American entry into the war shut off this channel of expression. In recompense, how ever, it released and gratified all the other lusts, impulses, appetites and resentments which in normal times are held in leash within the group. It released them by appearing to give them an objective beyond the group, in its enemy: to ward the Germans no attitude and no expres sion could be too immoral or too inhinnan. It gratified them by enabling the business classes and associations involved to identify the inter ests of their own opponents -within the group with the interests of the whole graupPs enemy outside. Thus, notably, although flie President's popularity became enormous and the solidarity of the country unprecedented, the opposition of the business classes grew intenser and took the form of a criticism of the conduct of the war, particularly with reference to the admin. istration's attitude toward labor. Violence be gan to appear in ninny forms, from pacifist and radical baiting to race riots, and a patriotic terrorism, engineered and led by members of the business class, became manifest part of the war psychosis. Examples are the Mooney case, the Bisbee outrage, the I.W.W. prosecutions, the Liberty Loan intimidations in Wisconsin and elsewhere, the assault on the Non-Partisan League in Minnesota. Incitements to violence became recurrent in the newspapers and were later chronic. Any appearance of free spirit or independent judgment in industry or politica was declared upro-Germae and proscribed. Particularly did the Russian revolution and sympathy with it come in for hysterical denun eaation. The underlying cause of this phe nomenon was the functioning of the War Labor Policies Board upon the basis of collective bar gaining and of a wage-scale determined by the standard of living. The repression of pacifistsi liberals and other minorities, the persecution of the merely foreign, the suspension of the civil liberties of the common man, of which much is usually made in war psychology were only in cidental to this more basic transference of the combative and aggressive emotions.
This was possible because the therd-instinct)' usually acting as a check upon the various con flicting personal and group wishes, impulses and feelmgs had wider the conditions of war released them, and had integrated them into its own processes. Inasmuch as the execution of the national purpoae fell naturally into the hands of the business class, the 4herd-dogmai was identified with the interests and prefer ences of this class. 4Americanism)) thus ac quired a meaning not at all intended by the President nor implicated in the institutions and principles of American polity. The meaning \vas reinforced 'by- two novel phenomena in the conduct of war: one was the necessary integra tion of the industrial basis of modern war, the other was propaganda usually called "public in formation." From April 1917 to November 1919 and longer, the feeling evoked by these conditions and agencies exhibits a steady ac celeration in mass and intensity. The armis
tice came long before the height of this move ment had been reached, long before the "herd feeling" had been used up by enchannelment in the standardized types of behavior apparent in the warring countries of Europe, long before war-weariness could set in. The armistice abolished the foe whose existence had been the initiating occasion of war-behavior and the war-psychosis. The country became like a charged wire with a loose end; a menace to almost anything that might draw its feeling. The premature removal of the external occa sion and the lack of a new one meant a re version of this feeling inward, bringing "un rest" and "law and order" into play. Bolshe vism replaced Germany as an object of hatred, and was used as a synonym for any attitude other than one favoring the perpetuation of the dominance of the business class. "American ism" became sy-nonymous with the suppression of labor activities, liberalism in politics, liberal ism of any kind. All these were extruded from the body politic by the epithet "foreign" or by being attributed to "foreign" agitators.
The same relation of emotion and condition obtained among the drafted men returning to civilian life. By propaganda and training their minds had been set to military activity covering a larger period than was actually required of them. While at the same time, the discipline of military life had repressed all the appetitions which the purpose of that life aroused. They came back, thus, ripe for violence. Organized in the American Legion, and led by persons of the business class, they also seek objects by which the emotional tension might be released. They function violently against anything 6for eign) or "Bolshevist.1) Because of the discrepancy between the in tensity of the war feeling and the length of the war the whole country is, in fact, in a con dition of intellectual confusion and emotional instability. The war having from the point of view of the emotional change in society.stopped too soon, the emotions accompanyhig it disin tegrate on all sides the unity they had estab lished. The pre-war rivalries are more explicit and more intense; the conflict between the eco nomic groups is now avowed and final. Tlus state will endure at least until the surplusage of emotion is consumed. It may endure niudi longer if the appropriation of ((Americanism* by one class is not repudiated and common purposes of construction posited effectively enough to create a new national morale.
Broadly speaking, the same things are true fur all Other countries. See PSYCHIATRY and WAR. • Ellis, Havelock, (The Psy chology of Conflict' ; Freud, Sigmund, (Zeit gemasses tieber Krieg und Todt' ; Jones, Ernest, (War and rndividual Psychology' ; Trotter, qnstintis of the Herd in Peace and War); James, William. 'A Moral Equivalent for War> ; MaeCurdy, J. T., (The Psycholou of War''; Kellen, H. M., (The Psychology of War.>