Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)/Volume 1/Chapter 10
10. Causes of the Collapse
The fall of any body is always measured by the distance between its present position and that which is originally occupied. The same thing holds for the downfall of peoples and states. But this lends prime importance to the original position, or rather elevation. Only that which rises above the ordinary limits can be noticeable in its fall. What makes the collapse of the Empire so hard and so horrible for every thinking and feeling person is that the fall came from a height which today, in face of the calamity of our present degradation, it is hard even to imagine.
The very founding of the Empire seemed to be gilded by the magic of happenings that exalted the whole nation. After a victorious course without parallel there grew up an Empire for their sons and grandsons, the reward of immortal heroism. Whether consciously or unconsciously is immaterial; the Germans all felt that the noble fashion of its founding raised this Empire, which owed its existence to no jobbing of parliamentary factions, above the stature of other states. It was not in the chatter of a parliamentary word-battle, but in the thunder and roar of the front around Paris that the solemn act took place, the manifestation of the will of the Germans, princes and people, to form one Empire in the future, and once more to exalt the Imperial Crown into a symbol. And it was not done by a knife in the back; not deserters and blackguards were the founders of Bismarck’s State, but the regiments at the front.
This unique birth and fiery baptism alone were enough to surround the Empire with the light of a historic glory such as only the oldest states—and they seldom—could enjoy.
And what an ascent now set in!
Freedom without and daily bread within. The nation grew in number and in this world’s goods. And the honor of the State, and with it that of the whole people, was guarded and defended by an army which was the plainest sign of the contrast with the old German Confederation.
So deep is the downfall which has overtaken the Empire and the German people that everyone seems dizzy, robbed for the moment of his senses; people can scarcely remember the old heights, so unreal and dreamlike does yesterday’s greatness and magnificence seem as against today’s degradation.
So it is natural enough for people now to be too much blinded by the splendor, and to forget to look for the portents of the monstrous collapse, which after all must already have existed somehow.
Naturally this is true only for those to whom Germany was more than a mere place of residence for the making and spending of money, since they alone can feel that the present state is one of collapse; to the others it is the long-hoped-for fulfilment of their hitherto unsatisfied wishes.
The portents even then existed and were visible, though few people tried to draw any instruction from them.
But today this is more necessary than ever. A disease can be cured only if the bacillus which causes it is known, and the same thing is true in curing political ills. Of course the outer form of a disease, its obvious appearance, is more easily seen and discovered than the inner cause. This after all is the reason why so many people never get beyond the recognition of outer effects, and even confuse them with the cause, whose very existence, indeed, they are likely to try to deny. Even now most of us see in the German collapse primarily the general economic distress and the results it brings with it. Almost everyone has to suffer these personally—one sound reason why every individual should understand the catastrophe. But the great masses are far less able to recognize the collapse in its political, cultural and moral aspects. Here many people’s instinct and understanding both are at a complete loss.
We may perhaps let it pass that this is true of the great masses, but the fact that even in intelligent circles the German collapse is regarded primarily as an “economic catastrophe,” and the cure expected by economic means, is one of the reasons why no recovery has hitherto been possible. Only when we realize that here as elsewhere the economic structure occupies only the second or even the third place, while moral and racial factors occupy the first, can we arrive at an understanding of the causes of the present disaster, and thus be able to find ways and means of cure.
The search for the causes of the German collapse, therefore, is of prime importance, especially for a political movement whose goal it is to make good the defeat.
But even in searching the past we must take great care not to confuse the conspicuous effects with the less visible causes.
The easiest and hence the most popular explanation of the present disaster is that it results from the war just lost, which therefore is the cause of the whole trouble.
No doubt there are many people who really believe this nonsense, but there are more in whose mouths such an explanation can but be a lie and a deliberate untruth. The latter is true of all those now feeding at the government trough. For was it not the very heralds of the Revolution who used to keep urging upon the people that to the great masses it made no difference how the war ended? Did they not, on the contrary, declare solemnly that at most the “great capitalists” could have an interest in the victorious termination of the monstrous struggle among the peoples, but never the German people as such, let alone the German worker? Did not these apostles of world reconciliation declare quite to the contrary, that Germany’s defeat would destroy only “militarism,” while the German people would be magnificently resurrected? Were these not the men who praised the bounty of the Entente, and thrust the guilt for the whole bloody struggle upon Germany? But could they have done this without their declaration that even a military defeat would have no special consequences for the nation? Was not the whole Revolution garnished with the cant statement that it would prevent the victory of the German flag, but that by this road the German people would advance toward its inner and also its outward freedom?
Was this not so, you contemptible and lying scoundrels?
It must require a truly Jewish impudence to blame the collapse upon the military defeat now, while the official organ of high treason, the Berlin Vorwäerts, wrote that this time the German people must not bring its banner back victorious!
And now is that supposed to be the cause of our collapse?
Of course it would be quite futile to wrangle with such a set of forgetful liars, and I would waste no words on it, if this nonsense were not unfortunately parroted by so many quite thoughtless persons with no particular malice or intentional untruthfulness. This discussion is intended also to furnish our warriors of enlightenment with weapons very necessary at a time when the spoken word is so often twisted before one can get it out of his mouth.
The following, then, should be said in reply to the statement that the lost war is responsible for the German collapse:
True enough, the loss of the War was of fearful importance for the future of our Fatherland; yet the loss is not a cause, but itself only a result of such things. It was always perfectly clear to every intelligent and not ill-intentioned person that an unsuccessful ending of this life-and-death struggle was bound to have devastating results. But unfortunately there were also people who seemed not to see this at the right time, or who at first, although they knew better, disputed and denied the truth. These were largely the ones whose secret wish was fulfilled, and who then suddenly understood too late the catastrophe they had helped to cause. It is they who are guilty of the collapse, and not the lost war, as they suddenly choose to say and to know. For the loss of the war, after all, was only the result of their activity, and not, as they now try to claim, the result of “bad” leadership. The enemy too was no coward, he too knew how to die, his number was greater than that of the German army at the outset, and the arsenals of the whole world were at his disposal for technical armament; therefore the fact that the German victories gained through four long years against the world were (with all their heroism and all their “organization”) due solely to superior leadership cannot be denied out of existence. The organization and direction of the German army were the most tremendous things the world had yet seen. Their faults were simply the general bounds of human fallibility.
