[ Human nature hard to fight ]

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Jun 14, 2002 by Capital-Journal

Having lived through the better part of seven decades, I find that human nature doesn't change much, especially when it comes to war. This came vividly to my mind as I was reading a book I took from the shelf in the home library of our daughter Tammy, who is a psychologist.

The book was Peter Gay's 1988 biography of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychoanalyst who spent a lifetime studying human nature and trying to develop a means to correct its aberrations. Gay, who apparently had done extensive research, not only gave the reader detailed information about Freud's theories, but also provided a good look at the times in which Freud lived.

I was particularly interested to read of the Austro-German attitude toward war. The pages of the book treated me to a glimpse into the thinking of people in an "enemy" country at the outset of World War I and it came to me that human nature is universally pretty much the same today as it was then.

I couldn't help but compare the behavior of people there in that place and time to the reaction and response in the United States following the terrorist attack Sept. 11. I was impressed with the similarity.

"Europeans of all stripes joined in greeting the advent of war with a fervor bordering on a religious experience," according to Gay. "For most, it established their own nation's virtue and the enemy's viciousness."

In this regard, it seems history is being repeated when our president speaks of "an axis of evil" and in a recent poll of Muslims in nine countries, "respondents overwhelmingly described the U.S. as ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."

Another example of de ja vu is how, well before the smoke cleared from the crumbled World Trade Center, Americans bought flags so extensively that the stocks in stores were soon depleted and the Stars and Stripes waved everywhere, even on automobiles.

And God, who had been in mothballs in the closets of many American homes, was brought to the forefront. People who hadn't invoked God's name in years except in profanity all of a sudden were singing "God Bless America" with gusto. This is an echo of 1914, when the German poet Rainier Maria Reike, according to Gay, visualized the "most remote incredible God of War rising again. At last, O God, since we often no longer grasped the peaceable One, the Battle-God suddenly grasps us, flings the firebrand!"

Thomas Mann said in November 1914, "How could the artist, the soldier in the artist, not praise God for the collapse of a peaceful world with which He was fed up, so exceedingly fed up."

Of course, the United States was provoked when planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, apparently headed for our nation's capital. But the Austrians also were provoked in 1914, when Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort were assassinated at Sarajevo by young Bosnian militants.

And, that which could have been a localized conflict became a world war because of the alliances of hostile power blocs: Britain and France verses Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

Gay's summary of the situation 88 years ago is relevant to ours today.

"In the weeks following Sarajevo, Austrian politicians and diplomats took a hard-line, their backs stiffened by German reassurances ... They talked of ... doing away with the Serbians once and for all," Gay said. "The need to act now or never, the fear that the world might interpret a conciliatory Austrian policy as a confession of problems, indecisiveness, effeminacy, impotence."

Within five days after delivering an ultimatum, Austria declared war. Gay quotes the British ambassador as saying: "This country has gone wild with joy at the prospect of war with Serbia, and its postponement or prevention would undoubtedly be a great disappointment. There are really great rejoicing and demonstrations."

I don't suppose the Austrians could sense at all at the outset that the war that erupted in late July and spread in early August 1914 would engulf most of Europe and adjacent lands: the Austria- Hungary Empire, Germany, Britain, France, Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and later Italy and the United States. A stalemate, costly in human life and wreckage, existed until the U.S. entered the war in 1917 to tip the scales. In all, 10 million soldiers died.

Naturally, both sides anticipated victory. Sigmund Freud's brother, Alexander, wrote to him at the outset: "No reasonable man doubts that in the end success will be on the side of the Germans." But in the end Germany lost.

Anyone would say that the U.S. had to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks. But, one wonders if we should have responded in almost the same way nations did nearly a century ago.

Today's situation may be somewhat different in that the terrorists did not act in behalf of one nation. Rather, they apparently were acting as members of a relatively small zealous religious sect who are not from just one nation, but from almost everywhere in the world --- even here in the United States.