In the spring of
1918 this American view could not compete with the traditional French
view, because while the Americans believed enormously in their own
powers, the French at that time (before Cantigny and the Second Marne)
had the gravest doubts. The American confidence suffused the American
stereotype, gave it that power to possess consciousness, that
liveliness and sensible pungency, that stimulating effect upon the
will, that emotional interest as an object of desire, that congruity
with the activity in hand, which James notes as characteristic of what
we regard as "real." [Footnote: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol.
II, p. 300.] The French in despair remained fixed on their accepted
image. And when facts, gross geographical facts, would not fit with
the preconception, they were either censored out of mind, or the facts
were themselves stretched out of shape. Thus the difficulty of the
Japanese reaching the Germans five thousand miles away was, in
measure, overcome by bringing the Germans more than half way to meet
them. Between March and June 1918, there was supposed to be a German
army operating in Eastern Siberia. This phantom army consisted of some
German prisoners actually seen, more German prisoners thought about,
and chiefly of the delusion that those five thousand intervening miles
did not really exist. [Footnote: See in this connection Mr. Charles
Grasty's interview with Marshal Foch, _New York Times_, February
26, 1918.
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