The fact that this army collapsed was not the cause of our present misfortune, but only the result of other crimes, a result which, it is true, in turn foreshadowed another and this time more visible collapse.
That this is so, we conclude from the following:
Must a military defeat lead to so complete a breakdown of a nation and a state? Since when has this been the result of an unsuccessful war? Are people ever destroyed by lost wars as such?
The answer is short: yes, if in their military defeat these peoples are reaping the reward of their inner rottenness, cowardice, lack of character—in short, of their unworthiness. If this is not the case, the military defeat will be rather the spur to a new and greater advance than the gravestone of a people’s existence.
History offers endless examples to prove the statement.
Unfortunately the military defeat of the German people is not an undeserved catastrophe, but a deserved punishment of eternal retribution. We more than earned that defeat. It is only the great outward symptom of decay among a whole series of inward ones, whose visibility may have been hidden from the eyes of most men, or which people, ostrich-like, would not see.
Consider the ways in which the German people received this defeat. Did not many circles express out-and-out pleasure at the misfortune of the Fatherland? But who does this unless he really deserves such a punishment? Did they not go yet further, and boast that at last they had made the front give way? And it was not the enemy who did this, no, no, this shame Germans put upon their own heads! Was it unjust for the disaster to befall them? And since when, on top of that, has it been customary to blame the war upon oneself? And this although one has better sense and knows differently!
No, and again no. The way in which the German people received its defeat is the best of signs that the true cause of our collapse must be sought elsewhere than in the purely military loss of a few positions or the failure of an offensive; for if the front as such had really failed, and if its misfortune had brought about the Fatherland’s catastrophe, the German people would have received the defeat in an altogether different way. They would have borne the subsequent disaster with clenched teeth, or have bewailed it, overpowered by anguish; their hearts would have been full of rage and anger against the enemy, victorious through the wiles of Chance or the will of Fate; like the Roman Senate, the nation would have gone to meet the beaten divisions bearing the thanks of the Fatherland for their sacrifice, and begging them not to despair of the Empire. Even the capitulation would have been signed only with the brain, while the heart already was seeking the revival to come.
Thus would a defeat have been received that was due to Fate alone. There would have been no laughing and dancing, no boasting of cowardice and glorifying of defeat, no jeering at the fighting troops and dragging their flag and cockade in the mud; but above all, things would never have come to the fearful pass which caused an English officer, Colonel Repington, to say contemptuously: “Every third German is a traitor.” No, this pestilence would never have risen to the choking flood which for five years past has drowned the last remnants of the world’s respect for us.
This it is which best proves the falsehood of the statement that the lost war is the cause of the German collapse. No, this military collapse itself was the result of a whole series of manifestations of disease and their germs, which had attacked the German nation even in times of peace. This was the first universally visible catastrophic result of moral poisoning, of a decline in the instinct of self-preservation and all that goes with it, which had begun many years since to undermine the people and the Empire.
But it took all the fathomless truthlessness of Jewry and its Marxist battle-organization to put the blame for the collapse on the very man who was trying single-handed with super-human energy and will-power to prevent the catastrophe he had foreseen, and to spare the nation the time of its deepest degradation and shame. Ludendorff was branded with the guilt for the defeat, and thus the weapon of moral right was snatched from the hand of the only dangerous accuser who could have risen up against the betrayers of the Fatherland. Here they were acting on the true principle that the greatness of the lie is always a certain factor in being believed; at the bottom of their hearts the great masses of a people are more likely to be misled than to be consciously and deliberately bad, and in the primitive simplicity of their minds they are more easily victimized by a large than by a small lie, since they sometimes tell petty lies themselves, but would be ashamed to tell too great ones. An untruth of that sort would never come into their heads, and they cannot believe possible so vast an impudence in infamous distortion on the part of others; even after being enlightened they will long continue to doubt and waver, and will still believe there must be some truth behind it somewhere. For this reason some part of even the boldest lie is sure to stick—a fact which all the great liars and liars’ societies in this world know only too well, and make base use of.
But those who have best known this truth about the possibilities of using untruths and slander have always been the Jews; after all, their whole existence is built up on one great lie, to wit, that they are a religious community, whereas in fact they are a race—and what a race! And as such they were pilloried forever by one of the greatest minds of humanity in an eternally true sentence of fundamental validity: he called them “The great masters of the lie.” He who does not see or will not believe this can never help truth to victory in the world.
We may almost consider it a stroke of good fortune for the German people that the span of its creeping disease was suddenly shortened by so fearful a catastrophe; otherwise the nation would have gone to destruction more slowly, perhaps, but all the more surely. The disease would have become chronic, whereas in the acute form of the collapse it is at least recognizable to the eyes of the crowd. It is not by chance that man mastered the plague more easily than tuberculosis. The one comes in fearful waves of death which toss humanity, the other creeps slowly; one leads to awful fear, the other gradually to indifference. The result was that men faced the one with ruthless energy, while they tried to check consumption by feeble means. Man became master of the plague, while tuberculosis became master over him.
The same thing is so of the diseases of peoples. If they do not take the form of catastrophes, men slowly begin to get used to them, and are finally destroyed by them all the more surely because gradually. It is a piece of good fortune, then, if a bitter one, when Fate decides to interfere in this slow process of decay, and with a sudden glow to display the end of the disease to the sufferer. For that is not infrequently the result of such a catastrophe. It may easily become the cause of a cure carried through with utmost determination.
But even a case of that sort presupposes a recognition of the inner causes which produced the sickness in question.
Here too, the most important thing is still to distinguish the germs from the conditions they produce. This is the more difficult the longer the virus has existed in the body politic, and the more it has come to be taken for granted as a natural part of it. For it may easily happen that after a certain length of time one will regard definitely harmful poisons as an integral part of one’s own people, or at least will tolerate them as a necessary evil, so that a motive is no longer thought necessary for searching for the extraneous germ.
