13 
June 20, 19 1 8 Land & Water 
At Death-Grips with the Wolf: By L. P. Jacks 
^A LL political problems, whether 
/^L domestic or foreign, become 
/ ^ in the last resort what I will 
/ ^^ call, for want of a bettei 
■^~ -^^name, human problems. 
This is not a distinction without a 
difference, and none but benighted 
politicians would treat it as such. It 
stands for the greatest difference con- 
ceivable ; it marks the dividing line 
between wisdom and folly, success and 
failure, in public affairs. Some of the 
most disastrous mistakes ever made bv 
nations or governments have arisen 
from the neglect of it. 
The astonishing mistakes which Ger- 
many has been making during the last 
four years — I shall speak later of her 
crimes — may be traced to the incapacity 
of the German mind for translating 
international politics into human terms. 
Nor is she the only sinner, though she 
is unquestionably the worst. Our own 
troubles in Ireland are due to our not 
having perceived that the Irish question 
is primarily a human one. We have 
treated it as primarily political, which 
is only its secondary aspect. At root, 
and in essence, it is not a question of 
Ireland and England, but of Irishmen and Enghshmen. 
What a difference would have been made if that had been 
understood from the first ! 
In like manner, we shall never understand the war, its 
■causes, its meaning, its issues, until we look at these things 
from the human point of view 
A typical wolf face 
General von Freytag, Author of "Deductions 
from the World-war." 
tvpe with the rise in rank. Among the 
common soldiers the wolf-face is absent 
fully as often as it is present. Among 
the junior officers one misses it only 
here and there. The generals reproduce 
it almost witliout exception ; while in 
the Kaiser, of course, it comes out pur 
sang. On the whole, the collection does 
justice to the alternative title my friend 
has inscribed on the cover — "the War 
interpreted at a Glance." You close 
the book with the feeling that the 
question has been reduced to its ulti- 
mate terms. "Mankind," you say, "is 
in arms against this wolf." Nor is this 
mere impressionism. We may use these- 
words with the assurance that we are 
anticipating the verdict of history. 
These German militarists have justified 
their faces. They have won for them- 
selves a reputation in cruelty by which 
they will be remembered hereafter, even 
though everything else should be for- 
gotten. The}' have made cruelty the 
keyword to the human mtaning of the 
war ; the word that explains better 
than any other single word that could 
be chosen what it is that binds the 
allied nations into a unitary force, what 
they are fighting to estabhsh, and what they are fighting 
to overthrow. , 
Ever since the outbreak of war evidence has been rapidly 
accumulating that the instinct for cruelty is an outstanding 
characteristic, if not of the German people, assuredly of the 
We shall never reach the German State— and I for one do not see how it can belong 
govenung factors by poring over maps, by studyirjg statistics to either unless it is the common property of both. There 
u.. __!..__, ___x ,__ ._„ • r was a time when we hesitated to believe this ; andeven.now, 
when evidence leaves no alternative to the behef, the mind 
revolts at the necessity which imposes upon it a conclusion 
so dishonourable to man. For a long time we tried to per- 
suade ourselves that the thing known as Schrecklichkeii 
(frightfulness) was the temporary expedient of a desperately 
of empire, by comparing political systems, by talking of 
tendencies, prindiples, or even ideals. I am not saying that 
these things are unimportant. They are immensely import- 
ant. But they are not fundamental. Behind them all lie 
the facts of temperament, of human character, out of which 
the ideals, the systems, the tendencies take their rise. The 
people who tell us that the war is "a conflict of ideas" think wicked Government fighting with its back to the wall against 
thev are takintr us to the foimtain-heari. Rnt assnredlv thev thp iiirlcrmr.nf nf m•.r,^i.1,^ w^^ ^„„ ^u'..,^. . 1 
they are taking us to the fountain-head. But assuredly they 
are mistaken. The ideas themselves have to be accounted 
for. How is it that the Germans have one "idea" and we 
another ? The answer can only be given in human terms — 
in language, that is, which shows wherein the Germans differ 
as men from ourselves. Primarily the conflict is between 
types of character ; onh' in a secondary 'sense is it a conflict 
between "ideas." All turns on the tjnpes of character that 
are involved. It is not merely a question of British, French, 
American, or German notions of the way the world ought to 
be governed. ,It is far more a question of Britons, French- 
men, Americans, Germans. 
