. Its American students, following the researches of Thorndike, Jennings, Yerkes, and their collaborators, apply the methods of experimental biology to the study of those vital manifestations of animals which are known as "psychical". The American school has based its research on the facts observed in human beings, and has been mainly interested in the discovery of analogies with human behaviour, while clearly taking care not to fall into anthropomorphism. The point of departure of the Russian school, the school of Pavlov, has been purely physiological. Thus, Jennings speaks of "trial and error" as one of the fundamental principles of the behaviour of living beings. Pavlov's approach was different: he studied the phenomena of nutrition, and especially the reflex action of salivation as a function of excitations of the sense of taste.

At the outset of his researches Pavlov came up against the fact of a salivation which is currently called "psychical". It is well known that saliva accumulates in the mouth at the simple sight of food, without its being introduced into the mouth. He found at once that this effect is simply a reflex, an adaptation of the organism to a given situation, a reaction in which the nervous system, the transmitter and co-ordinator of excitations and effects, plays a decisive part. But in analysing this phenomenon he soon found that the reaction he observed differed very distinctly from the automatic, absolute, or innate

Let us review the principal data of the theory of conditioned reflexes. This is the capital fact: if we give food to a dog, its saliva runs automatically. The process is a mechanical action conferred by nature on the individual at birth, in Pavlov's terminology [2] an innate or absolute reflex. If we ring a little bell it will have no effect on the salivation. But if we begin to synchronize the taking of food with this sound-excitation, and if we repeat the synchronization 40 or 50 or 60 times, we may find that after this "apprenticeship" of the dog's nervous system the mere sound of the bell, without the arrival of food, starts salivation. An association has been established in the dog's organism between the two excitations, a new reflex, "artificial" or temporary, has been formed, a "conditioned reflex" in Pavlov's phrase.

Having thus established the rule of the formation of the conditioned reflex, Pavlov studied its modalities under every aspect. He found that any excitation can become a conditional factor in producing salivation through repeated synchronization with the taking of food—any sound, the sight of figures or luminous signals, perception through taste or smell, the application of heat or cold to the skin, mechanical irritations

applied to any part of the body, by scraping, for example, or pressure or touch, or by electrical stimulation. He then studied the fineness of distinction between excitations: a particular sound, of 800 vibrations per second, was made the conditional agent, and a different sound, of 812 vibrations, was found to produce no salivation. If a combination of three sounds was made the conditional factor, any one of them served equally well alone: to put it in terms of introspective psychology, the dog "recognized" the exciting influence.

We come now to another group of phenomena, closely connected with those already considered, and of great importance to the comprehension of "psychical" acts in general. A conditioned reflex is formed—salivation is produced, for instance, in a dog by a particular sound. If then, at the moment when the sound is made, a cat is brought into the dog's presence, there will be no salivation, or if it has begun it will stop at once. The part played by the cat can be played by any other new excitant of sufficient strength. This is the phenomenon of inhibition.

Pavlov distinguishes between external and internal

The more experiments are made with these conditioned reflexes, the more facts are met with that show that this process of internal inhibition is in general much more unstable than the process of conditioned excitation; in other words, the manifestations of internal inhibition are much more subject to the influence of accidental excitants than the manifestations of conditioned excitation. These facts are constantly observed; if, says Pavlov, anyone enters the room in which experiments on conditioned reflexes are being made on dogs, the inhibition which may exist at that moment among the animals is profoundly

affected, whereas, once a conditioned excitation has been established, it undergoes little or no modification.

Mention must also be made of Pavlov's theory of the mechanism that governs the functioning of the organs of living beings. This mechanism depends, according to Pavlov, on two processes which he calls irradiation and the concentration of excitations and inhibitions in the cerebral hemispheres. A classic experiment has shown that a brief excitation of any point of the hemispheres produces a movement of a particular group of muscles. If the excitation is prolonged, the reaction is extended to muscles farther and farther off, ending in generalized convulsions. This irradiation of excitation is constantly observed in the physiology of conditioned reflexes [4].

Subsequently excitation was produced several times running by this fifth mechanism without giving food,

and the conditioned action was found to disappear: a process of inhibition had begun. A little later the four other mechanisms also produced no reaction, owing to irradiation of the inhibition. But the longer the interval between the functioning of the fifth mechanism and that of the others, the more these latter are liberated from the inhibition; the difference grows rapidly with the length of the interval, until at last the inhibition is no longer noticeable even on the mechanism nearest to the fifth. It is possible, says Pavlov, to follow with the eyes the wave of inhibition as it ebbs and returns to its point of departure: the inhibition is being concentrated. Thus two general laws govern these particular manifestations of activity—the law of irradiation and that of concentration of the nervous process.

Alongside these fundamental mechanisms, account must be taken of a very important one, the mechanism of analysis. Pavlov characterizes the analysers as "special apparatus of the nervous system . . . closely associated with the mechanism that generates conditioned reflexes".

Considering the phenomena of internal inhibition, Pavlov found that if inhibition is irradiated over the whole surface of the cortex (grey matter), a state of somnolence ensues. This led him to study the phenomena of hypnosis and suggestion. If the process of inhibition does not reach a certain degree, a state intermediate between sleeping and waking is produced, strongly resembling the state of hypnosis. But cases are also known in which a state of catalepsy or hypnosis is produced by violent excitation during which every inclination to opposition on the animal's part is destroyed. This is the experimentum mirabile of

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Kircher; the animal may remain motionless for several hours. It is a defensive reflex in the form of inhibition. In the presence of a vast force from which there is no escape either by resistance or by flight, the only chance of safety lies in immobility, which may enable the animal to remain unperceived or, if perceived, to avoid the violent reaction which any movement might provoke. In this case, according to Pavlov [8],

according to the intensity and duration of the excitation, this inhibition is localized exclusively in the motor zones (of the hemispheres of the brain), producing the faculty of remaining motionless (catalepsy); or it extends to the other regions of the hemispheres and even to the mid-brain. In this case all the reflexes gradually disappear; the animal becomes absolutely passive and passes into the state of sleep, with muscles relaxed. The immobility and fixity of expression under great fear is a reaction identical with the reflex described.

It is easy to see the importance of these physiological facts to the study of human behaviour in cases in which, especially among crowds, factors of suggestion play a prominent part.

In the course of his work Pavlov drew attention to two phenomena of psychical activity which he called the "reflex of purpose" and the "reflex of liberty". He regards them as absolute, innate reflexes. As an example of the former [9], certain persons are obsessed with the desire to collect, and their eagerness is often entirely disproportionate to the value of the object sought; this Pavlov considers to be an innate characteristic. The collector may be ready to sacrifice his life in the pursuit of some insignificant object. To satisfy his passion he may be ready to face ridicule,

The second innate reflex is that of liberty. Pavlov quotes the case [10] of a dog which was the offspring of stray dogs. In the laboratory he put up an obstinate resistance to every attempt to form conditioned reflexes in him. He struggled on the experimenting table, he salivated continually and spontaneously, he presented the symptoms of general excitation, and months passed before he was rendered docile and could be used for the formation of conditioned reflexes. This dog could not bear to have his movements restricted, and Pavlov classed this characteristic as an innate liberty reflex. Docility, he added, could only be the manifestation of the inverse of this, an innate servility reflex.

As will be seen later, we are more inclined to regard freedom or servility in behaviour as acquisitions, conditioned reflexes, based on the instinct which we have called that of individual defence or struggle.

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that the nervous system might well be the substratum available for this process, in view of the malleability of its functions and its adaptation to the reception and conservation of impressions. Pavlov himself thought at one time that mice in his laboratory, in whom conditioned reflexes had been formed (they came for food at the sound of a bell), were giving birth to new generations among whom this reflex was obtained with continually increasing facility. He abandoned the idea later, when it was established that in the cases observed there had merely been a progressive improvement in the technique of experimentation.

A fact that was quite definitely established in his laboratories was the possibility of influencing character-formation. Dogs of the same litter were divided at birth into two groups; one group was left at liberty for two years and the other kept in cages. When, later, a beginning was made with the forming of conditioned reflexes in the two groups, it was found that the task was easier with the caged group, who, moreover, showed great sensitivity to sound excitation: they were timid, continually trembling at the least noise. The others, habituated to multiple excitements, quickly became sleepy under the influence of the monotonous excitations in the laboratory, and put up a longer resistance to the formation of a reflex. These studies led Pavlov to the establishment of differences of character exactly corresponding to those long recognized in man: he distinguished morose, stolid, irritable, and cheerful dogs. In the two former types the processes of inhibition predominate, in the two latter excitability. This division of human characters was thus given a biological basis.

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relates physiologically to hypnosis and "suggestibility" (susceptibility to suggestion). If a phrase or an order is impressed on a psychical mechanism which is in a state of physiological enfeeblement, the suggestion outlasts that state. If we analyse the possibilities of resistance to suggestion—a question, as we shall see, which is of the utmost importance—we find that, apart from pathological cases of congenital inadequacy or sickness or poisoning, these possibilities are largely a function of the degree of culture, that is to say, of the endowment with conditioned reflexes, grafted on one another, which makes up the psychical mechanism of the individuals concerned. Ignorance is thus the best medium for the formation of masses who easily lend themselves to suggestion. This is a capital fact in the domain of politics and the social order; it has always been known, but thanks to Pavlov it is possible today to understand the physiological reasons for it.

It is often said that consciousness varies inversely with susceptibility to suggestion. What is consciousness? Shall we be able some day to define it in exact scientific terms, to connect it with data which can be rigorously reproduced and verified? Pavlov expressed this hope in one of his last addresses. In 1913 he had already suggested certain possibilities of explanation of the phenomenon. He wrote [4]:

Consciousness appears to me to be the nervous activity of a given region of the hemispheres which, at a given moment and in given conditions, possesses an optimum of excitability (which ought, probably, to be an average excitability). At that moment the excitability of other regions of the hemispheres is more or less enfeebled. In the zone of optimum excitability, new conditioned reflexes are easily established and differentiations made with precision. . . . If we could

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it recoils, and moves away, deviating from its usual trajectory. After a certain number of shocks at this spot, that is to say, after a series of excitations, combined with the perception of the place where they occur, it modifies its trajectory, avoiding the "dangerous spot". The ultra-violet barrier is then removed, and it is found that the infusorium continues to move in its new trajectory; it retains the "memory" of the danger-spot. This reaction lasts for about twenty minutes, after which the animal gradually resumes its original trajectory. Its "memory" is short: the conditioned reaction is extinguished. Thus we find that the faculty of showing conditioned, temporary, acquired reactions is by no means confined to nervous systems but is a general faculty of living matter.

Having established this fact of capital importance, we may consider the question of a system of the reactions in behaviour of living beings, reactions which, as we have seen, are a function of living matter. Let us take an extremely simple creature, an amoeba, for example, and analyse its immediate reflexes or reactions. They may all be reduced to four essential reactions: it flees from danger, it absorbs food, it multiplies itself, and by becoming encysted it can shelter its progeny, since it can divide itself within the cyst into a whole swarm of little amoebas. From the biological point of view, we find that Nature has endowed species with two special mechanisms for the preservation of the individual until it has accomplished its task in life, the transmission of the germ of the species, and two others for the preservation of the species. For the conservation of the individual these mechanisms or instincts are that of defence or struggle, and that of nutrition. For the conservation of the species the two instincts innate in the individual are that of sexuality and that of maternity.

All reactions of living beings are due to or derived from these four instincts. In spite of the apparent complexity of the reactions of higher orders of beings and of those of man, there are, strictly speaking, no other reactions. We may number the instincts in order of biological importance. No. 1, the most important because the most general, is the instinct of struggle. Every living being must struggle against death and danger to life. This is a more immediate danger than lack of food: danger from aggression, for instance, is immediate and may bring death, whereas one does not die at once from hunger; it is possible to resist hunger passively for a time, and

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meanwhile there is still hope. No. 2 is thus the alimentary instinct. It is common to all beings, while No. 3, the sexual instinct, is not. No. 4, the maternal instinct, is limited at best to a number of individuals to whom it appeals; care for the offspring is manifestly not universal.

The instincts are simply the innate or absolute reflexes or reactions of which Pavlov speaks. These are the mechanisms at the base of all behaviour of living beings. But we have seen in Pavlov's experiments that associated or conditioned reflexes can be formed, as derivatives of, or in association with, the innate ones. Pavlov has shown this by making use of the alimentary instinct: he based his experiments on salivation in connexion with the taking of food. He also indicated that other instincts might serve the purpose; and experiments have since been carried out in which the motive reactions formed the basis of conditioned reactions. Conditioned reflexes might be formed on the basis of the instinct of struggle or the sexual or maternal instinct; but these have not yet been as deeply investigated as Pavlov's experiments with the alimentary instinct.

matter. This must be borne in mind; it has an important bearing on the behaviour of men in regard to politics and propaganda.

Thus we have seen that the theory of conditioned reflexes, the essential foundation of objective psychology, is based on general biological laws and explains to us today all the complex forms of behaviour of animals and of man. But the understanding of mechanisms of behaviour brings the possibility of working upon them at will. It becomes possible to launch human reactions with a sure hand in directions determined in advance. The possibility of influencing men existed, of course, in all ages, since man lives and talks and has relations with his fellow-men; but it was a possibility availed of blindly, and one which demanded great experience or special aptitudes: it was a sort of art. Now this art has become a science, which can calculate, foresee, and act under rules which can be tested. An immense step forward is being made in the sociological domain.

What, then, are these important rules? We shall see them explained later by actual practice, by experiments prepared and successfully carried out. For the moment we will confine ourselves to emphasizing that at the base of every construction of applied psychology lies the group of instincts or innate reactions which we have just been discussing. We need only point out that a mass of derived notions separate out from them; it will be sufficient to give a few examples. To simplify matters we will use the terminology of everyday life. Purely scientific analysis has not yet been made in most of these cases, and the attitudes in question may be defined in ordinary terms with sufficient clearness. Consider, for example, the first system, that of struggle.

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Among the states related to this system are those of fear, distress, depression, and, as opposite correlatives, aggressiveness, fury, courage, enthusiasm; in a word, everything in the social or political field that has to do with the struggle for the seizure of power, in order to dominate. Here threats and encouragement and exaltation play an important part as forms of stimulation.

For the third system, that of sexuality, we may distinguish primitive and sublimated elements; the former include on the positive side all that directly causes erotic excitation. Our civilization makes less and less use of these elements, but they play an important part among primitive peoples, as they did in ancient times. We need only recall the Dionysian games or the phallic cult, which made use even of processions as a means of psychological influence over the masses. On the negative side, there is all that provides material for derision and contempt and raillery. Caricatures, carnival processions, and broad humour are examples. For the utilization of the sexual instinct in its sublimated form one may quote such appeals to elevated joys and affection as popular songs, dancing, current allusions, or the exhibition of pretty women as personifications of ideals; a historic example of this last was the "Goddess of Reason" of the French Revolution, a celebrated actress and beauty of her day, who was carried in procession, half-naked, through the streets of Paris.

The fourth instinct, that of maternity, is at the base of every manifestation of pity or care for others, commiseration, friendship, forethought; and also of indignation and anger.

This differentiation of the states of mind into a series of elements, a sort of spectrum analysis of the spirit, shows us that it is possible to produce vibration at will in determined parts of this "spectrum". This is information of essential importance to anyone who wishes to guide his fellow-men in a particular direction, to influence them psychologically, to decide their behaviour. The essential thing is to appeal to all sides of the psychical complex, to leave it no means of escape; it is not sufficient to play on any chance string; the rule is to appeal to every one of the deeplying, instinctive bases of the human soul.

We have shown that human activities are simply the resultant of a more or less complex network of processes that take place in the mechanisms of the nervous system, processes based on a mass of impressions received by the organism in the course of its life. But there are fields in which these phenomena are particularly distinct; in these fields conditioned reflexes may easily be formed at will, and their evolution may be easily followed. There is the field, for instance, of animal training. A circus is a school in which conditioned reflexes are formed by very clear and very sure methods. So also with the training of domestic animals, horses, cattle, dogs, and so on. There are differences, of course, between animals of different species and between individuals of the same species, as we have already seen in Pavlov's experiments, and as everyone knows who has had to deal with animals. But in the long run any animal can be

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trained, as has been declared by Hachet-Souplet [15], who unites wide personal experience of training with the knowledge of a zoopsychologist. In the technique of training we meet again with the principles already mentioned: animal apprenticeship is based entirely on bait and the fear of suffering, that is to say, on the play of instincts 2 (nutrition) and 1 (struggle). A general rule in training is the association of the conditional factor (the signal given to the animal in order to determine its action) with the factor constituted by an innate mechanism of fear (instinct of struggle) or appetite (instinct of nutrition), an association effected in such a way that the former factor precedes the latter by a few instants. Without this, the desired effect is not produced: an animal that is satisfied, or has suffered a nervous shock, will no longer react to so feeble a physiological excitation as a signal. Here we recognize the law, of which Pavlov speaks, of the charging of a centre with energy.

Another rule is that the excitation which is to become conditional must be well defined; it must not vary, must not present new aspects which might become inhibitors. Consequently, as Hachet-Souplet points out [15], once a particular form or arrangement of apparatus has been employed, it must undergo no modification in essentials. It is better not to modify even the colour of the accessories. He tells the story of a pigeon-fancier who renovated his perches and platforms, painting them blue in place of red, and then imprudently used them at once in public. His pigeons sought their red perches and ignored the blue ones; they started flying round and round the circus, and finally settled on a big hat, covered with red poppies, worn by one of the women spectators.

Another characteristic fact of training is that the rhythm of excitations, and even their accompaniment by musical or other rhythmical sounds, assists in the formation of habits and their automatism. Much use is made of this fact in the circus. It is a fact that is in conformity with the laws of suggestion: the higher mechanisms enter into a state resembling sleep, the generalized internal inhibition increases, and the possibility of responding automatically to the excitations imposed during the existence of this state is increased. The beating of drums, for example, assists the impeccable execution of the goose-step, so dear to the German militarism of the past. (The goose-step has, naturally, been revived by Hitler, who at bottom, as we shall see, is simply a trainer who is out to marshal automata, true living robots.)

It is often asked whether it is possible to attribute "intelligence" above the normal to trained animals—that is to say, a capacity, as we should put it, of forming grafted or superior conditioned reflexes. The case is instanced of "educated animals" or "calculating animals", such as the famous Elberfeld horses, who were supposed to be able to extract a square or cube root or any other root, or Frau Möcker's dog Rolf, at Mannheim, who "expressed sentences that were almost philosophical, and could express any shade

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of feeling to his mistress ". It was subsequently found that in all cases these were effects of more or less involuntary training, and of the transmission of almost imperceptible signs to the animals by their masters.

and Dr. Fadeyeva. Delayed reflexes are those which are elaborated by allowing an excitation which brings into play an innate reflex (nutrition) to follow a conditional excitation after a certain length of time, ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes. The result is that the reaction (salivation, for example) appears at the end of the interval between the appearance of the signal (the conditional excitant) and the presentation of food (absolute excitant). It is clear at once how great is the importance of a delayed conditioned reflex in the education of children, since what is required is to inculcate self-control, the faculty of waiting, of bringing into play the internal inhibition which is at the base of the processes known in introspective psychology as those of the will.

The procedure was as follows: The children were shown a luminous signal, and after a time, a minute, for example, they were told to carry out a movement (the compression of a rubber ball) which started an apparatus out of which came their reward, a sweet. After nearly a hundred repetitions it was found that the children succeeded, without prompting, in making the prescribed movement at the end of the desired interval (in this case a minute). A conditioned reflex had thus been formed, in which time was measured automatically by the mechanisms of the children's nervous systems; they had learnt to make the process of inhibition last just the time required. These researches also brought to light a certain differentiation of the children's characters: the reflex was formed more quickly in some than in others; but it was found possible to hasten its formation to some extent among the slowest, and to retard it at will, by inhibition, among the brightest. We see at once the rela-

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tions existing between the practical work of instruction, of education, and the phenomena, now known, of the formation of conditioned reflexes. The former, indeed, is simply an application of the laws governing the latter. In one of the last works published before his death, Pavlov declared that the method of conditioned reflexes assures great possibilities in the training of the organ of thought, that is to say, of the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres of man.

This interesting experiment was made on a dog. A very strong electrical excitation was associated with a sound; the dog reacted very violently, howling, struggling, and so on. Another sound was combined with the taking of food, and became a conditional excitant. When the two sounds were made simultaneously, the reaction caused by the former one was found to prevail; the dog did not salivate at all; it struggled and howled. This reaction even grafted itself on the second sound, which, when presented alone, gave rise to the reaction of defence. After the dog had been spared the electric shocks for a time, the second sound produced salivation, but if it was made when the dog was going to sleep the reaction of defence reappeared. This is exactly what happens with sufferers from nervous trouble after a disaster, a battle, and so on. In the process of falling asleep they enter a state of delirium, recalling that of somnambulism: they become restless, cry out, and behave as if they were living over again the events that were the origin of their malady.

We have quoted these instances in order to emphasize once more that the theory of conditioned reflexes is

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indeed one which makes it possible to explain a number of psychical states, both normal and pathological, in human beings; this is of the utmost importance to the comprehension of the facts dealt with in this book.

In the actual work of business men we may distinguish special aptitudes for the art of selling or buying or carrying on commercial correspondence: all these are simply systems of behaviour based on complexes of conditioned reflexes controlled by the phenomena of excitation, inhibition, and disinhibition and by the work of analysers of every sort, in accordance with the laws referred to in our account of Pavlov's theory. In commercial correspondence, for instance, it is not

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29 D

The forms taken by publicity are infinitely varied, and at times so unexpected and ingenious that they often inspire the political propagandist. Publicity has attained its maximum development in North America, where it assumes extraordinary dimensions. Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda manager, when trying to impress the world in the spring of 1932 and to startle the public into submission, declared that in his propaganda for Hitler's campaign in the presidential election he would use "American methods on an American scale". It was quite logical that he should do so, though it did not prevent him, after Hitler's defeat, from shouting that the other side had won by brazen employment of (American) "commercial methods, suggested and paid for, of course, by the Jews".

The physiological basis of publicity is sometimes so manifest in America that an example may usefully be quoted. A New York pork butcher had the idea of placing in his shop a loud-speaker that reproduced the squeals of the pigs as they were slaughtered in the abattoirs; his shop was always full of customers for his sausages. A café proprietor led his oven flue into the street: appetizing odours spread round his shop

and customers flocked in, tempted by these conditional excitants.

Commercial publicity has become a sort of practical science, which studies by laboratory methods every detail of efficacy of form, or of number, and the influence of the medium; recording, checking, and analysing results obtained. Political propaganda, which relies on the same laws of conditioned reflexes, and which is borrowing more and more from the methods of commercial publicity, needs to engage in scientific study of reactions and their effects if it wishes to dominate the masses and lead them where it will.

It will be seen that we have already explored part of the field of what might be called, in Charles Baudouin's phrase, "psychagogy", the practical science of the direction of the activities of other people through the action of influences designed with reference to their "psychical" mechanisms. The possibility of such action has been shown by our examination of the present state of our knowledge of the functioning of the psychical mechanisms of men and animals. Science tells us that this thing is possible, and why it is. It remains to be seen, in the chapters that follow, how this theoretical possibility is applied

to the various forms of behaviour of man as a "political animal". We continually see men act upon one another, for good or evil. It is thus of great practical importance to verify the scientific data, and to seek to establish from them rules permitting men to be led, not to destruction, but to the common weal. Then the practical science of psychagogy will become a social activity, not based on the rape of the human will and of the mechanism of human thought, as is too often the case today, but leading men toward the sublime ends of culture, one of the foremost of which is social duty.

H

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Political activity—The psychology of crowds—Gustave le Bon—The masses and the crowd—Examples drawn from the Russian Revolution—The system of instincts—The system of human activities—Vices—Sublimation—Feelings—The acquisitions of human culture—Degenerations—The school of Freud—The ideas of Adler—The doctrines of Marx—Christianity—The succession of great popular movements in history

The acts of human multitudes, the phenomena of social life, among which we must, of course, include the manifestations of political activity, are obviously psychological acts, and, as such, subject to the laws governing the nervous system of the individual. Without man there would be no politics, and, since political behaviour is characterized by acts, that is to say, by phenomena in which the muscles, the nerves, and the senses play their combined part, it is impossible, in speaking of politics, to disregard the biological phenomena which are the real basis of every act. Conditioned reflexes play here a dominant, if not the exclusive, part. If a speaker addresses a crowd in the street or at a meeting or in Parliament, if a journalist writes a political article, if a statesman signs a manifesto or a decree; if the citizen drops his vote into a ballot-box, or the Member of Parliament joins the Ayes or Noes in the House; if, finally, political opponents meet in the street and come to blows—all

It is also obvious that there can only be political action where there are human multitudes taking part in the action. These multitudes are the elements manœuvred, or the actors, whether in the form of an assemblage—the crowd—or in a dispersed form—the masses.

The psychology of crowds has often been studied. Gabriel Tarde, and especially Gustave le Bon [17], began in France a series of studies which dates from forty years ago. Where today we speak of "behaviour" and promptings, Le Bon speaks of the "soul" of the crowd. He distinguishes "the people" and "the crowd", and says that environment and heredity impose on all the individuals of a people a body of common characters, stable because of ancestral origin, but that the conscious activity of these individuals, when they are collected in crowds, vanishes and gives place to unconscious action of a very powerful but elementary type. Le Bon's ideas have set a fashion in modern sociology; he tends to attribute to the crowd all the evils from which we suffer, and to hold it entirely responsible for the failures in the social and political life of our epoch, which he calls the Age of the Crowd. If we bear in mind that this view was expressed toward the end of the last century, when the pace of events, compared with the dynamism of

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"Universal symptoms show in all nations the rapid growth of the power of the crowd. The advent of the crowd will, perhaps, mark one of the last stages of the Western civilizations, a return to the periods of confusion and anarchy which precede the emergence of new societies."

The characteristic of the age in which we are living is, on the contrary, a diminution in the real influence of collectivities on public life: they are growing more and more into docile instruments in the hands of usurpers, dictators, who unscrupulously make use of their more or less intuitive apprehension of psychological laws, together with their control of the formidable technical equipment afforded by the modern State, to manipulate the individuals composing a people by a method which we have called psychical rape. It is natural that they should be compelled, from time to time, to have recourse to noisy demonstrations in which they exploit the forces inherent in the crowd; resounding military parades, for instance, or spectacular shows like Hitler's Nuremberg congresses, or Mussolini's harangues from his balcony. The explanation of this is very simple: as we have seen, a conditioned reflex, if it is not "refreshed" from time to time, that

is to say, accompanied by an absolute reflex, loses its efficacy; when psychical violence is used as a method of government, the effectiveness of the symbols which act on nine-tenths of the masses, the motive force of commands on the "psychic slaves", the persons subjected to suggestion, gradually dwindles, unless the strings which can be made to vibrate in the masses by fear or enthusiasm are periodically plucked. For this reason the art of dictatorial rule always comprises two essential forms or phases of action: (1) the gathering of the masses into crowds, where they can be subjected to a psychical lash of the whip by means of violent harangues, associated with the exhibition of certain symbols, which reawaken their faith in these symbols; and (2) the redispersal of these crowds into masses who are then left for a time to act under the revivified influence of the symbols, which surround them on all sides.

If we follow out Le Bon's ideas we see that what he calls the "domination" of the crowd in modern life has nothing to do with the practices of dictators; it is a hit at the democratic idea, insinuating that noisy, unthinking, "chaotic" meetings impose manifestly irrational solutions and actions, which sometimes make difficult political situations worse instead of remedying them. There is a modicum of truth in this; but in our opinion it is really applicable to the case of a revolt of the masses against a psychical oppression that is becoming intolerable. This is a healthy reaction, preceding or beginning a real revolution. The "dispersed masses", passive, submissive, become a "crowd", which can more easily act: its passions are roused and it gives them free play—unless they are held in control and canalized by a tribune, a man

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who is himself in sympathy with the aspirations of the crowd, and who is able to exploit the force it exerts and direct it towards a salutary end. This is precisely the task of the true leaders of mankind at times of ferment and more or less conscious revolt—to make use of the energies unloosed in order to create situations which lead to material and psychical emancipation. The purpose of this book is to contribute to the understanding of the mechanism of the psychical oppression carried out by modern usurpers, and, secondly, to place effective weapons in the hands of those who are ready for any sacrifice in order to liberate humanity.

