Page:Whymenfightameth00russuoft.djvu/98

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WHY MEN FIGHT

pains upon him than upon his neighbors, hoping to win recognition by some slight wincing on his part, driven to frenzy by his continuing to behave as if they did not exist. In just the same way the Germans are maddened by our spiritual immobility. At bottom we have regarded the Germans as one regards flies on a hot day: they are a nuisance, one has to brush them off, but it would not occur to one to be turned aside by them. Now that the initial certainty of victory has faded, we begin to be affected inwardly by the Germans. In time, if we continue to fail in our military enterprises, we shall realize that they are human beings, not just a tiresome circumstance. Then perhaps we shall hate them with a hatred which they will have no reason to resent. And from such a hatred it will be only a short journey to a genuine rapprochement.

The problem which must be solved, if the future of the world is to be less terrible than its present, is the problem of preventing nations from getting into the moods of England and Germany at the outbreak of the war. These two nations as they were at that moment might be taken as almost mythical representatives of pride and envy—cold pride and hot envy. Ger-