[Wilson offers a historical overview of critical reception to The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.]

Few characteristics in the English are more irritating to the foreigner, or seem more hypocritical, than the proverbial modesty. It is easy to see why; for it may turn into a trap, as it has done more than once under the test of war. It is a secret weapon always at the ready, more deadly than most yet produced by adversaries who, for all their skill and courage, have too often shown the mentality, made the same boastful noises, and proved quite as destructive as urchins of, perhaps, a backward fourteen.

The modesty is inherent, and extends particularly to things of the mind. Any nation is glad to claim credit for inventions, especially those of a more sensational kind. There is less general interest in the birth and evolution of ideas. For all her quack about kultur, Germany expelled her most eminent man of science through a puerile theory of race. Britain's are apt to reach a decent obscurity—sometimes very honourable, but still obscurity—unless, like Darwin, they chance to split society by the violence of controversy. Modesty in this sphere is perhaps less fortunate, since the foreigner may jump to the conclusion that thought is not so valued in these islands as it should be. Wilfred Trotter would have agreed with such a conclusion, and would probably have applied it to mankind in general.

A time may come when Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War will be regarded as something more dynamic than a minor classic. It is one of those lone original books which English men of science are apt to produce from time to time. It was first published in book form, quite without fuss, in 1916. It expounds a fresh and original theory which, though it has been assailed, has never been disproved during the tumultuous quarter century in which it has been before the world. Trotter showed the existence and the power in man of what he called the Herd Instinct. He issued his first papers on the subject in the ‘Sociological Review’ before the last war. During that struggle he amplified what he had already written, a task he was able to do all the more satisfactorily because time had proved him a prophet. He died in 1939; and it is significant that one of the main obituary notices did not so much as mention his theories. It was left to correspondents to remark, in letters supplementary to the notice, that if more attention had been devoted to Trotter in ‘the years between,’ the question of another world outbreak might never have arisen. Such an assertion is worth examining.

Any indication of Trotter's ideas, however sympathetic, must, of course, be selective, arbitrary, and oversimplified. He himself did not waste words, yet found it necessary to occupy 260 close pages to his theme, so that it is impossible to do more, within the compass of a brief paper, than to suggest a line of thought apposite to the present.

Narrowing his inquiry down to particular herds or groups of such, Trotter divided the nations into (roughly again) the Wolves, the Sheep, and the Bees. It is characteristic of the Englishman to draw an analogy from the animal world, but Trotter at least gives depth to his illustration. The Wolves represent the aggressive herd, magnificent in enterprise and energy, but wholly lacking in that ‘benign use of power’ at which Trotter felt mankind might be aiming. To the Wolf herd, altruism is entirely suspect. Pre-eminent among lupine nations, at the time he wrote, stood Germany; and there she stands today, governed by men whose names will be abhorred for ever by the civilised.

The Sheep, the non-aggressive herd, helpless without a shepherd, have been represented with pitiless clarity in the smaller victim-nations of the present war.

The Bees are the socialised herd, gifted in altruism, not interested in aggression, and capable of a most formidable unity and defence. Dismissing modesty as irrelevant, Trotter saw in them the nearest approximation to his own countrymen.

Such, in a few words, is the theory applied to groups of nations, and the severest critic would be impelled to grant how abundantly events of the last and present war vindicate the reasoning. Nor is Trotter's doctrine without hope for a better future. He conceived it probable that the nature of the herd could change or evolve, and for the better, even if this, like any other trend in nature, must be of painful slowness. It was also his belief that the socialised herd, once it realised its own power and had cause to use it, was invincible, having immense stores of moral strength. He wrote: “If she (England) can bring about an adequate acceleration of the perfectly natural consolidation towards which she is, and has slowly been, tending, she will attain access to a store of moral power literally inexhaustible, and will reach a moral cohesion which no hardship can shake, and an endurance which no power on earth can overcome.”

The hour struck twenty-five years after those words were written. In July 1940, with France in default and without an effective ally in the world not of her own kin, Britain faced the supreme crisis of her history. The odds against her were greater than at any time in the past. She found a leader, found cohesion, and stood firm. It was the act of standing firm which brought the odds to nothing. The Wolves became aware from the past, or by some profound instinct, of the latent power of the Bees; and knew that if the hive were determined to make a stand, it boded ill. The first great moral victory was won in the face of all appearances and likelihood; for reason was all against it, and only the uncomprehending, the ultra-brave, and the very shrewd guessed that a miracle would come. The voice of Authority was sometimes necessary to still the querulous, but that the basic spirit was solid, every person then living within these islands can testify. It was the little incidents which showed it so unmistakably. Everyone found his own illustrations; for instance nothing was more impressive than the sight of a group of Chief Petty Officers and their wives standing by a Portsmouth train at Waterloo Station. The country had survived 1940 and the bombardment which continued so far into the year which followed. Then, when the clouds actually seemed to be lifting, came Crete. This hit the Navy cruelly, the fiercest blow of many it had had. The men in question were all veteran, weighty, skilled, the backbone of their Service; their wives were fitting partners. They stood in a group outside their carriage and discussed the threatening news. “It’s nothing really,” said one pontifically; “just a bad patch we’re going through, that’s all.” Then—almost defiantly—“It will pass.” “It will pass,” echoed every one of the little group as they turned to their carriages. There was no further argument; none was possible. “English morale,” said Trotter of events long before, “seemed actually to be invigorated by defeat, and even remained untouched by the more serious trials of uninspired and mediocre direction, of ill-will, petty tyranny, and confusion.”