Instances of the efficacy of psychological means of influencing the crowd may be quoted from episodes of the Russian Revolution. In Petrograd on March 5, 1917, crowds had been filing through the streets since early morning; for some days there had been a dull feeling of revolt among the war-weary, hungry population, and many rumours were current. The last straw had been an increase in the price of bread. Now spontaneously, planlessly, without leaders, the people had come out into the streets. There have been many attempts to prove that the whole movement was organized, calculated, and directed; there is not a word of truth in them. The whole city, the authorities, the political parties, were alike taken by surprise. All the main streets of the city were crowded; the police had fled in panic, and the crowds, silent, anxious, sombre, wandered helplessly. Troops were stationed in the barracks and in courtyards and in

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Here is another instance of the possibility of manipulating crowds at will by means of psychological weapons. In November 1917, after the Bolsheviks had come into power, excesses were no rarity, as is well known; the excited crowds frequently attacked people in the street for no reason, on the strength of simple suspicion aroused by anyone present. The persons attacked ran the risk of being lynched, and in some cases actually were lynched. To obviate this danger an organization of intellectuals in sympathy with the Soviet Government evolved a method of psychological action for such cases. A direct appeal

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Here is another form of psychical action on crowds in the streets which has proved its value. In the south of Russia, in the course of a political campaign during the civil war, posters, maps, photos, etc., used to be placed in shop windows. Crowds always gathered in front of these. Propagandists would mix in the crowd in twos, and would begin to talk loudly to one another, or enter into an argument. The crowd at once began to listen and take part in the controversy. The two

trained propagandists, furnished with telling data and arguments, could generally carry the feelings of the crowd in whatever direction was desired.

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order was restored, the pressure reduced; a collective inhibition had spread through the minds of the whole throng.

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vary; their importance varies also from individual to individual; the hereditary factors and the physiological characteristics which determine the character of each person are also of the utmost importance. Nevertheless, individuals with elements of resemblance may be found in crowds, and may be differentiated into more or less homogeneous groups; the attempt may be made to influence them in the same direction, and this is the aim pursued by politics, since in politics it is the multitude that matters.

With the four basic systems mentioned, which engender four systems of conditioned reflexes, it is possible to associate a quantity of reflexes derived from them. These derived reflexes may vary not only quantitatively but qualitatively: they may increase the individual's stock of reflexes at a particular level, or they may contribute reflexes on different levels. Here, to illustrate this, is a table (p. 46) showing from left to right the four instincts in decreasing order of importance, together with derivatives at corresponding levels in each column.

As will be seen from the table, it is possible to envisage evolution either upward or downward—sublimation or degradation. Starting from relatively primitive reflexes, we may see in the latter case the formation, by exacerbation of the primitive promptings, of complexes of behaviour which in everyday life are known as vices. These complexes are characterized by the excessive development of a single instinct or innate mechanism, which directs a man's activities towards an individual, non-social aim. In the field of the first instinct (struggle), the lowering of the level produces despotism, the tendency to reduce men to subjection; tyranny, with its sadistic perversions, is

45 E

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a further exacerbation of this complex, associating it with sexuality. In the field of the second instinct (nutrition), the non-social exacerbation leads to the vices of gluttony, cupidity, and avarice—the pursuit of the maximum of personal material satisfactions. The debasement of the third instinct (sexual) produces libertinism, depravity, and all sorts of excesses; sexual psychopathology offers examples in profusion. And negative exaggeration of the maternal instinct produces misanthropy, as in the case of a man, or especially a mother, who distrusts everyone outside his or her family, and to whom the rest of humanity appears hateful.

Consider now the upward evolution—sublimation. On the basis of the first instinct, under the influence of social factors, human evolution gives birth to complexes, or systems of conditioned reflexes, which characterize the sense of the clan, the community, a sense which leads in the end to the formation of the sense of the nation. It is by the enthusiasm and the courage that cement men that a nation is formed, and it is to this sphere also that warlike threats and the tendency to inspire fear and respect in others belong. We think we may affirm that the second instinct (nutrition) is the biological basis of the essentials of religious worship. If we study the ritual usages of the most primitive peoples, if we delve into ancient history and prehistory, and if we analyse certain forms of worship in different religions, we are struck by the close connexion between worship and the nutritive functions. Among many ancient peoples, for instance, a divinity will be represented as voracious, and as propitiated by sacrifices and offerings, especially of food. Animals are immolated in its honour, dishes

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Above the conquests of culture in our plan there is a sort of mansard roof. It is possible to believe that morbid phenomena attach themselves to the complexes which we have established as products of the conquests of culture. These excessive developments are degeneracies due to hypertrophy and leading to complexes which are negative from the social point of view. Thus philosophy may give birth to various mysticisms, which have no solid foundation and lose themselves in speculations sprung from nowhere and leading nowhere. Similarly Socialism may degenerate into anarchist extravagances; art gives birth to surrealism and other such absurdities; and science, losing its disinterestedness, may become the amoral servant of profit-seeking industry, degenerating into a sort of mechanicalism.

We have felt it useful to give this plan in order to indicate succinctly the developments and correlations of the spheres of human activity, in which the play of the mechanisms of human behaviour may take place by grafting conditioned reactions or reflexes on one another in the course of general human evolution; these then become the points of departure of actions which, as actions of multitudes, become the object of social or collective psychology, and so of politics. Like all such diagrams, the plan makes no claim to completeness or infallibility; in particular, the divisions it marks are not meant to suggest that reactions or their bases are always so plainly distinguishable and separate; in reality many of them are complex or mixed, and the plan only indicates the predominance

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of one character or another. In religion, for example, which we have placed in the second column, there exist at the base of worship not only elements of the second instinct (nutrition) but those of the fourth (maternity), such as the idea of compassion, of pity and love for one's fellow-men. In the first column, in the national and social idea, there are also elements of the second instinct—those of the economic doctrines, and so on. But in order to secure a certain clarity of thought with reference to the biological bases of the various forms of human activity, a plan such as the one here studied has its uses.

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It is interesting to observe that the social element plays an important part in Adler's doctrine. Baudouin even considers that it is its principal characteristic: neurosis, according to Adler, is a disturbance of a social character, whereas Freud interprets

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it as the result of the formation of perverse impulses and their inadequate repression in the unconscious self. We might say with Baudouin that Freud's psychology is mainly of biological and Adler's of sociological inspiration; here "biological" has reference to the notion of the physiology of the individual. Adler's social tendency is manifested above all in his action: he did not confine himself to formulating theories of the psychological value of those motives of human activity which he polarizes in the direction of "will to power", but founded at Vienna, and later in America, medico-educational dispensaries for nervous and "difficult" children. It was also Adler who, in his book Le Tempérament Nerveux, [19], spoke of the Great War as the "most terrible of the collective neuroses into which our neuropathic civilization has been thrown by its will to power and its policy of prestige. . . . It reveals itself as the devilish work of the lust for domination unloosed everywhere, stifling the immortal sentiment of human solidarity or turning it to perverted uses."

The ideas of Freud and Adler clash not only in the field of neuroses but also in that of dreams. Adler does not agree with Freud's view that dreams are a "realization" of infantile "desires" and a regression; he regards them as a simple attempt in advance to achieve security, an attempt in which tendenciously grouped memories are utilized, and which has no connexion with libidinous or sexual desires of infancy.

desires; that is to say, resurrections of a past, while Adler regards the dream as turned towards the future [20].

Thus we see clearly in Adler's doctrine, both in regard to dreams and to neuroses, elements of a finalist dynamism; his ideas are characterized by a final purpose. This is the same thing which we have seen in Pavlov's reflex of purpose, proceeding, in our opinion, from the "first" system (struggle); if, as Pavlov holds, it is the prototype of prehension, and thus proceeds from the second (alimentary) system, it still has elements also of the system of struggle. Adler himself says [19] that the purely imaginary final purpose which the subject forges for himself is characterized by the will to power, and is born of the aspiration to security. Adler finds fictions, compensating for the difficulties of life, not only among neurotics but also among children, savages, and primitives, for all these states raise questions and demand solutions that take account of the desire for power.

In brief, while Freud accentuates pleasure, Adler accentuates power, committing the same error as his master but in a different direction; he exaggerates, declaring that the feeling of pleasure proceeds from a feeling of power and that of displeasure from one of impotence. He even considers the "incest complex", Freud's famous "Oedipus complex", as a symbol of the thirst for power. In his view, "it is primarily the thirst for domination" in the neurotic, "like other characters, that makes use of love as a vehicle for its visible and manifest satisfaction". Adler adduces a series of rather striking instances [20] in support of this idea: there are known to be cases in which amorous "conquests" are made for the satisfaction of vanity

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rather than eroticism; the sexual attitude of neuropaths is sometimes conditioned by the sense of their debility and the fear of finding "a stronger partner"; some people become profligates or prostitutes out of fear of domination by a "single partner" and not out of superabundant eroticism. Another example is that of a woman who may love a weak man simply because she desires to dominate him; she may deceive herself as to her true motive, representing it to herself as pity. A woman may also desire to play a virile part and may therefore reject maternity and even love. Pursuing these ideas, Adler goes so far as to regard homosexuality as a practice by means of which the neurotic tries to avoid danger.

To ask which instinct is connected with a particular manifestation of a more evolved nature, is to put the question badly; for outside the category of instincts and that of evolved manifestations there is that of complexes; a manifestation is not connected with an instinct but with a complex, and in a complex all the important instincts are represented.

these is independent of the others, and we see how, for example, the individual's sexual universe may be affected by the endocrines; hence the evolution of his character and his behaviour. Adler has himself shown, for instance, that individuals with functional trouble of the gastro-intestinal system are marked by a love of gain and a passion for money and power.

If now we turn to Karl Marx, the great sociologist and the father of scientific Socialism, we find that his penetrating analysis of the socio-economic facts of his time brought him to the conclusion that the ills of humanity proceed from the fact that the accumulation of property in the hands of a small section of society leads to economic chaos, which of necessity produces a healthy reaction—the organization of the exploited, who defend their right to live and in the end will inevitably overcome the disorder; they will create a new Socialist society, characterized by the planning of production and distribution, and by the prevention of the exploitation of man by man.

Marx built up his argument from three sources—German philosophy, British political economy, and French Socialism, and out of these he formed the three main pillars of his doctrine [21] of historic materialism, which, by means of the philosophic method of Hegel, applies dialectics to the study of social relationships. He thus introduced the scientific idea of evolution (which, thanks to Darwin, had just triumphed in biology, making a deep impression on the whole of human thought in the second half of the nineteenth century) into the field of sociology and into the conceptions of history and politics, in which a chaotic empiricism had reigned until then. He showed very suggestively how, as a result of the growth of the

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forces of production, a particular form of social organization develops into a more evolved one; how, for instance, feudalism engendered the capitalist epoch. The second fundamental aspect of Marx's doctrine is his economic theory, based on criticism of the phenomenon of capital. The corner-stone of this doctrine is the analysis of the notion of the surplus value which is contained in the value of commodities, owing to the fact that the worker, by reason of his position of dependence, is compelled by his employer, who controls the means of production, to create a "supplementary" profit for which the capitalist makes no payment. This profit lies at the base of the increase in the power of accumulated money, of capital. The concentration of capital leads to anarchy in production—crises, a wild search for markets, and insecurity in the lives of the mass of the population.

The third element of the Marxian doctrine proceeds in part from the influence of the ideas of the French Revolution, the first liberator of humanity, and in part from French Socialist doctrines; it is the idea, following logically from Marx's economic doctrine, of the class struggle, and of an inevitable social revolution which will overthrow the capitalist regime and institute the Socialist form of human society. The capitalist regime, by massing the workers in great enterprises, itself creates the power of the workers, united in the organizations of the proletariat, who one day will rise in the final assault on their exploiters.

Little need here be said about the materialist point of view, as applied by Marx to sociology. With the incessant progress of science in every field, it has become a truism; it has been Marx's inalienable merit to have foreseen this possibility and applied it with

such sagacity to sociological phenomena. It is the same grandiose vision, applied to sociology, which guided Darwin in his application of the idea of evolution to biological phenomena. Darwin's and Marx's achievements are immortal. But we know today that Darwin's hypothesis, his explanation of evolution as the work of natural selection, is unable to withstand modern scientific criticism; facts established since his day, particularly those of variation through mutations and of genetics, have shown us that the factor of selection, while it is one of those which affect the evolution of living forms, is not the one that governs and explains everything; it is not as universal a principle as Darwin supposed. Similarly, in Marx's economic doctrine (which is usually what is meant in speaking of "Marxism"), alongside affirmations which remain true and indisputable there are others which can no longer be maintained in face of modern scientific data

Marx came to sociology (and the study of economic factors is a sociological problem) by way of philosophy and history. Today we know that sociology can be nothing but a science of human behaviour, which, as we have seen, is a function of the nervous processes, and these are by no means confined to a single sphere of activity, that of the alimentary instinct, as certain economists seem to hold; this instinct is not even the principal basis or the prime determinant of human activities. It is the instinct which we have numbered 1, the combative instinct, that dominates the phenomena of individual and collective behaviour. It is true that the phenomena of inhibition may master it and bring the other instincts into play at its expense, but this occurs either in manifestly pathological cases, or as the

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result of training, of special education, a function of the degree of culture attained by the human community. We shall see later that the proportion of individuals who "reason", who are able, that is, to inhibit the impulsions that come from the automatic mechanisms, especially those of the combative system, to those who fall more easily under the influence of suggestion, of the emotive factors, scarcely exceeds one in ten, even among peoples who regard themselves as highly civilized. We find, therefore, that a theory based on the preponderance in sociological phenomena of economic factors, of the alimentary instinct (and this is the logical result of the ideas of Marx as adopted and developed by the majority of the theoreticians of "Marxism"), no longer corresponds to the existing stage of our knowledge.

Marx himself had no part in the evolution which his ideas have undergone: he always stressed the necessity of making use of the scientific method of dialectics, in economic and sociological thinking; that is to say, of keeping pace with the positive sciences. And, indeed, in his own life, as an active and hunted revolutionary, he himself showed that struggle dominates everything, and that without struggle, in the most concrete sense of the word, it is impossible to achieve a better lot for humanity. His whole theory of the class struggle, a struggle which, as he himself says, "cannot but be at bottom a political struggle", is the best proof of the truth of our contention.

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Finally, the great human movement of Christianity gives us the example of a system in which those elements prevail which we have attributed to the fourth, the maternal instinct. Christ's Passion, the basis of the Christian dogma, is the suffering of an innocent Man for the salvation of others, a suffering endured out of devotion and love: this is the same basis as that of maternal love. And the propagation of this idea (of which elements are found also in other religions, notably Buddhism, and in Egypt) has its point of departure in the imitation of the Master's act by His first disciples: the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of this religion. This is seen at each persecution, at each new sacrifice through which they immolate themselves for the Idea: "around the rack and the stake, new adepts arise in ever greater numbers".

The moral which emerges and is spread abroad has all the elements associated with the realization of this biological function. God is the Father of the human community; men, His children, owe Him an account of their acts in the evening of their lives; an eternal reward is promised to the good, and endless chastisement to the evil; here we find the principles of education, of pedagogy. Love of God, the Father of all men, has to be translated into the accomplishment of the law of neighbourly love, that is to say, of the love of all men. Religion gives believers duties to perform (the Ten Commandments), and evangelical advice. For the rest, Buddhism also has its dogma of

universal love and of altruism. The distinction made between good and evil, and the retribution reserved for evil conduct, are of the essence of Buddhism [22].

In Christianity, this clear biological origin of the evangelical truth was more and more obscured by gnosis, or the doctrine of esoteric mysteries, which was full of borrowings from the religions of the East; it was choked with symbols and rites, derived from other biological bases, which easily impressed the masses; we have already indicated that the second (alimentary) instinct has given birth to similar developments in other, more primitive religions. Later, philosophic bases were provided for the primitive structure, and now the whole presents a complicated system in which the elements of all the basic systems have a part.

The ascendency of the new ideas over the ancient world was so powerful that it may be said, with Chateaubriand, that they transformed the world, and precisely in the direction by which their bases are biologically characterized: manners were softened, slavery abolished, the status of women improved; the bloody gladiatorial combats were discontinued, and war itself was comparatively humanized.

The Church, the propaganda organization of the Christian religion, employed very effectual methods for the diffusion of these ideas: in addition to worship, instituted on the basis of propaganda by symbols, a form of popular propaganda making its appeal to the emotions, and in addition to a written programme, the Gospel, it employed a whole army of propagandists, monks and nuns of different orders, created in the course of centuries, which rendered inestimable service by making regular campaigns at times of crisis and of difficulties in the life of the Church—at the time, for

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instance, of the various heresies, and again in the thirteenth century. The wealth and power of the Benedictine orders, which were centres of intellectual and artistic culture at that time, and their gradual detachment from the masses, provoked a reaction. This was marked by the appearance of the "mendicant orders", the Franciscans, Dominicans, and others, whose rule was to live only on alms, so as to reach the masses better with their preaching. Similarly, in the sixteenth century the Jesuits, Lazarists, and other orders, were founded to defend the Catholic faith from the advance of Protestantism.

The analysis of the systems we have been discussing reveals, from the point of view of modern biology, that each has a measure of truth, for the simple reason that the notions on which they are based reflect what we have called the four basic instincts of behaviour. Their error lies in their exclusiveness, which is biologically unsound. The four systems are all of biological value, but of varying value. It may be admitted that there are cases in which one or other of these systems predominates; but all the systems can coexist, sometimes working together and sometimes working against one another. If we consider the history of mankind along these lines, we find periods in which one tendency or system predominates, giving place later to another.

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come into conflict, in their desire for domination, in their ideology, and in their propaganda, the Christian system has been unable to hold its own. The latest example is offered by the struggle, during the period preceding the coming of Fascism, between the bourgeois ideologies, still strongly imbued with ecclesiastical ideas, and those of the workers' organizations, based on the trade-union idea, which, although proceeding from opposition to the bourgeois world, has naturally proceeded from the capitalist period, since that, too, is based mainly on economic tendencies, derived from the second instinct. Thus the idealist propaganda of Christianity and the bourgeoisie is unable to withstand the propaganda generally misnamed "Marxist".

We are now on the threshold of a new period, in which ideologies and propaganda based on the second (alimentary) instinct are yielding to the assault of those which are founded on the first (combative) instinct. Since this latter is the stronger of the two, the issue of the conflict cannot be in doubt; and we see, in fact, that wherever the reformist idea of the labour movement, the idea based on the priority of the economic principle, comes into collision with the activist Socialist idea and propaganda, based on the instinct of struggle, the former succumbs. This has happened in Soviet Russia, where we have seen the victory of the Bolsheviks, who, thanks to Lenin, corrected in practice the original ideas of Marx, over the Mensheviks, the faithful followers of "Marxism", the theory of the prevalence of economic motives. There can be no question that the Socialist ideology of the Soviet Union takes the instinct of struggle as its tactical basis: all its methods of struggle, even the use of terrorism in some periods of the regime, and all

The great final struggle now beginning in the world, a struggle on the issue of which depends the fate of our civilization, will be the struggle between two systems of equal psychical force, since both will be based on instinct no. 1, the combative instinct. One of these is the Fascist, totalitarian, pseudo-Socialist system—a hybrid monster, issued on one side from the machinations of capitalism in its dying hour and on the other from the inertia of the labour movement, which has been driven by dogmatic and incapable leaders into a cul-de-sac; the other is the activist Socialist system of the great democracies now growing up in the East and the old democracies of the West—if these last can effect their psychological recovery in time, basing the activities they need in the struggle on the instinct of struggle.

$_{\rm III}$

THE INSTINCT OF STRUGGLE

Struggle—Corporal violence—Pain—Menace—Minicry for terrorization
—Fear—Panic—Fighting masks—The uniform—The goose-step—
Discipline—Military music—Ecstasy—Enthusiasm—Courage—Psychology and war—Marshal Psychologos

We have seen that human behaviour in the field of collective political life may be the subject of an exact science, based on the data of individual objective psychology and its reflections in the social domain. We have also seen that, among the systems of conditioned reflexes here studied, it is with the system resting on instinct no. 1, the combative instinct, that we are primarily concerned in the field of political activities. The formation of a conditioned reflex requires the simultaneous operation of two factors, the absolute reflex or instinct, and an excitation, the form of which may be chosen at will, and which becomes the factor that brings into operation the reflex in question. Let us tabulate the reactions we have noted in the preceding chapters, and arrange them in succession for convenience in comparison (see Table on p. 70).

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chapter we shall analyse the forms of conditioned excitations, the symbols, which are associated today with the combative instinct in propaganda for the formation in the masses of conditioned reflexes which bring them to heel, the ultimate end of the political struggle of our day.

Struggle, either by defence or attack, for self-preservation from aggression is as old as man, or, indeed, as life. In biology the term Struggle means resistance to all sorts of factors that menace the existence—struggle against the forces of Nature, against storms, sickness, etc.; in a narrower sense the term indicates a reaction against more or less sudden dangers from living beings. The biological reactions to be observed in a struggle proceed mainly from more or less violent muscular contractions, directed by activity of the nervous system. In struggle envisaged as a biological phenomenon it is possible to distinguish an aggressive and a defensive form. In the former the individual tries to dominate or destroy another,

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and in any case to subject the other to violence; in the defensive form the individual attacked tries to escape from violence. The prototype of all violence is, of course, corporal violence, which the victim perceives through the sensation of pain. Pain is thus a mechanism of warning, with which each individual is provided. From the researches of Goldscheider and von Frey we know that special receptors, centres of pain, exist in the skin, for example, and in view of this it becomes very probable that there may exist an innate reflex which is brought into operation by nervous processes corresponding to the feeling of pain, and producing muscular contractions. This innate reflex, or primordial instinct, of defence, would be the biological basis of the "first" system, here under consideration.

In association with other excitations, especially visual ones, but also sonorous or tactile, it takes a form which is translated into our language by the term Menace. Menace becomes effectual, that is to say, able to take the place of actual pain, and to set in operation the negative defensive motive reaction (flight, or immobility due to stupor or paralysis), if these supplementary excitations are able to evoke with ease in the victim equivalent feelings, or, rather, nervous processes; that is to say, if they are composed at least partly of similar elements to those which create the pain reflex—if, for instance, the aggressor makes the same gesture, or the same exclamation, or takes up the same attitude, as in a real attack. The menace then becomes effective: it brings into operation the necessary reaction against the aggressor. This is the simplest and most primitive form of psychical violence. But we have already seen, in the chapter dealing with

conditioned reflexes, that it is possible to graft on a given reflex another of a superior degree. Thus any signal or excitant acting on the senses may become a conditional factor and bring into operation a reaction of the sort desired by the aggressor—a phrase or diagram, a geometrical symbol like the swastika, a tune or any sound, especially if it is of a certain intensity, a movement like the Roman salute, and so on. It is this simple mechanism that provides the basis of all the propagandist tactics of Hitlerist and Mussolinian Fascism—menace by means of symbols.

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Another case is that of the Smerinthus ocellata butterfly, which

in repose conceals its lower wings like all the Sphinx butterflies, but in the presence of danger suddenly unmasks them with their two great "eyes", blue on a red ground, which strike fear into the aggressor. This gesture is accompanied by a sort of trance. In repose the animal resembles slender dried leaves. If it is disturbed, it clutches its support, spreads its antennae, curves its thorax, throws its head back, and exaggerates the arch of its abdomen, while its whole body vibrates and quivers. When the access is over, it slowly returns to immobility. Experiments made by Standfuss have shown the efficacy of this behaviour: small birds, such as the tit, the redbreast, and the common nightingale, are frightened. With its wings spread, the butterfly seems to be the head of an enormous bird of prey.

Caillois [25] quotes a further example of this sort, that of the Caligo butterfly of the Brazilian forests, which Vignon describes as follows:

With the aid of these examples, drawn from biology, we have approached the problem of fear, which is a factor in the life of human collectivities of which it is necessary to take account, especially in connexion with behaviour in the political field, which, as we know, is pivoted on struggle. The emotion of fear, which may be defined with precision from the physiological point of view, and of which the characteristics may be objectively registered, and may be produced at will, is a necessary element of struggle and especially of menace. Menace tries to produce fear, in order to inhibit any inclination to resistance to the menacer. Fear is thus closely bound up with the manifestations of instinct no. 1, the instinct of struggle. Fear has long been studied by physiologists and psychologists. One of its principal characteristics is the fact that it is accompanied by marked physiological disturbances: the beatings of the heart become

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more frequent, the whole body trembles through muscular contractions, the throat dries and tightens, and the limbs, especially the lower limbs, are as if paralysed; perturbations of the vasomotor system are manifested in the pallor that invades the face, the viscera contract and involuntary defecation and loss of urine may supervene. The violence of these physiological manifestations proves that the reaction of fear must be deeply rooted in organisms and must proceed from an extremely powerful instinct. This is further corroborated by the fact that forms of fear which must be innate may be observed in animals: new-born chicks, for example, show symptoms of fear if they are confronted with a falcon [26]. A little bitch, born in the Canary Isles, where she had never met with wild beasts, was brought to the Continent; on coming past a travelling menagerie she began trembling at the first scent of the animals, and showed all the symptoms of fear.

Fear may be passive or active. The phenomena which characterize the former type are those of inhibition; they may go as far as paralysis. In the second type, a motive reflex is associated with the fear, that of flight. The motive activity may then attain such intensity, and the excitation may be so prolonged, that, as MacDougall says [26], the viscera can no longer bear them, and an exhaustion is observed which may lead to death. When active fear is intense, one may also detect certain physiological phenomena, as in passive fear; these are a state of obtuseness and loss of sensibility; phenomena of verbal or motive panic supervene, and the subject makes desperate movements, sometimes so thoughtless that they may bring it to destruction

The effects of fear are greater in a man if he is hungry or thirsty, ill or tired, or already depressed on account of some earlier trouble; this explains the fact that propaganda based on fear always takes effect more easily with men whose economic situation is precarious or who are worked too hard or have been made apprehensive by other influences [27].

The best way to combat fear (as is confirmed by the theory of conditioned reflexes) is to inhibit it, either by a sudden new excitation (external inhibition) or by a conditioned internal inhibition, which corresponds to what introspective psychology calls an effort of will. Military instruction, for example [27], tends to substitute for the defensive reflexes, especially that of flight, an automatism created by habit such as may lead to the accurate carrying out of the gestures and movements necessary in combat. It is well known that gunners generally continue to serve their guns impassively when themselves under fire; this is because the service of the guns calls for great physical activity and muscular efforts. The gunner's attention is thus absorbed, and he forgets the danger. Fear increases in inactivity. The fact is also well known that soldiers who have been scared gradually recover calmness in the course of continuous blind firing.

Other causes of fear are unusual phenomena and very violent excitations, especially by sound. The unknown in general; surprise, isolation, silence, and darkness are also factors that increase fear [27]. But in the view of G. Dumas it is especially a state of tension that brings fear, the expectation of an extraordinary sensation or emotion, of a physical, moral, or nervous shock. A well-known fact of this type is the stage-fright of a speaker before he mounts the platform

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77 G

During the French Revolution, there was a whole period, in 1789, known in the country districts as "The Great Fear". The historian [37] recounts that the most improbable rumours circulated in the country-side and that they caused panics. "Thus, the news spread that armed brigands were coming, pillaging and burning down the houses; they had been seen and were on their way. The belief in the story was assisted by the sight of clouds of dust raised by post horses, etc. At once the tocsin was sounded, women and children fled in terror, and the men took up arms."

