A SOCIOMETRIC VIEW OF RECENT HISTORY: THE RISE AND FALL OF LEADERSHIP

Abstract

It has been asserted that leaders do not make events but events make leaders. We may add that, in turn, leaders shape events their way and the cycle then renews itself. Every genuine leader finds his own following. There were a number whose aspirations paralleled those of Jesus of Nazareth but only he became the Christ. Several men had fanaticism and logical mastery of communism, but one, Lenin, became the creator of Soviet Russia. The British Empire produced quite a few great statesmen in the last century but one man, at an earlier moment quite unpopular, Winston Churchill, was designated to save it in the greatest crisis it had yet encountered. In America a leader handicapped by poliomyelitis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was chosen from among contemporaries of similar ideology to guide the destiny of his people. Another type of leader, Adolf Hitler, was the prototype for an army of others whose energy, purpose, and vision were no match for his and appeared but as pale reflections.