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Gustave LeBon and The Psychology of the Great War

Martha Hanna

A ~ first blush, The Psychology of the Great War esembles many of the several dozen essays

and books intellectuals penned and published in France during the Great War. With its occasional but unapologetic denigration of the German people as animals, it is perhaps even more unabashedly anti-German than most works of its type, but not by much. German-bashing was, after all, the cur- rency of the day. And as LeBon's book makes evident, it took many forms and was articulated in many arguments. Like many other wartime essay- ists, LeBon asserts German responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities; excoriates German atrocities; laments the supine character of German intellectuals, who so readily rushed to the defense of their nation in 1914; denigrates the German people as servile in their deference to authority and brutal in their treatment of all who seem weak; and insists that Prussia, "aided by her universities, her historians, her philosophers, and her patriotic societies," was to blame for the militarization of contemporary Germany. This characterization of Prussia as bent on establishing its dominance within the Ger- man Empire and the European continent was a com- monplace in French writing about the origins and causes of the war. So, too, were some of the arguments that appear more fleetingly in LeBon's work: that German science, internationally admired be- fore 1914, was essentially derivative and imitative; and German education, however careful, fastidi- ous, and disciplined, was inherently unreflective. It was, LeBon insisted, characterized by a "prin- ciple of examining small facts with minute care, to the exclusion of general ideas" (p. 113). "Organi- zation" rather than intellect allowed Germany to

dominate industrial and technological production. LeBon conceded that such attributes, eminently useful in the modern world, accounted for much of modern Germany's success, they were not, however, "necessarily admirable in themselves" (p. 121).

Although there is, therefore, a great deal in The Psychology of the Great War that appears to re- hearse the arguments of other prominent French academics and men of letters, the points of differ- ence are, in the final analysis, more important to our understanding of this book. For The Psychol- ogy of the Great War took issue with the academic consensus more often--and on more fundamental questions--than it agreed with it. Close examina- tion shows that LeBon did not believe that Ger- many had consciously provoked the war in 1914; he did not accept the argument that the war was the product of rational calculation; and he did not hold German philosophy fundamentally responsible for the expansionist ideology of pan-German- ism that held sway under William II. He did believe that the German Army had committed atrocities against Belgian and French civilians, and, like many other French commentators, marshaled evidence from neutral sources to support his claim. But in seeking an explanation for the perfidy of the German intelligentsia he urged his readers to consider the malign influence "mental contagion" might assert under such circumstances.

In the first year of the war most French academics argued that Germany went to war in 1914 inspired and impelled to action by a hubristic faith in its right to dominate the continent. Territorial expansionism, fueled by an overweening self-impor-

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tance, pushed Germany to expand its frontiers and dominate its neighbors. And thus in seeking to explain why Germany transformed the Balkan crisis of 1914 into international war, French scholars like Gabriel Hanotaux, Lucien L6vy-Bmhl, and Charles Andler emphasized the decisive influence of pan- Germanis t ideology in the years of the Belle Epoque. According to this view, which anticipated by several decades the arguments that Fritz Fischer would make famous in the 1960s, German statesmen, increasingly sensitive to the expansionist ambitions of German business, perceived in the crisis of July 1914 a rare opportunity to advance the nation's pan-Germanist agenda and shaped their diplomatic responses accordingly.

Other scholars argued that the origins of Ger- man aggression were to be found not in the imme- diate past but in a philosophical tradition that origi- nated at least a century earlier, with Hegel and Fichte. To assign blame for the war to the opportunism of calculating pan-Germanists and their political al- lies was really to beg the question, for such an explanation failed to examine the roots and origins of pan-Germanism. With syl logist ic certainty, Ernest Lavisse, Emile Boutroux, and many others contended that because Fichte and Hegel could be identified as the intellectual architects of pan-Ger- manism, and because pan-Germanism was responsible for German aggression, then Fichte and Hegel should be held responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914. The roots of German militarism were to be found, therefore, in a philosophical tradition that in its simplest terms insisted that might makes right.