In order to strike fear into the adversary, savages and primitive tribes have recourse to head-dresses that transform the warrior and give him a terrifying aspect. This is the same principle as that followed by nature in offensive fascination and mimicry among animals. In these cases the man tries to impress his adversary by artifices which increase his apparent size; he puts feathers, plumes, and all sorts of bulky objects, on his head; he paints and tattoos his body, sometimes giving it stripes like those of the zebra; he puts on clothing of striking colours, sprinkled with shining and sparkling objects; he covers his face with a terrifying battle-mask. Impressive examples are found among

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The prime purpose of the uniform is, of course, the

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all the principles of human liberty and dignity and of intellectual and social progress.

A comic note has been struck in this connexion by the Italian dictator: fascinated by Hitler's growing strength, he tried to emulate him, if not surpass him, by teaching the Italian army the famous goose-step (which arouses the indignation of those who desire to make men think); renaming it the "Roman step". Unhappily for him, the Italians are too lively and spirited a people, with their love of dance and song, to make a success of an imitation of Germanic ponderousness, and those who have seen the new style of parade at Rome have only laughed. The Italian army will never learn the goose-step, and the Italian people, accustomed to the lightfootedness of its Bersaglieri, will never be impressed by it.

The idea which the Germans pursued by this means before Hitler's time was that of discipline. The idea of using the mechanical appearance of the troops as an element of propaganda for the psychical violation of the masses is an invention of Hitler and his acolytes. There can be no question of the need for discipline in an army. Discipline, as defined in official regulations [27], "consists solely in obedience to rules of subordination and in the meticulous performance of prescribed gestures as outward marks of respect to superiors". If this were all, a very simple training, with the fear of punishment as its sole absolute factor, would perfectly serve the purpose; it would be a very ordinary case of a primitive conditioned reflex, based on the "first" instinct. This is what the dictators think, when they demand blind obedience from their men, inculcating it by methods sometimes of unprecedented brutality. In Italy, for example, the principal rule

of discipline, a very widespread one, is the phrase "Mussolini is always right!"

In reality the matter is not so simple. Captain Reguert, in his book Les Forces Morales [27], says very rightly:

When the body is frozen to the marrow by cold and rain, when it is exhausted by fatigue and privation, when death and mutilation are spread afar by fire and sword, obedience must still be required: moral strength and discipline alone win through, and it is with an eye to circumstances of this gravity that the education of the soldier has to be planned. The more disciplined they are, the more their morale is steeled, the less will be the sacrifices which troops have to make in order to triumph.

When one speaks of discipline, one usually thinks of punishment, of the means of securing discipline [27]. But punishment in modern armies must not be considered as expiation but as a salutary warning and example. The leader must know that punishment engenders fear, which does not help the growth of devotion; the leader must work for the creation in those whom he commands of the conviction that the

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In short, as Reguert well says, the purpose of discipline is "not to train parrots but to form men", and it is just this tendency that distinguishes the French conception of discipline unmistakably from the German. The apprenticeship to which a soldier is subjected in order to create in him the reflex of obedience is not, of course, an easy one, but after he has served it he sees that "rational discipline does not aim at destroying personality, but at regulating and co-ordinating efforts". If all desire for reflection begins to be stifled in a man, the development of the initiative indispensable in warfare is arrested. Conversely, "conscious discipline takes the place of coercion, intelligent initiative that of passive obedience. The soldier then ceases to be a machine for the execution of orders; he becomes a collaborator with the officer".

In the life of military organizations, music and rhythm play an important part. Clearly rhythmic work is easier to do; a familiar instance is the song of the Volga boatmen. The repetition of certain sounds, the monotony that results, is helpful to the generalization of Pavlov's internal inhibition, of a state related to somnambulism and hypnosis; this is in general the aim pursued by the military organization in the totalitarian countries. But music may also foster courage. A very well-known instance is that of the wreck of the Titanic in 1912: the orchestra went on playing while the ship was sinking, to preserve morale and prevent panic. Troops sometimes launch an attack to the sound of drums and trumpets. Among

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imagine this very concretely—and not budge. What a demonstration of the horror of the machine age under evil direction and deprived of every human element! There was nothing even to rouse enthusiasm or urge to courage and sacrifice. The masses who could be heard howling like wild beasts, with raucous strident voices, had nothing left of humanity; the impression created was one of bestiality unchained, and the impression was heightened by listening to this uproar on the wireless and seeing no one. How utterly different from the accents of another excitant of the combative spirit, the "Marseillaise", that sublime evocator of the grandeur of the human soul in readiness for sacrifice, virile, scintillating with humanitarianism, vibrant with ecstasy, firing courage—a source of true enthusiasm!

We have already said that the instinct of struggle, when set in motion, may manifest itself in two different ways, one negative or passive, revealed by fear and the attitudes of depression and inhibition, the other positive, leading to exaltation, a state of excitation, and aggressiveness. We will now examine this second form. Over-excitation may produce ecstasy, a mental state sometimes associated with pathological states of psychosis; it is then characterized by a fixed glare, by immobility, and by loss of sensibility. Hysterical and paranoiac patients with mystical tendencies give striking examples of it; P. Janet has described this state very well in his book De l'Angoisse à l'Extase, in which we may see very clearly the bonds existing between those two antagonistic states, which may sometimes be found in succession in the same person. But a kindred state which is in no way pathological may be produced by great excitement from joy or admiration

caused by a person, a thing, or an idea, and accompanied by an intense feeling of well-being.

But the state most frequently observed in life as a result of political events and actions is that of enthusiasm. It is derived from the same fundamental instinct, but is distinguished from the state of ecstasy by its active character: ecstasy always implies passivity, immobility, contemplation. Enthusiasm is above all a function of health, gaiety, and youth. For that reason it is necessary above all, when it is desired to create and maintain that state of mind, either in fighting or in political struggle, to take these factors into consideration and to guarantee them. Enthusiasm takes possession of troops or of a group carrying on political propaganda when the hope of final success and victory is borne out by the evidence of a success or stimulated by propagandist activity. Cheerful music may be a rational stimulant. "This enthusiasm is also produced by the sight of a wavering enemy in hesitation and on the point of beating a retreat" [27].

Courage in most cases determines the issue of a struggle, since, with material resources equal, the struggle is a conflict of psychical forces. The conqueror, says Reguert [27], is the one who is able and willing to go on fighting when the opponent is so no longer. And von der Goltz lays down that what has to be done is "not so much to destroy the enemy fighters as to destroy their courage".

Accordingly, the great leaders have always been

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mainly concerned to whip up the courage of their troops by all possible means, and especially by appropriate propaganda, and to prevent them from flinching. Napoleon's proclamations to his soldiers before decisive battles were a model of this type of propaganda.

Courage and discipline are closely connected. Courage maintains discipline at critical moments in a combat, but discipline in turn can engender courage [27]. In order to instil courage into the soldier, that is to say to give him the faculty of checking, inhibiting the reflex of fear, "none of the dangers to which he will be exposed on the field of battle must be concealed; the effort must be above all to secure his 'confidence'; voluntary subordination results from this confidence. Then it is that the fighting spirit can be inculcated in him "[27]—the spirit of attack which, according to Napoleon and to Frederick II of Prussia, is the best means of securing success in struggle, the precise purpose of the combative instinct.

The infantry, especially, undergoes the worst of ordeals. In some sectors the struggle was so fierce that corpses were piled up on the ground and the trenches and approaches seemed to be dug entirely out of human flesh. Thousands of men suffered from frozen feet in the night and had to be evacuated; sometimes they had to undergo amputation. In some places the mud became so thick that one sank into it; on leaving the trenches the infantrymen seemed to be transformed into blocks of mud. Imprisoned and truly buried alive in their trenches, often with nothing but a hole with a little straw for shelter and sleep, cut off from their

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fellows, kept day and night on the qui vive, exposed to death in its most hideous forms, the soldiers in that terrible war, soldiers in spite of themselves, may be felt to have extended the limits of human endurance.

Along that wild horizon, as far as the eye could reach, valleys and hills were broken up, split open, torn into strips, ploughed up into enormous scars that dug deep into their flesh, and saturated with blood that lay in pools. . . . Débris of soil, débris of holes, débris of men: a heaping up of things and beings torn to shreds, an ocean of mud from which there stood out in confusion equipment, rusty arms, and the corpses of animals. Woods and meadows were alike destroyed; one by one, branches were torn off and trunks broken, twisted, and mown down. The murderous bombardment raged above these ruins with the frenzy of the assassin who unceasingly fires at a victim already riddled with shot. Death was at home here, and the living who ventured here in spite of its fury were its destined prey. It passed to and fro, shrieking above their heads with a never-ceasing din. All the noises of gun-fire filled the air—hissing, rumbling, mewing, groaning, and then, suddenly, thunder, enormous explosions with a deafening noise that drowned all the tumult of the rest.

Perhaps the worst ordeal of all was the feeling of isolation in the advanced posts at Verdun, in the depth

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of the wild ravines. Each unit was abandoned to its own resources, to carve its destiny with its courage. There was no connexion left with the back areas, no telephone, no signalling. The only means of communication with the rest of the world was a narrow track, in ruins from end to end, an almost impracticable torrent bed. Yet the brave orderlies passed along it under shell and machine-gun fire, stepping over the corpses of the fallen in order to deliver their message. At the bottom of the ravine, half buried in their narrow trenches or squatting in shell-holes, there were men living in mud. Their hours of anguish seemed to leave fright in their hearts and an expression of stupor in their faces. Wedged in this spot that they had not the right to abandon, they were delivered up without defence to powerful machines of massacre. Their orders were to hold on. They knew what it meant, and they did it!

Thus the psychical elements are of the utmost importance in material struggle, especially today, when technique has considerably increased the intensity of the excitations to which the senses are subjected in battle—the rumbling fire, the artillery barrage, the bombardments from the air, the war of gases. All this calls for much greater self-mastery in the combatant than formerly. "Combat is above all a moral struggle; with equality of force, of technical strength, and of material organization, victory definitely belongs to the opponent who has conserved the highest morale" [27].

our own day a special "Psychological Laboratory", for the psychological study and preparation of actions, has been organized in the German Ministry of War.

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Because an extraordinary power emanates from his person: he is the director of souls. That is why his name will be Marshal Psychologos.

He will call the people to arms—or perhaps he will have the guns and warships destroyed; he will command "Work, work", always "Work"—or he may order a strike of all against all; he will invite men to enjoy life—or he may impose sacrifices and privations on all; he will be a prophet of God—or he may pull down the churches: no one knows. But everyone feels that the one who is coming will take the narrow path between precipices. . . A brutal man, but at the same time a good one . . . who will despise pleasure but will rejoice in the beautiful. . . The best quality he has is his speech (sic); it has a full and pure resonance, like a bell, and it reaches the heart of every man.

IV

SYMBOLISM AND POLITICAL Propaganda

The characteristic symbolism of our age—Gleichschaltung (the enforcement of conformity)—Political symbols—The fascio—The swastika—The three arrows—Symbols in print—Symbolic salutes—Sound symbols—The myth—Rites—Religious worship—Journalism—Principles of political propaganda

Symbols have always existed since men first found means of communicating their thoughts and feelings to each other. They have existed not only in an intimate and ephemeral form but also in a form more widespread and lasting. Writing, indeed, is simply a means of communication by symbols. It is true that humanity has passed along a remarkable course in this connexion; originally writing was composed of relatively simple characters, each representing a more or less perfected group of notions, in accord with the method of reasoning and of feeling among primitive peoples; later the units of writing were detached and individualized, definite characters being associated with particular sounds and combined into words, the expressions of ideas.

The infinite combinations thus made possible were of the utmost assistance to the intellectual evolution of mankind. Thanks, however, to technical advance, the tempo of our epoch became more and more rapid,

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93 н

In politics this tendency is of great usefulness. Here we have to deal with mass movements. Obviously in our day a political movement has no chance of success unless the ideas it advocates are adopted by an imposing number of people who make them their own, and who do so, moreover, in identical fashion. A movement thus needs, so to speak, a stenographic form of expression of its ideas, a symbol of its own, by means of which it may spread rapidly.

This is why present-day political movements make use of symbols for recruitment and in their activities. History furnishes striking examples of the use of symbols—the Cross; the Roman "S.P.Q.R."; the Crescent. Cross and Crescent furnish an example of political struggle by means of symbols.

Among present-day political parties, the Socialists, and notably the German Social Democratic Party, especially in its early years and around the end of the last century, made extensive use of symbols as a means of recruitment and of encouragement to active membership. The Red Flag, the carnation in the buttonhole, and the term "comrade" are symbols that have played an important part in the history of the Socialist movement. It is true that as time passed the Social Democratic Party, and especially its leaders, became more and more "respectable"; it grew ashamed of its earlier sentimental explosions, and considered symbolism a game for children; its leaders no longer "let themselves go" except in the accumulation of evidence and statistics and in economic theory and history and the like. If ever they returned for a

For this ignorance of modern physiological data concerning the science of life and of man, this habit of considering man as an automaton, reacting only to the agency of economic factors, this persistent failure to take account of the realities of human nature and its nervous mechanisms, this stubborn fidelity to manifestly inadequate dogmas, a bitter price has had to be paid. In spite of all the prophecies concerning the securing of the famous 51 per cent. of the votes, prophecies which were not so far from fulfilment, the Socialist parties of the whole world, in spite of the important trump cards in their hands, have suffered defeat after defeat. Their Fascist opponents, the last descendants of capitalism in its death throes, men without human ideals and without any well-defined economic programme, found means of setting the masses in motion and of administering shocks to the great democracies, frequently even wresting power from them.

with symbols on a vast scale. It is interesting to follow the evolution of methods of propaganda in recent years. At first it was the German Social Democratic Party that made most use of them. The Russian Social Democrats, especially the Bolsheviks, followed its methods, making clever use of them on a big scale. They did so especially in the civil war and in the period of the Five Year Plan. Later they were extensively imitated by the German Communists, who were usually content with servile copying, with the result that usually little result was achieved. Mussolini borrowed a great deal from the Russians; he had their methods attentively studied, and introduced in Italy various procedures which were of substantial service to him.

What was it that Hitler did? He attracted attention to himself by inflamed and totally unrestrained oratory. He violently attacked the Republican Government with criticism and abuse; he made outrageous threats—"Heads will fall", "The night of the long swords", and so on. The Boxheim document, referred to below, is another instance. Threats of this sort were characteristic of Nazi propaganda; they had, as they were meant to have, enormous influence over the masses, for two reasons. In the first place, the masses had already been brought by destitution into an excitable state in which they readily

listened to any opposition speaker; secondly, the impunity with which this propaganda was carried on created the conviction that the authorities were paralysed and no release from the intolerable conditions could be hoped for from them. Hitler and his skilled organizers, at meetings accompanied by the beating of drums, made use, in addition to their noisy propaganda, of a symbol that enormously reinforced the effect of his speeches—a very simple symbol, the swastika; this was shown in multitudes all over the country. For the very reason that it was easy to reproduce, it was copied by the million, and became an excitant, a signal that produced in the masses a nervous reaction that is familiar to us from our acquaintance with Pavlov's experiments and conclusions, the creation of conditioned reflexes.

The famous Nazi expression Gleichschaltung, meaning the enforcement of conformity, bringing to heel, is simply a name for this phenomenon under its political and social aspect. Its mechanism is this: every violent utterance of Hitler's, spoken or written, was associated in his hearers' minds with symbols which gradually became the evocative signs of his speeches and threats; the symbols were to be seen everywhere, and constantly acted on the masses, constantly reviving the favourable inclination toward Hitler, and maintaining the effect of Gleichschaltung produced by his frenzied speeches, just as Pavlov's conditioned reflex is reinforced by repeating from time to time the "absolute" stimulation.

There were two ways in which the German Government might have defeated this associative reaction. The effect of the symbols might have been reduced and they might have been made ridiculous by certain

with that intention that Hitler made use of the swastika. His opponents failed to recognize the efficacy of this type of combat; they had no symbol; they thought that they could work effectively with logical argument, and when finally they appealed to the emotions they simply tried to ridicule their opponent, the least effective of procedures, and frequently their ridicule was feeble. So they were beaten.

In the formation of conditioned reflexes the symbol can play the part of conditional factor, grafted on an existing absolute reflex or a conditioned reflex already formed; it can then become an excitant, producing the particular reaction desired by the person making use of the symbol. Speech, written or spoken, may be used to represent a concrete fact or a multitude of facts, as well as an abstraction or a collection of abstract ideas, scientific or philosophical. Similarly, a symbol may be concrete or abstract. In politics symbols are usually simple representations of ideas, perhaps even of very complicated and abstract systems or doctrines. This diagram illustrates the relations between a political symbol and its content:

The base of the pyramid is formed by a doctrine, for example, the Marxist doctrine. The next stage is an

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extract from this doctrine, made with a view to action—a programme, such as that of the Socialist Party. The third stage is constituted by a still further concentration: the general ideas of the programme are expressed in slogans, such as "Socialism everywhere!" And finally, at the summit, comes the symbol, for instance, the three arrows, a visible reminder of the Socialist idea, intended to secure action favourable to the party, such as adhesion; it is a sort of shorthand sign for the slogan, the programme, and the doctrine. It has the advantage, through its brevity and simplicity, of working rapidly, of easily producing the desired conditioned reflex.

The symbol is effective in proportion to its suggestiveness; in proportion, that is, as it easily transmits the active idea associated with the movement it represents, and especially the emotive basis to which the movement has recourse—menace, compassion, material interest, and so on. Thus symbols may become extremely effective instruments for assembling or directing multitudes. The phrase In hoc signo vinces was very characteristic of Christianity with its symbol, the Cross. There are symbols which are a visible expression of the idea of a movement, such as the Cross, evoking the idea of Christ's sacrifice for mankind and seeking to rally men in the name of compassion and love of one's fellowman; or the Communist hammer and sickle, symbol of Marxism, evoking the idea of Socialist construction, and the idea of labour, the source of well-being.

It may be of interest to recall the history of the Socialist symbol of three arrows. The following account is given by its inventor:

Toward the end of 1931 all Germany was startled by the discovery, near Darmstadt, of a document which has passed into history as "the Boxheim document". It was a programme which the Nazis intended to carry into effect on attaining power—a document full of hatred, vengefulness, and menace. This document envisaged only one instrument of repression—the gallows. Here are a few paragraphs from it:

SYMBOLISM AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

section it comes. All opposition shall be punishable with death.

"2. All firearms shall be delivered to the Storm Troops within twenty-four hours. Thereafter any individual found in possession of arms shall be regarded as an enemy of the German people and of the Storm Troops, and shall at once be shot without trial.

"3. All officials and workers employed in the service of the authorities or in that of the public transport shall at once resume work. All abstention and all sabotage shall be punished with death. The administration of the Storm Troops, represented by me,¹ shall replace the

"4. The measures of urgent necessity adopted by the leaders of the Storm Troops have the force of law from the day of their promulgation by poster. All violation of these measures will be punished, in particularly grave cases, with death, in addition to the other penalties fixed. . . ."

Tremendous agitation spread throughout Germany; the Left-wing press and the workers were especially revolted, and everywhere indignant comments were to be heard. Five days later I was crossing one of the squares at Heidelberg when I was suddenly transfixed. A swastika painted on the corner of a wall had been crossed by a thick line of white chalk. It struck me at once that this was the solution I had been seeking of the problem of a militant symbol suitable for us! This was precisely what we wanted!

I saw at once the psychology of what had happened. An impulsive worker, excited by the Boxheim affair, and no longer able to stifle his feelings, had been driven to violent reaction; he had taken a piece of chalk and struck through the hateful symbol, the swastika; in so doing he had given free rein to his accumulated hatred. Who was he? We shall never know. The image of an Unknown Soldier of our great working-class army suddenly appeared before my eyes. In the grip of strong emotion, I elaborated a simple and clear-cut plan. This

^<sup>1 The local leader signing the document.

I had found the solution, but was it really workable? Could I hope to carry it into practice throughout Germany? This was the great, absorbing question. On the next evening I got together a few young workers, all members of the "Reichsbanner". I spoke to them of our struggle, explained the significance of the symbol, and fired their enthusiasm by giving each of them a piece of chalk, saying: "To arms, boys! Strike out the hooked monster with a stroke of lightning!" The stroke became the arrow; the dynamic character of our struggle was better expressed so.

The Hitlerist pictorial symbol of intimidation was the swastika; that of the Socialists was the three arrows. These were reproduced everywhere in chalk, pencil, or charcoal, or in colour, on walls and fences, in the streets, on vehicles, and so on; they were shown on banners, on little paper flags, on transparencies and on placards; they were worn as badges; they figured constantly on the front pages of the principal newspapers of their party and in the pages of party periodicals; they were placed on hoardings, on leaflets, on labels; they were drawn on the pavement, on frosted windows, on dusty parts of motor-cars, trams, and trains. They were to be found everywhere, incessantly recalling to the population the existence of the Iron Front (as Hitler did for his movement) and reminding people of the aims and the strength of the great workers' organization.

As a plastic symbol of intimidation equivalent to the

Roman salute of Mussolini and Hitler, the anti-Fascists adopted the gesture of the arm energetically extended upwards, with clenched fist. This gesture symbolized the combative spirit of menace, and was intended to serve as a collective salute, an individual salute, a salute in the streets, a gesture of solemn affirmation, and for marching in column. Its equivalent as a mocking salute was the ancient Roman gesture of "thumbs down" by which the plebs doomed to death the vanquished in gladiatorial combats. It meant, in relation to the adversary, "You are doomed to destruction, you are weak, we shall get the better of you!" Each time Nazis were met in the street, this gesture was to be the reply to their provocative Hitlerist salute. It was made use of in processions, in shouts in chorus, and on any occasion calling for ironical demonstrations against the opponents.

As sound symbol of menace and as retort to the Nazi "Heil Hitler!" the Socialists employed the shout of "Freiheit" ("Freedom"), recalling the elevated Socialist ideal of political and social liberty and emancipation from the capitalist yoke. The shout was combined with the gesture of combat, the raised fist. It was used on every possible occasion in the streets; all the men and women wearing the three-arrow badge saluted one another with the war-cry of "Freedom". In order to spread the use and the effect of the symbols as quickly as possible, partisans went to and fro regularly at a fixed time in the most crowded streets and squares; the technical description of this propaganda was "symbol promenade".

An ironical sound symbol used was a shout parodying the Nazi "Heil Hitler!" ("Hail, Hitler!")—
"Heilt Hitler!" ("Heal Hitler!"); or the reply

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was shouted, "He will soon be healed!" or "The Iron Front will soon heal him!" Similarly a "t" was added if the words were found chalked on a wall. Thus the Hitler salute was ridiculed and lost its efficacy as a menacing symbol. Finally, the psychological efficacy of a symbol may be enormously increased by combining the two principles. A small symbolical drawing used by the Iron Front had great success in Germany: it was reproduced millions of times. It represented the swastika booted, with Hitler's head, fleeing from the three arrows. The Nazis in turn would transform the three arrows into three umbrellas. A very common Parisian deformation on similar lines is the change of "Vive le roi!" into "Vive le rôti!" ("Long live the joint!").

The symbol is generally conceived as an instantaneously evocative representation of an idea or doctrine; it is the almost automatic sign that rallies men by suggestion around the idea. But the idea or doctrine is man-made, in order to stimulate men's activity, and to polarize it in a particular direction; it always contains elements of what Pavlov called the reflex of purpose. If men are pursuing an aim, the reason is that they are not content with things as they are; they are in search of something more attractive, and, if this is unattainable, they create an ideal, a "blue bird". This is the origin of myths. Politics and myths have points of close contact.

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and especially, we may add, of a popular religious or political movement.

The individual is a prey to psychological conflicts with civilization. These conflicts result from the social structure itself, and from the constraint it brings to bear on elementary desires. The individual could only emerge from these conflicts by an act condemned by society. The result is that he is paralysed in face of the tabooed act, and that he leaves it to the hero to carry out. The hero is, by definition, he who finds a solution, a happy or unhappy issue out of myth-ridden situations. The individual who suffers from the conflict, and cannot escape from it because of social prohibitions, delegates the hero to act for him: the hero is thus he who violates prohibitions.

But the individual cannot always rest content with virtual identification with the hero, with the satisfaction of an ideal; he needs the act, he demands real identification, the satisfaction of action. The myth is nothing but the equivalent of an act. It is precisely for this reason that we also see that the myth always makes use of symbols which revive without difficulty states of mind that sustain in times of weakness. These symbols sometimes take the form of rites, of symbolic

We shall see later that in ancient times rites played an extraordinary part in life, not only in religious practices but also in private and political life. They were often given the form of public games, which were held periodically and provided men with the opportunity of allowing free play to their temperament or disposition, which had been inhibited in the period between festivals through the laws or social necessities restraining freedom of behaviour. These were true manifestations of collective disinhibition, of authorized excesses, through which the individual found himself dramatized and thus himself became the hero of the myth, since the rite brought the myth to reality and permitted it to be lived [25]. Freud has said of festivals that they are "a solemn violation of a prohibition".

We may see, in actual fact, that political movements which deliberately exploit the affectivity of the masses, the need they feel to realize their aspirations at least symbolically, try to create myths and make much use of spectacular festivals which sometimes have all the character of rites. In Paris, for example, the cult of the Unknown Soldier, a post-War institution which has spread almost everywhere, has created such rites

It might perhaps be objected that in our time, with rationalism everywhere pushing ahead, and with the positive sciences offering a continually clearer vision of

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natural laws, it is strange to talk of magic and of the influence of myths; we might be tempted to think that the dangers here discerned for humanity and civilization are imaginary or at least exaggerated. Apart from what has here been said about the laws of human behaviour, based on the data of objective biological psychology, we think we may reply to any objection of this sort with the following quotation from Roger Caillois [25], who, as a student of the philosophy of myths, does not consider that this danger no longer exists.

It is precisely of this danger of the violent and asocial socialization of the myths and rites in question, and of the process of their socialization which is already going on, that we wish to speak later, offering irrefutable examples and proofs. We wish also to speak of possibilities of action by meeting the real weapons of psychical rape with no less real and effectual weapons, and so overcoming the obscure forces which are dragging humanity to the verge of the abyss. For there is one principle that must guide us in this struggle,

The principle underlying the forms adopted by the churches in their emotive propaganda is absolutely the same as in the political movements. Consider, for instance, their symbols: the Cross, as a pictorial symbol, acts generally in the same manner as the swastika of the Hitlerists or the hammer and sickle of the Communists; but it has the great advantage of being simple and easily reproducible by anyone; its meaning, also, is obvious at once, a thing that is not

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the case with the swastika, which has no intrinsic connexion with National Socialism and Hitlerist "theories": it was adopted by Hitler solely for the sound propagandist reason that its simplicity makes it easy to reproduce. For him it was simply a trademark, as it had long been, for instance, for the famous Carlsberg brewery, of Denmark. He explains at length in Mein Kampf how and why he came to adopt the swastika, but these ad hoc arguments deceive no one. The Communist symbol, the hammer and sickle, is much finer from a human point of view; and, being comprehensible at sight—implements of labour—it exactly expresses the constructive idea of the proletarian State. As compared with the Christian Cross, it has the disadvantage of being too complicated to draw, a circumstance that hampers its spread.

sermons, and many other forms of influence over men's souls, used in order to canalize their behaviour along lines prescribed by the leaders—the priests. These practices are essentially the same as those of propaganda in general, especially political propaganda. The analogy is, indeed, obvious. Another movement using methods based on the same principle has the peculiarity of being built up ideologically on the maternal instinct (no. 4), but basing its propaganda on the first instinct (combative). This is the Salvation Army. Its hierarchy is closely copied from the model of military paganization, with "generals", "colonels", etc. Uniforms, drums, and parades play an important part in its work.

