The
German peasant believed as much in the might of the German armies as
Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The brutality of German generals was not
worse than that of the Unteroffizier or the foreman of works.
In England there was no traditional hatred of Germany, but for some
years distrust and suspicions, which had been vented in the
newspapers, with taunts and challenges, stinging the pride of Germans
and playing into the hands of the Junker caste.
Our war psychology was different from that of our allies because of
our island position and our faith in seapower which had made us immune
from the fear of invasion. It took some time to awaken the people to a
sense of real peril and of personal menace to their hearths and homes.
To the very end masses of English folk believed that we were fighting
for the rescue of other peoples--Belgian, French, Serbian, Rumanian--
and not for the continuance of our imperial power.
The official propaganda, the words and actions of British statesmen,
did actually express the conscious and subconscious psychology of the
multitude.
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