Thus in the long years of peace before the war certain ills had definitely arisen and been recognized as such, although, a few exceptions aside, almost no attention was paid to what caused them. Here again the exceptions were primarily in aspects of economic life, which would strike the attention of the individual more than ills in many other fields.
There were many signs of decay which should have given food for grave thought.
From the economic angle there is this to be said:
The stupendous growth of the German population before the war brought the question of daily bread ever more sharply to the fore in all political and economic thinking and action. Unfortunately people could not make up their minds to adopt the one correct solution, but thought they could attain their purpose in a cheaper fashion. The decision to renounce the acquisition of new land, and in its place to become entangled in the phantasm of world economic conquest, were bound eventually to lead to an industrialization as unrestrained as it was harmful.
The first consequence of grave import was the weakening of the peasant class. As fast as this class declined, the mass of the proletariat in the great cities kept growing, until at last the balance was entirely lost.
Now the violent contrast between poor and rich also became evident. Abundance and squalor lived so close together that the results might be and indeed were bound to be very bad ones. Distress and frequent unemployment began their work on men, and left discontent and bitterness behind as reminders. The result seemed to be a political division of classes. Despite prosperity, dissatisfaction grew and became more profound; things got to the point where the conviction that “this could not go on much longer” became general, yet without people’s forming or even being able to form any definite conception of what ought to have come.
It was the characteristic signs of a profound discontent that were attempting thus to express themselves.
But worse yet were other consequences which the commercialization and industrialization of the nation brought in their train.
To just the degree that the economic system became the ruling mistress of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve, and before whom all had to bow down. More and more the Gods of Heaven were put on the shelf as antiquated and outworn; the incense was burned not to them but to the false god Mammon. A truly pernicious degeneration began, pernicious especially because it came at a time when the nation, threatened with a probably critical hour, needed the noblest of heroic spirit more desperately than ever. Germany had to make up its mind that some day it would need to support with the sword its attempts to assure its daily bread by way of “peaceful economic work.”
The rule of money unhappily was sanctioned in the quarter where it should have been most strongly resisted: His Majesty the Kaiser acted unfortunately in bringing the nobility, especially, under the influence of the new finance capitalism. It must be admitted in his defense that even Bismarck unluckily did not recognize the threatening danger in this direction. But it meant that the virtues of idealism had in practice taken second place to the value of money, for it was plain that once it set out on this path the warrior nobility must shortly take a position subordinate to the financial nobility. Financial operations are easier to carry through than battles. Nor was there any longer an attraction for the real hero or statesman in being thrown together with the first stray Jewish banker: the really deserving man could no longer have any interest in the bestowal of cheap decorations, but declined them with thanks. Even as a pure matter of blood this development was a most melancholy one: more and more the nobility lost the racial sine qua non of its existence, and for a great part of it the name “ignobility” would have been far more suitable.
A grave sign of economic decay was the slow disappearance of the personal form of property, and gradual transfer of the entire economic system into the hands of corporations.
Thus at last work had become an object of speculation for conscienceless stock-jobbers; and the expropriation of property from the wage-earner grew out of all bounds. The stock exchange began to triumph, and slowly but surely started to take the life of the nation under its protection and control.
The internationalization of the German economic structure had been started before the war by way of stock issues. A part of German industry did indeed make a determined effort to save itself from this fate. But finally it fell before the united onslaught of greedy finance capital, which fought this battle with the particular help of its most faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
The constant war upon German heavy industry was the visible start of the internationalization of the German economic system aimed at by Marxism, which could not, it is true, be completed until the victory of Marxism in the Revolution. As I write this, the attack has at last succeeded upon the German Government Railways, which are now handed over to International finance capital. “International” Social Democracy has thus once again accomplished one of its great objectives.
How far this attempt to make “economic animals” of the German people had succeeded we can see from the fact that after the war one of the leading minds of German industry and especially of commerce could express the opinion that only economic improvement could possibly put Germany on her feet again. This nonsense was served up at the moment when France was restoring the instruction in her schools primarily to a humanistic basis in order to prevent the growth of the mistaken attitude that the nation and the State owe their survival to economics and not to imperishable ideal values. This remark of a Stinnes caused the most incredible confusion; it was picked up at once, to become with astonishing rapidity the leitmotif of all the bunglers and twaddlers whom Fate had let loose on Germany as “statesmen” after the Revolution.
One of the worst phenomena of decay in Germany before the war was the common and everspreading habit of doing everything by halves. It always results from lack of certainty upon a subject, as well as from a cowardice growing out of this and other causes.
The disease was fostered by education. German education before the war had an extraordinary number of weaknesses. It was very one-sidedly aimed to produce pure “knowledge,” and placed less emphasis on ability. Still less value was attached to the development of individual character—in so far as this is possible at all—very little to fostering joy in responsibility, and none at all to the training of will and determination. Its products were really not strong men, but the docile “Polymaths” which we Germans before the war were generally considered to be, and accordingly were rated as. The German was popular, because he was very useful, but he was little respected, precisely on account of his weak will. Not for nothing was he the quickest of almost all peoples to lose nationality and Fatherland. The apt proverb, “He who travels hat in hand goes the whole width of the land,” tells the entire story.
But this docility became positively fatal when it determined the fashion in which alone it was permissible to deal with the Monarch. Good form accordingly demanded that one never contradict, but approve anything and everything His Majesty deigned to please. But here was the very place where free, manly dignity was most necessary, or else the institution of Monarchy was bound some day to be destroyed by such fawning; for fawning it was, and nothing more. Only sorry sycophants and turnspits—in short, the whole decadent crew that had always felt more comfortable at All Highest thrones than frank and decently honorable souls had—could consider this the sole proper form of intercourse with the wearer of a crown. It must be said that with all their humility toward their Lord and meal-ticket these “humble servants” of majesty have always displayed the greatest boldness toward the rest of mankind, particularly when they chose to display themselves to the other sinners as sole and exclusive “monarchists”; this is a piece of genuine impertinence which only an ennobled or perhaps an unennobled mawworm would be capable of! for in reality these fellows have always been the grave-diggers of monarchy and particularly of the monarchical idea. Nor is anything else thinkable; a man who is ready to stand up for his cause can and will never be a skulking, characterless sycophant. A man who is really serious about preserving and fostering an institution will cling to it with every fiber of his heart, and will never get over it if it begins to show any faults. Nor will he, however, shout through the streets as the democratic “friends” of the Monarchy did, acting in equally truthless fashion; he will most urgently warn His Majesty, the wearer of the Crown, and try to convince him. In doing so he will not and must not take the standpoint that His Majesty is then still free to act as he pleases after all, even when such action must plainly be disastrous; on the contrary, he will be forced in that case to protect the Monarchy against the Monarch at any risk. If the value of the institution were in the person of the Monarch of the moment, no worse institution could be conceived; for rarely indeed are monarchs the flower of wisdom and reason, or even of character, that people like to pretend. Only the professional sycophants and skulkers believe this, but upright men—and they after all are the ones most valuable to the State—can not but feel themselves repelled by attempts to assert such nonsense. For them history is history, and truth truth, even in dealing with monarchs. No, the peoples are so seldom fortunate enough to have a great man as a great monarch that they must think themselves lucky if the malice of Fate spares them absolute miscarriage.