Before we come to the subject of modern political propaganda, properly so-called, a few words may be said about an activity closely connected with it—the journalist's profession. A journalist, too, is an "engineer of souls". He needs a perfect knowledge of the instrument on which he plays—the whole keyboard of human instincts, their depths and their sublimations; he needs to be able to bring into action in the multitude the conditioned reflexes it has acquired, to inhibit some, to disinhibit others, to create new ones, and through them to incite to action. For these purposes he has a tremendous apparatus, the press. But although the press today has extraordinary technical resources, much more powerful than in the past, its influence is diminishing. During the French Revolution it played a very important part as an organ of political propaganda; during the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, it attained its apogee; but since the Great War, thanks to the growing democratization of politics, the employment

of methods of popular influencing by suggestion as an arm of propaganda, and the enormous spread of wireless broadcasting, the press has become of secondary importance. It will suffice to recall the crisis of September 1938, during which millions of people listened day and night to the wireless, which, of course, brought them the news more quickly than the newspapers could. The multiplicity of the newspapers, their competition, too obviously of a commercial nature, and their size, often more than twenty pages, an obstacle to the rapid information which the man of today wants, are further causes of a certain decline in the influence of the modern press. It is still, for all that, an important element in political propaganda.

Generally speaking, a political newspaper appeals to reason, since it supplies the reader above all with information on the events that interest him, or with comments in article form which clarify current issues; but it has the means, and usually makes use of them, of appealing to the reader's emotions. By means of more or less tendencious reporting, to produce a particular state of feeling, or by appropriate wording or arrangement, it plays on the feelings, creating conditioned reflexes which the newspaper proposes to guide in order to attain its own ends or those of the group it represents; it is also able to create an emotive state by its arrangement of its matter and by giving headings in the form of slogans, of symbols. In our day people are often in such a hurry that they do not even get their paper read in the course of the day; they content themselves with a glance at the headings, which in a few words may create an orientation, a state of mind, a tendency. Needless to say, the daily political newspapers, especially the party organs, work

The possibilities of action here under consideration may be seconded by pictures, which transmit ideas and feelings with extreme rapidity, and which are particularly valuable means of evocation of desired states of mind. A properly organized editorial department always aims at accumulating files of information and of pictures, so classified that the elements needed may be quickly set up at any time.

Before giving detailed instances of all this, let us consider the actual principles of modern political propaganda, resulting from the theoretical considerations advanced in the preceding chapters, based on the data of present-day biology. The great mass movements characterizing our epoch, which find concrete expression in the act of voting in elections or plebiscites, or in public demonstrations or revolutionary rioting, are not the results of careful deliberation on the part of the individuals forming the mass, but of physiological, nervous processes, which are called "volitional" in classic psychological language, and are deliberately produced by energy applied from without, by the methods known as propaganda, or demagogy, or, better, "psychagogy".

Modern biological theories, supported by experi-

It may be worth while, in order the better to understand these rules, to begin with a criticism of the methods of propaganda on which the political action of most of the parties is based under a democratic regime, especially the Socialist parties; these "classic" methods are in plain contradiction with scientific data. Their propaganda often takes on plaintive forms, complaining of atrocities on the part of their opponents, charging them with aggressiveness, in a word, dwelling on their boldness and strength. This is bad tactics, since it unwittingly renders the opponents a service.

It is the principle which we shall call "retroactive intimidation" or "intimidation by repercussion". The democratic propaganda also frequently makes too much use of irony, merely laughing at the opponents even at times when what is really needed is combative action, a demonstration of their own strength. It is often too doctrinaire, too abstract, and takes forms which the masses find boring and insipid. Its activity is fortuitous and directed solely by intuition, often mistaken intuition; it lacks system and co-ordination. Consequently it may make a great effort for a very poor result. Finally, and this is a very grave matter, it is often belated, and reduced to dealing with events at the last moment.

Even in propaganda based on the principle of suggestion, the mistake is often made of thinking and acting as if each person reacted in the same way; in reality the mentality of the various groups of the population is very varied, and rational propaganda must be differentiated accordingly. It is also often imagined that a happy formula or symbol or slogan is itself a guarantee of success, as if nothing more were in question than the advertising of some commercial product. It is forgotten that the essential thing in rational propaganda is to work to plan. The plan must comprise—

• (a) Differentiation between the groups of people to be influenced:
• (c) The creation of organs for the carrying out of action with these ends;

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• • (f) The co-ordination of these actions;

All rational propaganda depends on a relatively small number of trenchant and concise formulae, which need hammering into the heads of the masses after they have been brought into a state of superimpressionability. This is Pavlov's principle of the creation of conditioned reflexes. Another condition that must be fulfilled is uniformity and simultaneity of propaganda in various places, necessitating central direction of each big-scale campaign. Another requisite of good propaganda is that it shall be carried on under really artistic forms; platitudes must be banned. Unfortunately the idea that elementary stuff, vulgar and aesthetically worthless, may be put before the masses is fairly widespread. The moral basis of propaganda must not be abandoned; here, too, the soul of the people is often more rational than that of some propagandists.

The political struggle never ceases, and propaganda must be unwearying. Hitler has understood this: he did not confine his propaganda to election times; he carried it on unceasingly, whereas his opponents woke up only from time to time; even during an election campaign they often welcomed holidays for "relaxation", as they said, but really in order to get away from the struggle, which bored them, and to indulge their bourgeois habits.

We have seen already, and we shall see later still more plainly, that in basing his propaganda by mass

We have already emphasized that propaganda must not be carried on to a rigid plan, but must be differentiated for the different quarters appealed to. In his propaganda Hitler made use of specially organized Storm Troops, who enabled him to penetrate the country districts with ease and to win over the peasants by terrorism; he also had the monopoly of the rural districts since the other parties almost entirely neglected them. In an article in the Deutsche Republik in 1932, Siegfried Hoxter analysed the problem of propaganda in rural districts, and distinguished two main zones. One, crossed by the main lines of communication, he called the mixed zone; in the other, in which the

peasantry forms a more uniform stratum of the population, it was easier for Hitler's ideas to penetrate. Accordingly, he was of the opinion that aggressive methods of popular propaganda, based on the combative instinct, such as those which proved effective against Hitler when begun by the Socialists with the sign of the three arrows in 1932, should be employed in the first zone; in the second they should be modified and adapted to peasant surroundings and mentality; they should be detailed and often individual in character, recalling the methods of commercial travellers and insurance agents.

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campaign improvised, an ad hoc committee constituted, and everything left to a single person, a Minister who is hopelessly overburdened.

Propaganda requires staffs of specialists, agitators, etc., and these need instructing through propaganda courses. Hitler well realized this, and formed a whole corps, his Storm Troops, as propaganda shock brigades. These are the troops who actually carried him into power. But if militant propagandists are to be mobilized and thrown into the fray at a given moment, they must be given concrete instructions and their enthusiasm must be aroused. This is done in a rational system of propaganda by means of special meetings of militants for instruction and encouragement. The German practice showed that this is the best means of rapidly organizing political campaigns.

Finance plays, of course, an important part in propaganda, but it is by no means true that effective propaganda is impossible without heavy expenditure. Effective political campaigns have been carried on with next to no money; the secret lies in the rationalization of action and in the possibility of psychically mobilizing the enthusiasm of masses of people. It may even be said that in general the funds for popular propaganda by means of symbols may be found in the streets; they have only to be sought and collected. In Hesse, for example, the Iron Front in 1932 entirely financed its victorious propaganda against Hitler out of the receipts from the sale of badges. It is a healthy principle that propaganda should be able to provide its own resources.

Propaganda as here analysed and described assures virtually certain success; this is shown by the formidable results of Hitlerist propaganda, but also, and

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above all, by a political experiment carried out in Hesse in 1932; this experiment was conducted with the rigour of laboratory practice. In the elections in Hesse, which we shall describe later in detail, the new methods of propaganda of the Iron Front were employed in four towns—Offenbach, Darmstadt, Mainz, and Worms; in a fifth, Giessen, the old Social Democratic methods were once more used. In the first four of these towns Hitler was beaten; in the fifth, Giessen, he won. The following figures are striking:

The elections took place on June 19. It will be seen that the gains were a function of the duration of the propaganda. This shows plainly that it is perfectly possible to direct the reactions of the masses. This is precisely Hitler's secret.

where that it will be sufficient then to appeal to reason and to try to combat the poisoning, the "psychical rape", by persuasive propaganda, it must be agreed, after all we have said, that this is a dangerous illusion. The only way to guarantee constitutional liberties is to be provided with apparatus for psychical immunization, by means of organs of propaganda which will assure that any attempt to rape the soul of the people by psycho-physiological practices, which are now revealed as veritable intoxicants, shall at once be met with an effective reply in the form of psychical protection.

V

POLITICAL PROPAGANDA IN THE PAST

Ancient times—Greece—Rome—Christianity—The French Revolution— —The Socialist methods—The war of 1914-18—The secrets of Crewe House—The propaganda ministries—The Russian Revolution

Political propaganda is as old, to tell the truth, as politics itself. In the distant past, when tribal chiefs imposed their will on their subjects, they transmitted the signs of it, their orders, to them by means of words or gestures, which had a fixed significance and were accompanied by encouragements or by threats of punishment for disobedience. They were carrying on politics. Harangues to assembled peoples, discussions in streets or public buildings, inscriptions on walls, letters and formulae graven on the pediments of temples or palaces, rites and ceremonies, processions carrying emblems, flags, flowers, symbols of all sorts; the music accompanying processions of this sort or marching soldiers; the soldiers' uniforms and trappings—all this has existed for centuries, if not for thousands of years, and it is all simply propaganda, mostly political. Manifestations of this sort are found also among the most savage and primitive peoples.

The most advanced among the ancient peoples have, of course, left us fairly numerous relics which are instructive on this point, and the aspect of which entirely confirms the application of the principles we

have enunciated as underlying political propaganda. We will confine ourselves here to quoting a few examples drawn from the history of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The inscriptions and representations of which the tombs of the Pharaohs in Egypt are full bring to life for us the details of the private and public life of thousands of years ago in that country, and especially the religious and funeral rites, showing the extent to which symbolism and mythology (in other words, the means of influencing the imagination of the masses and determining their behaviour) were employed in those distant epochs.

As regards practical political life, and the forms taken by public acts affecting the community, it is known that assemblies, and especially the Agora, were highly developed. There is clear evidence of attempts to influence the course taken by citizens at elections by the appeal to reason. The art of propaganda by persuasion and the art of oratory were especially cultivated; there were, indeed, schools of oratory.

The use of the first (combative) instinct as a factor of political propaganda was held in relatively slight honour in Greece; it found expression mainly in actual warfare. The war-cry—alala!—was used as a psychological stimulant in battle, increasing the fighting spirit and courage of the troops and striking fear into the enemy; other manifestations of this type (uniforms, banners, and external discipline in military evolutions) were less developed than, for instance, at Rome, where it might be said that the dominating concern was to make an exhibition of force as a psychological factor for influencing foreign and home policy.

It was in this respect that the psychological factor in military matters could find full appreciation: the Romans attached the utmost importance to brilliant uniforms, to flags, eagles, standards, military music, and so on. The characteristic element in the direction of the Roman armies was the care taken to give the legions the appearance of redoubtable collective engines of war, formidable, sinister, crushing everything in their destructive march. One may detect in ancient and especially imperial Rome a foretaste of Ludendorff's "doctrines", so dear to German militarism, which Mussolini has tried in vain to inculcate in Italy. To strike healthy fear into the adversary, to make every movement a menace—this was the guiding idea of Roman force.

The use of the clamor, the battle-cry, was widespread among the Romans. They gave this shout, accompanied by trumpet blasts, at the moment of attack. The leaders even assessed the chances of success in battle by the intensity and character of the clamor. Any hesitation or dissonance in the cry indicated feelings of ill augury. Later the Romans even adopted the Teuton battle-cry, called barditus: Tacitus describes it as an explosion of raucous sounds, made more prolonged and more resounding by pressing the shield against the mouth. Ammianus Marcellinus gives this description: "This terrible shout began with an almost inaudible murmur, steadily increasing, and finally breaking out into a roar like that of waves breaking against rocks. This cry roused the soldiers to intense excitement" [34].

The strongest form of psychological working of the Roman army on the crowd was in the "triumph" accorded to the commander of the army after a great

present, for the amusement of the crowd. Appian records that among the musicians in Scipio's triumph there was a buffoon, in a tunic reaching to his ankles, ornamented with gold necklaces and bracelets; he kept up a stream of insulting gestures against the vanquished enemy. Finally came the victor's chariot. The general wore a finely embroidered tunic and toga, and was crowned with a laurel wreath. The chariot, currus, was drawn by four white horses, with wreaths on their heads. After the general came his sons and his principal lieutenants. The soldiers followed in the customary order, themselves wreathed and wearing decorations; they chanted their exploits and made satirical remarks to the great amusement of the spectators. After it all there was a banquet.

Obviously such a spectacle gave the Roman crowd the opportunity of experiencing various emotions, mainly, of course, those related to the first (combative) instinct. It was thus a means of propaganda, very effectively organized by the State. Another means of working on the crowd by the exploitation of the same instinct was the games in the circus. The familiar formula for governing the plebs was panem et circenses—in scientific language, the appeal to instincts 1 and 2, those of struggle and nutrition. Efforts were made to introduce in Rome processions and festivals appealing to instinct 3 (sexual), such as were so widespread in Greece; those, for instance, of the Dionysian cult, but without success. They became known under the name of Bacchanalia, and quickly degenerated in Rome and Etruria into orgiastic debauches of the worst sort; ultimately they were prohibited by the State. The followers of the cult then formed secret societies, and were persecuted.

A plastic symbol, used as a means of propaganda of the Roman idea, is well known—the Roman salute with the arm extended horizontally; Mussolini revived it for his Fascist movement, and it was copied by Hitler, for no intelligible reason except to make it a sign for rallying followers and attracting the attention

Persuasive propaganda in assemblies, at electoral comitia, and so on, took among the Romans the classic forms which have come down to our day. The art of oratory was well developed; its precepts are to be found in Quintilian; there were schools of oratory, platforms for harangues, etc. Cicero writes in his letters of the technique to be employed at elections. For written propaganda or propaganda by means of pictorial symbols, a sort of placard (titulus) was used, figuring in processions; there were also inscriptions on walls, sometimes caricatures or insults, such as may be seen to this day at election times. Finally there were pamphlets corresponding to modern tracts and posters. Even the principle of the newspaper was represented, in the diarium. It was all, of course, very primitive, especially in view of the technical impossibility of mass reproduction.

At Byzantium the need and the possibility of guiding the masses seems to have been recognized, and they were given opportunities of giving expression to their feelings and utilizing them for political purposes. Monster meetings were organized at the Hippodrome, and a scene described by Theophanes in his Chronicles [35] gives us an idea of the methods employed in order to play on collective instincts and to carry on mass emotive propaganda. The assembled crowds sang psalms referring to the combat between St. George and the dragon, while Justinian II publicly stamped on his defeated adversary Leontes. On another

occasion, at the time of the revolt at Nike, there was a rhythmical dialogue at the Hippodrome between the crowd of adherents to the "Green" party, insurgents against Justinian the Great, and his emissary Callopodius.

The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the epochs of the Humanists and the Encyclopaedists, witnessed a gradual decline in the tendencies to emotional popular propaganda and the rise of rationalism, a movement which continued until the French Revolution, when there was a true explosion of agitation and propaganda, intense and violent, based essentially on

the principle of struggle, our instinct no. 1. From this time it was especially the idea of progress, of human emancipation, that relied on these methods of popular propaganda, employing them with more or less success. A little examination of the propagandist methods of the Revolution shows a strikingly extensive use of symbols—the Tricolour, as visual symbol, the "Marseillaise", as auditory symbol, and the use of the term "Citizen", employed from 1792 in place of "Monsieur".

Yet these violent and sanguinary tendencies made their appearance alongside the good nature of the Parisian people. In this same procession there were patriotic dances, sarabands, songs and embraces; a Tree of Liberty was carried and planted in triumph, amid general rejoicings. Here was an example of the exploitation, in a propaganda action, of two derivatives of the same instinct—menace, producing fear, and enthusiasm, ecstasy.

But it was above all the "Marseillaise", the "warsong for the Army of the Rhine", composed at Strasbourg by Rouget de Lisle, that was the principal stimulus of patriotic and combative ecstasy. The fédérés of Marseilles carried it through France in 1792 in their march to the capital. Lavisse [37] describes the emotion that gripped all hearts when the "battalion of the Marseillais" marched through the "faubourg de gloire", the Faubourg St. Antoine, into the Place de la Bastille, with drums beating and tricolour banner aloft, singing the then unknown hymn of the Army of the Rhine. In this revolutionary faubourg (suburb) the cry

Aux armes! Citoyens, Formez vos bataillons!

To arms! Citizens, form your battalions!

the glorious invocation

Amour sacré de la Patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs,

the appeals to vengeance and to combat against

cette horde d'esclaves, De traîtres, de rois conjurés

To arms, men of Poitou, form your battalions!

March! The blood of the aristocrats shall redden your furrows [37].

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original in his propaganda, which is simply a deliberate accumulation of ideas and devices picked up from anywhere.

Another historic song of the Revolution was "Ça ira". It was sung by the fédérés and by the people of Paris when the Champ de Mars was being hastily prepared for the great festival of "Federation" on July 14, 1790; it well expressed the fundamental idea of the Revolution together with a certain popular optimism:

He who raises himself up shall be abased, and he who abases himself shall be raised up. Ah, it'll be done!

At dusk the united popular working parties, returning from the Champ de Mars, tramped through Paris after a drum and fife, greeted by cheers and shouts of "Vive la Nation! Vive la liberté!"

To the street lamps with the aristocrats! We will hang them!

41

du Peuple" ("The people's awakening"). There was then a sort of war of slogans. That of the Muscadins, when they caught sight of revolutionaries, was "Vive la Convention!" Their opponents replied with "Vive les Iacobins!"

Marat in his writings incited to violent revolt. In a pamphlet issued in 1790 he wrote: "If you refuse

to meet our desires, our arms are lifted, and we shall strike traitors wherever they may be found, even in our own ranks." Later, when the Jacobins began to lose influence, their opponents carried on a pamphleteering campaign of equal violence, based on the same instincts: they were described as "drinkers of blood" (a slogan which became very popular 120 years later, in the Russian revolution); "Barrère was said to wear boots of human skin"; "it was reported that the authors of the September massacre ate the hearts of their victims"; "a woman was said to have given birth to an abortion after seeing Danton's ugly face"—and so on [37]. Satire, invective, calumny, epigrams, witticisms abound in the press of the period of the Directory.

The other form of propaganda characteristic of the French Revolution was agitation by means of speeches at public meetings, organized in and by the clubs, especially those of the Jacobins. It was by this means above all that the Revolution was nurtured and carried to success. Robespierre was one of the most prominent in this work. The clubs concentrated on propaganda by argument and persuasion, on forming a uniform public feeling, on creating moral unity in the nation. "The club was the ferment of the Revolution," said Lavisse [37], "and the Jacobin spirit was made up of patriotism and faith in the Revolution, increased each day by the obligation to fight against the aristocracies—the nobility, the prelates, and the aristocrats of army and judiciary." The more their difficulties increased, the more the Jacobins were led to speculate on the appeal to popular passion; it was they who trained agitators for activity in the streets, for organizing pressure from the gallery at meetings, for the

spread of threats and the whetting of the primitive instincts of the crowd; they introduced the practice of abuse in political combat; they worked up the feelings of the crowd, more or less deliberately. The vocabulary of their propaganda grew more and more narrow; their meetings grew more and more tumultuous. Taine [36] has described the propagandist activity of the Jacobins:

Alongside the Jacobin club another, more democratic, that of the Cordeliers, included the best orators and the most active trainers of men, such as Danton, Hébert, Marat, Camille Desmoulins. They were no less violently revolutionary than the Jacobins, but in their propaganda they used a more familiar style of address; they called themselves "brothers" and "sisters"; they were more supple, less theoretical, and more men of action.

The result of this violent propaganda of violence was that all political life became dominated more and more by terrorism. Terrorism dated from the very beginning of the Revolution in 1789, spreading especially in the countryside; we have already mentioned, in Chapter III, the panics of that period, which were known as the "Great Fear". At the end of 1792 fear reached even the deputies of the Convention. Taine [36] says: "Robespierre pointed out that the strongest party was also the safest. It was constantly said that it was prudent and even necessary not to

It is easy to understand that, since the whole propaganda of the Revolution was built upon the instinct of struggle, the moment the threat of foreign complications and of war appeared the military spirit flared up. At this period the revolutionary song "Ça ira" was given a further verse of a fighting character:

La Fayette dit: "Vienne qui voudra, Le patriotisme leur répondra." Sans craindre ni feu ni flamme, Le Français toujours vaincra. Ah! Ga ira, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira.

The first great festival of the Revolution was the

An altar was erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, the Autel de la Patrie, twenty feet high, before which petitions were to be placed for signature and oaths administered. Around the altar there were dances, gay farandoles, and singing, and banquets. At the festival 160,000 persons had seats and a further 150,000 stood; all wore tricolour ribbons. A company of 1200 musicians had been assembled. A procession of 50,000 persons marched on to the Champ, including voters, administrators, deputies of the Constituent Assembly, and a battalion of children and another of old men. These were followed by the fédérés from each of the Départements of the country, bearing as banners white squares ornamented with little tricolour badges.

There was delirious enthusiasm. This festival was followed by countless village feasts all over the country, which created a universal current of joy and confidence and hope. Autels de la Nation were erected everywhere; marriages were celebrated before them, sometimes a small child, even a new-born babe, was placed on the altar and then covered with gifts and good wishes; the most touching symbolism was adopted. These festivals were almost always presided over by old men, who were surrounded by children and girls in white robes girdled with the tricolour ribbon. Thus everywhere this propaganda appealed, more or less con-

sciously, to instincts 3 and 4 (the sublimated sexual instinct and the maternal). But already in some provinces there were also to be seen at these festivals figures of women bearing naked swords, with the flag of the Revolution—appealing to a curious combination of emotions, derived partly from the combative and partly from the sexual instinct.

As the course of the Revolution took on a graver and more tragic character, its processions and festivals became more agitated, more violent, and more austere. Thus in the Fête Funèbre of August 26, 1792, in honour of those who had died on August 10, commemorative standards were carried with a list of the massacres, perpetrated by the court and its agents—those of Nancy, Nîmes, etc. The procession was formed of National Guards in uniform, citizens armed with pikes, and women in white robes with black girdles; it moved forward to the accompaniment of a funeral march by François Gossec. This fête was organized by Sergent, and, in Taine's words [36], was designed "to inspire in turn thoughtfulness and indignation". Here we see already elements of conscious direction of the feelings of the masses, elements, that is, of methodical propaganda.

David also arranged the imposing funeral of the assassinated Marat. The corpse was carried, uncovered, on a bed, by ten men who were naked to the waist. An expiatory ceremony at Lyons in memory of one of the martyrs of the Mountain, Chalier, was given the character of a carnival. An ass was dressed in bishop's clothing; incense was burnt before it, and it was taken to Chalier's tomb, on which church vessels were broken; they were afterwards melted down [37]. On the initiative of the Hébertists, sacrilegious parodies and public ceremonies of homage to Reason became customary. A festival of this sort, typical of the method

of working on men's minds in vogue at this period of the Revolution, took place in November 1793 at Nôtre Dame, which had become the Temple of Reason. There was a lyrical performance, "The Offering to Liberty", accompanied by Chénier's hymn. A mountain was erected, with an ancient temple at its summit; the temple bore the inscription "To Philosophy", and two rows of ballet girls, dressed in white, stood on the slopes of the mountain. Liberty, represented by the dancer Mademoiselle Aubry, came out of the temple, sat on a seat of verdure, and received the homages of citizens and citizenesses.

the brazier was extinguished there rose from it a statue of Wisdom.

As the Revolution drew to its end, after the fall of the Mountain, a new cult made its appearance, the theo-philanthropic movement, expressing the ideas of a religion of "reason and nature". Its followers held that social morality was founded on solidarity, and identified the good with the useful. Ceremonies were performed for births and marriages before an altar covered with verdure and decorated with flowers and fruits. The orator or reader appeared on a platform in a robe of white wool, which was subsequently exchanged for a blue toga with saffron girdle and white tunic. The songs accompanying the ritual were selected from the works of Rousseau. Lavisse [37] describes this cult as an "amiable religion"; all appeal to the instinct of struggle was banished.

A detail mentioned by Lavisse bears interestingly on our proportion of one to ten between the active and passive elements in modern political life, the 5000 and 55,000 of the anti-Hitlerist struggle in Germany in 1932. In speaking [37] of the activity of the various elements at the beginnings of the Convention, he gives the following figures of attendance at meetings in the "sections" (constituencies). There were 150,000 citizens of Paris, that is to say, 150,000 persons with the right to vote. These were divided among 38 sections, so that there were 3000 to 4000 voters in each section. But meetings were not attended by more than 200 to 300 citizens. The proportion his figures yield is thus even less than 1 in 10.

Yet, before the Coup d'Etat, when he was still but a General of the Republic, Bonaparte knew very well how to make use of the gazettes for publicity in his favour, for regular advertising of his merits. He particularly liked to address proclamations to his soldiers, in which the true and the false were mingled in a picturesque, vibrant, heroic style. Here [37] is an example from 1796:

During the Empire it might be said that the very character of the French had changed. Military conquests and successes followed one another almost without interruption, while agitation and propaganda grew more than ever in that period of instability and increasing internal unrest. Then came 1848, and the Commune, with a new burst of propaganda, which became almost the exclusive prerogative of the working-class movement and the Socialist parties. In Germany, especially, with the industrialization of the country and the rise and growth of the great Social Democratic Party, Socialist propaganda became very active; in addition to propaganda by suggestion, with the Red Flag, the red carnation in the buttonhole, the revolutionary songs, and the term Genosse (Comrade) as its

symbols. Socialist fashions also spread in the ranks of the party—the Bebel goatee, in imitation of the great German tribune, and the soft hat, were rallying symbols that helped to attract the masses to the great working-class party. From Germany the forms of Socialist propaganda spread over the world. May-day became the occasion for the principal demonstration, for playing the trump card of menace to the bourgeois world, making use unawares, by intuition, of the instinct of struggle. The bourgeois parties were panic-stricken at the spectacle of the mounting of the working-class tide, of trade unionism and Socialism. The only counter-measure they could envisage was that of government coercion and police activity, which made martyrs and threw oil on the fire, adding to the importance of the emotive factors in the political struggle in progress.

During the war of 1914–18 all this, naturally, came to an end, through the sudden rise in the various countries of patriotic and, indeed, chauvinistic feeling. The movement was entirely spontaneous and undirected, except in Germany, where the General Staff went deliberately to work, through the press, to create a movement of patriotic frenzy, including a widespread spy mania, in order to obtain better results from mobilization. All this, it is true, was done in a very primitive way. There was, for example, the familiar slogan Gott strafe England! It was used on every occasion, in print, in speeches, as a salute, and so on. As the war went on, both sides acquired experience in propaganda, and realized more and more the importance of the psychological factor both at the front and among the general public, and the possibility of manipulating it. We have seen already how the idea

The Ministry was organized late in the war, in February 1918, mainly for propaganda in enemy countries, in order to create dissension in the ranks of the armies at the front and among the populations. To this end it was essential to create a favourable "atmosphere". The study of the factors that may produce this atmosphere was well organized under the direction of Mr. Wickham Steed, Professor Seton-Watson, and Mr. H. G. Wells. The following postulates were laid down:

• Propaganda operations must not be started until general lines of policy have been clearly established;
• Propaganda must never have recourse to distortion of the truth;
• 3. It must steer clear of inconsistencies and ambiguities.

This British propaganda, which was rapidly spread through the Western and Balkan fronts, played especially on the note that the enemy cause was lost, that the enemy no longer had any possible hope of victory, and that the Allied forces were continually increasing. These statements, supported by figures and maps and other methods of argument, demoralized the enemy. Millions of tracts were thrown into the German trenches from Allied planes, and dropped within Germany from parachutes. Gramophones were

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of the present one; the most striking examples are to be found in the very existence of the Russian Revolution and of Hitlerism.

Propaganda was developed extraordinarily in the Revolution and especially the civil war in Russia. Toward the end of the Great War a Committee for the Moral Factor had been formed in Russia, within the Committee of Technical Military Aid which had embraced all the technical and scientific institutions in Russia. The purpose of the new committee was to maintain the morale of the population. After the Revolution, in which the Technical Aid Committee played an active part, as we saw in the example mentioned in Chapter II, the new committee was transformed into a Committee of Politico-Social Education under the Kerensky Government, and later into a Propaganda Committee of the Soviet (Council) of Intellectual Workers. It collapsed after the October Revolution.

