Show in their madness they go to war I 1 v F av r U 1 I 1 er lw ta R Z 50 W 14 V I 1 4 1 A ajl V I 1 F 11 T i 1 we R mussolini left and hitler addressing vast throngs give evidence that great masses of people are carried away mentally and emotionally by public speeches by WILLIAM C UTLEY HOLE nations go mad and in W WHOLE their madness to war they are moved to terrible deeds with equally terrible consequences by powerful forces of suggestive propaganda at the hands bands of leaders who are themselves mentally out of balance only mental hygiene universal and ceaseless in application can save mankind from the horror borror and degradation of war and indeed as military science advances from utter extinction this Is the ominous warning given in a document sent to the statesmen of the world by the committee on war prophylaxis of the netherlands medical association and sl signed ned by 9 prominent psychiatrists of 30 nations it was a modern reiteration scientifically prompted of the old maxim that the pen Is mightier than the sword that suggest suggestion lon Is more powerful than soend logic in its influence on human instincts inherited from the dark caverns of the past tile the danger which confronts the world now was named by prof william wililam james rioted noted psychiatrist at a medical meeting in london there are at the present time individuals holding prominent positions and influencing the destinies of whole countries who are known to be mentally unstable or who have actually had attacks of mental disorder people are excited by the fire and emotion of unbalanced but powerful personalities and nd by tile the evilly cilly inspired speeches of public heroes until they themselves are hypnotized and carried away then and only then are they capable of doing acts which if they were in their normal state would shock them and fill them with loathing the psychiatrists say even in this advanced age of civilization man still possesses somewhere in him thai dangerous instinct to destroy ind kill when they believe their community Is in danger of being attacked or Is belna being wrong edby another community these instincts break loose in a strife state of war such instincts are an looked upon as heroic and are rewarded speeches urging that there Is real necessity for military action cries of sine saie the world for democracy down with the enemy i and similar catch lines can throw such nations emotionally out of control they can make a man who hurt a lly fly ordinarily be ready to run a bayonet through another man with wilh the greatest satisfaction and with the knowledge know edg that tie lie Is actually to be condoned for elch an act force Is enormous the suggest suggestive lve force of 9 speeches made by statesmen is enormous and way may be dangerous Is c conclusion the warlike spirit so easily aroused by the cry that the country Is in danger Is not to be bridled ns as was evident in 1914 A catch phrase or a sloran slogan shouted by a great lender can do more to bring a nation up in arms than all the lemalle lerun lic recruiting and logical approach to sense of duty can cain hope to do he call 54 40 or fight give me liberty or give me death de athi they shall nut not passi pass I 1 even the sand lot baseball game provides a parallel A pitcher who has hurled a beautiful ball game allows a own man or two to get to base and although bhough the spectators know he be bly has control of the situ situation atlon a military 0 heckler unstable in his logic rid ind poor in his judgment starts crying take him out take him outi out I 1 oon the cry roars forth with the mighty volume of the entire crowd who mho really know better belter and the pitch r actually does docs got get rattled and blows up great leaders are often suffering rom suppressed fears or hates or desires for power these motions may cause them to believe hat their countries are threatened by langer from other countries and that hey must lead their peoples to pro act themselves they may be totally but the flame inside em powers them to sway entire populations from the norm these lenders leaders dont for a minute fool the psychiatrists who say our science la is sufficiently advanced for us to distinguish between real pretended and unconscious motives even in statesmen the desire to disguise national militarism by continual talk about peace will not protect leaders from the judgment jud of history the se bet promoters of militarism are responsible for the misery a new war Is sure to bring brine need control of instinct all of us have the warlike In instinct it Is only when we are swayed into losing control of it that we make war professor james says we inherit the warlike war like ilke type our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow and thousands of years of peace wont breed it out of us the public imagination fairly fairl Y fattens on the thought of wars wara let public opinion once reach a certain lighting fighting pitch and no ruler can withstand it you can test yourself on your inherited love for fighting get a pencil right now and write the names of the 10 men you consider outstanding in the worlds history now look them over now many of them are or were fig fighters gaiters gli the inborn instinct for war Is not impossible of control however says science dr john SI it fletcher professor of psychology at tulane university ver sity wa given some light on this subject in the answers to a question lie put to members of the american psychological association this was tile the question do you as a psychologist hold bold that there are present in human nature ineradicable instinctive factors that make war between nations inevitable of the members of the association ass ocla answered three