Why do the fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terribleand wonderful thing called a war?In nothing is this new history needed so much as in the psychology ofwar. Our history is stiff with official documents, public or private,which tell us nothing of the thing itself. At the worst we only have theofficial posters, which could not have been spontaneous preciselybecause they were official. At the best we have only the secretdiplomacy, which could not have been popular precisely because it wassecret. Upon one or other of these is based the historical judgmentabout the real reasons that sustained the struggle. Governments fightfor colonies or commercial rights; governments fight about harbours orhigh tariffs; governments fight for a gold mine or a pearl fishery. Itseems sufficient to answer that governments do not fight at all. Why dothe fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terribleand wonderful thing called a war? Nobody who knows anything of soldiersbelieves the silly notion of the dons, that millions of men can be ruledby force. If they were all to slack, it would be impossible to punishall the slackers. And the least little touch of slacking would lose awhole campaign in half a day. What did men really feel about thepolicy? If it be said that they accepted the policy from the politician,what did they feel about the politician? If the vassals warred blindlyfor their prince, what did those blind men see in their prince?There is something we all know which can only be rendered, in anappropriate language, as _realpolitik_. As a matter of fact, it is analmost insanely unreal politik. It is always stubbornly and stupidlyrepeating that men fight for material ends, without reflecting for amoment that the material ends are hardly ever material to the men whofight. In any case, no man will die for practical politics, just as noman will die for pay. Nero could not hire a hundred Christians to beeaten by lions at a shilling an hour; for men will not be martyred formoney. But the vision called up by real politik, or realistic politics,is beyond example crazy and incredible. Does anybody in the worldbelieve that a soldier says, ‘My leg is nearly dropping off, but I shallgo on till it drops; for after all I shall enjoy all the advantages ofmy government obtaining a warm-water port in the Gulf of Finland.’ Cananybody suppose that a clerk turned conscript says, ‘If I am gassed Ishall probably die in torments; but it is a comfort to reflect thatshould I ever decide to become a pearl-diver in the South Seas, thatcareer is now open to me and my countrymen.’ Materialist history is themost madly incredible of all histories, or even of all romances.Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in thesoul; that is something akin to religion. It is what men feel about lifeand about death. A man near to death is dealing directly with anabsolute; it is nonsense to say he is concerned only with relative andremote complications that death in any case will end. If he is sustainedby certain loyalties, they must be loyalties as simple as death. Theyare generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The firstis the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguelyknown as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thingthat threatens it. The first is far more philosophical than it sounds,though we need not discuss it here. A man does not want his nationalhome destroyed or even changed, because he cannot even remember all thegood things that go with it; just as he does not want his house burntdown, because he can hardly count all the things he would miss.Therefore he fights for what sounds like a hazy abstraction, but isreally a house. But the negative side of it is quite as noble as well asquite as strong. Men fight hardest when they feel that the foe is atonce an old enemy and an eternal stranger, that his atmosphere is alienand antagonistic; as the French feel about the Prussian or the EasternChristians about the Turk. If we say it is a difference of religion,people will drift into dreary bickerings about sects and dogmas. We willpity them and say it is a difference about death and daylight; adifference that does really come like a dark shadow between our eyes andthe day. Men can think of this difference even at the point of death;for it is a difference about the meaning of life.Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier thanpolicy: by hatred. When men hung on in the darkest days of the GreatWar, suffering either in their bodies or in their souls for those theyloved, they were long past caring about details of diplomatic objects asmotives for their refusal to surrender. Of myself and those I knew bestI can answer for the vision that made surrender impossible. It was thevision of the German Emperor’s face as he rode into Paris. This is notthe sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. ...