LeBon found neither argument adequate or con- vincing. Although willing to agree that Germany should be held responsible for the war, he denied that Germany had in fact wanted war in August 1914. He admitted that his patriotic impulse had been "to share the belief of most people in France that Germany was looking for an excuse to make war upon us"; but his respect for the available evidence prompted him to reconsider: as he "studied the documents with more care, a light dawned on [his] mind, and [he] came to the conclusion that although Germany had made war inevitable ... nevertheless she had no desire whatever for a conflict at the time when it actually occurred" (pp. 261- 62). LeBon knew that on this point his was a mi- nority opinion, and he did not hesitate to castigate those Sorbonne professors (like L6vy-Bruhl) who insisted that Germany had consciously provoked the war. But he was willing to recognize that even

in the Sorbonne one could find the occasional scholar of independent judgment.

To believe that Germany had taken advantage of the crisis of 1914 and had willfully provoked an international war, one had to believe that Germany had acted out of rational calculation. LeBon dismissed this belief as "one of the most disastrous errors of modem times" (p. 135). Indeed, had reason prevailed, Germany would have pursued a path of peaceful co-operation with its neighbors, for rational calculation would have quickly proven that German interests--economic and polit ical--would have been best served in this way. The decision to go to war was, therefore, contrary to reason, for it denied Germany access to markets previously open to it and antagonized populations previously toler- ant of Germany's presence. Convinced that reason would have prompted Germany to desist, LeBon concluded that German motivation was far less calculated, and considerably less rational, than dis- tinguished Sorbonne scholars would admit.

Skeptical of interpretations that attributed greater rationality to German decision making than the evidence might warrant, LeBon also challenged those who found in German Idealist philosophy the fundamental cause of German aggression. A cursory reading of The Psychology of the Great War would suggest that LeBon endorsed this argument: he, too, found in the German philosophical tradition that started with Hegel a tendency to jus- tify militarism and aggressive expansionism, but in the final analysis he did not hold philosophy (whether Hegelian or otherwise) to blame for Ger- man militarism. Instead, he considered Hegelian phi losophy a symptom rather than a cause of Germany's aggressive spirit. In their celebration of military might, German philosophers had merely provided intellectual justification for the Prussian monarchy 's well-established inclination towards militarism: it was, he noted, "the philosophers upon whom devolved the task of attempting to furnish a rational basis for theories whose usefulness was demonstrated by the history of their country" (p. 66). Speaking of Hegel and Nietzsche, LeBon conceded that they had indeed "exalt[ed] the most unworthy aspirations of their fellow-countrymen, particularly their instincts for conquest, slaughter, and rapine"; but they had done so only because "it is just as well to laud one's instincts when one can- not dominate them" (p. 75). In LeBon's analysis, therefore, thought did not form behavior; rather, behavior, bred by "instinct," prompted the devel-

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opment of thought. Philosophy might have played a part in the emergence of German militarism, but insofar as reason was neither prior nor primary, philosophy could not be held responsible, as French academic rationalists contended, for that tradition.

If neither rational calculation nor philosophical hubris could adequately account for German aggression in 1914, where did a plausible explanation lie? LeBon believed that because the war was not the "result of conscious calculation on the part of any one nation--not even Germany--but of the force of men's passions and emotions over rational calculation" (p. 179), only psychological prin- c iples-especial ly those already adumbrated in his earlier works--could adequately explain both the causes and the character of the war. He appealed in particular to three basic principles of collective behavior: that man is moved to act more by the strength of his emotions than the calculations of his reason; that the irrational and collective impulse is stronger than the rational and individual; and that mystic beliefs are more powerful than rational ones. Indeed, "mysticism and reason ... belong to mutu- ally exclusive spheres, for mystic beliefs are in- duced by suggestion or mental contagion, but never by ratiocination" (p. 37). Thus, to explain human action, and especially the actions of nations in times of crisis, by reference to reason alone, was to mis- understand the nature of human motivation. LeBon preferred to seek an explanation in the "affective, collective, and mystic forces" which combined to plunge Europe into war.

Recognizing that all nations had participated to some degree in bringing war to the continent , LeBon took pains to identify the affective forces that acted upon each of the Great Powers. Some nations were moved by honor, duty, or pride; others, by race-hatred, hubris, and excessive ambi- tion. Britain, for example, rallied to Belgium's defense not out of economic interests but out of a sense of moral obligation; France felt compelled to honor its international agreements and defend its aggrieved Eastern ally. By contrast, the Central Powers were moved by less honorable affective influences: Austria by a deep hatred of Serbia; and Germany by an irrational belief in its destiny. Rea- son, however, had no place in any nation's calculations.

