THE INFECTION OF FEAR.
FEAR is communicable like an infectious disease. Sugges- tion and imagination are as powerful as the most virulent bacillus to plant a disease. We have all road of the bound and blindfolded man who, having had a knife passed harmlessly across his throat, and hearing water dropping into a pail, died because he believed that ho was bleeding to death. Many of us have listened to the noise of rats or mice or cracking furniture, or the gurgling of water in pipes, in the stillness of the night, and imagined it to be tho footfall of a burglar. We knew that burglars generally are rats or mice or cracking chairs or hissing eisterns, but on a particular nigl-a. we told ourselves that the explanation had ceased to be true. Fancy defeated reason and experience. Among children fear is nearly always conveyed by suggestion. Children are p overbially afraid of darkness- " men fear death as children fear to go in the dark "—and yet few children aro afraid of darkness as such. They are afraid because they have been told by foolish persons of ogres, and had fairies, and ghosts, and cruel policemen who come at night for naughty children who cry. Boys have been known to work with a malignant success upon the fears of another boy till they wrecked his nerve. It was fun to them, but nearly mental death t a him. A man surrounded by conspirators, who talked and behaved as though they were all insane, would certainly doubt his own sanity before long. He might even lose it. For how do you judge or recognize sanity except by testing conduct with what appears to be normal ? Make the abnormal appear the normal, and your standard is taken away and you yourself are lost. There is a well-known anecdote about a farmer who was iaduccd to believe that his dog was a pig because every one whom he met on the-road congratulated him on the fire appear- ance of the pig he was taking to market. Fainting, it has been said with as much truth as paradox, is infectious. Brain calls to brain in a packed crowd of sightseers on a sultry day ; and when one woman faints, self-confidence diminishes at the signal on all sides, and the First. Aid people are in for a busy time.
So it is with fear. Most people can be talked into a state of fear. A railway carriage full of people has been thrown into alarm because some one suggested that the train waa travelling at a reckless .speed. The ordinary jolts from an indifferent per- manent way seemed to be the perilous leaps of an engine that kept the rails more by good luck than good management. Fear has spread among the passengers in a steamship because some idiotic person suggested, when the ship slowed down in a mist, that the captain did not know where he was. The idiot in such a -case has a touch of the criminal, because he can have no evidence for- what he says, and because no useful purpose can be served by his remark even if be speaks on any evidence. Nothing is more easy than to spread fear, and no one bears more responsibility in a crisis than the person who does it. Even if he have some facts on his side, he is diminishing the capacity of the crowd to bear themselves sensibly, quietly, and bravely when the moment of danger comes.
Now this is very much what some people arc doing in England. '['hey are spreading the infection of fear. The object of the fear is chiefly Zeppelins, 'and in a minor degree other aircraft of the enemy. We have nothing to say against those who appeal coolly and rationally for anti-aircraft defences, provided that they recognize that the defences must be in their proper pro- portion and degree—an incidental part of a large and compre- henaive air policy. For ourselves, we think that our anti-aircraft defences at-home ought at present to be a very small incident indeed. There is so much more need for aeroplanes and guns at the front than there is here that we grudge every one of 1 hem—and the services of every man who is required to serve them—so far as they are a concession to fear. What are we to say, what are we to think, of the persons who spread the infection of fear with words which arc not weighed or measured—in a
frenzy of recklessness ? These persons arc doing something far worse than increase the alarm of those who arc alreadyslintid. They are infecting these who would have been saved from " conspicuous alarm by their own sense of deeeney and theirs osvit dignity. For many men and women who are inwardly alarmed scorn to show fear. Their self-respect holds them in hand. Moreover, they want to set an example. We know a mother who before she was married used to seek refuge in a cellar from lightning, but now will sit in a room with her children during a thunderstorm and remark upon the grandeur of the spectacle.- Suelr people control themselves because they think that they have no right to be visibly afraid. But now in these days of Zeppelins come writers and speakers who try to undermine that belief of self-respecting people that they have no right to be afraid. " You have every right," they are told. " There is no need at all to have these bombs dropped on your houses and your families. It is all the fault of a supine and half-witted Government. Bestir yourselves and demand protection and you will get it." The certain result of such arguments, if they continue, will be to unman many of those who would have been quite able to bear themselves bravely. The truth is that the tendency wildly to blame others when a catastrophe has occurred, and there is the possibility of another, is one of the first and most familiar symptoms of panic. It should be recognized for what it is, and be condemned and repudiated wherever it appears.
The right appeal is to the nobility that is in English men and women, and not to the cravenness that lies very much deeper,but may be disastrously coaxed out by a false stimulation. Granted that the available men and material arc employed to protect British homes as effectually as possible, there will still- be a vast margin of insecurity. It is unavoidable. The range of Zeppelins continually increases, and if anti-aircraft guns were dotted all over the British Isles there would still be no - certainty of safety. Appeals might go up for more protection- from Shropshire and Midlothian and Lanarkshire, and no sooner would their appetite for guns have been satisfied than the next raiding Zeppelins would .avoid them all and drop bombs on Sutherlandshire, Inverness-shire, and Dublin. We should have thought that men and women at hoine' would have been proud to feel that by a stoical and quiet endurance they were rendering some fractional service to help on the war. In fact, wo are sure that most men and women who cannot go to the front are tormented by the feeling that their lives are too easy because they cannot share' the perils of the field. When Zeppelins hover over them they can say with pride : " At least I have not squealed for guns and aeroplanes. to protect me." They exult in the sense • that a calm popular bearing releases guns and aeroplanes to go where alone they can play their part in ending the war. They know that the more howling for protection there is in Britain, the more the Germans will consider frightfulness to be a success. They know that not a single gun or aeroplane kept here is doing_ anything directly or positively to end the war.
But all this they are invited not to believe. The awfulness of their situation is pointed out to them daily, so that they are tempted to feel like the woman defendant who, when she had heard her case stated by a very passionate and eloquent counsel, burst into tears, exclaiming : " I never knew before what a • deeply wronged woman I am ! " Even children are ready enough to whistle to keep up their spirits, but the spreaders of fear say : " No, we'll whistle you a different tune to keep them down ! " After all, the good white corpuscles of the nation's blood will be strong enough to resist the infection. The time will come when the attempt to weaken resolution will be remem- bered only with contempt. The Zeppelins will pass away, and our Mrs. Gummidges, deprived at last of their " old 'un," will be ridiculous figures. Those who refuse to listen to the tales of .woe will look back with satisfaction to the time when they refused to hinder the progress of the war. Or even if they should bo among the unlucky few who may still be killed-=- well, death is no worse than death. They will have died in an " earnest pursuit." And those who die in that case " are like one that is wounded in hot blood, who, for the time, scarce' feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death."-
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