GERMAN MENTALITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22487, 4 February 1935, Page 11

GERMAN MENTALITY

PHANTASY OF SUPERIORITY DANGEROUS INFERIORITY COMPLEX. ; (From Ovi- Own ; Corbespondeht.) January 5./ General Smuts, in bis great speech a month ago, applied the words "inferiority complex " to the German nation. Dr J. Burnett Rae, a psychologist, of Harley street, carried the subject a step further and, in a letter to The Times, asserted that Germany , ia ". hiding from' herself the fact that she lost' the war and that she lost it, not so much through the superior military force of her enemies, as through her own inability to recognise the character and motives of those Whom she opposed. ■ ",,.,,-• " That," say e Dr Rae, " has always been the failing of the German people since she forsook the path of her true development and set'herself to achieve the goal of military supremacy. " "'The Qtevmana,' said Lord Grey, during the war, * have an incomparable knowledge of facts and an incomparable ignorance of the meaning of them.. And I think it is true to say that since their defeat they have not seriously .considered why it was that they found themselves up against the massed forces of practically all the progressive people ot tne world. That this must have had profound mental repercussions is obvious. Although Germans are not fully conscious of it, a feeling, of inadequacy and failure throughout Germany undoubtedly exists, and this has been increased ■by the more conscious feeling that she is at' a disadvantage in relation to her late enemies and that she has been unjustly dealt with under the war treaties and was not the sole war culnnt. A WEARY, BEWILDERED PEOPLE. Since this enlightening letter was published the subject has been dropped, but this week Mr E. M. F. A. Ormiston, of Bath, returns subject fflfrgflOTg that Dr Burnett Rae's letter should be read by all who have at heart the interests of peace and who realise the importance of understanding the outlook of other nations. . ~ . iv__ " While wandering recently in Germany," he writes in The Times, 'I was deeply impressed by the morbid mentality of the country at the present time. Ihe Germans have indeed an inferiority complex in the truest sense of the words, for, underneath the official po ß e of self-praise and boasting, they are horribly afraid—of themselves. They know in their souls that they lost the war, though they may hardly see why. They know that in. the last 16 years.they have shown none of the characteristics of a ruling race and have thrown up no leader, but to admit even to themselves, far less to the outer world,, that they are a very weary, frightened, and bewildered people would be to own that they are not, after all,-the supermen of Europe £hey have so long believed themselves to be. , '..-.' '•■<■' "But what if all their misfortunes .are really due to the machinations of envious inferiors? Why, then, it is certainly a proof of their true greatness, and instead of dupes to false theories they can see themselves as the victims of persecutions. "However far the leaders may sincerely hold this view, it is certainly taught and encouraged at every turn. The newspapers are full of the schemes of jealous rivals, warning placards show a terrified mother holding her children from an air attack, even in sermons this constant suggestion of vague danger is present, and the result, intentional or not, is to work up a mass hysteria that looks on the horrors of war as a form of martyrdom. ; "The world at large is apt to think of Germany's problems in terms of armaments and frontiers and overlook the sickness of her.soul, that phantasy of racial superiority. ' "Germans are a mixed folk like their neighbours, but the years of war and now the practical closing of the frontiers to foreign travel are emphasising the sense of being a people apart and driving them in upon themselves and their wrongs, with results that must be unfortunate and might easily become serious."