It is well known how great was the importance of the propaganda of the Bolsheviks. The famous slogans "Down with the war", "Peace and land", "No annexations and no indemnities", were spread by every possible means, with the result now known. At the time, however, the principal element seemed to be the meetings and processions, with the red flags, the propaganda placards, and the enthusiastic, unorganized crowds of onlookers. With the spread of the civil war both sides organized Ministries of Propaganda as organs of their State. The most modern methods of propaganda were employed—tracts by the million, illustrated newspapers, photographs, placards, shop-window displays, staffs of agitators working in markets, trains, cinemas and all places where crowds

were assembled, and travelling propaganda groups. Trotsky, for example, travelled about the country in a special train fitted up as a propaganda office, with a printing-press in one coach, an exhibition of examples of propaganda in another, and so on. British officers who visited Denikin's Propaganda Ministry after the Dardanelles had been forced were astonished at its scale: "You have surpassed Northcliffe," they declared

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social factors. So far as we are aware, this was the first and only example of the application of scientific methods in political life for purposes of action and not merely of later historical analysis. It is a curious fact that a service of this sort already existed at Petrograd in 1917 under the Kerensky Government. On reaching the Ministries these maps were carefully filed away; no one studied them, for no one knew what use to make of them. The maps were also sent regularly to the Central Soviet at the Smolny Institute; if it was an hour late a cyclist came from the Soviet to fetch it and ask why it had been delayed. The Bolsheviks, as practical men, clearer-headed than their opponents, working tenaciously toward the ends they had set before themselves, realized the usefulness of this modern method and knew well how to profit by it.

The Osvag Ministry maintained some hundreds of free reading-rooms and public libraries in the country; by means of these, propaganda made its way among the town population and especially in the villages. The agitation section of the Ministry ran several services: it issued tracts and brochures, manuals of agitation, illustrated posters, caricatures, and an artistic periodical; it organized lectures and meetings, sending speakers, whom it had always at its disposal, round the country; it held an instructional course for agitators, who were sent out to work in public places, in trams and trains, in front of shop windows, in the villages and in the markets. These agitators were used also in groups, forming regular tactical units in the psychological warfare of a propaganda campaign. Finally, there was a musical and artistic service for the organization of popular entertainments,

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Popular propaganda through the masses, of the type referred to in preceding chapters, the type so characteristic of recent times, was scarcely then born; while making some use of emotive forms, the Osvag was active mainly in propaganda based on reflection and persuasion. It appealed to the intellectuals and did not greatly influence the masses; it was thus doomed to failure even if the Government it represented had not been without any solid political basis, and had not inevitably succumbed before the flood of the triumphant Revolution.

After its victory the Soviet Government attached the utmost importance to propaganda in the building up of the Soviet Union. The most varied methods of suggestion were employed in its great campaigns for the five-year plans, for rearmament and the spread of aviation, for preparation for chemical warfare, etc. It is curious to find that the Bolsheviks, formerly Social Democrats, adopted the methods of propaganda of the German Social Democratic Party, and that while the latter more and more neglected the energetic and efficient use of propaganda the Russian Bolsheviks transplanted the classic emotive Socialist methods in their own country. Later, Mussolini had the Russian methods watched and studied, and transplanted them in turn, sometimes with servile imitation, in Fascist

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Italy; thence they were brought back to Germany by Hitler, who employed them on a grand scale and with unprecedented violence, with the result that he attained power.

$\mathbf{v}_{\mathbf{I}}$

THE SECRET OF HITLER'S SUCCESS

The Hitlerist phenomenon and its dangers—The distinction between the "5000" and the "55,000"—Popular emotional propaganda and propaganda by persuasion—Mein Kampf—Mussolini

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How was all this possible? What was the secret of this prodigious success? Why was he yielded to, time after time? "We want to avoid war" was the reply. War was not avoided, as we now see. But instead of stopping him at the outset, when his preparations were incomplete, when it would have sufficed to let him know that his aggressiveness would not be tolerated, that if necessary he would be brought down by force of arms, everything was done to encourage him in the fatal idea that the democracies would do nothing beyond talking and would not dare to fight. Yet he should have known that if he were faced with war against the

whole world there would be a collapse of the Hitlerist regime and of Germany herself; faced with imminent war, even Hitlerist Germany should have thought twice before plunging into it. In embarking on the present war in spite of all, Hitler must have supposed, especially on the strength of his pact with the Soviet Union, that the Western Powers would not make war on him.

Up to that point, all had been a monstrous bluff, relying on the fact that the rest of the world looked on the Germany of today as a united community. That is what impresses those who are used to the divisions and strife within their own countries. People repeat again and again, "But Hitler's policy was submitted to a plebiscite in Germany and obtained ninetynine per cent. of the votes." It is undeniable, and it cannot be claimed that the result was obtained by means of physical terrorism. He conquered power in Germany, as everyone knows, without a putsch, without striking a blow. It is a fact that he imposed himself on the German people, who carried him into power. Did they do so deliberately? That is another matter, and that is precisely what we want to discuss here. Our thesis is that he attained power by means of psychical violence.

The mere fact that Hitlerist "plebiscites" produce always the same result no longer excites anybody. We are all used to it and expect it. But what does astonish us all is that Hitler can still speculate on this simulacrum, this pretence, that he continues to defy the world, to declare that it has to deal not with him but with the whole German nation, with 75,000,000 individuals who are in agreement with him and who, according to the current theory, prove thereby that they have considered everything and approve.

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There is, of course, no need to infer that Hitler or his manager, Goebbels, have studied this doctrine and have consciously applied it in order to attain their ends. Far from it. What has actually happened is that Hitler, an unsophisticated man, unburdened by the sociological and economic doctrines that oppress and complicate and confuse the thinking of most statesmen, has unconsciously, by intuition, applied to the management of crowds, to the political battle, the laws defined by Pavlov. And as his opponents in Germany

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conditioned inhibition—the figures of attendance at political meetings in Heidelberg in 1932 were taken. Subsequent investigations arrived elsewhere at much the same results. In this town of 60,000 voters it was found that the meetings of the Social Democratic Party, the most active and the best organized of the political parties, were attended normally by 600 to 800 persons; the maximum was 2000. The figure for the Nazis was about the same. The remaining parties—Catholic Centre, Communist, Liberal—taken together gave a figure of about 1000. The total number of persons who attend any political meetings was thus about 5000. What of the remaining 55,000 voters? These are the "passive" elements. They have the same right to vote as the 5000 "active" persons; and it is manifestly these 55,000 who determine the issue of an electoral campaign. The aim of the propaganda of all the parties is thus to secure the votes of these 55,000 persons. Here we have the key to political propaganda.

Lenin and Hitler, the two great propagandists of our time, had a suspicion of this distinction. Lenin showed it when he wrote: "The revolutionary propagandist must think in terms of hundreds, the agitator in terms of tens of thousands, and the organizer and leader of the revolution in terms of millions!" Hitler is thinking of the same distinction when he writes in Mein Kampf [31]: "The task of propaganda is to attract followers, that of organization to enrol partisans and affiliated members of the party."

These two functions of propagandist political activity thus envisage two different categories of individuals. What are their characteristics? Whence do they come? We have already seen that the larger con-

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Passing now to the "5000" who are resistant to propaganda, we find that they belong especially to the intellectuals and the more class-conscious, cultivated, and active workers and peasants. Munzenberg [32] gives curious evidence of the spirit in which important sections of the workers have passed into the Hitlerist ranks. Workers who formerly were in the Socialist organizations and had become Storm Troopers were saying in 1932: "We have not changed. But among you Socialists everything is too slow-going. Adolf is working more rapidly. And if he betrays us he will be hanged by us." The outcome of this line of argument was seen in the massacre of June 30, 1934, when Hitler had his former friends, the leaders of the opposition within his party, who believed in his Socialist intentions, executed.

As we have just seen, Hitler distinguishes between the functions of organization and propaganda: the first thing needed is to secure organizers who will carry on propaganda with which to attract the masses. To this end he makes enormous efforts to train his militants (our "5000"); his Labour Front has instituted special schools in which 5000 party officials are educated every year; there they learn how to lead and dominate the masses. The principles on which he acts are, in truth, quite simple, and we have seen them already: the leaders must know how and when to bring symbols and slogans into action upon the masses, so as to make the masses behave as the regime desires. Intimidation, psychical violence, is always the supreme regulator. The masses, the "55,000", must constantly feel the presence about them of the signs of Hitler's power and of the State apparatus of coercion. Each symbol, each swastika, thus becomes a reminder of that constant

The difference between the "5000" and the "55,000" is not due exclusively to intrinsic or racial physiological factors; the elements of education, of culture, of the formation of phenomena of conditioned internal inhibition, also play an important part; thus we find that among the democratic peoples, which are politically more advanced, the proportion is rather different from that which we found for the Germans. But it must not be supposed that the difference is of any great importance. The mechanisms of the nervous system are the same, after all, for all human beings.

What, then, were the methods of influencing the masses? As we have said, there are two categories of persons; consequently two forms of propaganda were needed, one addressed to the 10 per cent., who are sufficiently sure of themselves to be able to resist crude suggestion, and the other to the passive 90 per cent., who are accessible to suggestion, especially suggestion working on the basis of the first (combative)

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instinct. This suggestion works by actual menace from time to time, as an absolute factor, and in the interim by the mass dissemination of symbols which recall the menace and thus act as a conditional factor. These absolute and conditional factors combine to create reactions of fear, which take effect in the form of votes in favour of those who spread the threat and its symbols.

These two forms of propaganda, addressed to these two groups of persons, thus differed in principle. The first acted by persuasion, by reasoning; the second by suggestion, by means now of fear, now of its positive complement, enthusiasm or excitement, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes furious; these reactions also proceeded from the combative instinct. We call the first of these two forms of propaganda ratio-propaganda and the second senso-propaganda. The first is simply political instruction, and needs no lengthy explanation; it is, moreover, the propaganda normally employed by political parties, especially in democratic countries. Its forms are well known—newspapers, broadcast speeches, meetings with discussions, pamphlets and leaflets, and, finally, personal propaganda, "canvassing". It bases itself on various instincts, but mainly on the second (nutritive) one, appealing especially to economic interests.

and noisy processions in this type of propaganda. Hitler especially combined these demonstrations of force with the interest of the masses in aviation as a sport: he would organize his demonstrations at the same time as aviation meetings, and would arrive by air in great pomp; he popularized the slogan "Hitler over Germany!" [32], he distributed badges to his followers on which the swastika was combined with a representation of aeroplane wings, and so on. The public, especially its younger members, was filled with enthusiasm at the news that he would speak sometimes at three or four widely separated towns on the same day, arriving and leaving by 'plane.

The forms employed by senso-propaganda are well known; they are, on the whole, those most used to this day. The element of novelty that entered into the emotional propaganda carried on by Hitler and by his opponent in Germany, the Iron Front, was the attention paid not only to the elements, but to the methods of appeal to the emotions. For instance, the publication of the Hitlerist economic programme was made to coincide with a demonstration of the failure of his opponents, carried out through the press, the wireless, leaflets, meetings, and individual propaganda. When it was desired to intimidate opponents and the passive element and to fill partisans with courage, a guerrilla war was carried on by means of symbols, a war of flags and posters and demonstrations, processions with symbolic cars, uniformed groups rhythmically marching, etc. To arouse feelings of anger or pity or concern for others, use was made of violent posters and tracts and of meetings at which the audience were roused to wild indignation and hatred or burning enthusiasm. Opponents were ridiculed by carnival-

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like processions including individual and group caricatures, by street songs, by leaflets with satirical verses, and by posters and cartoons. In order to work on feelings of love and joy, that is to say, on sublimated erotic elements, use was made of public dances, of popular airs or street songs with new and topical words, of aesthetic figures, especially of women, or groups in processions, of flowers, etc. Finally, whenever it was desired to appeal to feelings of friendship, readiness for sacrifice, and the sense of duty, the forms of propaganda used were leaflets, meetings, and pictorial posters.

For this aspect of his propaganda Hitler borrowed largely from the practices of the Catholic Church [32], in which incense, semi-obscurity, and lighted candles create a special state of emotional receptivity. In his processions he made a point of including groups of handsome, vigorous, muscular young men, marching to martial airs, knowing well how stirring this spectacle is for women. He himself, on the platform, used luminous colour effects during his speeches; there would be a board of electric switches on his desk. His demonstrations are sometimes accompanied by the clanging of church bells [32]. He knows very well that the same speaker, speaking on the same subject in the same hall, may obtain entirely different effects at 10 a.m., 3 p.m., or in the evening.

Here is a specimen of instructions for propaganda of this type in the Iron Front, with the significant title "Creation of enthusiasm at a meeting":

2. Maintain the excitement and the dynamism of the

audience at an increasing pitch up to the end of the

meeting.

• 4. Have songs before and after the speeches. Songs to be sung always standing, never seated.

Speeches must never exceed thirty minutes.

6. Play out the audience at the end with a popular

fighting song

• 8. A symbolic tableau, or illuminated placard, dynamic and cheerful, or sarcastic, accompanied by music, may be useful as light relief.
• g. Incite the audience to make the revolutionary gesture from time to time: shout "Freedom!", with the clenched fist raised.

A characteristic of Hitlerist propaganda is the creation around the Fuhrer of a sort of legend as national hero; needless to say, it is a tissue of exaggerations and often lies, but here again the character of senso-propaganda becomes manifest as a means of psychically dominating the masses, of maintaining them in a state of psychical enslavement.

In Mein Kampf [31], Hitler describes the few simple propagandist principles and practices he has employed in his "struggle". His book, which has been enormously pushed in Germany, is valueless from the

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philosophical, sociological, and even political points of view, but has a certain value in its exposition of the technique of Hitlerist propaganda. In its 700 pages Hitler tells his own decidedly unimpressive story, with the years of war very briefly and obscurely dealt with; he then enters complacently and at great length into every detail of the organization and vicissitudes of his movement. There are some exaggerations; no one, for instance, will believe that forty of his young Storm Troopers threw out seven hundred militant Communist and Socialist workers and beat them till blood flowed.

The chapters in which he described the principles of propaganda and the tactics he has followed have a certain interest. The pages in which he speaks of France, Germany's "chief enemy", her "mortal enemy", the country of "negroid bastards", and so on, are very instructive for the French, especially when he concludes: "These results" (the destruction of France) "will not be attained either by prayers to the Almighty or by speeches or by negotiations at Geneva. They must be attained by a bloody war, by the German sword." To this end "we intend to recover our arms!" [31].

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Let us pass now to the most interesting part of Hitler's book, in which he talks of political propaganda. We must first note the importance he attaches to propaganda: "It is the essential art of giving political guidance to the masses"; in 1932, during his conversations with Chancellor Bruning, he declared: "I look on this question entirely as an agitator"; at the Nuremberg party congress of 1936 he exclaimed: "Propaganda brought us into power, propaganda has since enabled us to remain in power, and propaganda will give us the means of conquering the world."

This is his conception of propagandist tactics [39]:

"The task of a propagandist is not the scientific education of everyone, but the indication to the masses of the facts, events, necessities, etc., whose significance and moral enter into their field of interest." Thus we see that he has fully appreciated the supreme general rule, for an unscrupulous propagandist, of the psychical rape of the masses. It is disgusting and abominable, but from the moment when one of the parties has trampled down the boundaries of fair dealing, his opponent has no choice but to follow suit—or perish. Hitler himself says of propaganda: "It is a terrible weapon in the hands of those who know how to make use of it" [32].

To tell the truth, Hitler has brought forth no original idea in his propaganda: all its forms have been borrowed from elsewhere, especially from the Socialist movement and from Italian Fascism. He admits it in his book [31]: "We have learnt enormously from the tactics of our enemies." He considers "atrocity propaganda," and Lord Northcliffe's wartime propaganda in general, as an inspired work of genius. But the thing that characterizes Hitler is the consistent application of the rules of this propaganda on an enormous scale. The question then arises of the funds for working on so vast a scale. This problem offers no difficulties for Hitler, since, as he said at a Nazi meeting in Berlin, "we shall carry on our propaganda at other people's expense, and in the end we shall reach financial sources which hitherto have been accessible only to the German Nationalists" (the great reactionary party) [32]. These sources are well known—the great industrial magnates. On attaining power, Hitler provided his Ministry of Propaganda with enormous funds. The Ministry's budget for

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Another characteristic of Hitlerist propaganda is its frenzied social demagogy in internal politics. Hitler realized that in order to win over the masses they must be humoured, and, while pursuing his mediaeval nationalist ideas, he gave those ideas a social basis; hence the hybrid formula of National Socialism. The Socialism in this case is simply a bait, devised to catch the worker and peasant masses without irritating the middle classes, on whom he principally depends. He did not hesitate to promise to each social stratum the entire fulfilment of its aspirations—better wages for the workers, bigger profits for the employers, higher prices for the peasants, cheaper food for the townsmen, and so on. He speculated on the failure of his audiences to see the inconsistencies in his promises—and he was right. As Munzenberg well says [32], Hitler launched a slogan in between the Socialist "All

take months to prepare, but I shall do what I always have done throughout my life: I shall pounce on my adversary like a stroke of lightning at night." This is the language of intimidation carried to frenzy! His followers have caught his method: we may see it in the prayer spoken by an Evangelical pastor: "I believe that liberty will come from our Father in Heaven if we believe in our own strength" [39]. Never in our day has propaganda made use of such insulting language as Hitlerist propaganda does: "Scum, tramps, perjurers, procurers, murderers, intellectual prostitutes," and so on. Hitler has made his opponents a present of the formula he has used, the formula necessary, in his opinion, for success [31]: "These tactics, based on an accurate valuation of human weaknesses, must lead almost mathematically to success, if the opposing party does not learn to meet poison gas with poison gas. Terrorism in the shipyard and the factory will always have entire success if its path is not barred by equal terrorism."

On the question of general tactics, he considers that unity of command is essential in political propaganda as elsewhere, and he declares that "the strong man is stronger if he remains alone". Another rule is never to speak in the conditional tense: "only the indicative and the imperative maintain the psychosis of power among friends and the psychosis of terror among enemies" [39]. "Never demand or hope; always promise and affirm." Propaganda, he adds, must always repeat that the Nazis are the conquerors and always will be; every scuffle must be represented as a victory, in order "to produce the force of suggestion derived from self-confidence" [31]. This last rule is closely bound up with another characteristic of Hitlerist

The most characteristic thing in the tactics of Hitlerist propaganda is the deliberate effort to reach the whole of the population, and not merely the voters, since the psychological environment will influence the voters. It is for this reason that all Hitlerist activities are based on the appeal to the emotive factors. Hitler says [31]: "The great majority of people are so feminine in their mentality and disposition that their opinions and actions are determined much more by impressions produced on their senses than by reflection." To attain these ends, all means are justified. Thus Hitler declared in a speech to women [32] that "when we come into power, every German woman will obtain a husband". The press director of the Nazi movement declares that it has often been mainly the women who saved the movement at critical moments.

In our account of the relations existing between the state of somnambulism and the phenomenon of generalized internal inhibition, which may be produced by certain practices of formation of conditioned reflexes, we saw that this state of somnambulism (in which the susceptibility to suggestion reaches such a point that the individual becomes a malleable object in the hands of another, and is easily made to obey orders given) may be produced by excitations repeated during a more or less lengthy period and characterized by their monotony. This practice is also regularly

Thus the phenomenon of reawakening, of disinhibition, was also manifested.

Not the least element in the success of the Hitlerist propaganda has been its patience and perseverance. Hitler writes [31]: "I then adopted the following attitude: it matters little if our opponents deride us or insult us, if they represent us as clowns or criminals; the essential thing is that they shall talk of us, occupy themselves with us. . . ."

As regards the technique of this propaganda, Hitler's book contains indications of considerable importance, which his opponents should note and mark well. He considers that the spoken word is of more importance than the written. "The orator, in close touch with his audience, receives from it the reflection of his words. He consequently brings forward all the explanations best suited to produce the feelings necessary to the end pursued. . . . The play of the features of his audience shows him whether he is understood, whether they follow him, and whether he has convinced them."

The technique of meetings is also carefully dealt

with. He insists especially on two things: the necessity of a staff of "stewards", hefty young fellows who prevent discussion by throwing out interrupters; and the necessity of vigorous publicity in advance of a meeting. Writing of his first experiences, he says: "I hired a couple of lorries which we thoroughly covered with red; with fifteen to twenty partisans in each, these were to go to every part of the town, throwing out tracts. . . . That evening the circus was filled to bursting."

But the great rule, essential to success in propaganda, of which Hitler thoroughly appreciated the fundamental importance, without knowing anything about conditioned reflexes, was that of repetition. He writes [31]: "All the ingenuity employed in the organization of propaganda would have no result if account were not rigorously taken at all times of a fundamental principle: it must confine itself to a few things, and must constantly repeat them. Perseverance... is the first and the most important condition of success." That is why he constantly hammered into the masses his slogans or "motto germs", as Paul Lévy calls them, his shouted or written symbols, his swastika, broadcast by the million (the wearing of the swastika is obligatory for all members of the party); that is why he attaches such importance to flags and banners. And, knowing that red is the colour which most attracts attention, that it is also the colour chosen for the working-class movement (hence, similarly, the use of "Socialism" in the name of the

party), and that it suggests blood, and therefore fighting and violence, he chose that colour for his flags and posters. He writes [31]: "We chose red for our posters after careful reflection, in order to enrage the Left wing, and to bring its members to our meetings even if only with the intention of breaking them up, because that was the one way of compelling those people to listen to us."

Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, Hitler's

"brilliant second", who cannot forgive Hitler for always being ahead of him but who, owing to his obvious inferiority of power, is compelled to follow his master, uses the same methods, though with less mastery; he has no Goebbels, only a Ciano.

The very symbol of Fascism, the fascio, is a symbol of violence: it is the fasces or bundles of rods with an axe in the middle that the lictors or magistrate's officers carried in ancient Rome. The legend of the origin of the fasces is that in the sixth century B.C., Brutus, first consul of Rome, has his sons publicly beaten with rods and executed with an axe for plotting against the State [40]. This instrument of punishment, inspiring terror, became the symbol of power in Rome. The lictors carried the fasces as they preceded the consul, whose sentences they executed there and then—beating, hanging, or beheading. As the symbol of

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Fascism the fascio has the disadvantage, as compared with the swastika, the three arrows, or the Cross, of being too complicated to be capable of being scrawled by the untalented.

But the thing that is characteristic of Mussolini above all is his bravado. He hurls his menaces right and left in his speeches, in complete indifference to the ridicule they usually call forth abroad because he habitually carries them to excess. Here is an example [41]: in July 1935, at Eboni, he shouted: "To those who think they can stop us by words and phrases, we shall reply by the force of our first 'squadrons of action'. Me ne frego! (To Hell with them!)." Here is another instance: on May 3, 1927, Mussolini declared that war would break out in 1935, and he added [41]: "Italy will have 4,000,000 men under arms! She will have the most formidable navy in the world, and an air force so powerful that the booming of its motors will drown every other sound in the peninsula, and the wings of the 'planes will darken the sky over Italy."

Bluff, always and everywhere—this is the essence of Mussolini's propaganda. In his passion for bluff he goes so far that one day, when recalling the painful memory of the Italian disaster at Caporetto, he exclaimed: "If I had been Premier at that time, I should have announced that disaster as a great victory" [41].

It is edifying to watch Hitler and Mussolini in rivalry for the benefits of the Berlin-Rome axis. During the Abyssinian war Mussolini wanted to compel Hitler to help him to start a world war, but Hitler, faithful to his tactics of threatening only when no real risk was involved, contented himself with the

evasive statement [41] that "a firm but prudent policy, and progressive but methodical rearmament, will permit us, with the aid of diplomacy, to obtain satisfaction for Germany's essential demands without war". In September 1938, when Hitler was growing impatient and pressing Mussolini to decree the mobilization of the Italian army in reply to the French mobilization, it was Mussolini's turn to shuffle and wriggle and procrastinate: he knew well that the people of Italy would not agree to go to war.

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and mendacity play a preponderant if not exclusive part.

Propaganda is expensive, and Mussolini, like Hitler, has no scruple about taking money for it from those who have an interest in his dominance—the capitalists. A well-known industrialist gave 1,500,000 lire to organize the famous "March on Rome", a propagandist action of menace [40]. Fascist propaganda, like Hitler's, has no programme, whether social or economic: its purpose is, at all costs, "first to dominate, leaving ideas to come and projects to be established and the ideal of the party to emerge slowly from the chaos in which its elements have been indiscriminately simmering" [40].

All these traits become comprehensible when one knows Mussolini's history. From youth up he led an adventurous life of hardship and poverty [40]: often he slept in the open, and one day he was reduced to begging for bread. His southern temperament launched him into the social struggle; he became a Socialist, a revolutionary and an extreme antimilitarist. He made the acquaintance of prison cells; he did not shrink from the idea of regicide; he was an enemy of religion and of clericalism, and a blasphemer. He was a born political fighter, and he succeeded in making his way in the Socialist movement to a position of some prominence: he became editor of Avanti, the official paper of the party. But with the 1914 war Mussolini's activism came into conflict with the mild, non-interventionist opportunism of the party leaders. His thunderous propaganda in favour of Italian participation in the War on the side of the Allies brought him attacks from his comrades, which ended in his being accused of venality and expelled from the

party [40]. Wounded in his self-esteem, and urged on by thirst for vengeance, he declared pitiless war on his former comrades. In an article in the Popolo d'Italia of November 25, 1914, he hurled defiance at them: "I am here precisely in order to spoil your pleasure. The Mussolini affair is not over, as you imagine: it is beginning, growing complicated, and taking on vaster proportions" [40]. And he acted accordingly. He threw himself into the battle with unprecedented vehemence. The thing that characterizes him above all is "complete unconcern in the expression of his thought and in his language and figures of speech in polemics". He did not hesitate, for instance, to write: "This man disgusts me; but before I am overcome by nausea I want to bash him till the blood runs" [40]. "To bash" is one of his favourite words. When he became head of the Government he said of the opposition: "There is nothing to be done but beat them unmercifully."

These continual appeals to violence, these menaces amplified by a propaganda of great technical ability, created a state of tension which led to crimes, the most atrocious of which was the assassination of Mussolini's Socialist opponent, Giacomo Matteotti. It was the work of Cesare Rossi, one of Mussolini's intimates and a propagandist holding a responsible post; Rossi was betrayed by Mussolini, fled from Italy, and published abroad revelations in the course of which he denounced Mussolini as the spiritual author of that revolting crime. He paints Mussolini [40] as a man of dual nature, superficial, an improviser, "in turn sceptical and sentimental, generous and cruel, resolute and hesitant, intransigent and moderate", and mainly concerned to keep the upper hand

against everybody so as to maintain himself in power.

We entirely agree with Roya when he says that

Fascism is the game of a connoisseur of caprice, a game played in masterly fashion by a man who is out to wreak vengeance for his past sufferings and lack of recognition and his disavowal by those for whom he had fought. His success in this game intoxicates Mussolini, for in it he has his fill of the pleasure of employing force, of manifesting his disdain for others, and of exerting the authority which spreads smiles or tears [40].

It is a game that will end with the player. Mussolini knows it, and has said so. Geneviève Tabouis [41] mentions that "In his book on Mussolini, Emil Ludwig has reported a conversation he had with the Duce. In an access of sincerity rare in him, Mussolini said to Ludwig that Fascism must inevitably come to an end with him. 'After me, the deluge!' In the Italian edition, that statement was, with natural delicacy, suppressed."