Thus the value and meaning of the monarchical idea cannot lie in the person of the monarch himself, unless Heaven decides to put the crown upon the brow of such an inspired hero as Frederick the Great or such a wise character as William I. This may happen once in centuries, seldom oftener. Otherwise, however, the idea is above the person, and the meaning of the system resides solely in the institution as such. This means the monarch himself is one of those who must serve. He too is but a wheel in the machinery, and as such has his duty to it. He too must fall in with the higher purpose, and hence the “monarchist” is not the man who silently allows the wearer of the crown to desecrate it, but he who prevents this. If the meaning were not in the idea, but in the “sacred” person at all costs, even the deposition of an obviously insane prince could never be undertaken.
It is necessary to lay this down as a fact because lately those figures whose sorry attitude was not the least among the causes of the Monarchy’s collapse have begun to come out of hiding again. With a certain naive brazenness these people have once more begun to talk only of “their King”—whom, however, they most despicably left in the lurch at the critical moment only a few years ago—and to decry as a bad German anyone who refuses to join in their lying outpourings. And yet as a matter of fact these are the very same chicken-hearts that scattered and fled in 1918 before any red arm-band, let their King look out for himself, hastily exchanged the pike for a walking stick, put on neutral neckties, and vanished without a trace as peaceable “civilians.” In an instant they were gone, these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary hurricane had begun to die down enough again (thanks to the activity of others) so that one could bellow his “Hail to the King, all Hail” to the breezes did these “servants and counsellors” of the Crown begin to make a cautious appearance once more. Now they are all here again, gazing back longingly at the fleshpots of Egypt; they can scarcely contain themselves for energy and devotion to their King—until some day the first red arm-band appears again, and the whole ghostly crew of profiters from the old Monarchy will once more take to its heels like mice before the cat!
If the monarchs were not themselves responsible for these things, we could only pity them heartily for their defenders at the present day. But they may be quite sure that thrones can be lost with such knights as these, but no crowns won.
Such servility was a weakness of our whole system of education, whose results in this particular were especially disastrous. For thanks to it these sorry figures could maintain themselves at all the courts, and gradually undermine the foundation of the Monarchy. When at last the structure began to rock, they were gone with the wind. Naturally—crawlers and lickspittles are not going to be killed for their master. That monarchs never know this, and, almost as a matter of principle, never learn it, has always been their ruin.
One of the worst signs of decadence was the growing cowardice in the face of responsibility as well as the resulting supineness in all things.
It is true that in our case the source of this epidemic is quite largely in the parliamentary institution, where irresponsibility is positively cultivated in its purest form. But unfortunately the disease has slowly spread to all the life outside, especially to governmental life. Everywhere people have begun to evade responsibility, and for this reason have resorted by preference to inadequate half-measures; these after all seem to reduce the measure of personal responsibility to a minimum.
We have but to consider the attitude of the individual governments toward a series of truly injurious phenomena in our public life, and we shall easily recognize the fearful importance of this universal half-heartedness and fear of responsibility.
I will cite only a few cases from the enormous mass of examples:
Journalistic circles are particularly fond of describing the press as a “great power” in the State. And indeed its importance is truly enormous. It simply cannot be overestimated; it after all is what really continues education in adult years.
By and large, readers may be divided into three groups:
Those who believe everything they read;
Those who no longer believe anything;
Those minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.
The first group is numerically far the largest. This constitutes the great masses of the people, and accordingly represents the most simple-minded part of the nation. It cannot, however, be segregated by occupation, let us say, but at most by general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have been neither born nor trained for independent thinking, and who believe, partly through incapacity, partly through incompetence, anything which is offered them printed black on white. To it belong also a class of sluggards who could indeed think for themselves, but who out of pure laziness gratefully pick up anything that someone else has already thought, on the humble assumption that he must have worked hard over it. On all these groups, then, representing the great mass of the people, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are unable or unwilling themselves to weigh what is offered them, so that their whole approach to every problem of the day goes back almost wholly to external influence exerted by others. This may be of advantage if their enlightenment be undertaken in serious and truth-loving quarters, but is disastrous if attended to by scoundrels and liars.
In number the second group is considerably smaller. It is made up partly of elements which once belonged to the first group, who after continued disappointments have gone to the opposite extreme, and now believe nothing that is presented to them in print. They hate all newspapers, and either do not read them at all, or fly into a rage over the entire contents, which they believe to be compounded wholly of lies and untruths. Such people are very hard to deal with, because they will always be suspicious, even of the truth. They are thus lost to any positive work.
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of those really fine minds which have been taught by training and natural bent to think independently, which try to form their own judgments on everything, and which subject everything they read to a repeated, thorough scrutiny and further development of the implications for themselves. They never look at a newspaper without mentally taking part, and Mr. writer’s position is then no easy one. Journalists have in fact only a limited fondness for such readers.
To the members of this third group the nonsense which a newspaper may choose to scribble is, however, scarcely dangerous or even significant. They have usually become accustomed anyway, in the course of a lifetime, to regard every journalist on principle as a rogue who happens sometimes to tell the truth.
