(1) The Nemesis of Docility: A Study of German Character (2) La Guerre et la Pense Mdicale

Abstract

(1) BY docility the author means “readiness to obey for the sake of obeying, avidity for commands and instructions, reluctance to accept responsibility or exercise initiative, inability to react against the pressure of autocratic authority”; and this is what is wrong with Germany, where a slavishly docile majority is as wax in the hands of a dogmatic and domineering minority. The Germans lost their early domestic freedom in becoming feudalised, and they failed to recover it because of the disruptive influences of tribalism. The ultra-docility has grown and is obvious today alike in the Army, with its “serf-like rank-and-file” and its “arrogant, overbearing caste of officers,” and in “an almost serf-like people,” which bows to the despotism of the Kaiser, the Junker, and the lords of commerce and finance “as to the gracious rule of a divinely instituted ‘State.’”

(1) The Nemesis of Docility: A Study of German Character.

By E. Holmes. Pp. vii + 264. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1916.) Price 4s. 6d. net.

(2) La Guerre et la Pense Mdicale.

By Prof. Ricardo Jorge. Pp. 63. (Lisbon, 1916.)