Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon.

  • Cannon, Walter B. (Walter Bradford), 1871-1945.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage : an account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement / by Walter B. Cannon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    irony has remarked, “The gods in Valhalla would hardly choose the organization of modern lines of military communication, as they chose the play of portance, and which, under past and gone conditions of fighting, was invaluable in keeping alive the regimental spirit upon which our British troops depended so much.” All war has been trans¬ formed by the invention of the far-reaching and fate-dealing rifle and automatic gun, with which an enemy kills, whose face is not even seen. War is almost reduced to a mechanical interchange of volleys and salvoes, and to the intermittent fire of rifles and machine guns, with short rushes at the last, in which there is no place for the dignity and grace of the antique battle of the standard. (See London Times, July 31, 1897, p. 12.) T. F. Millard, the well-known correspondent of the Russo-Japanese War, wrote as follows of the characteristics of present-day conflicts: “A large part of modern war is on too great a scale to give much opportunity for individual initiative. Soldiers can rarely tell what is going on in their immediate vicinity. They cannot always see the enemy they are firing at, and where they can see the object of their fire such an important matter as range and even direction cannot be left to them. . . . Troops are clothed so much alike nowadays that it is very difficult to distinguish friend from foe at five hundred yards, and large bodies of troops rarely get that close to each other in modern war while there is light enough to see clearly. . . . Bat¬ tery officers simply see that their guns are handled according to in¬ structions. They regulate the time, speed, objective and range as ordered. . . . The effects of the fire are observed by officers ap¬ pointed to that duty, stationed at various parts of the field, often miles and miles apart, and who are in constant communication with the chief of artillery by telephone.” See Scribner’s Magazine, xxxvii, 1905, pp. 64, 66.) The testimony of a captain of a German battery engaged against the French and English in 1914, supports the foregoing claims. He is reported as saying: “We shoot over those tree tops yonder in accordance with directions for range and distance which come from somewhere else over a field telephone, but we never see the men at whom we are firing. They fire back without seeing us, and some¬ times their shells fall short or go be}mnd us, and sometimes they fall among us and kill and wound a few of us. Thus it goes on day after day. I have not with my own eyes seen a Frenchman or an Englishman unless he was a prisoner. It is not so much pleasure— fighting like this.” (See Saturday Evening Post, December 26, 1914, p. 27.)