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VII

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We come now to the consideration of the events of the year 1932 in Germany; they furnish a good experimental illustration, because actually lived through, of the value of the scientific analysis of the principles enunciated in preceding chapters. We have in our hands an authentic unpublished record of the course of events of that tragic year, in which the fate of Germany and Europe was at issue. The account is the work of the man who at that time was in charge of the propaganda of the Iron Front, the great organ of defence against Hitlerism which had been created by the German Social Democratic Party:

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centres. I put before one of our party secretaries, a man who was exhausting himself in this sort of "activity", the following calculation: at the height of the electoral campaign, with the Nazi propaganda making progress like wild-fire, with the Nazis masters of the streets, displaying their symbols everywhere, falling upon our followers and starting street-fights, our leader had left the town to speak in some hole to a hundred people, of whom about eighty were with us already and would have voted for us in any case. We could not hope to win over more than half of the remaining twenty. To this end, to get ten votes, he had left the offices of the party, left young members who were burning to help kicking their heels at home, and left the comrades of the Reichsbanner to wander aimlessly about the streets; for he had sent the local leaders of the Reichsbanner and the local youth leaders to speak in similar holes. The same spectacle was to be seen everywhere.

a member of the party?

I spent two days visiting the principal centres in south and south-west Germany; I spoke to our leaders, explained the new methods, got together the young comrades of the Reichsbanner, and initiated them into the technique of symbol warfare. I had the good fortune to win over some active men among the secondary leaders; the younger members, especially, adopted the new methods with enthusiasm and thereafter vigorously carried them into execution. The walls of these towns were quickly covered with our symbols, and the "Freedom" salute was shouted in the streets and at meetings. The symbolic picture of the three arrows pursuing the Hitlerist swastika appeared in the local papers of the party, and, accompanied by short and striking couplets, as stick-on labels. Party secretaries and leaders of the

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Reichsbanner in these towns told me of the jubilant enthusiasm that had taken hold of our young militants and the ardour with which they rushed into the propagandist mêlée. Better still were reports such as this from our agents: "Since the 'chalk campaign' started, everybody has been transfigured. We used to have no more than a few comrades ready to distribute tracts; it was always a difficult problem and, indeed, too much for us; now there are always more volunteers than we need for sticking up labels, for the arrows, and even for distributing tracts. At present they are all full of the idea." There was nothing astonishing about this; the new method had the advantage that it aroused the enthusiasm of those who took part in it; a little personal risk added a romantic flavour of adventure; and there was something definite to do, the thing above all that youth wants. A few militants were caught by the police; the rest became more careful, but not a bit less enthusiastic.

There was universal excitement at Heidelberg; the whole city was covered with the three arrows, and on the day of the election every enemy label was covered by ours. Here are a few of those we used:

If you attempt a coup, the Iron Front will strike!

Those who listen to Goebbels and those who know Hitler are saying: "Hindenburg will be President"

A little while before election day Nazi posters were put up everywhere, representing an enormous head of Hitler above which was the inscription: "Hitler will be elected President." Next day every one of these posters had a big note of interrogation chalked across Hitler's face. On Saturday, the eve of the election, the street walls were covered with one of our labels:

Adolf, mache Dir keine Sorgen, Bist erledigt Montag Morgen!

Adolf, don't worry, you will be right out of it on Monday morning!

These days ended with an unexpected final fling: at 3 a.m., while the whole town slept and everyone assumed that the battle was over, our militants went out to cover

the walls with a new label:

Durchgefallen, durchgefallen, Ist der Adolf bei den Wahlen!

Rejected, rejected, Adolf has been rejected at the election!

This appeared in triumph on the hoardings next morning, and its unexpected appearance enormously amused

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the population; the prompt retort of the Iron Front

On the other hand, reports soon began to come in of difficulties and dissension within our organizations. There were differences of opinion between the leaders of the Reichsbanner, those of the Iron Front, and those of the Social Democratic Party. I had foreseen the danger of this, and had at once tried to get into touch

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I went from one to another, insisting that it was madness to waste three whole days of campaigning; I compared the situation with that of a great battle, in which the General Staff has to work all night and even on Sunday; I was able to show that our opponents were not going to sleep. All in vain. Eyebrows were raised, I was treated with good-natured chaff, and away they went to dine and dance and play cards. I hurried off to the trade-union headquarters; here I found myself in the midst of a bourgeois entertainment. Ladies in finery and men in frock coats with big cigars were strolling about the rooms; it was a scene of laughter and fun. I hurried off to see one of the most prominent leaders; I found him in his garden, busy on his rose-beds. He was astonished to see me there, a hundred miles and more from Berlin; we talked of matters of great urgency, but he was tepid and lethargic. Grinding my teeth, I returned to Berlin. I tried to work, but I was paralysed: the mechanism of the organization was no longer running. Not until three days later did we get back to work.

On top of this there were intrigues. Otto Horsing suddenly reappeared in the Reichsbanner offices. He was the leader of that organization, but had not been seen for some time. Now he had come back—to work against the new ideas. They were "too modern", "too dangerous", they were contrary to police regulations [sic!]; what was more, they seemed to him to be ridiculous, and to expose us to the risk of being "misunderstood" by the public. He demanded that all further development of the new propaganda should be suspended. He threatened the central committee; the committee, suddenly horrified at the thought of its own courage, gave way to him. Everything we had begun was suddenly stopped, all the orders for eagerly awaited propaganda material which had reached us from local branches were to be cancelled, and excellent posters of a new type, artistically carried out and highly effective, promised to the local branches and wanted by them, were suddenly prohibited by our own leaders. It was argued that there was no money left. I was in charge

of propaganda, but a large sum had been expended without my knowledge, hundreds of thousands of marks, almost the whole of our available resources; they had been expended on the printing of two scandal-mongering pamphlets with details of the intimate life of the Nazi leaders. It was intended to send these to schoolmasters, clergymen, and officers—an enormous task, costly and time-wasting, heavily burdening our most active officials and wasting a great deal of money, for a result which in my opinion was very doubtful and entirely without moral value. I have always maintained that we ought to fight with clean hands, and that only hard work could save us. Scandal-mongering is not hard work, and could due no good. My remonstrances were without effect. The pamphlets had been ordered, and they were expected to have enormous success.

Bitterly disappointed and indignant, I abandoned the work and returned home. The campaign was manifestly lost already, and I had counted on certain success from the wave of enthusiasm produced by our new weapons; my opinion was that we could confidently expect a further increase of four to five millions in our vote. This was now manifestly impossible; our campaign, half ruined by our own action, could not bring us now more than an added million at most.

Not only that; the whole purpose of the plan had been to assure an enormous and striking success, to smash our opponents, and to make the supporters of the Republic so full of triumph that their spirit and enthusiasm could be of service in the battle to come—the Prussian elections. In that decisive battle we could then destroy the opposition by a series of propaganda fights on a colossal scale. I had submitted the plan of this campaign to our chief leaders and also to the head of the party, Otto Wels himself. This plan included the following stages. Once the Prussian victory had been secured, there must be the grant of freedom of propaganda for the Iron Front, the suppression of the prohibition of the wearing of uniforms at demonstrations, and the maximum use of the new freedom in order to

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My plan came to nothing; the party leaders had no broad policy, they lived from day to day; they had no confidence either in themselves or in the forces they led; they had lost, indeed, all contact with those forces, and had passively abandoned themselves to the working of destiny.

My prediction came true. Indeed, we did not even gain a further million votes, but only some 600,000. There could no longer be any question of a triumphant advance; on the contrary, our opponents, who had given themselves up for lost, recovered their courage and considered that it was they who had conquered. Their victory was only relative, but that was enough. Two days before the elections our leaders suddenly changed their minds, recovered from the panic into which Horsing's intervention had thrown them, and wanted to go on with our plan. But the mechanism had been destroyed. All that could be done was to reap the fruit of our own weakness and mistakes.

My friends and I regarded the situation with anxiety. In spite of all, it was our duty to go on with the fight. But the task to be accomplished was enormous, we had lost a great deal of ground, and our enemies were proceeding to profit by their advance. Elections

were imminent for the provincial diets of a number of German states. Hitler was preparing to seize the keystone of Germany—Prussia. His impresario, Goebbels, proclaimed to the country that the Nazis intended to carry on propaganda on an "American" scale. This was a reply to our vigorous offensive—it was being reported, indeed, in the press that the Iron Front itself intended to copy American methods. Goebbels also declared that enormous sums would be employed in propaganda; he hoped in this way to surpass us in the eyes of the middle classes. He would wake them up!

The tragedy of our situation was that while we had obtained a certain moral success in the psychological struggle, we had gained no concrete advantage; the opportunity of consolidating our forces had been missed, and our leaders were still deaf and blind, always ready to object, to put a stop to anything they thought too bold and unusual. Yet the essential condition of success, the actual control of the whole network of working-class organizations, including their financial resources, was still in their hands.

What was to be done? There was not a day to lose in the struggle against the Hitlerist menace, but everything had to be begun again from the beginning. My task, above all, was to carry on propaganda in our ranks in favour of propaganda. Hindenburg's electoral campaign had been a terrible proof of the inadequacy of the official propaganda of our party. It was infinitely humiliating to realize that the greatest political party in Germany, the best-organized party and the party which ought to have been able to decide the issue of the election, had proved incapable of making use of its moral weapons and had proved incompetent in its propaganda.

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and it was further time gained. Who could say? We might then succeed in getting our ideas adopted. Of one thing I was certain: once masters of the machinery, of the network of our organizations, we should be able in a few weeks to launch tremendous activities, and our whole programme would then proceed without a hitch. But how to steer clear of the fatal reef, the dull incomprehension of our responsible leaders? If a congress could have been held, there might have been a hope of throwing out the passive elements who were at the head of the party; there were quite enough members who were discontented with the wrong-headed policy of the leaders and could easily be roused; but for this very reason there was no chance of the party calling a congress in the midst of the political contest. There was thus only one thing to do—to try to convince the leaders.

I chose the three following methods: instructive articles in the newspapers, personal persuasion, and the production of practical proofs from the results of the elections to the provincial diets. I published a series of articles on the new propaganda, on the experience at the elections, and on the "activation" of the workers' movement. I sent these to our leaders. I tried to persuade each of them personally—Vogel, Breitscheid, Hilferding, Herts, Grassmann, Kunstler, Heilmann, Lobe, Stampfer, and others. I went to see them, talked with them for whole hours, and tried hard to convince them from figures, diagrams, and maps. When speaking separately to them I found each of them ready to admit that many things were amiss in high quarters; they promised to fight against inertia and routine and to help us to introduce the new methods. But when they came together in committee they all rejected the new ideas. They sent me to perdition, especially Otto Wels, the great leader of the party, and all his speeches ended with the statement that since he was against these ideas it was a waste of time to talk about them.

The only thing, then, was to beard him, no light task. I knew in advance that he was entirely against our new propaganda. At first he had refused to listen to the idea

of a campaign by means of symbols. His arguments were entirely incredible in the mouth of the leader of a revolutionary party—"We shall make ourselves ridiculous with all this nonsense," and "We shall have trouble with the police"! One of the comrades at the head of the Iron Front spent five hours with him trying to persuade him to give his assent to the new symbols, which had already proved their usefulness in the struggle. He consented at last when he had been presented by the Berlin police headquarters with a special document drawn up by lawyers, signed by the police authorities, and bearing the official stamp. This document stated that the police had no objection to offer and would not intervene if Socialist workers chalked the three arrows on the walls!

I decided nevertheless to have a talk with him. I found him in the lobby of the Reichstag on April 13, the day of the trade-union congress. He asked me abruptly: "What has been your experience of the campaign?"

I replied:

"Comrade Wels, I owe it to you to speak out. Of the three factors at work in our party, the masses, the party and trade-union organizations, and the leadership, the first is excellent; the masses are intelligent, disciplined, and full of enthusiasm and fighting spirit. The second factor, the machinery of the organizations, is also excellent. It is natural that it should be: an organization that has been in existence for seventy years ought to be good. The party machinery is equal to any situation and capable of carrying out any task; it could really do much more than it is set to do at present. As for the third factor, the leadership, I must admit frankly that the head is—rotten. That is where our weakness lies: the leadership puts a brake on everything, every action, all fighting spirit; the leadership is discouraged, and has no confidence either in the masses or in itself."

Wels turned purple, the witnesses of this scene opened their eyes wide in alarm—the storm was about to burst. But this had been no more than a psychological feint of

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"But you, comrade Wels, can remedy this; you can play the part of a German Lenin. Remove the fetters as quickly as you can, efface the mistakes made by incapable leaders; suppress them!"

Wels's face cleared, and with a smile full of shrewd

good humour he replied :

"Ah, well! We will talk about it. Come tomorrow to the party offices and I will give you a full hour."

We began to hope. Comrades congratulated me: "The hattle is half won. We may succeed after all."

Next day I went to see Wels. I found him surrounded by old party bureaucrats. I brought all my eloquence into play and did my best to win them over, Wels and the rest; but in vain—I was wasting time! At the end of half an hour he was called away, and the rest fell upon me:

"What are you after? We are working at top pressure, and paying careful attention to everything; we have nothing to learn from you, we are not in any need of help, not in the slightest."

I realized that the battle was lost.

There remained a third and last possibility—to persuade the leaders by the force of the facts. We were on the eve of four elections to regional diets, in Hamburg, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, and Prussia. I was sure of victory at Hamburg; I had already spoken there at the time of the second ballot in the presidential election, to a big meeting of 2000 officials of the party, and had had remarkable success; I had found entire comprehension and a manly spirit, even among the leaders. The new methods had penetrated there, and I knew that all would be well. Bavaria was a region apart, and the circumstances there were rather special. I chose Wurttemberg. I had already done a certain amount of preparatory work there during the first ballot for Hindenburg's election.

Wurttemberg seemed to be won over to reason. The great question was now Prussia. Berlin was thoroughly disheartening. There were plenty of fine phrases in the party press and at the public meetings, but behind the scenes it was quickly evident that everything was at sixes and sevens. There was no real political direction. The leaders were all out of town, speaking at insignificant meetings; the party offices were snowed under, as usual, and the literature organization was ineffective and often ridiculous. Some of the new ideas had penetrated the Iron Front, but its organization was doing nothing; the party had paralysed it by holding that the elections to the provincial diets were political elections in which all parties were fighting one another, and that, since the Iron Front contained elements of the Democratic and Centre parties (I per cent.!) as well as Social Democrats, this organization could not be allowed to work for the Socialist party alone! The party had itself taken sole "direction" of the campaign.

I soon learned that any real direction was non-existent. I looked for it everywhere; I was sent on from one organization to the next, but of direction there were no discoverable signs—for the simple reason that there was none. The leaders of the Iron Front had other cares—trouble with General Groener, the head of the Reichswehr, on the question of the dissolution of the Nazi

Our best forces were left outside the decisive struggle; here and there they were working on their own responsibility in the country, but all this was unco-ordinated, left to chance, and, what was more, paralysed everywhere by conflicts with the local party secretaries. All my efforts to improve matters, to get some really organized activity, remained sterile. I could see that the battle in Prussia would be lost; and it was. We suffered defeat also in Wurttemberg. Greatly distressed, I went to Stuttgart. And what did I learn there? Not a single one of the decisions of the planning conference had been carried out. The party offices at Berlin had inundated Wurttemberg also with their literature; as always, all

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efforts had been directed to useless activities. There, too, the Iron Front had been paralysed; it was admitted once more that the new methods were the only effective ones, but routine had had the upper hand. Thus we had lost an important position.

Only one centre had not failed—Hamburg. There had been a real fight there, and the result had been the brilliant victory I had anticipated. The new methods had been used, and everybody was loud in their praise; the campaign of symbols had become popular in the party, especially in the country districts; the three arrows badge was being worn; red flags bearing three arrows were now making their appearance everywhere; many people were exchanging the greeting "Freiheit!" in the streets, and many of the party newspapers were placing the three arrows at the top of their front page. One of the few papers that did not was Vorwarts, the national party organ: it obstinately refused.

We were thus on the eve of a fresh struggle. I breathed freely—at last we had a real opportunity; here, in Hesse, we supporters of the new ideas had our best forces, and the leading positions were occupied by active men. A telegram took me away once more from my scientific work; I hurried to the spot and threw myself joyfully and with confidence into the struggle. We and the enemy alike grasped the importance of this fight; it was the psychologically decisive battle. If we won, the way might be open for the application of the new propaganda,

205 P

the only reliable weapon; if the road to power was once more blocked for Hitler, there would come a new wave of confidence in our forces, and there would be many opportunities in the next struggle. If Hitler won in Hesse, it would mean that his arrival in power was assured. It would put an end to the beginnings of dissolution which were already to be observed in the ranks of the Storm Troops, which were growing tired of hope deferred. The fight in Hesse was thus to be a struggle to the death with moral weapons. All parties mobilized their forces, and the small State was inundated with speakers, posters, and tracts. Almost all the members of the Reichstag were to be found there. They covered the State in every direction. Hitler surpassed himself; Goebbels made him speak in the open in every district of Hesse, to enormous crowds which were assembled by the beating of drums, crowds mainly of peasants; there was uproar and excitement everywhere; flowers, flags, drums, processions, torchlight marches—everything was brought to bear.

But this time we, too, were not sleeping. On the very first night a plan of campaign had been drawn up, following all the rules of rational organization; it had been thoroughly discussed, and was sent out to our network of organizations. A modern examination of the results by means of maps was instituted, enabling the whole course of the struggle to be watched. A small tract, energetically written, was broadcast; it hammered into the heads of the masses the faith in the power of our symbols, awakened fighting spirit and confidence in our own forces, and, above all, stated the three principal slogans with which we intended to carry on our campaign—"revived activity", "iron discipline", and "proletarian solidarity". The campaign was divided into weeks, so as to secure growing tension each week. By certain devices we kept the masses expectant. We promised, for instance, to produce "Schorsch", apopular Hessian figure, and curiosity was widespread over the "iron Schorsch" that would arise in Hesse in the last weeks. It was whispered everywhere what it

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At last we were to be seen at full strength. Our chances grew instantly. Such crowded meetings had never before been known; there was little theoretical discussion, but confidence and fighting spirit were so much the more effectively inspired in our militants by propaganda acting on the subconscious self, while the conscious was appealed to by the oath of faithfulness. There was what we called "revolutionary gymnastics"—dialogues between the speaker and the crowd, which led the crowd to shout "Freiheit!" at intervals and to raise the clenched fist. The purpose was to inject combative ardour into men's minds, by means of collective volitional acts, so as to make it easier to call forth such ardour in the future. Everywhere one could feel the

surge of the masses, their animation and strength and

A guerrilla war of symbols and pictures raged in Hesse, taking the most singular forms. It was only with this development that the enemy began to find means of combating our symbol, destroying it or making fun of it. We replied promptly. In several places they tried to turn our arrows into umbrellas, which were regarded as a middle-class emblem. We barbed them a second time, thus restoring our symbol. They destroyed the effect of the arrows by pointing them at both ends; we changed the new points to feathers, and once more restored our symbol. They drew three broken arrows with a swastika on top of them; we changed their picture to a rain of arrows pouring on the swastika, and again we had the last word. They drew a hand held up against the arrows, writing below it "Halt!" We lengthened the arrows through the hand and wrote beneath: "We shall get the better of you anyway!"

Then came the highest expression of the political dynamism of the masses—demonstrations. Meanwhile the von Papen Government had come into power with Hitler's assistance, and in consideration of this he was allowed to restore his Storm Troops, a thing of the utmost importance for his propaganda. The prohibition of the wearing of uniforms was suppressed, and all parties were permitted to march in columns. In our newspapers and those of the bourgeois moderates Hitler and von Papen were strongly attacked for this move; they were also laughed at for concerning themselves with such a trivial matter. The raillery was ill-judged: Hitler had made the right move from the point of view of his tactics. But there was one thing on which he had not counted: he thought he had a monopoly, relying on the fact that until then his principal enemy, the Socialist Party, had consistently shown an entire absence of psychological foresight and a consistent clumsiness in the technique of propaganda.

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First the public was subjected to feelings of depression and anxiety; for this I drew on the funeral scene from the Dreigroschenoper. Without music, in a sinister silence,

there went the victims of war, orphans, widows, wounded men; cripples borne in cars; then the victims of the capitalist crisis, unemployed, homeless, starving; finally the victims of the Nazis, beaten and wounded, some on crutches, some with heads or limbs swathed. The crowd was moved; there were sighs of pity and revolt.

Suddenly there came a ray of light, of hope—the liberators, symbolizing our power and our ardour in fighting for the freedom of the people and for the abolition of all social injustices. Led by a band, stepping rhythmically to the accompaniment of military marches, our formations passed by in uniform, with symbolic groups in their midst representing the strength and fighting spirit of our comrades. At their head marched a group of a dozen strapping young fellows, in uniform, carrying above their heads three enormous arrows of burnished metal, glistening in the sun. In time with the music the arrows were shot forward, at a word of command, every thirty seconds, with shouts of "Freiheit!" ("Freedom!"). This produced an enormous dynamic effect on everyone; the spectators, carried away, cried "Freiheit!" and cheered frantically.

A lorry followed, in which a handsome young man from the Reichsbanner stood with a flag bearing the three arrows in his left hand and his right arm lifted for the "Freiheit!" salute. The lorry was decorated all round with bugles from which hung red pennons with the three arrows. Another lorry carried a moving representation, "The Shade of Bebel": on a sheet was painted a huge black silhouette of the head of the great tribune in profile, illuminated by a projector placed in the lorry. On another lorry, decorated with red drapery and green boughs, was "The Goddess of Liberty", a fine young woman draped in red and with the Phrygian cap on her head; she looked fixedly ahead, holding in her left hand a big red flag with the three arrows and in her right hand a sword thrust forward. She symbolized the figure of the "Marseillaise" on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Shrill fanfares were trumpeted round her, and she was

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followed by a whole forest of red flags carried by the Socialist Youth. After these came a group of pretty girls dressed in red flags with the three arrows, their right shoulders bared; they brandished red flags and at night carried torches; these were the "Living Torches of Liberty". Then came several groups that aroused delirious enthusiasm among the spectators. In order to provide relief without lessening the tension, it was necessary to appeal to a new set of emotions, and this was the purpose of the third "chapter" of the procession. It contained groups mocking the enemy; the excitement of the crowd was now diverted along another path. First came a cart-horse, pulling along a tumbril from the edge of which hung a puppet, upside down, in the uniform of a Storm Trooper and with Hitler's features; the tumbril was followed by a group of men singing

Adolf, ade, Scheiden tut weh.

Good-bye, Adolf, it's sad to part,

There could be only one of him (Hitler), he won't come again.

The spectators laughed heartily. Between these groups marched the sports organizations, various associations, youth groups, etc., incessantly shouting "Freiheit!" and saluting with the raised arm and the clenched fist. The massed crowds joined in the shouts with enthusiasm.

The fourth "chapter" of the procession represented the Socialist ideals and demands. With drums beating and red banners unfurled, amid deafening fanfares, went

columns of the Socialist Youth, at their head a banner with the inscription: "Youth—Hope of the People." The next group represented "The Brotherhood of the Peoples": on a lorry stood men and women in different national costumes gripping hands. Another group was entitled "The Reign of Labour". This was a lorry with an anvil which two vigorous workmen struck with heavy hammers in time with music. Round the lorry walked workmen in blouses carrying various tools. There followed a group called "Union of Workers and Peasants": peasants on big farm horses were surrounded by artizans in blouses, carrying the insignia of their trades, who led the horses by the bridles or held out their hands to the riders. Several groups of the same type followed. One of the last of these was "The Victorious Three Arrows": two files of girls in light dresses, garlanded with flowers, surrounded three beautiful young girls in their midst who carried great gilded arrows decorated with flowers and pointed upwards, symbolizing the Socialist motto "Toward the light!", while a band played in turn the song "Bruder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit!" ("Brothers, advance into the sunlight of Freedom!"), popular melodies, and waltzes of Johann Strauss.

This was the apotheosis. The crowd was moved and excited by the incessant shouts of "Freiheit!" from the marching columns and from the spectators, mixed with the music and the rhythmical marching of the masses of workers; all this produced an ineffaceable impression. Now came the final note, that of exhortation to action. This was a large lorry on which stood an enormous figure 1, covered with red material and bearing the inscription "Vote for List no. 1". On the lorry, around a ballotbox, stood four persons in characteristic costumes—a peasant, a worker, a woman, and an intellectual. They continually threw white sheets representing ballot papers into the box. This was what the spectator was expected to do on the day of the election, now he had been won over by the "book" he had just "glanced through"—the procession

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result of the demonstration: at the end of the actual procession there formed a long further procession without flags or music—those who had been "activated". Spectators, carried away, felt unable to remain passive, and themselves joined the procession, making common cause with us: they had been won over. It was a striking and incontestable proof of activation, a triumph for the new methods of propaganda.

I have a vivid memory of the great torchlight procession on the eve of the election at Darmstadt. Twenty thousand men marched at night by the light of torches, surrounded by thick clouds of smoke; among the masses, symbolic groups suddenly stood out, fantastic and picturesque, in brilliant colours lit up by the moving lights; the bright red of the flags, the music, the shouts of "Freiheit!", and the thunder of thousands rhythmically marching, mingled in an unprecedented symphony, and the crowd was filled with wild excitement. I found myself alongside a car containing reporters and members of the Reichstag. Lobe, the president of the Reichstag, was standing, and with his two hands he was pressing against his heart a bouquet which a little girl had given him. He looked steadily at the masses who cheered him as they marched by; this sober, thoughtful politician had suddenly been transported to another world, almost an imaginary one; it was evident that he was moved to the depth of his soul. When the procession had passed, Lobe came up to me, shook hands warmly, and said: "Well, I have seen today that you were quite right." As we parted I thought to myself, will he get the better of the opposition, will he dare to?

elevated and purely human order, had been produced as if by enchantment in the crowd. There was superb evidence of it in the photographs of onlookers. These showed not features distorted by rage or hatred, but men and women in ecstasy, in a state of happy deliverance.

A miracle had happened in the sight of all of us—the transformation into active dynamism of the enormous latent energy of the working class. Everyone could see that victory was certain in Hesse. And on June 19 victory was in fact achieved. The enemy had been sure of victory, and the professional politicians had agreed with them, but the Social Democratic Party gained two seats, and the Socialist Government remained in power. The Hessian election broke the magic circle which had been paralysing men and had rendered them helpless to counter the rising Hitlerist wave of mass political madness. It was seen that it really was possible to triumph over the swastika. Here lay the enormous importance of this election. It had been a psychological recovery among the masses. For several months, even among the most active supporters of the Republic, the general opinion had been that in the long run the struggle was hopeless, that the best that could be hoped for was that Hitler's arrival in power might be delayed for a time, and that the real object of any continuance of the struggle would be to tire the enemy and to prepare the way for recovery after the disaster. The hope that Hitler might actually fail to attain power seemed to have been entirely abandoned. Now, however, we knew that after all he could be kept out, and we knew also how it could be done.

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We had really irrefutable proof that our victory had indeed been due to the judicious use of rigorously calculated methods of propaganda. The following figures showed it: in four towns of Hesse, namely Offenbach, Darmstadt, Mainz, and Worms, conferences had been held for the "enlightenment" of the militants of the party, and the whole of the new apparatus of propaganda had been instituted, but not in a fifth town, Giessen, which I had deliberately selected for a sort of control experiment; and Giessen was the only town in which the Social Democratic Party lost votes, while in the other four our gains were very substantial. It was clear, moreover, that the victory was in proportion to the extent of propaganda. In the four towns the campaign started on these dates—Offenbach, May 25; Darmstadt, May 27; Mainz, May 30; and Worms, June 6. Our gains were in proportion—Offenbach, 3300 votes; Darmstadt, 1500; Mainz, 1300; and Worms, 600. Thus the Hesse experiment had absolutely succeeded. We now had in our hands the sure means of solving our problem.

expected to wake up the party leaders.

