Understanding Germany, the Only Way to End War (Volume 523) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1916. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... THE ANTI-GERMAN HATE HEN" there is a fight on, every one - - has an enemy. Our instinctive pugnacity is so strong. We can not even view a tennis-match, but our partisanship, taking its rise from the color of a shirt, grows hotter and more convinced with every crack at the ball. Neutrality may be possible to a few highly concentrated cerebrums, but to the general nervous system of mankind it is simply an alien condition. We were foredoomed to take sides. And also we were foredoomed to hate. For it is the fashion of our nature, whenever any of its own precious desires are blocked, to flash into an angry response; and when the blockage of these desires is general and continual, that anger inevitably concentrates itself upon some object for the mere sake of relief.--And who is there, whose desire or passionate hope has not somewhere been blocked by this catastrophe of universal war? The truth is that even in times of tranquillity we are usually emptying our public venom upon some scapegoat. And we always have been. Professor J. G. Frazer, in the later volumes of his "Golden Bough," a book which is a treasure-house of true fairy-stories, has set forth how all tribes in history have found indispensable to their spiritual ease and well-being some standardized villain, upon whom they could dump the sins and the dammed-up malice of the day and go on their way rejoicing. And the incidents which gave rise to the choice of that scapegoat were always quite disproportionate to the burden of crime and odium which he carried away.* * Periodically, Mr. Frazer tells us, in spring or at the beginning of the calendar year--as a kind of public New Year's resolution --the powers of a community would single out some person, object, animal or spirit, symbolically load upon hi...