THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRAZES. 291 



lowed. The effect of social excitement in paralyzing the intellect was 

 shown in this case in the wholesale and useless destruction of women 

 and children. Furthermore, this reversion to the manners of the savage 

 carries with it its appropriate mood. The slaughterers are not like 

 demons, as we imagine demons to be, but rather like thoughtless chil- 

 dren. There is merriment and much gayety, and there is dancing and 

 singing around the corpses, and seats are arranged for the ladies, who 

 are eager to enjoy the spectacle; and finally the victims are made to 

 pass through a double row of executioners, who carve them into pieces 

 gradually, so that all can saturate themselves with the sight of the 

 bloodshed. 



Although in some cases wars may be coolly planned by the people's 

 leaders for personal or political reasons or for purposes of national 

 conquest, still they all depend for their successful issue upon the 

 homicidal impulse in the masses of people. This is called .the war spirit 

 and is always of an epidemic character. It may have any degree of 

 ferocity or mildness. It has a tendency to be periodic, so that if it has 

 slumbered for a considerable period a very slight cause is sufficient to 

 awaken it. A mere boundary line in Venezuela, in which this country 

 had but a remote interest, was sufficient a few years ago to excite this 

 war spirit in a milder form, when a curious craze for a war with Great 

 Britain flowed like a wave across this country. 



Any war will furnish instructive material to the student of social 

 psychology. In the late Spanish-American war, for instance, we all 

 felt the war spirit which flowed in epidemic form across the country 

 and engulfed it. The first motive of the war, the altruistic desire to 

 free an oppressed people, was of the ideal glittering kind, well fitted to 

 excite the emotions of the masses. A dramatic event further fans this 

 emotional flame, and at once the aggregate personality of the nation 

 is in a condition of automatism, where primitive instincts, such as 

 revenge and lust for the paraphernalia of war, are no longer checked 

 by the more lately acquired moral principles. Congressmen, editors, 

 members of peace societies, ministers of the gospel, forget their long 

 and patient efforts to establish means for settling national differences by 

 arbitration and join lustily in the war cry, and the psychologically 

 curious spectacle is presented of a great nation, priding itself as a leader 

 in the world's morals, giving to the appeal of a weaker nation for the 

 arbitration of a dispute the answer of shot and shell. Although the 

 motive of blood for blood is a moral motive belonging to a bygone age 

 and in individual ethics has long been outgrown, yet collectively, under 

 the influence of the war craze, we revert to it, and it is shamelessly 

 proclaimed from platform and editorial room and vigorously applauded 

 by the people. We have seen that cruelty and the persecution of the 

 weak by the strong were among the reversionary symptoms of the social 



