The Dominion. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1915. NATIONAL MADNESS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2647, 18 December 1915, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1915. NATIONAL MADNESS

Germany's perverted views touching her own position in Europe, and the attitude towards her of other nations, clearly indicate _ tha ; t she suffers from a form of national madness. This question was dealt with by the Tima recently, and in a manner that went far to explain Germany's ' marvellous hallucinations with respect to supposed envious and persecuting neighbours. _ Madness, the writer pointed out, in its outward symptoms, _ is a wrong functioning of the mind. A madman's mind may still be powerful or acute, but he uses its power or its acuteness perversely, and not for his own spiritual or material welfare. If he has persecution mania, he obviously desires to believe that he is persecuted, and all his mcntal faculties minister to this desire. He sees a confirmation of the conspiracy against him in every trifle. He has the will to be mad, and that is what makes him mad, and distinguishes him from all who are sane. This madness of individuals has a physical cause, whatever it may be; and because of its physical cause it is to bo distinguished from collective madness. And yet there is a collective madness with just the same symptoms. It is because the individuals of a nation have the tendency to perverse functioning of the mind that an entire nation can'be seized with collective maclncs3. The individual may fHshtaued by hie isolation, while » pw# is diavm

more closoly together •by the belief : of its peoiile, and enjoys more keenly ; its .sense of national unity. TheGcrmans have fallen into mad habits of thought. They have as a nation tho will to be mad, and tliey arc prosecuting the purposes of their madness with all the sanity which they still possess as individuals. The Germans fall into national madness more easily than other nations, because of their natural _ docility. They have a passion -for unity which the French and the British lack. The British and the French havo among' them the rebel element, which refuses to render obedient and unthinking submission to any authority civil or military. Discord and reaction play much the same part in a, nation that the healthy, unaffected portions of the mind play in an individual. A man needs something in himself to be impatient v>>ith himself, and so does a nation. But there is no clement in Germany to tell the nation when it is making a fool of itself. It would not bo. tolerated. ' The Germans impose military rules upon themselves, and to them, the universe, including the mind of man, moves at the word of command. The Germans, adds the' Times, are so used to obeying that they never ask who utters the command: The Times subsequently had the Kaiser as_ a separate subject, treating lnm mainly as a figure of comedy. There is, however, a shadow, darker than that of comedy, which rests upon Kaiser Wilhelm and upon the Hohenzollern dynasty. It is the bJack shadow of insanity. In the Brandenburgs, as in other branches of tTie Hohcnzollerns, insanity lias been conspicuous, appearing in various guises among the chiefs of the different houses. The Kaiser's ancestors include men who, while they lived, were openly acknowledged to be insane. More than one of the number were confined in. mad-houses. Frederick the Great is generally considered as being the founder of Prussia as a great military power, though certain authorities look upon Frederick's 1 father as. being responsible for the . militarism of the nation. Macaulay -wrote of Frederick's father, that his character was disfigured by many • vices, and "his ecccntricities were such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse." When Frederick became King, Mac,iulay's verdict is that a tyrant "without fear, without faith, and without -mercy, ascended the throne." Mr. C. Sheridan Jones, author of thc : racy volume The Unspcahable Prussian, has devoted attention more recently to the Hohenzollcrns, a,nd searching and pitiless is the analysis to which they are subjected. What he styles_ the "spice of madness" which tainted Frederick the Great, ho considers has come to a ' head in the present. ruler of Ger- - many, i"Over and above all the insanity which tho Kaiser betrays, much of which is peculiar to himself, is the real hereditary madness of his race," says Mr. Sheridan Jones. The commonest form of the • Hohenzollern lunacy has for many generations led to an ber lief in their super-normal relations with the Deity. Several of i.-bc Kaiser's ancestors considered themselves as inspired agents _of the Almighty, armed with special pow- ■ ers, and released from the ordinary obligations that press on common men. A'fc least one of the Brandenburgs built a temple in his own honour, set up within it a statue or image of himself, and commanded his docile people to Worship it and him. Instances are on record of the present Kaiser's manifest lunacy in references to himself. There is, for example, ono proclamation to the \ army which opened with the words: ) "Soldiers, remember that yon sro tho chosen people. The spirit of the Lord has descended upon mo becauso I am Emperor of the Germans. I f am the, instrument of tho Most i High. ' I am- His sword, His viceroy." One benevolent commen--5 tator remarked not long ago that the Kaiser had not yet reached the stage of the maddest of his ancestors —the Brandenburg Elector who command-1 ed the people to worship him ; This claim is no longer quite valid. In . the Fortnightly Bcvieiv for Septcm- ' her last, tho Right Hon. W. F. Bailey describes, among the wrongs and horrors inflicted upon Poland, ; the carrying off to Berlin of the i famous picture "The Heart of the - Heart 'of Poland." We read: "To s the dazed horror of the citizens and ) all Poles, a vulgar portrait of the > Kaiser in uniform was raised above the dismantled i altar, lights were } placed before it, and the wretched " people were daily driven in by the 1 brutal German soldiers to -kneel be--j fore the picture of the man whom J they regard as the devil incarnate."