But unluckily the importance of these splendid figures is only in their intelligence, and not in their number—a misfortune for an age in which wisdom is nothing, and majority everything! Today, when the ballots of the masses are final, the decisive factor is with the most numerous group, and this is the first class: the crowd of the simple-minded or credulous.
State and people have a prime interest in preventing these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or actually ill-intentioned educators. It is therefore the State’s duty to supervise their education and prevent any mischief from being wrought. In doing so it must keep a particularly sharp eye on the press; for the press’ influence on such people is by far the strongest and most penetrating, being exerted not momentarily but continuously. It is in the perpetual, uniform repetition of this instruction that its enormous importance consists. Here if anywhere the State should not forget that all means must serve an end; it must not be misled by chatter about so-called “freedom of the press” into neglecting its duty and keeping from the nation the nourishment it needs and can thrive on; with ruthless determination the State must assure itself of this instrument of popular education, and put it to work for the State and the nation.
What was the fare which the German press before the war offered people? Was it not the most virulent poison imaginable? Was not the heart of our people inoculated with acute pacifism at a time when the rest of the world was preparing slowly but surely to throttle Germany? Did not the press even in peacetime fill the brain of the people with doubt of its own State’s just cause, thus at the outset reducing its choice of weapons for defense? Was it not the German press which succeeded in rendering the nonsense of “Western Democracy” appetizing to our people, until at last, captured by all the enthusiastic bombast, the people believed it could entrust its future to a League of Nations? Did it not help train our people in a miserable immorality? Did it not make morality and propriety ridiculous, calling them old-fashioned and narrow-minded, until at last our people too became “modern”? Did not its continuous assault undermine the fundament of governmental authority until one push was enough to make the building collapse? Did it not oppose by every means the will to give to the State that which is the State’s, depreciate the army by constant criticism, sabotage universal military duty, urge the refusal of military appropriations, etc., until its success was bound to come?
The activity of the so-called liberal press dug the grave of the German people and the German Empire. This is to say nothing of the Marxist lie-sheets; they cannot live without lying any more than a cat without mousing; their sole task, after all, is to break the national and popular backbone of the people in order to prepare it for the yoke of international capital and its master, the Jew.
But what did the State do against this mass poisoning of the nation? Nothing—nothing at all. A few ridiculous decrees, a few sentences for too-violent villainy, and that was all. Instead they hoped to win the favor of this plague by flattery, by recognizing the “value” of the press, its “importance,” its “educational mission,” and other such nonsense—all of which the Jews accepted with a sly smile, giving wily thanks in return.
But this shameful impotence of the State was due not so much to failure to recognize the danger as to a cowardice that cried to Heaven, and the consequent half-heartedness of every decision and measure. No one had the courage to use thoroughgoing and radical remedies, while here as everywhere people fooled with half-cures, and, instead of stabbing to the heart, merely provoked the viper—with the result that things did not even stay as they were, but the power of the institutions to be combatted grew from year to year.
The resistance of the German government of those days to the press (largely of Jewish origin) which was slowly corrupting the nation lacked any directness, any determination, above all any visible goal. Here the privy councillors’ understanding was at a complete loss, in gauging the importance of the struggle as well as in choice of means and in laying a clear plan. They tinkered aimlessly, and sometimes, if they were bitten too hard, locked up one of these journalistic vipers for a few weeks or months; but the snakes’ nest itself was left quite undisturbed.
This was of course also partly the result of the infinitely crafty tactics of Jewdom on one side and a stupidity or naivety truly worthy of a privy councillor on the other. The Jew was far too shrewd to let all his press attack with equal vigor. No, part of it was there to cover up the other part. While the Marxists were taking the field in the basest fashion against all that man can hold sacred, infamously attacking State and government, and setting great bodies of the people against each other, the bourgeois-democratic Jewish sheets succeeded in giving themselves the appearance of the famous objectivity, and carefully avoided all strong language, knowing that the empty-headed can judge only by exteriors, and are never able to penetrate within, so that for them the value of a thing is measured by this exterior instead of by the substance—a human weakness to which they owe their own standing.
For such people, no doubt, the Frankfurter Zeitung was and is the very essence of decency. It never uses rude language, opposes all physical brutality, and always urges war with “intellectual” weapons, which oddly enough is always the favorite idea of the most unintellectual people. This is a result of our half-education, which separates people from natural instincts, and pumps them full of a certain sort of information without being able to lead them to the ultimate knowledge; for here industry and good intentions alone are useless, and the necessary intelligence—native intelligence—is indispensable. But ultimate knowledge consists in understanding the causes of instinct—that is, man must never be so misguided as to believe that he has ascended to the position of lord and master over Nature (as in the conceit of half-education he so easily may), but must understand the fundamental necessity of Nature’s rule, and realize how completely even his existence is subject to these laws of eternal battle and upward struggle. Then he will perceive that in a universe where planets and suns revolve, moon moves around planet, in which strength is always master over weakness, and either forces it to be an obedient servant or crushes it, there cannot be special laws for man. Even over him the eternal principle of this ultimate wisdom holds sway. Try to grasp them he may, but can never free himself from them.
It is precisely for our intellectual demi-monde that the Jew writes his so-called newspapers for the intelligent reader. For this Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt are made, for this their tone is set, and on such people they exercise their influence. Scrupulously avoiding any seeming roughnesses, they nevertheless pour their poison from other vessels into the hearts of their readers. With a flow of pretty sounds and phrases they lull their readers in the belief that they are acting in the interest of pure science or even of morals, whereas in fact theirs is the brilliant and crafty art of thus stealing from the enemy’s hands any weapons against the press. As one set fairly drips with decency, the half-wits are all the readier to believe that with the other set it is a question of but slight abuses, which, however, must never lead to any restriction upon freedom of the press—as this mischief of poisoning and lying to the people with impunity is called. Therefore people hesitate to take action against these banditti for fear they will immediately have the “decent” press against them as well—a fear which is only too well founded. The moment anyone attempts to take action against one of these scandal sheets, all the others at once rush to its defense, of course not to approve its method of fighting. Heaven forfend; it is solely a matter of freedom of the press and of public opinion; that alone is being defended. Even the strongest men weaken under this outcry, for after all it comes entirely from the mouths of “decent” papers.
