PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GERMANS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1503, 29 January 1916, Page 4

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GERMANS.

In these times everybody writes and talks ot psychology, from Colonel Gibbous to Mr Woodrow Wilson, Land and Water asserts that the psychology of the German people is probably the simplest to understand of any people in the world. It is all writ large in the methods they employ against those they wish to conquer. When the Germans desire to achieve certain psychological results, they first ask themselves what would produce those results among themselves. Foresample, they are anxious to make their enemy civilians tire of the war and beg their Governments to sue for peace. To the question, “What means must we employ to accomplish this result ?” their answer is •‘Precisely those which would cause our people to beg for peace.” Hence all the horrors and deeds of frightfulness at which the world has stood aghast! Here it would be well to notice how unwittingly our enemies have exposed the true inwardness of their own character by their interpretation of the psychology of other nations. Knowing that fear and greed are the two most potent influences by which they themselves are swayed, they calmly assume that by these same influences the whole world can be governed. This affords us a most interesting view of the kind of “kultut” the Germans have acquired. It is a fact that the greatest surprise and disappointment the German rulers have yet experienced during the war is the utter failure of their deeds of frightlulness. —Zeppelin raids, etc. —to create panic and terror among their adversaries- This has puzzled them beyond words. That their methods have succeeded in the Balkans need not astonish us, for it is among those races whose psychology and morals (or immorals) are nearest akin to their own, that one would naturally have predicted the results that have happened, one might almost say, inevitably.