hundred and forty six responded with an unqualified NO only 10 said YES there were 22 indefinite answers most of the negative replies were emphatic underscored and elaborated with argument and reiteration operation cooperation co called solution primitive man fought over roots and berries ber rles we over markets said dr S lil ritter hitter whose teachings in psychology are known in america and china operation cooperation co founded on equally innate sympathy and gregariousness seems a possible solution when leaders are sane note not said dr A S otis any one who thinks so Is densely ignorant of political affairs wars are arc artificial commercial strategic strates lc political li dup and forced upon us and dr adolf alemer johns hopkins hopking university psychiatrist said the abolition of duels in anglo saxon society Is a striking and suggestive fact worth remembering the only solution to the problem of how hiow to end war Is to restrain the warlike spirit not to stir it up by propaganda and how a clever propagandist can stir it up say the psychiatrists why cannot it be used to destroy war publicity Is a replacing powder in settling international difficulties said dr alay itay lyman wilbur president of stanford university and former secretary of the interior and publicity elty means attacks through and upon the mind more fatal than bullets war Is an old well established and emotional state often artificially created which will carry individuals li and groups of people through degradation and misery almost without limit and yet in war we have found that propaganda fatal than bullets propaganda organized played a large part in the last great war and organized Is now nov on its way in case there should be another great war world control must dust come not through gli the mass soldering of men hut bill through the minds of men so that mental hygiene sound thinking the control of the emotions emot loLS becomes the outs outstanding banding tan ding problem of 0 the world 60 today often it Is important to the exam cause of the propagandist that the source of 0 information in an account be played down or even omitted entirely doctor wllbur warns that when you yon teal feel yourself becoming excited by a statement or a news story or a magazine article you should check it tor for the tha source of its information if you have hart trouble finding it or cannot find end it at all there Is ground for suspicion you should take time to think it over and weigh its arguments carefully above all dont hurry about taking its suggestions in reading accounts of this kind it Is well to keep in mind that propaganda has been developed as an art am and the men who make propaganda their business are real artists but they have their art an which if they in ra known by their victims would make pr propaganda ofin ganda much more easily recognizable ni the rules may be summed up in this manner a avoid logical argument and appeal to emotion alone W b always fit the situation into a pattern of we versus the enemy c neach entire groups as well as individual persons d keep hidden the source of the tha propaganda the fighting spirit in itself Is not something to be deplored it Is only potentially bad actually it Is an amerlean american tradition and the spur to progress aad activity but like criticism it can be destructive or constructive the great opportunity awaiting science and government Is that of putting patting such a vital force to tb admirable use values military training professor james believes that martial training lias has its virtue and does doea not dot necessarily have to have wr war as ai its objective ile he would like to end ware am but believes something can be saved out of them ills plans along this line cannot help calling to mind the Ci civilian villau conservation corps for he would like to see gee young men drilled to develop thele their strength tn their courage their manhood no digging of trenches to train them in the art of killing their fellow men rather let them dig ditches the sweat and the muscle Is there and the dla can be but the violence the tha degradation are missing tills force says proem professor sor james would be applied to man mans battle against nature not against his neighbor lie sums up his own idea instead of military conscription let us have a conscription of the whole youthful populations to form for a certain number of years a part of the tha army enlisted against nature to ire coal and iron nines mines to freight trains to fishing fleets in december to dishwashing dish washing cloth clothes ea washing and win dow washing to road bullying and tuni tun nel making to foundries and stoke holes and to the frames of e erg re would out glided youths be drafted off on according to their choice to get the childishness knocked out of them and to come back into society with healthier and soberer ideas I rhe the martial type of character can caa be bred without war strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound elsewhere priests and medical men tire ar la Is a fashion educated to it let our young men go to war against flood earthquake famine wind peo paa silence and ignorance let them go into a scientific war now how long it will be before governments can be persuaded to take up op the cause of mental hygiene ax as the tha only sure way of saving mankind from war Is a question to which hardly anyone would be willing to guess the an aa awer certainly not mot very bocis with alt conditions what they are in europe and the far east individual effort can help it if only everybody would STOP TO THINK that Is the krists a answer then thea mentally unbalanced lenders leaders would lose their sting 6 0 western newspaper Nw paper union |