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In this era of economic, social and political transition, most marked in Europe, psychological attention has been focused on the problems and behavior of the individual in relation to the new world he finds himself confronted with, yet the study of the problems and behavior of nations has been left to economists, sociologists and experts in political science. Thus, while we have come to recognize that man's relationship with his environment is, to a great extent, guided by psychological processes, we have been content to confine the study of nations, whose every action affects us all, to the purely physiological aspects of economics and politics.
Today many individual difficulties and maladjustments can be solved in the psychological field; similarly the solution to difficulties and maladjustments on a national scale should be sought in this same field. Patterns of national behavior emerging from the study of history suggest that nations constitute psychological entities as well as economic, social and political bodies. While nations are composed of individuals, each of whom displays patterns of behavior which can be recognized and explained in terms of psychology, it is not suggested that national behavior under any given circumstance is simply the sum total of the behavior of the individuals constituting that nation. It is, however, suggested that the study of national behavior parallels and can be explained in terms applying to the behavior of the individual. Essentially, the emerging pattern must differ from that resulting from the study of an individual since history, geography, economics and traditional policy (itself a composite of these three tangible considerations, plus the intangible of national psychological make-up) influence a nation's behavior and constitute a hereditary compulsion which channels it into certain directions.
The selection of a topical and historically compact case history has been guided by the criterion that the reactions resulting from