a psychological interest of practical power.[1] As a matter of fact, the recruit tends to put on, with his uniform, a more primitive and sexually challenging behavior than he assumes as a civilian in the restraining circumstances of western society. To the women of the nation, male personality became, during the war, of paramount importance, and the conflicting values went almost completely into the discard. Whether this effect will be carried over into the postbellum period remains to be seen.
It is entirely improbably that a war of less than ten years’ duration has any injurious effect upon the stocks of a nation. Conclusions that the effects of short wars are damaging have entirely neglected the psychological factors, which are the most important of all. A war lasting throughout a generation would have quite different effects, and is not to be made the basis of arguments concerning briefer conflicts. The incidental benefits which war confers upon a nation are not reasons
- ↑ Since writing the above I have received the following interesting communication concerning the fascination of the uniform: “In a recent book I came across these sentences, which come nearer expressing my sentiments on the subject than anything I have ever read:—‘but now that we are at war, there has awakened in every woman the ancestral enthusiasm that her remote grandmother used to feel for the strong and aggressive beast.—Before a uniform they feel the humble and servile enthusiasm of the female of the lower animals before the crests, foretops, and gay plumes of the fighting males.’” “But there is another feeling” (my correspondent adds), “that men in uniform always awaken in women:—the desire to mother them. Why is that?” An almost universal expression of the maternal instinct towards the potential parent! But with some women, the dominant response to the uniform (and the conditions it symbolizes) may be best described as an increase in coquetry.