Why, it may be asked, if it is true on Trotter's showing that the Wolf herd, once barred from aggression, is apter than any to disintegrate, why is it that the lessons of the last war were lost on the Germans? The answer is that they were not lost. They learnt in every possible way, and put the knowledge to such good use as to counter-balance, as near as maybe, most of the disadvantages of the lupine technique. They learnt a lot, but they did not change their character. Most important of all, they were able to persuade themselves that they had never been beaten. Trotter is strong on this very point. “It needs no psychological insight to foretell that if the result of this war can be in any way regarded as a success for Germany, she will be thereby confirmed in her present ideals, however great her sufferings may have been, however complete her exhaustion. … Proof of failure adequate to convince a people of the socialised type might be quite inadequate to convince a people of the lupine type in whom, from the nature of the case, mental resistiveness is so much more impenetrable.” He added, in a sentence which should be recalled at any future peace conference: “This is the psychological fact of which the statesmen of Europe will have to be, above all things, aware when questions of peace come seriously to be discussed, for otherwise they will risk the loss of all the blood and treasure which have been expended without any corresponding gain for civilisation.”

Last time, Trotter's words went unheeded. The victors were sanguine enough to hope that Germany would accept a treaty vastly different from any which she herself would have imposed on a victim. In the “unconditional surrender” preliminaries which must foreshadow the settlement of the present struggle, it is to be hoped that earlier miscalculations will be recalled.

It has already been mentioned that when Trotter died, in November 1939, a principal cause of his fame was at first overlooked. Other distinctions were readily recalled, as well they might be, since he had been Serjeant Surgeon to the King, and the only surgeon of his generation to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His medical career was full of honour. The fame of his writing, though steady, was altogether less spectacular. Between February 1916 and February 1930 his book achieved eleven impressions, and in ‘Group Psychology’ it had the honour of extensive and respectful notice by Freud. As ‘Impression’ is a word which may cover the printing of any number of copies from perhaps five hundred upwards, the facts can give only an indication that his work did not go unread. It had a steady public, particularly in the twenties. Between March 1920 and March 1926 six of the eleven printings appeared. That of February 1930 was the last before the present war, the opening of which found it out of print. A small group of people, who conceived its special value to the times, induced the publisher to spare paper for a reissue. This appeared in February 1940, not without success.

Although Trotter did not live to see the full fury of the present struggle, he lived long enough to make some pertinent observations upon it. For instance, in the pre-blitz period he regarded the black-out as a gross mistake, an inconvenience with no corresponding advantage, with implications discreditable to the good sense of the people of this country. He was not alone in feeling that the authorities had under-estimated the powers and resistance of those they were alleged to be leading. Two days after war began a General, then in one of the most responsible posts in the Empire, was understood to say that he feared above all things the possible effects of bombing on the spirit of the civil population. Yet there was already the experience of Barcelona and China as a guide. One more instance was provided of a nation being led largely from below.

When the war was still very young, Trotter's voice was heard once, in the columns of a newspaper, though, as was his custom, he did not raise it. “The adversaries of the present war are separated not by mere political disagreement,” he said, “but by differences in their attitude towards life which practically amount to incompatible types of civilisation.” He saw through the deceptive initial stages with the keen eye of one who had mastered his own lessons. “If the contest is of the kind suggested,” he added, “it is certain that the weaker must go to the wall, and that no ultimate issue by way of compromise is likely to be possible.”

The last sentence of his letter is worth recalling, as are few dating from that time: “Vigorous and original thought of an arduous kind is necessary to keep open and develop communication between Government and fighting departments and Government and people; to maintain civilian morale; to study and exploit on the largest scale the element of surprise in war …” (“It will be a siege-war all through,” said the same General so perturbed over civilian morale; and it was the Germans who had learnt something about surprise) … “to study and exploit the advantages of contending with an enemy who has certain well-marked mental limitations, and to undertake a really serious campaign against enemy morale in supplant to the rather innocent machinations that have hitherto passed as such.”

To look back is to be twice encouraged: first, to find that the truth of Trotter's ideas are being once more realised and—as he expected—not to our disadvantage; and then through the discovery that we are slowly, painfully slowly, and too often unconsciously, learning from experience. It is stupid to expect too much since “Man is notoriously insensitive to the suggestions of experience,” as Trotter wrote; but those of twenty years ago are still too close, too large in the common memory to be quite forgotten. “We are not taking part in a mere war,” he wrote in 1915, “but in one of Nature's august experiments. It is as if she had set herself to try out in her workshop the strength of the socialised and the aggressive type.” Such a statement may appear obvious, but so are most great truths. If the more advanced state of society is vindicated, if the Wolf herd is truly anachronistic, as Trotter believed, then the war, ending in victory for the Bees, will open upon the most difficult and protracted task of all, the re-education of the misguided and the readaption of the warrior to a life which, although capable of fulfilling every side of man's aspirations, has too often the appearance of desperate dulness, restrictive of those very qualities and attributes so necessary and so cherished in war.