Thus this poison could enter and work in the blood-stream of our people unhindered, without the State’s having the strength to control the disease. In the ridiculous half-measures it employed one could discover the already threatening downfall of the Empire. For an institution which is no longer determined to protect itself with every available weapon has practically surrendered its existence. Every act of half-heartedness is a visible sign of inner decay, which must and will sooner or later be followed by outward collapse.
I believe that the present generation, properly guided, will more easily master the danger. It has gone through various experiences which somewhat strengthened the nerves of everyone who did not lose them altogether. No doubt even in days to come the Jew will raise a terrible outcry in his newspapers when a hand is laid on his favorite lair, an end is put to journalistic mischief, and the press is set to work as a means of education for the State, vesting no longer in the hands of aliens and enemies of the people. But I think it will disturb us younger men less than it once did our fathers. A ten-inch shell hissed even louder than a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers—so let them hiss!
Another example of weakness and half-heartedness on the part of the government of pre-war Germany in the questions most vital to the nation is this: for many years there has run parallel with the political and moral infection of the people a no less horrible physical poisoning of the body politic. Syphilis began to flourish more and more in the great cities, while tuberculosis gathered its harvest of death almost uniformly throughout the country.
Although in both cases the results for the nation were horrible, people could not rouse themselves to decisive measures against them.
Particularly toward syphilis the attitude of State and popular leaders can be described only as absolute capitulation. Any seriously intended attempt at stamping it out must have gone further than was actually the case. The invention of a questionable remedy and its money-making use can do little good against this disease. Here too the only possibility was a fight against the cause, not the removal of the symptoms. But the primary cause is our prostitution of love. Even if it did not result in this natural disease, it would still be gravely injurious to the people, for the moral devastation which this perversion brings with it is enough to lead a people slowly but surely to ruin. This Judaization of our spiritual life and mammonizing of our mating instinct will sooner or later corrupt our entire offspring, for instead of the vigorous children of a natural emotion we shall have only the sorry products of financial expediency. More and more this is the basis and sole requisite of our marriages. But love spends itself elsewhere.
Here too, of course, we can fight Nature for a certain length of time, but retribution will not fail; it is only a little slower to arrive here, or rather people often recognize it when it is too late.
We can see in our nobility the disastrous results of long-continued neglect of the natural essentials for marriage. Here we observe the consequences of a propagation which depends partly on purely social compulsion, partly on financial considerations. The one leads to general weakening, the other to blood-poisoning, because any department-store Jewess is thought good enough to increase the posterity of His Grace. But it looks very much like it. In both cases complete degeneration is the result.
Our middle classes today are trying hard to go the same way, and they will arrive at the same destination.
With hasty indifference people try to pass by unpleasant truths as if such behavior could undo the things themselves. No, the fact that our metropolitan population is more and more prostituting its love-life, and is thus falling victim in ever-increasing number to the plague of syphilis, cannot be denied out of existence; it is there.
The plainest results of this mass sickness are to be found on the one hand in the insane asylum, and on the other hand, unfortunately—in our children. They in particular are the sad products pf the irresistibly increasing poisoning of our sexual life; in the diseases of the children the vices of the parents are revealed.
There are various ways of reconciling oneself with this unpleasant, nay horrible fact: some people see nothing at all, or rather will see nothing; of course this is by far the simplest and cheapest “attitude.” Others wrap themselves in the saintly garments of a prudery both ridiculous and dishonest. They always speak of the whole subject as of a great sin, and express particularly their profound indignation over every sinner who is caught; then they close their eyes in pious horror to this godless plague, and pray to the good Lord that he will (if possible after their death) rain fire and brimstone upon this Sodom and Gomorrah, thus once more making an edifying example of shameless humanity. A third group, finally, see clearly the awful consequences which this plague can and will some day bring with it; but they merely shrug their shoulders, convinced that in any case they can do nothing against the peril, so that things will simply have to be allowed to take their course as they will.
All this is simple and easy indeed. Only one thing must not be forgotten: such indolence will take a nation for its victim. The excuse that other peoples are no better off will naturally make little difference in the fact of our own downfall, unless the feeling of seeing others also suffering misfortune may diminish many people’s own pain. But then more than ever the question is which people can manage by its own efforts to master the pestilence, and which nations will succumb to it. That is what it comes to in the end. Even this is but a touchstone of racial excellence—the race that cannot stand the test will simply die, and make room for healthier or at least tougher and more resistant ones. For since this question primarily concerns posterity it is among those of which it is said with such fearful truth, that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the tenth generation—a truth which holds only for crimes against blood and race.
Sin against blood and race is the original sin of this world, and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
But how truly pitiful was the attitude of pre-war Germany toward this one question! What was done to halt the infection of our young people in the great cities? What to attack the disease and mammonizing of our love-life? What to combat the resulting syphilization of the body politic?
The easiest way to get at the answer is to point out what should have happened.
The question should not have been taken casually; people should have understood that on its solution depended the happiness or unhappiness of generations, nay that it might be decisive for the whole future of our people, if indeed it was not bound to be so. But this realization would have carried the obligation of ruthless measures and intervention. Above all other considerations must have stood the conviction that the attention of the whole nation should be concentrated upon this dreadful peril first of all, so that every individual would become conscious of the struggle’s importance. Obligations and burdens which are truly crucial and sometimes hard to bear can be made universally effective only if the individual is enabled to feel the necessity as well as the compulsion. But this requires a tremendous process of enlightenment, excluding other and distracting questions of the day.
In every case where there are apparently impossible demands or tasks to be met, the whole attention of a people must be concentrated in a body on this one question exclusively, as if existence or non-existence actually depended upon its solution. Only thus can a people be rendered willing and able to accomplish great achievements and exertions.
This principle holds also for the individual, in so far as he wishes to achieve great things. He too can do so only piecemeal, step by step; he too must always concentrate all his exertions upon the accomplishment of a certain limited task until it seems achieved, and a new section can be attacked. The man who cannot thus divide up the road into individual stages, and try to achieve these singly by exerting all his energy, can never reach his final destination, but will fall somewhere along the road, or perhaps even away from it. This process of working toward an objective is an art, and demands supreme effort at every stage in order to cover the whole distance step by step.
