Wolves Originated German War Songs.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 43, 5 June 1917, Page 2

Wolves Originated German War Songs.

REASON FOR BRITISH SOLDIERS’

RHYMES. To the German the war song is a serious matter ; it is for the most part a grave composition, exalted in feeling, and thrilling with the love of country ; he is taught to sing it, and he sings it well, with obvious and touching sincerity and - with equally obvious advantage to his morale. The attempt to introduce similar songs and a similar attitude towards them to the use of the English soldier has often been made, and exactly as often lamentably failed. On the whole it has, been, perhaps, the most purely comic effort of the impulse to mimic Germany which has been in favour until of late with certain people of excellent aims but inadequate biological knowledge. The English soldier, consistently prefering the voice of Nature to that of the most eminent doctrinaire, has, to the Scandal of his lyrical enemies, steadily drawn his inspiration from the music-hall and the gutter, or from.-his own rich store of flippant and ironic realism.

The biological meaning of these peculiarities, says Mr. W. Trotter, in "Instincts of the Herd of Peace and War” renders them intelligible and consistent with one another. The predaceous social animals in attack or pursuit are particularly sensative to the encouragement afforded by one another’s voices. The pack gives tongue because of the functional value of the exercise, which is clearly of importance in keeping individuals in contact with one another, and in stimulating in each the due degree of the aggressive rage. That serious and narrow passion tends naturally to concentrate itself upon some external object or quarry, which becomes by the very fact an object of hate to the exclusion of any other feeling, whether of sympathy, selfpossession, or a sense of the ludicrous.

The curious spectacle of Germans greeting one another with "God punish England !”,and the appropriate response is, therefore, no accidental or meaningless phenomenon, but a manifestation of an instinctive necessity ; and this explanation is confirmed by the immensely wide .currency of the performance, and the almost simian gravity with which it could. be carried out. It succeeded because it had a functional value, just as similar movements in England have failed because they have had no functional value and could have none in a people of the socialised type, with whom unity depends on a different kind of bond. The wolf, then, is the father of the war song, and it is among peoples of the lupine type alone that the war song is used with real seriousness. Animals of the socialised type are not dependent for their morale upon the narrow intensities of aggressive rage. Towards such manifestations of it as concerted cries and war songs they feel no strong instinctive impulsion, and are therefore, able to preserve a relatively objective attitude.—"?. S. Siftings."