behaviour of a mechanic. Indeed I think he implies that all outward thought is only convention, all inward thought is only habit. And this is what you would expect of someone honest enough to admit that the best military theory may be contradicted by defeat in battle.
In contrast, to delve into the depths of a person's psyche in order to solve everyday problems in social adjustment seems to me a process likely to lead precisely nowhere. No one is entirely isolated from his fellows, save possibly in the mad-house or in Dante's Inferno, as I am sure most doctors would agree. And ferreting around in the patient's unconscious so as to discover that he has this or that neurosis or fixation, so far from explaining away his difficulties, usually makes clear I suspect that his difficulties are insoluble, at any rate by those means. You do not get rid of neuroses by bringing them into the light of day; or if you did, you would discover there were half a dozen more just behind. Professionally of course I have read hundreds of psychiatric reports on old lags and young lags, always with interest, sometimes with incredulity. But the true psychology must surely be to study how the human mind or soul can integrate with his fellows to produce acceptable practical results. And the supreme exposition of this was given by the Wehrmacht in the first years of the Second World War.
I was a schoolboy at the time, and it goes much against the grain to praise one's enemies; but in all honesty one must admit that in the early years of the war, and perhaps right to the end even in defeat, the Wehrmacht was incomparable. In the first two years of the war the German Army won an unparalleled series of victories (unparalleled at least in modern times). This was not due to massive superiority in numbers. On the Russian front, Field Marshal von Manstein put the Russian superiority in numbers at seven to one; and he rated Russian superiority in equipment, both on the ground and in the air, as…