The very first essential, then, in attacking so difficult a stretch of the human road is that the leadership shall manage to present the momentary partial goal to be attained, or rather to be fought for, to the masses of the people as the one and only thing worthy of human attention, upon whose conquest everything depends. The great body of the people can never in any case see the whole road before them without growing tired and despairing of their task. They can see their goal a certain distance ahead, but the path to it they recognize only a bit at a time, like the traveler who knows his destination, but can travel the endless road better if he divides it up into sections, and attacks each one as if it were his final destination. Only thus can he get on without becoming downhearted.
By every resource of propaganda, in other words, the question of combating syphilis should have been presented as the task of the nation, not as a task. For this purpose its ill effects should have been hammered into people by every available means as the most awful of all disasters, until the whole nation became convinced that everything—future or extinction—depended on the solution of this question.
Only after such preparation, continued for years if necessary, will the attention and hence the determination of a whole people be so aroused that even grave measures involving great sacrifice can be resorted to without danger of being misunderstood or suddenly left in the lurch by the will of the masses.
For enormous sacrifices and equally enormous exertions are necessary in any serious onslaught upon this plague.
The struggle against syphilis demands a struggle against prostitution, against prejudices, old habits, against previous notions, generally accepted views, not least among them the false prudery in certain circles, etc.
Before we have any right, even a moral one, to attack these things, we must make possible the earlier marriage of coming generations. Late marriages in themselves compel the retention of an institution which is (no matter how we may twist and squirm) a shame to humanity, an institution which damnably ill becomes a creature that likes, with its usual modesty, to regard itself as the “image” of God.
Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, but it cannot be abolished by moral lectures, pious intentions, etc.; its restriction and eventual disappearance presuppose the removal of a whole swarm of prior causes. The first of these is to make possible, in accordance with the dictates of human nature, the early marriage particularly of the man, for here the woman is only the passive party in any case.
We can see how misguided, in fact how wholly incomprehensible some people have by now become from the fact that one quite frequently hears mothers in so-called “good” society say they would be thankful to find their child a husband who has “already sown his wild oats,” etc. As there is usually less shortage of this than of the reverse, the poor girl is pretty sure to find such a husbandman, and the children will be the visible result of this wise marriage. When we consider that procreation in itself is restricted as much as possible in addition, so that Nature has no chance of selection, since of course every creature, no matter how sorry, must be preserved, there is really but one question left to ask—why does such an institution continue to exist at all, and what is supposed to be its purpose? Is it not exactly the same as regular prostitution? Does duty to posterity no longer cut any figure at all? Or do people not know what imprecations of children and children’s children they are earning by such criminal negligence in maintaining the last rights of Nature, but also the last duty to Nature?
Thus the civilized peoples degenerate and gradually decline.
Not even marriage can be an end in itself; it must serve the greater purpose of increasing and preserving species and race. That alone is its meaning and its purpose.
But this being so, its goodness can be measured only by the way in which it fulfils that purpose. For this reason in itself early marriage is good, for the young couple will still have the vigor which alone can produce strong and healthy progeny. To make this possible will, it is true, still necessitate a whole series of social changes without which early marriage is not to be dreamed of. A solution even of this small question cannot take place without heroic social remedies. How important these are should be particularly obvious to an age when the incompetence of the so-called “Social” Republic in the solution of the housing question alone has simply prevented many marriages, and thus abetted prostitution. The nonsense of our wage-distribution, which takes far too little consideration of the question of the family and its support, also makes many an early marriage impossible.
In other words, a real attack on prostitution can be made only if a basic reform of social conditions permits earlier marriage than is now usually possible. This is the very first essential for a solution of this question.
But in the second place, education and training will have to root out a whole series of evils to which today we pay no attention. Above all a balance must be struck in education between intellectual instruction and physical development. What is called a gymnasium [Not a gymnasium in our sense, but the German equivalent of a secondary school.—Translator] is a mockery of the Greek original. We have completely forgotten in our education that in the long run a sound mind can live only in a sound body. Particularly (with a few individual exceptions) if one takes into consideration the great masses of a people, this statement has absolute validity.
In pre-war Germany there was a time when absolutely no attention was any longer paid to this truth. People simply went ahead sinning against the body, and believing that one-sided training of the “mind” offered positive assurance for the greatness of the nation. This was a mistake whose results were felt sooner than expected. It is not by accident that the Bolshevist wave found no better soil than in places with a population which had degenerated through hunger and permanent under-nourishment: in Central Germany, Saxony and the Ruhr district. But in none of these districts do even the so-called intelligentsia offer serious resistance to this Jewish disease, for the simple reason that even the intelligentsia are physically altogether degenerate, if less through privation than through education. The exclusively intellectual approach of our education in the upper classes makes them, in times when not the mind but the strong arm is decisive, incapable even of surviving, let alone of really establishing themselves. Seldom are physical ailments not the original cause of personal cowardice.
Excessive emphasis on purely mental training and neglect of physical development also fosters the rise of sexual notions far too early in youth. The boy who has been brought to an iron hardness by sport and gymnastics is less subject to the need for sensual gratification than is the “grind” fed exclusively on mental pabulum. This a sensible education must consider. It must also not forget that the healthy young man’s expectations of woman are different from those of a prematurely corrupted weakling.
Thus all education must be planned so as to employ the boy’s free time for useful strengthening of his body. During these years he has no right to loaf idly around, making streets and movies unsafe, but must, after his day’s other work, steel his young body and make it hard, that life some day may not find him too soft. To prepare for this and carry it through, to direct and guide it is the task of youth’s education, and not solely to pump in so-called wisdom. It must also sweep away the notion that the treatment of his own body is the affair of the individual. There can be no liberty to sin at the expense of posterity, and thus of the race.