It was not reason but psychological myopia on the part of each of the Great Powers that transformed the July Crisis into a European war. In a series of diplomatic blunders, each nation revealed the pau-

city of its psychological insight. Germany and Aus- tria-Hungary, for example, failed to appreciate the psychological factors that would propel Russia to defend Serbia, even if going to war was in all other regards contrary to Russia's basic interests. The Central Powers also miscalculated how Britain would react to the violation of Belgian neutrality. Britain's response, in LeBon 's estimation, was driven not by economic interests but by honor, and it was in their inability to appreciate the importance of honor and dignity to British statesmen and citizens alike that the Germans committed their most serious miscalculation.

Even though affective forces and psychological misconceptions prompted each of the Great Pow- ers to act in ways that were either indifferent or contrary to reason, it was Germany's mystical belief in her divinely ordained superiority that propelled Europe into war. LeBon was convinced that mysticism, which he defined as "characterized by a taste for mystery, love of the supernatural, contempt of experience, and a belief that superior powers intervene in mundane phenomena" (p. 37), more than any other single factor was at the root of Ger- man aggression: "mysticism ... [was] the determin- ing cause of the conflict that Germany has let loose upon the world" (p. 160). German mysticism had well-established characteristics: the German people constituted a chosen people, destined by God, to dominate the continent of Europe. This set of beliefs, propagated most vigorously by such nine- t een th -cen tu ry his tor ians as Tre i t schke and Lamprecht, seemed to be vindicated by the prodi- gious growth of Germany industry and the con- comitant expansion of the German military at the fin-de-si~cle. Encouraged by their philosophers and historians to believe that God had chosen Germany to govern Europe, the German people were so mesmerized by this mystical belief that they were willing to overlook rational self-interest and seek opportunities to fulfill their ordained destiny.

Mysticism was such a powerful force in contemporary Germany that neither the nation's statesmen nor her intellectual leaders were entirely immune to it. This was evident, in LeBon's opinion, in the actions of the philosophers, theologians, and scientists, who endorsed the Manifesto of 93. Like many French academics, LeBon was outraged by the enthusiasm and almost complete unanimity with which "Teutonic professors" had rallied to the national cause, denying- - in the face of compelling evidence--all allegations of German misdeeds and

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atrocities. But he would not accept the dominant interpretation of why German academics had gone so far astray. French scholars who found in the philosophical principles of Hegel and Fichte the origins of German aggression, believed that this tradition of Kultur could also explain the alacrity with which German scholars rushed to the defense of their nation. As participants within and perpe- trators of a cultural tradition that cultivated obedi- ence rather than intellectual independence, that placed the interests of the state above the demands of intellectual inquiry, and that justified all, even that which was illegal, immoral, and ignominious, by appeals to raisons d'~tat, the signatories of the Manifesto of 93 became, in the final analysis, in- capable of independent judgment. LeBon rejected this explanation out of hand, and proposed an explanation grounded in psychological principles. Acknowledging that the signatories were "in some instances celebrated men," LeBon did not hesitate to conclude that they nonetheless "exhibit[ed] the strangest weakness of the reasoning faculty, as well as the most complete ignorance of the mentality of other nations" (pp. 270-71). LeBon explained the phenomenon of the "ninety-three" in these terms: "German opinions [regarding causes of the war] show how entirely inaccessible to the influence of argument is a belief established by suggestion and propagated by mental contagion ... the loftiest intellect will not prevent a man who is the slave of such an overmastering belief from being completely deluded by it" (p. 267). LeBon perceived in the Manifesto of 93 verification "of the fact which [he] pointed out long ago in [his] books, that the most sagacious intellect loses all its powers of judgment when subjected to collective influences" (p. 119). How else could one understand the alacrity with which men of considerable intellectual accomplish- ment had abandoned all independence of judgment and asserted--in the face of compelling contrary evidence--that Germany's soldiers had committed no atrocities?