Then we presented ourselves before the party committee. It proved to be labour in vain. I saw at once that we could not hope for understanding sympathy. The committee did go so far as to accept the new symbols and to order the use of them in the campaign, but it had no real will to fight. It was impossible to get new wine into these old bottles! Nor had they the courage to entrust the direction of the struggle to young and fresh and uncompromised forces and allow them to take responsibility for it. The old clique wanted to do everything themselves; they hoped to profit personally by the new ideas. They wanted to use methods of which the efficacy was now incontestable for their own ends—to establish their shaken authority with the masses. They adopted the forms and draped themselves with the new symbols, but their spirit remained unchanged—crafty, timid, incapable of rising to the situation, to the pace of the new times, to the exigencies of the struggle. They had no plan, they did not even realize the necessity of having one, and when they did make use of the new methods they mixed them up with antiquated and inefficient methods in such a way as to destroy their usefulness.

A committee was formed to consider the whole matter. Instead of at once studying the plan which had been prepared and submitted to them, the committee proposed, in order to gain time, to meet again some days

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all this? Does he want us to give him a post?

There, in the sublime struggle, in the effervescence of the awakened spirit of the masses, I soon recovered from my disgust and momentary discouragement. We had now to carry the fight to a successful conclusion in Hesse and to point the moral. We continued the struggle, and

emerged from it victoriously.

The first days after the victory were passed in wild excitement. But all preparations were immediately made for triumph in the new struggle, the Reichstag election campaign; the election was due in Hesse in six weeks' time. Everything was done, of course, in accordance with the new methods, and without troubling about the activities, such as they were, of the central office of the party at Berlin, which continued to inundate the country with antiquated material. It wanted to centralize the campaign of symbols—the manufacture and distribution of badges, flags, etc. This, of course, meant more delay. Here is an example. In Hesse, with 10,000 organized party members, we distributed 50,000 badges in a fortnight; this was equivalent to five millions for the whole Reich. But "as a matter of prudence" the central committee ordered only one million. Orders should have been placed with a dozen firms, but to save a halfpenny on each badge the order was placed with a single firm. Consequently the demands that streamed in from all parts of the country

could not be satisfied, and certain districts were compelled to make their own badges at the last moment. So also with banners and flags and everything. Once more Berlin inundated the country with paper; several millions of ill-compiled, useless tracts were distributed. After the elections these tracts remained on hand in thousands in all the local offices; they had been regarded as ineffective or worse, and in many cases the local workers would not touch them. All the parties made use of picture posters, except our own, which contented itself with distributing those left over from the Prussian elections. The only positive gain was the official recognition of the three arrows and their employment in the campaign, and the fact that the Iron Front once more took part in the campaign of symbols. But everywhere there was latent hostility between the party organizations and those of the Iron Front.

by the party direction.

The direction of the Iron Front finally saw that things could not remain as they were; some means must be found of getting the effective control of the campaign into our hands. Then there came into existence our plan of "getting hold of a finger". The party direction was to entrust us with the organization as models, in four places within the Reich, of great symbolic processions, similar to the Darmstadt one. Delegates from neighbouring centres were to visit these four places to see the arrangements for these processions. The whole campaign of symbols was closely connected with the processions. In this way we assured ourselves of the "finger". Then, by intensified activity and a series of stratagems, we counted on getting hold in a short time of "the whole arm and then the whole body", in other words, the whole machinery of propaganda. I felt sure of success. After a furious battle in the central offices of

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Front finally secured control of the matter.

Thus we had our "finger". The next thing was to lose no time; the whole of the Reich must be made acquainted as quickly as possible with the essential technique of the symbol campaign. I worked day and night, and at the end of forty-eight hours I had prepared the propaganda pamphlet, entitled Précis of modern propaganda, illustrated with drawings and photographs; four days later it was printed and ready for distribution. But the party direction had got wind of the matter, and suddenly prohibited the pamphlet it had itself asked me to draw up. At that time I had refused, seeing no purpose to be served in compiling instructions for a plan which had been rejected. Now the party direction ordered the destruction of a pamphlet already completed, printed, and demanded from everywhere—on the ridiculous pretext that the Nazis might learn something from it. Only after long discussions did our direction at last succeed in getting the veto rescinded and the pamphlet distributed.

Authorized to organize model processions, and firmly intent on taking advantage of this authorization to do everything possible to spread the scope of the symbol campaign, we left to start our work. Suddenly we came up against obstacles devised by the party. Everywhere the party offices obstructed the work of the Iron Front: they refused to part with the right of initiative, though they were making no use of it and did not even know how to. They also suddenly objected absolutely to the use of adhesive labels, a means of propaganda of well-known efficacy at little cost, since specimens could quickly be reproduced by the million; we were often reduced to printing these ourselves in secret, in country districts, a difficult matter, since we had no funds with which to meet the expense. We were being dogged with objections and obstructions, but we were determined to evade them.

This time again the marvellous working masses of Germany found a remedy for the situation. With their

sound judgment they made good the mistakes made by their leaders. Their columns filed in martial step through the German towns, shouting "Freiheit!" We worked unremittingly, flying from one town to another, and stirring up the masses. Everyone now wore our badge, the symbolic three arrows shone everywhere; in processions they were carried in various forms; hundreds of different devices were invented under the new sign, and the masses were at last thoroughly aroused. At night three enormous arrows, made of electric lights, shone on the walls of the trade-union offices, the streets were splendidly hung with red flags bearing the three arrows, and confetti in the same form were thrown. By about the first week of July it became a rare thing to meet Hitlerists wearing the swastika on the days when our processions were organized; the enemy badges and the brown shirts were disappearing. In Berlin Storm Troopers were repeatedly dragged by the crowd into the courts of blocks of flats, and there they were divested of their brown trousers and left to get home as best they could; at Frankfort the police had to take Storm Troopers to the police station in cars. The wave of popular feeling was mounting irresistibly.

roward the middle of July I could see that the Nazis were steadily losing; everywhere they were on the defensive; the initiative of attack had passed into our hands and lay with the Iron Front. The following secret instructions, signed by Goebbels, were sent to all the Nazi organizations and propaganda leaders in the Reich: "The heads of our press and propaganda must manage as quickly as possible to get the party out of the defensive

parties."

Here is an account from a Baden newspaper of this time:

"All these activities were carried out with an enthusiasm long unknown in our party. There were unemployed men, without a penny in their pockets, who went several hours' journey on foot in order to take part in our demonstrations. Everywhere women stood with

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their children in the crowds, adding to the enthusiasm of the marchers by their shouts of 'Freiheit!' The middle classes were disturbed at the sight of all this agitation; they were unable to understand how it had been brought about. For these people it was a mystery how the Iron Front had been able to put an end to the Hitlerist demonstrations."

Here are a few more quotations:

"On Friday the Iron Front organized at Offenburg a demonstration in which the Communists also took

part," etc.

Clear proofs of our victory accumulated in my hands. On July 12 the Angriff, Goebbels' newspaper, had on its front page, in big print, surrounded by red, this startling message: "The red murderers intend to make 20,000 men perish in a fire!" Good! At last these heroes were talking in a different tone; it was their turn to employ "intimidatory propaganda in the wrong direction". It was we now who were upsetting their nerves and they who were complaining to the public, describing us as the more powerful. This was a sign of the growing confusion in their ranks for which I had been waiting. We must go ahead, keep up the fight, and not allow the enemy a moment's respite!

In a street in Berlin a Nazi tract fell into my hands. At the head were three arrows and, in bold type, the word "Freiheit." They were adopting our ideas, copying our symbols! All their organs, their newspapers and comic sheets, were filled with attacks on the "Three Arrows"; they were turning and twisting like worms under the shots from the arrows, and trying by all possible methods to stop the triumphant march of our symbol.

21 Q

absolute masters, sure of their victory; it was their turn to lament and cover the walls with execrations and implore the population to "think" of all that our victory would mean. It was they now who were the innocent sheep and we the wicked wolves! They said so themselves! Splendid! Wonderful! Confidence grew unceasingly in our ranks. Everyone was jubilant, full of the subject, and now we heard the voice of the people with quite a different ring. At last even Vorwarts placed our three arrows on its front page, with the rhetorical cry: "We are attacking!" It is true that another communication stood alongside this under a big headline: "Demonstrations prohibited!" and a sub-heading that betrayed the paper's true psychological orientation: "Along the path of reason?"

What was unexpected, and inexplicable, was that the leaders of the Social Democratic Party were in a curious and constant state of alarm at the popular effervescence that was revealing itself everywhere. They still did not realize the importance of what was going on before their eyes. They were, of course, out of touch with the masses, and they were dumbfounded by the fact that the feared and hated propaganda methods of the Nazis, with their uniforms and demonstrations, were suddenly being turned against the Nazis, and by the further fact that this master-stroke was ours. Now the Nazis, headed by Hitler, began to assail Hindenburg and von Papen with telegrams hysterically calling for the immediate suppression of all demonstrations. Our progress was becoming irresistible and must at all costs be stopped. The "brown heroes" had suddenly lost heart; they had miscalculated, and had found that their monopoly was being broken.

At this point we learned to our amazement that our own leaders agreed with the Nazis and were seconding their demand. On July 18 the Prussian Council of State adopted, with the votes of the Catholic Centre and the Social Democrats, this motion: "The Council of State considers it indispensable to reintroduce, in addition to the decreed restriction of the freedom of demonstrations.

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the prohibition of the wearing of uniforms." On July 17 the direction of our party had actually implored Hindenburg, in a telegram signed by Wels and Breitscheid, to proclaim the prohibition of demonstrations!

Two days earlier I had clearly seen that the situation was developing in two important directions. The Nazi leadership had been driven effectively on to the defensive, the offensive being in our hands; and the leaders of the Social Democratic Party were suffering from a fright psychosis. This state of things called at once for the following actions: our victorious progress must be announced everywhere (a capital argument in favour of our propaganda); the whole of the foreign press must be informed as quickly as possible; facts and documents bearing out this news must be supplied to the whole world (this would psychologically be a hard blow at the Hitlerist movement); and our attack must be pressed on and the processions increased in number and in aggressiveness. We were approaching with giant strides toward the culminating point of the campaign. The idea that we might have no need of elections, that the issue would be decided without them, gained currency more and more.

Our great press reception was to take place on July 18; everything had been prepared in advance to this end; an exhibition of illustrations of our demonstrations, a complete show of our symbols and of the characteristic forms of our propaganda and of that of Hitler, were systematically arranged; among the documents were authentic proofs that we had driven Hitler on to the defensive. On the 17th I was to take part in the procession at Magdeburg; I went there to organize it. On the morning of the 18th I was at Mannheim to prepare a great torchlight procession there. On the evening of that day Hitler was to be definitely checkmated, in Berlin, with the aid of the press. I left for Berlin by air. On my arrival at the Tempelhof aerodrome I learned of the prohibition of demonstrations.

press campaign must be carried through to the end. At our office I found our people utterly depressed: the leaders were disheartened and no longer inclined to take the press campaign seriously. Everything was in vain: I was actually warned, with threats, against doing anything on my own responsibility. I realized in the end that it was impossible at the moment to allow the press a glimpse behind the scenes of our movement; as things were, nothing at all could be done. To my disgust I found myself compelled to give up my campaign. No hope remained; all was lost.

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Next morning the Rubicon was crossed. The alarm was given to our office at 9.30 a.m.; we received a message that Severing, Minister of the Interior, and Grzesinsky, Chief of Police, had been arrested. There was reason to suppose that action would be taken at any moment against us and the party. If von Papen was in earnest, all our central organs would be occupied in less than half an hour, and put out of action.

The moment had come for revolutionary action. The situation was now critical. The party leaders and those of the trade unions and of the Iron Front met at the office

at Lindenstrasse 3. "Now or never!" I said to the head of the Iron Front at the last moment. "Take four of our armed men with you, face the bosses of the party, and give them this ultimatum: 'No more talk, it is time for our defence organizations to act.' If the party leaders refuse, declare them arrested and act yourselves. Get quickly out of Berlin, since it is under martial law, and from some other town give the order to mobilize the whole of our forces; at the same time, send an ultimatum to Papen demanding the immediate withdrawal of his whole imposture." But my words were vain.

However, an unexpected thing happened, a last respite from Fate: von Papen hesitated, he was afraid: he had threatened, but he did nothing—he allowed seven full hours to pass! At the end of half an hour we learned that the first news was false, nothing had happened to Severing or Grzesinsky, both were in freedom and safety in their offices; we, too, were left undisturbed, the place where the representatives of our directing organizations were discussing the situation was not being surrounded by the police. It was evident that von Papen was hesitating, he was afraid, afraid of us, afraid of the council in session at Lindenstrasse 3, and was waiting to see what the powerful workers' party would do. He was in doubt: would it not be too dangerous to take the first step and let loose the storm? So he hesitated and allowed seven full hours to pass

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After this all hope of respite was lost. Germany could no longer be saved without enormous sacrifices, except by the one means of propaganda. There now rose the spectre of civil war with all its consequences. Would our leaders at last be capable of abandoning their passiveness, of nerving themselves to make the decision to give greater freedom to the new forces? Would the working masses be able to compel them to do so? Their organization still remained intact, and the whole position could be saved, though it was evident that nothing but brute force could now avail against the enemy. This was the great question for the German workers' movement, including the trade unions. But my own feeling, after all I had witnessed, was that the "leaders" would never be capable of being leaders, of acting and directing. Now, I thought, they will lose courage and lose their heads for good and all.

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victory they had dreamed of. I had interesting information in my hands concerning the struggle of June and July, supplied by our agents and coming from the organizations of our adversaries. Toward the middle of June, Hitler counted on obtaining 54 per cent. of the total vote. After that, the figure steadily fell, first to 51 per cent., then 47 per cent., then 44 per cent., and by the middle of July to 37 per cent. This was striking evidence from the other side of their depression, resulting from the good effects of our new fighting methods. After July 20, I knew that their supporters would rapidly grow in number, as they did; yet, together with their allies, the German Nationalists, they only obtained in the end 44 per cent. of the total vote. Once more Hitler had been beaten and the realization of his dream had been deferred. And this despite the fact that at the last moment he had induced von Papen to strike his tremendous blow at us. It had been too late; the effect of our propaganda had been too deep-seated to enable them to checkmate us in ten days.

^<sup>1 By offering Hitler the Vice-Chancellorship under Papen and, when Hitler declared that he would accept nothing but the Chancellorship, curtly dismissing him.—Translator's note.

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Papen's propaganda, however, had no effect. Neither his command of the resources of the State nor the great sums invested in his propaganda were of any avail. Once more it was shown that propaganda in itself, with no political basis, is useless; political propaganda and commercial publicity are, after all, two different things.

The real victor on November 6 was the Communist Party, which had gained votes both from the Social Democrats and from the Hitlerists. This was a clear

symptom, though of no practical importance.

in the party slogans or in the ability of the party to put up a fight. The fact that it did not go more entirely to pieces was due simply to the force of cohesion that had cemented the organizations for many years past, to the tenacity and endurance of the masses, and to the belief that, in spite of all, a miracle might happen. Manifestly the final, merciless struggle was approaching; and each one prepared to do his duty. It was necessary, therefore, to form a coalition.

Since the end of July I had withdrawn from politics, fully realizing that it was impossible to get anything useful done. The first thing needed was to try to heal the workers' movement itself. The old leaders had failed and must be got rid of. So long as they were at the head of the movement, nothing could be done. I was now working for this. I spoke to the workers on the subject at every opportunity. Unhappily, I no longer had the same means of adequately spreading my ideas; our meetings were attended by smaller and smaller audiences, consisting almost entirely of well-paid officials of the party and the trade unions, who sought to acquit the true authors of our defeat if one tried to tell the truth and get them to join in the attack on their leaders; one was met simply with a malevolent and suspicious refusal. They were, indeed, economically dependent on the leaders. Even after the November defeat they continued to refuse to think independently; they had but one hope, to be able to continue to vegetate.

At this time there appeared in Das Tagebuch an article, "Down with Wels and Company!", in which very sound opinions were expressed concerning the leaders of the Social Democratic Party and the causes of their failure. The clan around the party leaders at once suspected me of being the author of the article, but I was not, though I entirely agreed with the ideas put forward. Attacks on me followed.

In October I was asked, as an expert on propaganda, what effective means of propaganda were available for the coming elections of November 6. The only measure, I replied, that might perhaps restore, at this late hour,

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the courage and hope of the masses would be for the leaders to show revolutionary courage by sending out a manifesto appealing to the militants, confessing that they had erred, and declaring their readiness to transmit responsibility for the campaign to new forces that had not yet been worn out. This would be a heroic method, but it was the only one with any chance of producing a psychological effect—an effect, moreover, of cleansing and purification. Lenin adopted it on several occasions, publicly avowing mistakes, admitting responsibility for them, and promising not to repeat them. The propagandist effect of this was moving, and it frequently changed depression into a state of mind in which fresh courage and fresh strength could be brought into play. But there was no Lenin among the Social Democrats, and consequently it was impossible for my proposal to be taken seriously.

After this events came thick and fast. First came Papen's fall. All his plans had come to nothing, the situation remained unclear, and in Hindenburg's entourage opinion was divided between making certain concessions to public opinion and relying on the army—it was never certain how things would end. General von Schleicher seemed to unite both outlooks, and he was used to throwing over his past colleagues or leaders—Hermann Muller, Groener, and Bruning were cases in point. He now threw over von Papen, and installed himself in his place. He looked in both directions, parleying with Hitler and talking also with the trade unions; he sat on the fence between the two parties until Hindenburg, growing tired, made a new bargain with Hitler. Hitler had learned the lesson of August 13; this time he did not let his opportunity slip. He knew well that his destiny hung by a thread; the defeat of November 6 had played havoe in his ranks, the rupture with Gregor Strasser was an ominous symptom, and all sorts of intrigues were being hatched in his immediate surroundings. He accepted Hindenburg's offer and became Chancellor of the Reich

This time he had not miscalculated. In the eyes of

The pursuit of his detested adversaries followed at once. Blow followed blow—the dissolution of the Reichstag, its burning as a propaganda device and an excuse for terrorism during the elections, the suppression of the Communist Party, arrests, persecution of the Jews, the famous "campaign against corruption", the "Labour festival" of May-day, the destruction of the trade unions, and the dissolution and total destruction of the Social Democratic Party. Finally came attacks on his allies, the Steel Helmets and the German Nationalist Party, the fall of Hugenberg, and the end of the Catholic Centre Party, the Bavarian People's Party, and the Democratic Party.

Events succeeded one another before our eyes like a cinema film. The whole process had assumed a unique tempo, never before seen either in Soviet Russia or in Italy. It was a wild career, in which the German middle classes entirely lost their head. The poor Social Democratic "leaders" allowed themselves to be led over to the Nazi leader—completely beaten and put out of countenance; they bleated agreement with him, their reward for which was to be kicked out; in spite of their sudden conversion to the "completely national" point of view, they were sent packing. A Nazi Minister gave them this epitaph: "They have no business to open their mouths; they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The Nemesis of history has spoken the last word. They have reaped that which they sowed. No true Socialist has any pity for their fate."

VIII

PSYCHICAL VIOLENCE ON A WORLD SCALE

Once in power, Hitler's first act was to set up a Ministry of Propaganda, at the head of which Goebbels was placed. Psychical violence was now to irradiate the outer world. The political aim—hegemony in Europe—had been formulated in Mein Kampf, in which the stages were indicated in advance.

PSYCHICAL VIOLENCE

It was to be expected that the Hitlerists would be faithful to their habitual tactics—as in the event they were—and, after inundating the country with symbols, would resort to intimidation. Shortly before the plebiscite they threatened to carry out a putsch in the Saar and to bring in their troops "to guarantee order". This threat decided the issue, as usual; and Hitler's victory was gained all the more easily since the plan described above was not carried out.

Thus Hitler won his first propaganda battle in the international field, beating France in the Saar. His next coup was the reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936. Speculating on the indecision shown by the democratic countries in their application of sanctions against Italy, on the confusion at Geneva, and on the dissensions between France and Britain, Hitler struck his great blow and took his first great risk. He was already so convinced of the efficacy of his method of bluff and intimidation that he gave the order to his troops to enter the Rhineland almost without munitions. Geneviève Tabouis, in her book Blackmail or War, gives a picturesque account of Hitler's discussion with his generals on the eve of the occupation. One of them drew his attention to the risk Germany would be running. Hitler replied:

"Let me tell you that France won't move an inch, and that we can get going without the least fear. In fact, you needn't serve out any ammunition to your troops, because they won't need to fire a single shot."

"If France takes any counter-measures," replied

7

The entry of the German troops into the Rhineland passed off without a hitch. Madame Tabouis mentions that a Frenchman in Cologne was able personally to verify that "not a single round of cartridges had been issued to the infantry and not a single shell to the artillery. The aircraft, though equipped with machineguns, had no ammunition."

Accordingly, violent methods continued; the dictators' appetite was stimulated by success. Mussolini felt that his hour had come, and at the chosen moment he struck where he could hope to succeed without excessive risk—in Abyssinia. With the maximum of theatrical gestures and explosive speeches, and threats to set the world on fire, and with the whole arsenal of modern military resources—motorized troops, bombers, machine-guns, poison gas, and, last but not least, journalists and cine-photographers—he went to war against an old African people who had begun to assimilate Western culture, who rested all their hopes

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This people had no idea that they were playing the part of guinea-pig in an international experiment. The time had come for an object-lesson for Europe on the strength of Fascism, in order to intimidate the diplomats, to reinforce the conditioned reflex of submission by the excitation through bloodshed of the absolute reflex of fear. The new arms also needed testing by a laboratory experiment in vivo. Which human mass could serve as guinea-pig? The answer had been found. The cynicism of the Italian dictator was not to be obstructed by trifles which could only matter to "old ladies in England and puritanical archbishops". Abyssinia was beaten, and Mussolini's prestige, which had been rapidly falling in his own country, rose again.

The tragic thing is that he nearly lost his sceptre: the Ethiopian resistance proved stronger than might have been expected—the human factor still counts in spite of "motorization". In the winter of 1935–6 the Italian military situation was very precarious, and there were signs of revolt in Italy, with demonstrations here and there in February. Then it was that Laval's equivocal action embittered Anglo-French relations; there was a weakening at Geneva; Hitler profited by it to carry out his coup in the Rhineland, and Mussolini's situation in Italy was "disinhibited"—he was saved!

This example shows clearly the interplay of bluff, psychical violence, and Realpolitik. And yet again the democracies failed to profit by the lesson: they obstinately persisted in their "wait and see" policy

and still failed to recognize the value of the psychical weapons which were being used against them.

Now, however, there came a revulsion in France—the victory of anti-Fascism at the elections of May 1936 and the arrival of the Popular Front in power. The whole world was filled with fresh hope; an obstacle seemed to have been erected in the path of the dictatorships, which at first showed annoyance and even some apprehension. The psychological capital accumulated in a few weeks by France and the democracies was immense. Unfortunately nobody knew how to use it. It was frittered away in discussions and internal discord and the usual backstairs intrigue. For a moment it seemed possible that the lessons of the examples offered by Soviet Russia, Germany, and Italy, of the employment on an enormous scale of collective psychical phenomena would not be lost, that their methods would be adopted in the service of the great human ideas of peace and democracy. Here is an extract from a series of articles by Jérôme and Jean Tharaud in the Paris-Soir, published about this time under the title "The Unknown Force":

We have just been having lessons from Russia, Germany, and Italy. One of our colleagues who had been present the other week at the famous meeting of the Front Populaire at the Vélodrome d'Hiver described it to us, and it was possible to see very clearly the different processes used that day to produce the force I have just been speaking of. First there was the sheer size of the place chosen for the meeting; the vast crowd within it, and the considerable crowd outside listening to the loud-speakers; the sudden darkening of the hall and flood-lighting of immense portraits of Guesde and Jaurès; the gripping effect of the gramophone record in which a dead man, Pierre Renaudel, described to the crowd, who were

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But men of the old school came in to upset everything. They had been brought up in the belief in certain dogmas, had digested volumes of economic and political and sociological theory, had juggled with statistics, and had been fortified with all the sacraments of scholastic ritual; and they were disturbed at the very idea that their bible might be getting out of date, that science had advanced, the true science of biology, the science of man, and that it rejected all that they held sacred. They were afraid of the extent to which what they called "collective insanity", "unworthy methods", etc., were being pushed. So they combated the healthy reaction of a people who sought to meet poisoned weapons with the only effective reply of similar ones. The popular enthusiasm was destroyed, petty routine restored, and the opportunity that had come wasted—to the great satisfaction, of course, of the adversaries.

The adversaries lifted their heads again, and renewed the offensive that for some time had been held up. This time a real blackmail with the threat of war began. The scheme was to threaten Britain in the Mediterranean and to create a third strategic frontier for France—the Pyrenees. Spain was attacked: it was the logical course, and might have been expected.

It was the point of least resistance at the moment. For Austria, for the Anschluss, a stage envisaged in Mein Kampf, the moment had not yet come; Italy was still too closely wedded to her policy of protecting Austria, and the story of the Brenner was too fresh in men's memories; it was necessary to humour her and to have patience. Czechoslovakia was still too dangerous: Soviet Russia had to be considered, and it was impossible to know whether a game of bluff would succeed. Soviet Russia had learnt, she could bluff as well as anyone, and in addition she had substantial forces: it was necessary to be prudent.

But Spain—there was an opportunity! Her Republic was only just born and still weak and full of party dissensions, and her army had long been penetrated by Fascist propaganda. She was far from Russia, which would have difficulty in sending effective aid to her republic. Spain was a centre of disorder at the very gates of France, who was soaked in pacifism and in any case would be held back by Britain. Finally, Spain was within reach of Italy's aircraft. It was a situation that cried out for aggression. And aggression came, as soon as it was seen that French popular resistance was losing effective strength. The coup succeeded, intimidation produced its full effect, the famous device of "non-intervention" was hit on, and by purely psychological operation it was actually turned into unilateral intervention, France closing her frontier while the Fascist countries continued to give full support to General Franco in war material, troops, and technicians. The amazing resistance of Madrid, kept up for nearly two years, a thing almost inconceivable, was an extraordinary psychical factor, adding to the

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It is true that the application to the Spanish war of the principles of modern propaganda, based on the theory of conditioned reflexes explained in preceding chapters, was facilitated by the fact that war is a field in which the action of masses and crowds is dominant, and in which the feelings play a preponderant part, since what we have called the first instinct, the instinct of struggle, is an outcome of feeling. Here fear or enthusiasm may be aroused to their maximum and guided at will.

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days the Soviet reaction, though slow at first, grew so formidable with the progressive concentration of Soviet forces that the Japanese retired and ceased hostilities. The psychological situation in favour of the adversaries of the totalitarian regimes was completely restored; this time bluff had failed.

The second element, the bluff of the "Axis", also crumbled away, since it was leading to nothing: Spain continued to resist, and Hitler, when Mussolini urgently asked him for effectual assistance, gave an evasive reply: at that time Mussolini's lieutenants in Spain were reporting the situation to be precarious. Italo-German antagonism had grown in Spain; the German specialists had a low opinion of the Italian command and of the morale of the Italian forces; everything went to show that the famous proclamation of the solidarity of the axis Powers was simply another piece of bluff. In the Far East, in spite of the axis, Germany was supplying arms to China—business is business. Meanwhile Japan, while as anti-Communist as ever, let it be known that her adhesion to the axis was largely platonic: the campaign in China demanded prudence in other directions.

Meanwhile Hitler passed on to a new stage in his programme, the Anschluss, assuming that Italy was too deeply committed in Spain to move, and taking

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At the same time, he was himself apprehensive: he had no desire for matters to take a serious turn; he knew well that a general war would mean his downfall; the army leaders had made this plain—they would refuse to move. Hence his hesitations; but he considered that Chamberlain was too old, too anxious for peace at any price, that he was embarrassed by his commitments to France, and that his hatred of Soviet

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M. Fabre-Luce says very rightly [42]:

Hitler's position in September 1938 was analogous to that of Mussolini in September 1935. If at that date Abyssinia had been offered him on a silver platter, he would have refused it, for his first aim in war was not conquest but victory—"revenge for Adowa". Such conceptions are so foreign to the psychology of democratic statesmen that they simply do not introduce them into their calculations.

