That more or less perfect organization of
perception by official propaganda, of interest and attention by the
stimuli of hope, fear, and hatred, which is called morale, was by way
of breaking down. The minds of men everywhere began to search for new
attachments that promised relief.
Suddenly they beheld a tremendous drama. On the Eastern front there
was a Christmas truce, an end of slaughter, an end of noise, a promise
of peace. At Brest-Litovsk the dream of all simple people had come to
life: it was possible to negotiate, there was some other way to end
the ordeal than by matching lives with the enemy. Timidly, but with
rapt attention, people began to turn to the East. Why not, they asked?
What is it all for? Do the politicians know what they are doing? Are
we really fighting for what they say? Is it possible, perhaps, to
secure it without fighting? Under the ban of the censorship, little of
this was allowed to show itself in print, but, when Lord Lansdowne
spoke, there was a response from the heart. The earlier symbols of the
war had become hackneyed, and had lost their power to unify. Beneath
the surface a wide schism was opening up in each Allied country.
Something similar was happening in Central Europe. There too the
original impulse of the war was weakened; the union sacr?e was broken.
The vertical cleavages along the battle front were cut across by
horizontal divisions running in all kinds of unforeseeable ways.
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