The atrocity debate was passionately engaged on both sides of the Channel. In Britain, the Bryce Commission reported with unseemly relish and in horrifying detail the misdeeds of German soldiers; so lurid were the stories thus circulated that few subsequent readers found them credible. Only re- cently have historians revisited the issue, examining the evidence available and the reasons why German commentators denied that actions taken against civilians were in fact "atrocities." John

Horne and Alan Kramer have demonstrated that many of the charges leveled against German troops were in fact well-founded; but they have argued that German denials were not entirely disingenu- ous. German commanders and soldiers alike justified actions taken against noncombatants because they genuinely believed that civilians were rarely innocent bystanders: the experience of the Franco- Prussian War had taught them that civilians were often either partisan francs-tireurs or soldiers in disguise. And so when German soldiers advancing through Belgium and northern France in August 1914 killed villagers and country priests, they did so not because they were callous brutes but because they believed that civilians constituted a threat to their own survival.

Horne and Kramer build their subtle and per- suasive analysis upon an archive of documents collected and much discussed in France during the war years: the diaries and field journals of German soldiers captured or killed in the first months of the war. French scholars outraged by the Manifesto of 93 created a Committee for Documents and Stud- ies on the War to discredit German denials and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that however horrifying, the atrocity tales circulating in France, Britain, and Belgium were indeed true. Two pam- phlets spoke directly to this issue. The first, published in 1915 under the title The German Theory and Practice of War, based its resum6, of German atrocities on accounts gathered by French and Bel- gian commissions of inquiry. Perhaps aware that such evidence was not sufficiently impartial, the Committee subsequently published Joseph B6dier's pamphlet, "German Atrocities, from German Evi- dence," which analyzed evidence culled from the diaries of German soldiers captured or killed in September 1914. From these self-incriminating texts, B6dier concluded that German troops had indeed razed villages, massacred civilians, killed prisoners-of-war, and brutalized women and children. In the face of evidence provided by German participants and eyewitnesses, B6dier insinuated that it was absurd for German scholars to insist that German troops had committed no atrocities.

LeBon acknowledged that his own discussion of the atrocity charges owed much to B6dier's scholarship. He, too, cited evidence extracted from these German diaries in order to dismiss categorically German denials. "It [would] be difficult ," he charged, "for the Germans to gainsay facts which have been related by their own soldiers" (p. 384).


In this regard, LeBon's methodology resembled that of many other French commentators (including B6dier) who self-righteously sought to establish the credibility of their arguments by reference to non- French sources. Throughout The Psychology of the Great War LeBon placed considerable weight on sources that could not be suspected of partiality to France in order to represent French intellectual l i fe-- even in war t ime- -as committed to principles of objective and fair-minded scholarship. But he also wanted to explain the aberrations of human behavior in terms of psychological principles he had out- lined in his previous work. The atrocity debate gave him an opportunity to do just that.

To explain why German troops acted with such contemptuous disregard for the established rules of soldierly conduct, LeBon turned to his theory of inherited, immutable racial characteristics. In The Crowd he had proposed that national character was the product of "unconscious elements that consti- tute the genius of a race." Like Maurice Barr6s and other French nationalists, he was convinced that all individuals raised in the same nation, saturated with its history, and inspired by its ideals were alike in some fundamental ways. Although idiosyncra- cies of education and upbringing, when combined with the influence of inherited family traits, often made individuals in any given nation appear radically different one from the other, the "genius of the race" could never be totally negated.

LeBon's concept of "racial" characteristics dif- fered from that of other twentieth-century racial- ists, for he dismissed the notion of racial "purity" as an absurd myth. He nonetheless insisted that the human personality was made up of some core "ancestral influences accumulated by heredity" that remained "a fairly fixed psychological kernel." And in the case of the German people, sadism, ferocity, and contempt for civilized conduct were deeply ingrained in the collective psyche. It was no acci- dent that the German invasion of Belg ium resembled "in every particular ... the Teutonic in- cursions which took place in the first centuries of the Christian Era," for the German people had, LeBon regretted, only imperfectly tamed their origi- nal, bestial natures. In a strikingly bleak passage, he concluded that "it was a great mistake to think that the progress of civilization could transform our feelings by developing our intellects, for nothing of the kind has taken place. Social restraints par- tially conceal the ancestral barbarity of certain nations, but it is merely disguised, and when these

restraints are removed it reappears" (p. 396). Con- vinced that "the Teuton" would always be the "ir- reconcilable enemy of [French] civilization and [the French] race," LeBon rejected out of hand all pro- posals put forth by more optimistic scholars that after the war France and Germany could establish a lasting, peaceful relationship predicated on mu- tual respect for universal principles.

