present
the social instinct or feeling at its highest point. These phenomena
are types of social reaction, but the question may be raised whether
they do not represent something more than reactions in the ordinary
sense. We see in times of war, first, a greatly increased
sensitiveness to leadership, a craving for devotion to a leader,
indeed, which is sometimes pathetic in its effort to transform really
commonplace men into religious objects. The leader as a concept and an
ideal is a product of the social mood itself, which does for him
precisely what romantic love does for its object, exerts a creative
effect upon him. The leader is magnified to heroic size and held up
before the enemy as a threat. It is plain to be seen that this
devotion to leader and imaginative treatment of him is in part a
defensive reaction. The individual hides behind this colossal figure,
and thus feels himself safe. But this protective impulse that creates
the invincible leader is not the only motive; at least it is probably
not the only one. The leader represents the ideals and the ambitions
of the people, and his prestige and the forms that surround him,
especially everything that is aesthetic or suggests the heroic,
symbolize the craving for power in a people. The strength and the
peculiar abandon and perversity, one may say, of the affections of a
nation toward the leader in time of war make the rise of such a leader
dreaded by the political powers in every country. Newspapers, in every
war, find some heroic figure whom they exploit as a coming dictator,
and changes of leadership in the field apparently sometimes have
reference to these popular currents. But a nation in love with its
leader is strong in defense, and readily becomes aggressive, and this
relation of mass to leader is of course one of the main foundations of
military morale.

The second universal social phenomenon of war is the greatly
intensified feeling of solidarity as shown in comradeship and united
feelings on the part of the people. This too is in part, and only in
part, a protective reaction. The individual becomes safe by becoming a
part of a whole which then alone seems to have real existence and true
value. The individual loses himself in the whole, but the whole group
also becomes absorbed and taken into the sphere of protection and
interest of the individual. The individual becomes highly sensitive to
everything that happens to the group, and peculiarly affected