Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/42

Blended with the root-passion of sheer brutality are certain other feelings, more complex in origin and composition – admiration of courage and adroitness, the zest of sport, curiosity, the interest in swift change and the unusual: all these serve to conceal and decorate the dominant force of brutality, that Yahoo passion which revels in material disorder and destruction, with carnage for its centre-piece. That this passion, like other phases of the war fever, is of social origin, and grows by swift, unseen contagion and communication, is made evident by the character and behaviour of its victims. Mild and aged clergymen; gently bred, refined English ladies; quiet, sober, unimaginative business men, long to point a rifle at the Boers, and to dabble their fingers in the carnage. The basic character of the passion is disclosed by the fact that death and destruction by firearms do not satisfy; it is the cold steel and the twist of the British bayonet in the body of the now defenceless foe that brings the keenest thrill of exultation. Many will deny this subjection to sheer animalism – in some cases a revulsion of pity, or some better human feeling, hides it; but, wherever the dissecting-knife is honestly applied, the essential brutality which underlies the glow of patriotic triumph in