Outraged by evidence of German atrocities and astounded by the alacrity with which their German counterparts had rushed to support the German war effort, French scholars and writers were equal ly-- albeit more pleasantly--surprised by the fortitude and courage of French conscripts. Having lived since 1871 in the shadow of ignominious defeat, having pilloried the French Army for its anti-republican inclinations, and having feared the decadence and imminent decline of a nation seemingly commit ted to nothing but self-gratification, the French intelligentsia were astonished by the resolve with which the nation-in-arms responded to the outbreak of war. What could possibly explain the determination with which French conscripts, so rudely pulled from the comforts of home, had con- fronted both the enemy and the everyday afflic- tions of war? Commentators inclined to religious explanations spoke of the "miracle" that had transformed France since August 1914. Others preferred to speak of a "magical" transformation. But all agreed that when challenged by the adversities of war ordinary French soldiers displayed a moral stamina not much evident in the last years of peace.

In the fading years of the Belle Epoque, French social commentators lamented the moral decay of contemporary society and often pointed either to the plummeting birthrate or the escalating divorce rate as positive proof that France was a nation in decline. Natalists lamented that married couples, seduced by the lure of comfortable living, chose not to have children so that they could indulge their tastes for the manifold pleasures offered by a bur- geoning consumer society. Obtuse to the needs of the nation, which could defend itself only if its population continued to grow, the citizens of France were, many commentators feared, equally indifferent to their responsibilities to one another.

The moral decadence of contemporary France was an issue about which LeBon himself was much concerned. Although skeptical of the natalists ' claim that the nation's vitality depended upon its birthrate alone, he shared with many conservative commentators of the Belle Epoque a belief in the

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imminent decline of France. Writing in 1895 in The Crowd, he had concluded that "the education ac- corded the present generation justifies the most gloomy previsions . . . . It is in the school room that socialists and anarchists are found nowadays, and that the way is being paved for the approaching period of decadence for the Latin peoples." How, then, could he explain the obvious, unanticipated, and most welcome fact that "at a time when luxury and love of comfort seemed to have made a life of danger and privation an impossibility, hundreds of thousands of men ... have become as brave as the most famous warriors of olden days" (p. 304)?

This was the question to which LeBon turned his attention in the final chapters of this book. To explain why a generation of men educated by socialists, anarchists, and radical individualists and heretofore committed to a life of self-indulgence and material comfort could have been so positively t ransformed by the experience of mobilization, LeBon turned to three concepts he had elaborated on in The Crowd: environmental determinism, mental contagion, and the inherited (or "racial") characteristics of a collectivity.

Twenty years earlier he had argued in The Crowd that "all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in conse- quences of a sudden change of environment." As circumstances and environment changed, so too did the man. The validity of this claim became star- tlingly evident during the war, when the new environment to which the nation was subjected brought to the surface characteristics heretofore submerged. Convinced that "a prolonged war ... [had] the power to alter the equilibrium of the elements which compose our mental life," LeBon concluded that an individual's character could be so transformed by the process of war "that his conduct surprises his acquaintances, and will even astonish the man himself ' (p. 304). And if individuals could be transformed by the force of environmental factors, so, too, could nations. This certainly seemed to the case in 1914 France: abandoning its anticlerical poli- tics, internationalist predisposition, and self-indul- gent habits, the nation embraced religious faith, patriotic ardor, and self-abnegation. Whatever its horrors, the Great War seemed to offer justification of LeBon's theory "that the apparent persistence of personality simply results from persistence of environment ... each one of us has various possibilities of character which emerge in different ways under the pressure of circumstances" (p. 305).

Envi ronmenta l factors alone could not adequately explain the moral transformation of wartime France. "Mental contagion" was also important. Def ined as "a psychological phenomenon which makes individuals who are subjected to its influence act according to the wills of those who surround them," (p. 325), "mental contagion" was, in LeBon's estimation, an especially powerful factor in the life of a soldier, "for it alone produces that group-cohesion without which no military action is possible." Whether subject to this collective impulse in the barracks, the training grounds, or the trenches of front-line combat, the soldier is in- evitably transformed by the "spirit of the collectivity" which prompts him to "feel, think, and form opinions according to the ideas of his group and not according to the feelings, thoughts, and opinions which he usually entertains as an individual" (p. 326).