For Hitler the Sudeten territory was merely a pretext. All his fine phrases about "the martyrdom of our German brothers", or "Benes's bloody and sadistic activities", etc., were rhetoric. It is well known that no German minorities had greater freedom or better social conditions than in Czechoslovakia, with its model democratic institutions. On the other hand, Hitler had no difficulty in putting up with the real oppression of the South Tyrolese by his friend Mussolini, or with that of the Germans in Poland so long as he was concerned to remain on terms of friendship with Colonel Beck.

The Sudeten pretext fitted well into Hitler's plan of dislocating the Franco-Soviet pact, for this pact continually haunted him. Accordingly, after Munich, his first care was for the drawing up of a so-called plan of "European appeasement", the main elements of which were to be a promise by Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain to enter into no agreement with Soviet Russia, and the consent of Britain and France to allow Germany complete freedom of action in Eastern Europe. In reality Hitler aimed at open hegemony, after his great success. In exchange, he was prepared to "guarantee" France's frontiers, and to declare that "the territorial basis of the British Empire as at present constituted is in conformity with Germany's interests".

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to do something to appease the agitation in the Sudetens, though in reality this agitation was kept up artificially by the classic Hitlerist methods. Appropriate propaganda, aimed especially at British public opinion, was to paralyse any attempt of the democracies to put an end to this agitation. Everything Prague offered was declared "inadequate", and the more Prague tried conciliation the more the agitation grew. International mediation in the form of the Runciman mission, the work of British Conservative circles under the influence of Hitlerist propaganda, more and more dislocated the psychological coherence of the Czechoslovak State. Profiting by the growing confusion, the Sudeten agitation took on the forms of more or less disguised civil war.

The last disguise fell off after the speech at Nuremberg in which Hitler proclaimed his desire to come to the aid of the "brothers" in the Sudeten territory with his army. This speech was interpreted by the Sudeten Germans as a direct invitation to revolt. They acted accordingly. Meanwhile Hitler made all his military preparations, and, on the pretext of carrying out manœuvres, mobilized a million and a half men. The democracies did not interfere. This time again he had taken the wind out of their sails, and he was well aware that in their knowledge of this they would do nothing. He could ignore "warnings". There had, indeed, been so many warnings in the past which had not been followed by any sort of action that it might have been expected that the new ones would not disturb Hitler. Here was a clear instance of the phenomenon of the "extinction" of a conditioned reflex which had not been kept alive by an absolute reflex

Then the decisive stroke became possible—the annexation of the small republic, a bloody lesson which must remain localized but would suffice to revive collective fear throughout the world and to prepare the way for the next step toward hegemony. At the worst, if he was allowed to take Czechoslovakia without a "military victory", he would nevertheless have sent in his troops in military formation with all the impressive paraphernalia of war, he would have gained the fortresses, and he would have created the impression of force and inculcated the fear of violence; in other words, the psychical rape would have been consummated, the conditioned reflex "revived".

This was Hitler's plan, and it had entire success once more. It might well have failed if the democracies had shown more sagacity, or even more comprehension of the mechanism of the pressure that was being put on them, and had firmly cried a halt. By way of excuse, the leaders declared after their capitulation that if they had not given way there would have been war, and they even relied on subsequent propagandist rodomontades of Hitler's, such as his statement at Cheb on October 3 to his new subjects that "we were ready to draw the sword for you."

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Fabre-Luce [42] well says: "Since there had in the end been a conference, it was held that the allied Governments had achieved a success, though the conference consisted essentially in the acceptance of the proposals of the adversary." But the fact that it was in reality a total and tremendous defeat is further proved by the complete disregard by Hitler of everything stipulated by the Munich agreement. A few weeks after the agreement, for instance, there was nothing more to be heard of the guarantee by the democracies of the new Czechoslovakia. It was Germany herself who "protected" her, in order to swallow her more completely later on. The two parties had also agreed that there was nothing further to be gained by plebiscites, and to the stupefaction of the world the Ambassadors' Commission for the delimitation of the frontiers gave Germany in some cases more than she asked.

This capitulation becomes comprehensible if it is admitted that it was more or less consciously expected from the outset. Psychologically, those immediately concerned were prepared in advance to yield before the threat of force. At times Mr. Chamberlain was startled by the German threat to British interests, but his apprehensions were quickly allayed, and he succumbed easily to a passive optimism, dominated at all times as he was by the desire above all for peace and tranquillity. He readily repeated arguments that confirmed this attitude. He did so, for instance, when his emissary at Prague, Lord Runciman, declared that Sudeten Germans and Czechs could not live under the same roof; and again on September 26, after the

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French mobilization and the firm declaration of the French Premier that France regarded the Godesberg memorandum as inacceptable. Even after the visit of the French Generalissimo, Mr. Chamberlain persisted in following his own personal idea of peace at any price. Without informing anybody, he sent his adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, to Berlin to see the Fuhrer yet again and try to negotiate with him. At Godesberg, it is true, he had a sudden access of firmness and returned to his hotel and, to the surprise of the world, refused to see Hitler again, sending his views to him by letter; but this was because he was suddenly alarmed by the manifest growth of opposition in Britain.

Persons who had been captured by Hitlerist propaganda insinuated that both France and Britain were divided at this period between a war party and a peace party, and that the European crisis was dominated by the struggle between these groups. This is precisely what Mussolini and Hitler contended, and the insinuation was a service to them. In reality there were men who had succumbed to the fascination of force, and others who were virtually making common cause with the dictatorships; there were, on the other side, others who saw more clearly and realized where the continual concessions would lead, and who wanted, not war (who does?), but a policy of firmness: they knew well that Hitler would not go to war, and they knew the inner springs of his behaviour. The best proof of this segregation is that the psychological differentiation cut across party divisions: in France, for instance, M. de Kerillis was to be found in agreement with the Communists, and on the other side M. Flandin, who had sent a sympathetic telegram to Hitler, was supporting the views of certain well-known pacifist intel-

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The chief responsibility for the Munich capitulation lay with Mr. Chamberlain's Conservative majority. It had carried on an incoherent and inconsistent policy: sometimes it "warned" Germany and threatened intervention, making at the same time suggestions to France for formulae of conciliation; sometimes it encouraged France to take a firm stand, but at the same time allowed Hitler to see that this need not be taken too seriously. Thus, for instance, when the Foreign Office published on the evening of September 26 the famous declaration that "Great Britain and Russia will certainly stand by France", the whole effect of this declaration was destroyed by the statement issued from Downing Street next morning by Mr. Chamberlain: "I have read the speech of the German Chancellor, and I appreciate his reference to the efforts I have made to save the peace. I cannot abandon those efforts. . . ." Naturally Hitler was encouraged by these words.

Contradiction is one of the characteristics of this policy: the day after this statement Mr. Chamberlain made a broadcast speech in which there is a phrase, quoted at the outset of this book, which shows that he was beginning to realize Hitler's real intentions and to see that it was necessary at all costs to prevent Hitler from increasing his prestige by a show of force on that occasion—from reinforcing, that is, the collective conditioned reflex to which he was subjecting the world. But he did not see that the sole means of smashing this hoodoo, which was becoming more and more dangerous, was to copy it. He still nursed the illusion that he could prevent Hitler from taking action

by yielding to him, though that gave Hitler the opportunity of militarily ("symbolically", as Mr. Chamberlain euphemistically put it) penetrating the Czechoslovak fortifications. Mr. Chamberlain did not see that in this way he prevented nothing, that Hitler had attained his end, and that the final collision was only postponed, to be faced later under less advantageous conditions.

Thus it is easy to see that all the remonstrances and

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On Wednesday morning for the first time . . . Herr Hitler was prepared to yield an inch, an ell perhaps, but to yield some measure to the representatives of Great Britain. But I would remind the House that the message from the Prime Minister was not the first news that he had received that morning. At dawn he had learned of the mobilization of the British Fleet.

Thus the whole course of this acute crisis shows the tactical soundness of the principles here enunciated as determinants of the dictators' action. Among other psychological features of the crisis was, above all, the rapidity with which, thanks to the technique of wireless publicity, reflexes were formed and reactions produced which determined behaviour. The Hitlerist and pro-Hitlerist propaganda in the democratic countries made full use of these new possibilities, especially by spreading false news or declaring false news to be true; this is a new aspect of struggle at moments of acute crisis in international policy, and one of which account must be taken in future; it is capable of producing entirely unexpected effects.

Of great interest is the behaviour of the masses and of crowds at the time. Excitation, producing anxiety,

The reactions of the masses in Germany had not the same definite character as among the democracies.

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The people had, of course, been kept in ignorance of events. They were not informed, for instance, of the British mobilization; the French mobilization had been explained as a counterstroke against "Communists who were shouting for war"; President Roosevelt's first note was published only twenty-four hours after its receipt, simultaneously with Hitler's reply; and the publication of the second note was deferred until after the summoning of the conference at Munich.

The consequences of Munich were grave: they may be resumed under three main heads—German hegemony in Central Europe was almost secured; France was isolated, and Mussolini's position was consolidated. The disappointments in Spain and the loss of Austria had brought Mussolini to bay, and his influence in Italy had so suffered that he did not dare to mobilize when Hitler demanded it; he knew that the Italians would have refused to march. He had to content himself with touring the cities of northern Italy and making speeches twice a day, "commenting on events" and declaring Italy's position in ambiguous terms ("We have taken our stand"). It is clear that Mussolini welcomed the appeal of the democracies to his "mediation" as a re-establishment of his position.

France's isolation after Munich was clear from the insistent rumours about Hitler's colonial claims. Geneviève Tabouis, who is generally well informed, wrote in the Œuvre on October 20: "It is being repeatedly stated that he (Mr. Chamberlain) considers that in this case it might be France who will have to appease the Reich by the return of former German colonies!" The attitude of all the British Members of Parliament, without distinction of party,

made it clear that no presents for the insatiable Herr Hitler would be forthcoming from that quarter.

"People say we ought not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between Nazidom and democracy. But the antagonism is here now. . . . Is this a call to war? I declare it to be the sole guarantee of peace."

It was of no use to try to ignore the moral element in yielding to force (which, indeed, was mainly not real force but only the menace of it): human behaviour, into which the moral element enters today, in the light of biological science, on the same plane as the material elements, being itself a material factor, cannot be eliminated. From this point of view it will never be possible to regard the Munich agreement as a moral action. It consecrated psychical rape, and it was made at the expense of a small people who had always conscientiously fulfilled their human and social obligations. Czechoslovakia was not even admitted to the discussion of her fate; she was only notified of the sentence. Her Government's protest remains unanswerable: "The Government of the Czechoslovak Republic, after having considered the decisions of the conference in Munich, taken without and against

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them, find no other means but to accept, and have nothing to add."

IX

ACTIVE SOCIALISM

The struggle between the two principles is being fought out, and nothing can end it but total victory on one side or the other. It involves the whole destiny of mankind. But a struggle implies something about which it is fought, implies an objective. As we know, the thing that is at stake is the freedom of men and nations, a freedom which is of the essence of human life, and which it is natural to man to seek. Pavlov even speaks of an innate reflex of freedom, common to living beings, and considers that its purely physiological nature is discernible. We prefer to believe that it is a human acquisition, one of the higher conditioned reflexes, a product of culture. But, since the tendency to culture is a property of human collectivities, this reflex, proceeding from it, and conditioning it in its turn, is of extraordinary strength; this is comprehensible since, as we have seen throughout our analysis,

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it is derived from instinct no. 1, the instinct of struggle, the most important and the strongest of all the instincts from the biological point of view.

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that of Darwin, who set the idea of biological evolution on a firm basis, and greatly contributed to its spread. But even "Darwinism", that is to say, Darwin's attempt to find an explanation of the facts of evolution, and to define the factors that determine its course, no longer holds against present-day scientific criticism; similarly some of Marx's ideas are no longer in conformity with the contemporary state of science: it would never have been imagined in his day that economic sociology was in reality a branch of biology, and that it must therefore employ its methods of analysis and synthesis in that capacity. Moreover, Marx himself, with his insistence on the necessity of a scientific Socialism, would have been horrified at the present-day exegetical battles that rage now and then over his doctrine, treating it as a sort of infallible Bible, instead of what it was, an attempt at explanation from the point of view of the science of his day.

An error for which Marx is less responsible than his commentators and the modern prophets who have given "Marxism" its new aspect, lies in regarding human behaviour entirely from the materialist point of view, that is to say, as proceeding from what we have called the second (nutritive) instinct; according to their ideas, economic factors count above all else. Even from their own point of view, that of "scientific materialism", we consider that their theory is untenable. Our position is itself the outcome of positive, experimental scientific research. Human behaviour is usually a complex phenomenon in which there are other factors besides the economic ones, factors actually of greater force and importance, which nevertheless are purely physiological, and therefore material.

This is confirmed by recent economic and sociological

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The third element which has assumed great importance since the Great War is the idea of the League of Nations. During the last twenty years the whole international policy of Europe and the world has revolved round the League. But, magnificent as

Another element of importance in the world political situation was the emergence of a self-styled pacifism, more or less "absolute", which in reality undermined peace by playing the game of the Fascist dictators. The men who constituted themselves the champions

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of this movement ignored the fact that the law of existence of Fascism is the drive toward war, or black-mail with the threat of war. Did Mr. Lansbury imagine that the dictators would permit a Peace Pledge in their own countries?

The first thing needed in a popular political movement like the Socialist movement is optimistic energy and thirst for action. The great failing of many democratic leaders is to take too little interest in the state of mind of their followers, to be always inclined to dwell too much on criticism; it does not occur to them that this excess of criticism often paralyses not only the masses but the militants. How often one may find a speaker piling up arguments and figures for an hour, two hours, or even more, without noticing that his hearers have become physiologically tired and saturated by the multitude of verbal excitations to which they have been subjected, and accordingly quite unable to carry out the action for which he is pleading. Yet the only reason for a speech is to mobilize men for a particular action.

The reactivation of Socialism is the great task for the masses, and for the popular tribunes, who hope to march to the conquest of better times, and to avoid subjection to the despotic will of usurpers. So long as people continue to hope that matters may settle themselves, so long as they believe in the immutability of out-of-date dogmas, dogmas which life and the science of life have passed by, so long as they persist in inhibiting men's tendency to take an active part in political life, inviting them to wait with unending patience and to put up with the consequences of the inertia of their leaders, so long, finally, as they shut their eyes to the new forms of political struggle and

6g 1

the new data of a science which advances unceasingly and is today becoming the very foundation of politics—there will be no positive advance, the situation will grow worse from day to day, and in the end there will come either destruction through war or the loss of the freedom for which men live and struggle. Active Socialism—that is the purpose and the slogan of renewal. Need I say that I do not reject any part of the positive programmes of constructive Socialism, which is eclectic and in no way hostile to the retention of healthy traditions rooted in life itself, in the biology of peoples? But traditions must not hamper the advance of mankind in conformity with scientific and social progress. Finally, active Socialism aims at liberating humanity from its psychical servitude, and at guaranteeing it from psychical rape, with which at present it is constantly menaced. Means must be found of immunizing men from the authoritarian toxins, so that the "5000" shall become 55,000 and the "55,000" shall fall to 5000.

But how is this to be done? There seem to us to be three lines of approach to the problem—education, eubiotism, and psychical prophylaxy. We saw in one of the early chapters of this book that conditioned reflexes are easily formed among the young, and that the so-called retarded reflexes, especially, offer the opportunity of developing the faculty of exercising internal conditioned inhibition, the basis, that is to say, of what in ordinary life is called the will. It is thus the capacity of holding back certain reactions, exercising the "will" to resist. This is just what is needed in order to dominate the reactions from without provoked by the will of others. The more this faculty is firmly established in the human organism

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We have seen that an overworked or ailing or hungry man, with his nervous system upset or weakened, will succumb relatively easily to the force of suggestion. Thus eubiotics, the improvement of the conditions of existence—a sufficient wage, guaranteed rest, the removal of family or industrial anxieties in a word, the assurance of all the factors of a rational and hygienic material existence—will quickly consolidate popular resistance to the enemy forces aiming at the physical and psychical enslavement of the people.

The third and last way of emancipating man from the danger of psychical violence is psychical prophylaxy, or the constant inculcation by the community in all its members, by means of propagandist practices mainly of a demonstrative and persuasive order, of ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and of faith in human progress, and in its true instruments, the principles of social duty. These ideas will then be conditioned excitants, solidly anchored in the mechanisms of men's behaviour, which will warn them of the danger of falling too easily under influence from without, and of allowing themselves to be carried away by egoist adventurers.

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This is possible, it is even easier than was Hitler's propaganda, which rallied millions of men round the idea of the aggressive greatness of Germany, the idea of anti-Semitism, and the idea of Hitler's own divine mission! How much more effective, how much more appealing, would be the humane idea of morality, Socialism, Peace! But it is necessary to act. And the first thing to be done, the key to all the rest, is to organize the propaganda of a peace imposed on those who have been breaking the peace, the Fascist dictators. The idea of the Round Table of peace, the pact of collective defence, the alliance of all the countries that are loyal to the idea of Freedom, of Humanity. An effective and active alliance; if necessary, a warning and threatening one!

Once the will to action has been proved by the leaders, the second question arises. How to turn the activity of the masses to practical account along the

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We have seen that propagandist activity can and should be of two types: propaganda by persuasion, mainly for militants, and by suggestion, for the masses. For the former, doctrine is the essential thing, together with technical hints in the manœuvring of the masses. For the latter, the important thing is to find for the doctrine the equivalents of a mysticism—a myth and suggestive expressions, rites, symbols, slogans.

The anti-Fascist doctrine has no need to be invented: it exists and develops day by day unaided. For its negative side, more and more obvious arguments are furnished by its adversaries—their brutalities, their persecutions, racial and religious, their persecutions of intellectuals and workers; their annexations, their growing arrogance in foreign policy, their continual menaces and covetousnesses, and the slenderness of their political and economic ideas and theories. But propaganda cannot be confined to negation. There is no lack of constructive elements in the anti-Fascist camp—the political programmes, for instance, of the great parties that formed the Popular Front in France contain sufficient positive elements to guarantee the

We have already said that, in order to carry on this type of propaganda, an essential condition is the creation of a myth, corresponding to its doctrine. Dr. Arthus, in his La Genèse des Mythes [45], says: "Certain ideologies and certain myths seem to be indestructible, and centuries pass without witnessing their, decline. They have been based on certain constants of the human heart, and thus call forth an echo at all times." The myth we need for our emotional propaganda exists, and is entirely in conformity with the democratic doctrine, which, indeed, draws its strength from it. This is the wonderful myth of human liberty, of the French Revolution. Is it not that myth that underlies the popular movements in France, and serves to the peoples of the world as a

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The technical details of the propaganda of this type follow easily from the principle of this myth. The pictorial symbols to be derived from it, symbols which, as we have seen, are of the first importance for the success of this propaganda, are easily discovered. The essential conditions are the following: (1) They must be suggestive—that is to say, they must directly transmit the idea they embody; and their form must be characteristic and easily memorized; (2) They must be dynamic; that is to say, they must evoke feelings related to the instinct of struggle; they must stimulate the will to combative action, and will thus do well to represent a weapon; (3) They must be very simple, so that they may be reproduced everywhere in masses, and by anyone. These symbols must be worn as badges, drawn in every possible place, and shown on flags, posters, tracts, and newspapers.

• (2) In this emotional propaganda, satire or irony must be used with moderation. It should be judiciously mixed with activities based on the instinct of struggle, and especially on its positive component, the creation of enthusiasm.
• (3) In this emotive propaganda, all dishonest forms, all aesthetically or morally debased forms, all crudities that shock the onlooker, must be absolutely avoided; this does not mean that popular forms of expression, particularly those which appeal to the masses, should not be used.
• (4) This propaganda should be so established that it can respond immediately to events; only then does it become an effective and formidable weapon.
• (5) It must be scientifically planned. Plans of political campaigns must be drawn up, and their preparation, conduct, and results supervised and examined, in order that any needed modifications may be promptly made.

If the democracies take this path, which is indicated

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by the science of the bases of human activities, not only will the nightmare of the imminent peril of humanity be dissipated, but the advance of mankind to the sublime goals of human culture will be assured. The danger of the "psychical rape" of the masses by usurpers will be removed, and demagogy will give place to true psychagogy, to the leading of men to a bright future of peace, well-being, and freedom.

CONCLUSION

The awakening—The conditions of safety—The antagonism between culture and life biologically healthy—The idea of compensated pessimism

We have written this book under the sense of the great risk mankind is at present running. That sense led us to try to see at close quarters the acts of men and the social facts that result from them, or, rather, the social facts which they make up. A rigorous scientific analysis is not only possible in this field, but is the essential condition for the understanding of these phenomena, on which our well-being and the very reason of our existence depends.

The great danger to which mankind is exposed results from three facts. The first of these is that there are men who have seen that, in the existing state of most of their contemporaries, they can make puppets of them, in order to serve their own ends (not necessarily material ends or profit); in a word, they can subject them to "psychical rape". They have

CONCLUSION

adjusted the necessary levers, learned the rules of their application, and, without scruple, have used them. The second fact is that these possibilities exist in human nature itself, and that the proportion between the human elements who succumb and those who can put up more or less resistance is appalling—ten to one. The third fact is that the collective "psychical rape" is carried out by the usurpers without opposition, without those who should be on the watch realizing the danger, or, if they do realize it, without their understanding what to do about it. One by one, human communities have succumbed. It is thus urgently necessary to call a halt, to observe what is happening and to take quick and effective steps to end it.

In social organisms there are, of course, as in individuals, mechanisms of self-defence, which are set in motion in face of peril and try to counter it and thus to save the organism from destruction. But their automatic functioning is not sufficient to guarantee safety. A sick person may have a temperature which indicates that his organism is reacting and struggling against his fever; but this may be insufficient to save him, and the medical art may be required. Similarly, peoples driven to destitution or war by Fascism may revolt and ultimately recover their liberty. But, apart from the fact that this struggle may be long-continued and may result in enormous loss of life, it may also lead in our day to the frightful disaster of general war, in which a whole civilization may founder, as other civilizations have foundered in the past. Modern science tells us that this danger can be avoided: the science that invented engines of destruction reveals to us also the means of avoiding the worst.

But it must be listened to, and its instruction must be availed of and given prompt practical effect.

CONCLUSION

"non-intervention" committee, succumbed, but this in no way alters the fact that a gallant attempt was made at psychological encouragement of a fraction of democratic elements in resistance in that corner of Europe.

A reawakening is unquestionably observable everywhere. This is a hopeful circumstance, and offers the best opportunity for propaganda of the type described in this book, which would register rapid successes. This is all the more so since the dictatorships, while making shrewd use of the technique of popular propaganda based on the instinct of struggle, nevertheless make political mistakes which diminish their advantage in having a monopoly of this type of propaganda. Thus, the lying nature of Nazi propaganda tells against the regime, as does also the fact that Hitler has succeeded in arousing the bitter hostility of workers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even certain military elements.

Hitler's dictatorship has had at least one positive result: it has brought together various sections of the German people; it has prepared the way, for instance, for a German "Popular Front" between Socialists, Communists, and Democrats, who formerly fought one another bitterly; it has also freed the German working class from incapable leaders who were in reality responsible for its defeat. In Italy, Mussolini has done a useful thing: he has taught the Italian people the necessity of order, and this is the first condition for the achievement of Socialism.

There is no choice but to act; the Fascisms must be destroyed. But let it not be supposed that it will suffice to prohibit the Nazi and Fascist movements, to persecute them by police measures. This would only create martyrs, adding fuel to the fire. There is only one effective method—to meet them with violent propaganda, to counteract their tendency to psychical rape by equivalent action on the psychism of the masses, but without recourse to lying. It is possible to carry on violent propaganda without violating the moral principles which are the basis of human society!

CONCLUSION

According to Pavlov, we now know: by a judicious formation of appropriate conditioned reflexes, by propaganda, and above all by education. The fact that in the Soviet Union, in all the numberless schools, millions of children, from the tenderest years upwards, have had inculcated in their cerebral mechanisms the idea that all human beings are equal—that a black, a yellow, and a white man have the same rights to life and well-being—this single fact has already so vast a bearing that it will totally change the world. The idea of equality, now the conditional excitant of a reflex, will determine for life the behaviour of nearly two hundred millions of men and women. That is the path to follow. Another idea, that of Peace, is of no less importance: war must be described to the youngest children as abominable and a crime, and not glorified as is done by the Fascisms. Finally, the myth of Liberty, the sublime idea of the French Revolution, must be spread. Its sparks, at a distance of more than a hundred years, lit the great liberating flame of the Russian Revolution.

It is often said that these things are Utopian. It is also contended that these social, not to say Socialist, ideas are artificial, against human nature, and therefore harmful. Young men are told that life is a brutal struggle, that men must be distrusted, that everyone is a competitor waiting for a chance to destroy them and that they must be ready to do the same, and so on. The "superman", above social morality, is praised as an ideal. Let us admit that there is a grain of truth in this. Life is in truth hard, many succumb, and with advancing civilization life becomes more multiform and nervous; the inhabitants of crowded towns die earlier, exposed to all sorts of dangers from

85 u

accident and infection, lack of air and sunlight, dust, factory and motor-car exhalations, and nerve-racking noise; they sleep little, often work too much, feed badly, take intoxicants to excess, and are always obsessed by the pace of events, so that their strained nerves often set them against one another. All these influences necessarily exhaust and weaken them and shorten their lives. It is a biologically negative state of things.

It is not sufficient to reply that as technics and culture advance the conditions of living become more hygienic and people are better protected. That is true, but at the same time the conditions of living grow more and more complicated and exacting. It is a vicious circle. We are continually bombarded now with various radiations, wireless waves reach us unceasingly without our noticing them, and we do not yet know definitely what is their action on our bodies and our nervous systems. It is true also that life is becoming better protected through the progress of science and hygiene, and that longevity is increasing, but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that this is no more than a respite, a retardation of the inexorable process associated with culture, the destructive effect of which on life cannot be entirely eliminated.

CONCLUSION

But are we therefore to renounce culture, renounce all the things that seem to us to embellish life and make it worth the living? The higher we go in the scale of culture, the more do the aims that characterize our reflexes depart from instinctive bases; new reflexes are grafted on the existing ones. Does not philosophic interest, proceeding, in our view, from the second (nutritive) instinct, give us more pleasure, when we are well informed, than the satisfaction of having eaten a good meal, and is not the enthusiasm we feel at the sight of a great social achievement more intense than the primitive feeling of having beaten a rival? How often the latter satisfaction is accompanied by a feeling of regret and shame! This example plainly shows the incompatibility between instinct and social feeling.

But in order to have these higher pleasures it is

necessary to pay for them with part of oneself, of one's physical well-being, of one's life. One must be ready to say that, if long life is incompatible with culture, it is life that must be sacrificed; better renounce perfect biological health than the spiritual felicity we gain from culture. Such is the philosophy of what we might call "compensated pessimism". Culture leads us ultimately to destruction, but it gives us a compensation: thanks to it our life becomes richer and more humane. And even if this compensation does not come in every case, there is something that takes its place, giving us new strength for the struggle, preventing us from becoming discouraged, and leading us to persist in the pursuit of our aim. That something is the myth that demands always from a man something that goes against his nature, a sacrifice. Let us, then, be guided by the great myth of Socialism, of Love of humanity, of Liberty, basing our action on Science, which offers us the sole means of one day converting this myth into reality.

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• A. Vasiliev: Histoire de l'Empire Byzantin, vol. 1. Picard, Paris, 1932.

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• 42. A. FABRE-LUCE: Histoire secrète de la Conciliation de Munich

Kerensky Government, 155 Kerillis, 254 Khazan, Lake, 244–5 Khodynka, disaster at, 43, 77 Kircher, 9 Krassnogorsky, 23 Ku-Klux-Klan, 112 Künstler, 201

Lansbury, George, 269
Lavisse, 143, 150
League of Nations, 267-8
Le Bon, Gustave, 34-8, 89
Lenin, 62-3, 67, 139, 165, 23
Leontes, 135
Lévy, Paul, 182
Liberty, myth of, 276-7
— reflex of, 9-10
Lisle, Rouget de, 139
Löbe, 201
Louis XVI, 138

Ludendorff, 154 Ludwig, Emil, 189