A friend of mine, who is a student of liistory, makes a 
point of collecting all the contemporary German por- 
traits he can lay his hands on.. He has them pasted in a 
book, handsomely bound, on the cover of which he has 
printed these words : "The Wolf, or the War interpreted at 
a Glance." Inside is a vast collection of faces: authentic 
photographs of the Kaiser, his ministers, his generals, Hinden- 
burg, Liidendorf,. von Kiihlmann, von Tirpitz, and the rest — 
all tlie representatives of the military party. In another 
group are the various professors and divines who have declared 
their militarist proclivities. In another are their opponents. 
And, lastly, there are hundreds of prisoners of war, repro- 
ductions of photographs from the illustrated papers, to which 
my friend, as an expert in physiognomy, attaches a high 
VEilue. 
The type which he professes to have found, more or less 
strongly marked in the great majority of these faces, is that 
of the wolf. To make this apparent, he has executed a well- 
drawn wolf's head on those pages where the type stands out 
clearest. In the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and many of 
the generals no one could overlook the resemblance. A few 
of them, like the Crown Prince, appear to be men of a low 
order of intelligence, and one wpuld hardly say of these that 
they make convincing wolves. But the gre-^t majority have 
the marks of exceptional intellectual power, and it is precisely 
in them that the lupine traits are most pronounced and 
unmistakable. 
Very remarkable, too, is the increasing dominance of the 
the judgment of mankind. We can think so no longer, even 
if we have thought so before. 
We now know, by force of cumulative evidence, that we 
have here to do with an instinct deeply embedded in German 
character and sufficiently powerful, in spite of whatever 
resistance it may encounter here and there, to stamp the 
mark of cruelty on the world- pohcy /"of the German State. 
Let the reader cast his eye through the collection of sayings 
by German statesmen, jshilosophers and divines issued by 
the American, Committee on Public Information in the 
volume Conquest and Cnltur : or lot him turn to von Freytag 
Loringhoven's book. Deductions from the World Wa;- (Constable 
and Co., 3s. 61. net). If his "experience resembles that of 
the present writer, he will find that the whole mass of this 
abominable hterature resolves itself quite simply into the 
picture of a cruel face, in which the ferocity and cunning of a 
wolf are rendered revolting by combination with the high 
intelligence of a man. Such unquestionably is the German 
State as it is here exhibited by those who belong, to it. 
The war has provided hundreds- of test cases which are 
quite unintelligible except as the outcome of a native instinct 
for cruelty. Some of them, like the killing of Nurse Cavell, 
are small things when set down before the general background 
of horrors — small, but infinitely significant as betraying the 
spirit of these people. Others reveal cruelty on an immense 
and incredible scale. Foremost among these is the appalhng 
story of the treatment accorded to prisoners of war — ^in 
which the civilian population appear to have taken an equal 
hand with the military authorities. This is not the place to 
recit(i the evidence ; "it is abundantly accessible to all who 
can sfeel tlicmsclves to read it ; and "hereafter when the full 
story is told— for as yet we have but a fragment— the worid 
will have before it a record of cruelty practised on a scale 
which, had it been predicted of any nation before the war, 
would have caused the prophet to be counted insane. 
Let no one say that these are the inevitable incidents of 
war. They are no such thing. Far from being ine\-itable, 
they would be impossible even in this, the bitterest of all 
wars, were it not for the psychological fact that one of the 
belligerents has inclinations towards cruelty which are to be 