As the term itself would suggest, "mental contagion" was by no means always a positive force. It had led the German intelligentsia astray; and Ger- man soldiers had been corrupted by its nefarious influence. Nor were French troops entirely immune to its negat ive force. LeBon offered evidence, culled from front-line sources, to show that the courage of French soldiers could be undermined by the negative force of mental contagion. This evidence notwithstanding, LeBon bel ieved that when mental contagion combined with deeply rooted inherited instincts, soldiers could be moved to feats of unprecedented heroism.

A conservative elitist unsettled by evidence that crowds could be "easily led into the worst excesses," LeBon nonetheless recognized that whatever dark and dangerous powers crowds might possess, they were also "capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues." In- deed, they were "even more capable of showing these qualities than the isolated individual." If prop- erly led and sufficiently inspired, men in crowds could display and be motivated by such qualities "as abnegation, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, [and] devotion." Thus, his analysis of crowds had convinced him that an individual's character could be t ransformed--and not always for the worse - - when subjected to the influence of a crowd. He wrote in The Crowd: "Appeals to sentiments of glory, honour, and patriotism are particularly likely to influence the individual forming part of a crowd, and often to the extent of obtaining from him the sacrifice of his life .... Collectivities alone are capable


of great disinterestedness and great devotion." This was precisely what happened in 1914 when mil- lions of individuals, torn from the comfort of their homes and daily routines, became part of the collective crowd of the French Army.

LeBon acknowledged that "wars and revolu- tions" were destabilizing historical forces that strip away "the inhibitory laws" which in times of international peace or domestic stability constrain individuals. Liberated from these inhibitory laws, Ger- man troops had indulged their most pr imi t ive instincts and reverted to the "ancestral barbarism which had hitherto been held in check by social sanctions" (p. 43). If war had released German soldiers from socially imposed inhibitions, why were French or British soldiers not equally inclined? To explain why French conscripts had become not a dangerous but a heroic crowd, LeBon appealed once again to his thesis of racial characteristics. Because citizens of each nation inherited a different set of core beliefs or ancestral influences, they would "react differently under identical stimuli" (p. 141). Thus, German soldiers might have been tempted to terrorize civilian populations, while the French and British remained unmoved by such temptations. Unlike their German counterparts, they "have been so long under the influence of social restraints that their feelings have acquired a certain amount of stability" (p. 44). Self-restraint was, in LeBon's estimation, the product of accumulated, inherited social fo rces - -acqui red over centuries-- that successfully kept bestial instincts at bay.

Perhaps such an explanation would have satis- fied LeBon's British readers, but how well did it apply to France? With its tumultuous history of revolutionary upheaval, France could surely not have cultivated in its citizenry the "social stability" LeBon identified as an essential precondition of civilized behavior. The recent past demonstrated that France was neither inherently stable nor in- nately self-disciplined. In fact, it was hard to imag- ine a nation in 1914 whose history was more vola- tile or less restrained. As a student (but not an admirer) of the Revolution of 1789, LeBon knew of his nation's inclination to eschew social restraint and indulge its appetite for "primitive barbarism." In The Crowd he had explained the brutal tenden- cies of the National Convention (1792-95) in terms of environmental determinism: the "sudden change of environment" brought about by the Revolution "explains how it was that among the most savage

members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates." In The Psychology of the Great War he noted other ways in which ardent revolutionaries--with their propensities to irratio- nalism, mysticism, and violence--anticipated the excesses of aggressive pan-Germanists.

Like many a pan-Germanist, revolutionaries had been shaped less by reason than by "affective, mystic, and collective forces that have no kinship with the intellect" (p. 22). Even though "the pro- tagonists of that tragedy [the French Revolution] were for ever appealing to Reason," LeBon was convinced that "the secret forces which ruled the actors in that great drama were drawn from quite other sources than the rationalism to which they constantly appealed" (pp. 22-23). Recent experience brought other unsettling similarities to light. In 1914 the German General Staff waged war by ordering its troops to live off the land they had re- cently conquered. However much LeBon depre- cated this strategy, his French readers would have recognized it as a method that owed as much to French genius as to German barbarism: Napoleon had perfected the strategy more than a century earlier in his Italian campaign of 1796. Nor did the similarities end there. Both nations had resorted to the systematic use of state-sanctioned terror. Not only does LeBon admit this; he emphasizes it. Ger- man atrocities were, he contends, not the acts of individual soldiers let loose upon a hapless civilian population, but "the result of methods which were resolved upon beforehand ... and are based on terror" (p. 381). This apparently innocent judgment was fraught with political implications. To speak of "terror" to a French audience was inevita- bly to conjure images of Robespierre, Jacobinism, and the horrors of 1793-94. And LeBon clearly knew this, for he defined "terror" as a technique "employed by revolutionaries no less than by kings, as a means of impressing their enemies, and as an example to those who were doubtful about sub- mitting to them" (p. 391).

