Chapter 33: The Psychology Of Fear

The old illustration of one soldier who accused another of having no bravery because he had no fear, by saying, ' If you were as much afraid as I am you would have run away long ago,' is not true to life, for it is the man of dulled feelings that is the first to run, and the ' man who is afraid of being afraid' who stays at his post to the last. I have ever found that the best scouts, men who must generally work alone in the dark, are those of highly strung nervous temperaments. 

I have noticed, too, that our best airmen were of the same type, for if you go into any mess of pilots on the front you will see them always fidgeting. their hands never still, betraying nervousness I have gone down the trench before a charge and seen the men with teeth chattering and blanched faces, but at the appointed second these men go over the top, none hesitating, every man performing prodigies of valour; not one but was a hero, yet not one that was not afraid.

There must be something wrong with the makeup of a man who under modem artillery-fire is not afraid. There are no nerves that do not break down eventually under the strain, but the man who shrinks from a shadow, and shudders at the touch of cold mud does his job with care and walks unhesitatingly into the mouth of hell. 

I have seen our signallers mending the telephone-wire under fire ; each time it would break they would curse and tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen resolution - the second wind of determination.

Fear is the 'purgative of the soul' ! There is nothing so wholesome for a man as to be 'scared to death' ! Nothing that so drives out the littlenesses that poison his life and set tip the toxemia of selfishness. Many a man that before the war made the acquiring of wealth or the gaining of the plaudits of his friends his chief aim, now finds that these things have no appeal for him. For he has been to the edge of life and looked into the abyss, and fear has stripped from him the rags of self-adornment ; and standing naked between the worlds his soul has found that it needs no beautifying but the cleansing of self forgetfulness.

This war is one of the greatest blessings this world has ever known, for it has brought to us fear of selfish force, fear of the engines of our own construction, fear of isolation in world politics, fear of secret diplomacy, fear of an unguarded peace, fear of an unprepared future, fear of an undisciplined people, fear of an irresponsible government, and, above all, THE FEAR OF FORGETTING!

But there is another reason why a man in battle, though afraid, does not fail. The fact is that men in a regiment or an army are not under the domination of their own will at all, but of the collective will of the whole. That is why some regiments are so anxious to keep alive their traditions, and emblazon their battles on their colours. That is why we devote so much time in the training of young recruits to the knowledge of the esprit de corps of the regiment. 

That is why the regulars are always the best fighters. It is not their longer training, for that is a handicap with new methods of warfare. It is not because of their superior discipline, for the territorials have not lacked perfect discipline. But there is an atmosphere in the regular regiments that makes one brother that goes into the regulars a better soldier than the other that enlists in militia. 

This atmosphere is compounded of pride in past achievements and confidence that the colours that have never been lowered, though shot down on many a field, cannot be shamed to-day. The victors of many engagements have an enormous advantage in battle, No one expected anything but the most heroic courage from the British regulars who had never failed when called upon, but every one was not a little anxious how ' Kitchener's' would stand their first ordeal of fire.

Every mass of men has, besides the will and mind of each one of them, a collective will and mind. Every town has this-who has not felt, on entering a town and viewing its shops and people, a certain pushing toward behaviour-some towns tend to make one frivolous, others grave. I know a city which, every time I enter, makes me think when last I was in church, while there is another in which I always want to dance or view the Follies. 

Have you not seen countrymen in town, whose clothes proclaim that they have never been out later than nine o'clock in a lifetime, trying to be the gay Lothario, drinking wine in a cabaret ? Every house has its personality made up of the collective minds of the people who inhabit it. Take your child to one strange house and he will fidget uncomfortably on the edge of his chair ; but take him to another, just as strange, and he will romp about without hesitation. Children are like the canaries we use to detect the presence of poisonous gases, most sensitive to atmosphere.

In the same way an army has ONE WILL, and that is why in battle you will not see one man fail, or there will be panic and all will fail. In every army there are individual men weak in resolution who, left to themselves, would run away ; but as the MIND of the army as a whole is courageous, so they are swept along in spite of themselves. The German army has ONE MIND for bestiality, and the Allied army has ONE MIND for victory.