It becomes apparent, therefore, that when LeBon explained the heroism of the French Army by appealing to the power of inherited national traits, he unwittingly embroiled himself and his argument in internal contradiction. At the heart of his argument there resides a simple, but ultimately untenable, dist inct ion: the German and French p e o p l e - - equally susceptible to the force of mental conta-

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gion and the transformative effects of environmental change--responded differently to the outbreak of war because they had inherited radically different collective traits. The Germans were bloodthirsty, brutal, and unrestrained; the French, patriotic, self- controlled, and inherently stable. Yet by his own admission, France in 1793-94 had succumbed to the very barbarism he so deeply abhorred in the German Army of 1914. In spite of his insistence that Germany and France were inherently incom- patible-Germany always propelled by its irrational lust for domination; France, the representative of civilized order--LeBon presented evidence to suggest that French troops descended from a people as bloodthirsty, irrational, and inclined to violence as their German counterparts. Whatever compelled them to act in 1914 with honor, courage, and de- cency could not be explained satisfactorily by LeBon's precepts of collective behavior.

Embedded in The Psychology of the Great War one finds, therefore, a subtle but insidious com- parison identifying Germany in 1914 with France at the height of the Revolution. LeBon was not alone in this regard. A similar rhetorical strategy marked the writings of the Action franqaise during the war years. What was to be gained by such dis- cursive subterfuge? The Action fran~aise hoped to discredit the political principles upon which the Third Republic was built by identifying them as essentially alien, Germanic, and injurious to France. Even though LeBon was indifferent to the pros- pects of a royalist counter-revolution, he, too, found the political ideals of the republican left anathema. He feared that if the principles of French "demo- cratic socialism" were to prevail after the war, then France would be doomed: "all conceptions of a general nature, like socialism, humanitarianism, the Hague Conventions, and others which are intended to modify international relations, have had no influence whatsoever." Although he confidently asserted that these ideals had "gone into permanent bankruptcy" (p. 398), he no doubt knew that prominent republican academics hoped that the credibility of these internationalist ideas would be restored after the war. In 1915, both Alphonse Aulard and Victor Basch identified in Kantian philosophy the foundations upon which postwar reconciliation with Germany and a lasting peace could be built.

Convinced that Kant's vision of perpetual peace predicated on international cooperation was a dangerous chimera, LeBon disparaged those who de- fended such ideals by identifying them with the enemy. Thus, when he spoke of Jacobins and Ger- man intellectuals in one breath (p. 42), he deni- grated by indirect inference all those who (like Aulard and Basch) identified themselves as heirs of the Revolution.

Whatever its internal inconsistencies, this book is important to our understanding of LeBon's ca- reer. While it seemed at first glance only to reca- pitulate many themes already addressed in other texts, in fact it attempted to subvert, rather than sustain, the academic orthodoxy. Not only did LeBon take issue with the rationalist interpretations of many of France's most prominent academics, but he also suggested that the political principles to which they were committed resembled in un- pleasant ways the practices and ideals of the Ger- man state. Like more radically conservative commentators, he thus impugned the patriotism of the men who had done so much to frustrate his intellectual ambitions. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the academic establishment continued after the war to rebuff the efforts of LeBon's friends to win him election to one of the Academies of the Institut de France. No doubt the ideas expressed in The Psychology of the Great War had won him some admirers; but the veiled insults had done nothing to mollify his many opponents. At war with the rationalist and internationalist ethos of French academic culture at the beginning of the century, LeBon remained unrewarded.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Hanna, Martha. The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Nye, Robert A. The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1975.

Martha Hanna is a professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of the introduction to the Transaction edition of The Psychology of the Great War.