Along with training of the body must begin the struggle against poisoning the soul. Our whole public life today is like a hot-house of sexual phantasies and provocations. When we look at the menu of our movies, theaters and vaudeville houses we can hardly deny that this is no proper fare, particularly for young people. In show-windows and on posters the lowest means are used to attract the attention of the crowd. That this is bound to do grave damage to young people must be understandable to everyone who has not lost the power to think himself back into their souls. This sultry sensual atmosphere leaves phantasies and stirrings at a time when the boy should not understand such things at all. We can study the results of this sort of education, not altogether pleasantly, in the youth of today. It has become precociously mature, and thus also prematurely old. From the courts occurrences sometimes reach the public ear which offer horrible insights into the spiritual fife of our fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Who then can be surprised that syphilis begins to pick its victims at that age? And is it not a crying shame to see many a physically weak and spiritually ruined young man receive his introduction to marriage through some big-city whore?
No, he who would strike at the root of prostitution must above all help to remove its spiritual prior cause. He must sweep away the garbage of our moral infection of metropolitan “culture,” and that ruthlessly, without wavering under all the outcry and screaming which of course will be set up. If we do not lift youth from the morass of its present surroundings, it will go down in it. The man who will not see these things is thereby supporting them, and assuming a share of the guilt for the slow prostitution of our future, which after all lies in the coming generation. This cleansing of our culture must expand into almost every field. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters and show-windows must be cleared of the signs of a rotting world, and pressed into the service of a moral idea of State and culture. Public life must be freed of the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, as well as of all unmanly, prudish disingenuousness. In all these things goal and road must be fixed by care for the preservation of our people’s health of body and soul. The right of personal freedom is secondary to the duty of preserving the race.
Only when these measures have been carried through can the medical assault upon the disease itself be undertaken with some chance of success. But even here there can be no half-measures; we shall have to come to the gravest and most radical decisions. It is a half-measure to allow incurably diseased persons continual opportunity to infect others who are in good health. This is a sort of humaneness which, to avoid hurting one, sends a hundred to perdition. The demand that it be made impossible for defective persons to beget equally defective progeny is a demand of the plainest common sense, and if consistently carried through would be humanity’s humanest deed. It will save millions of unfortunates from undeserved suffering, and in the end lead to a general improvement in health. And the determination to proceed in this direction will also dam the further spread of venereal diseases. Here we may have if necessary to resort to the pitiless segregation of the incurably diseased—a barbarous measure for the unhappy victim, but a blessing for the rest of the world and for posterity. The temporary anguish of a century can and will free tens of centuries from suffering.
The battle against syphilis and its pacemaker, prostitution, is one of humanity’s most enormous tasks, enormous because it is a matter not of solving one single question, but of removing a whole series of evils which leave this plague behind as their result. For here the disease of the body is but the product of diseased moral, social and racial instincts.
But if, through indolence or cowardice, this battle is not fought, just let people look at the nations five hundred years hence. They will find but few men left in God’s image, without blaspheming against the Almighty.
But how did people try in the old Germany to deal with this plague? Calm consideration returns a truly melancholy answer. True, the fearful havoc of the disease was clearly recognized in government circles, though they could perhaps not altogether take in its consequences; but in fighting it they were a complete failure, and instead of making thoroughgoing reforms they preferred to resort to wretched palliatives. They cobbled away at the disease, and let the causes alone. They subjected the individual prostitute to a medical examination, supervised her as well as they could, and, if disease was discovered, shoved her into some hospital, from which, externally cured, she was once more let loose upon mankind.
They did, indeed, introduce a “protective provision” in the law, according to which persons not in perfect health or entirely cured were obliged under penalty to refrain from sexual intercourse. Of course this was in itself a proper measure, but in practical execution it was almost a complete failure. In the first place, the woman, if she suffers such a misfortune, in most cases will probably decline—as a simple result of our or rather her education—to be dragged into court as a witness against the miserable thief of her health, often under painful circumstances. She is the one to whom it does the least good; in most cases she is sure to be the worst sufferer anyway. The contempt of her unkind neighbors will fall upon her much more heavily than it would with a man. Finally, imagine her position if the carrier of the disease is her own husband. Is she to bring a complaint? Or what is she to do?
But in the case of the man there is the additional fact that all too often he encounters this pestilence just after he has partaken copiously of alcohol, since in that condition he is least able to judge the quality of his “fair one,” which the diseased prostitute realizes only too well, and therefore always fishes for men in this ideal state. But the result is that no matter how the unpleasantly surprised man may later rack his brains, he can no longer remember his kind-hearted benefactor—which is sarcely surprising in a city like Berlin, or even Munich. Besides, it is often a question of provincial visitors, who are quite bewildered by the magic of a great city anyway.
And, finally, who can tell whether he is diseased or sound? Are there not many cases in which a person apparently cured has a relapse, and does the most fearful damage without even dreaming of it? Thus the practical effect of this protection by legal penalty upon a guilty act of infection is actually nil. The same thing is true of the supervision of prostitutes, and finally the cure even today is still uncertain and doubtful. Only one thing is sure: despite all measures to the contrary, the disease kept spreading. This is the most conclusive proof of their ineffectiveness.
For everything that was done was as inadequate as it was ridiculous. The spiritual prostitution of the people was not prevented; nor was anything whatever done toward preventing it.
If anyone is inclined to take it all casually, let him study the statistics on the spread of this plague, compare its growth in the last hundred years, imagine its further development—and he must have the simplicity of a donkey if he does not find an unpleasant shiver running down his spine.
The weakness and half-heartedness of the attitude adopted even in the old Germany toward so fearful a phenomenon may be accounted a visible sign of the decay of a people. When the strength no longer exists to fight for one’s own health, the right to life in this world to struggle is at an end. This strength belongs only to the vigorous “whole” man, and not to the weak “half” man.
One of the plainest signs of decay in the old Empire was the slow decline of the general level of culture, by which I do not mean what is described today by the word civilization. The latter seems, on the contrary, rather to be an enemy of true exaltation of mind and living. Even before the turn of the century there began to intrude into our art an element which until then could have been considered altogether alien and unknown. No doubt even in earlier days there were sometimes perversions of taste, but these were rather artistic aberrations, to which posterity could attach at least a certain historical value, than products of a degeneration to the point of senselessness not in art but in the brain. Here were cultural signs of the political collapse, which did, it is true, become more plainly visible later.
The Bolshevism of art is the only possible cultural form of life and intellectual expression for Bolshevism in general.
Anyone who thinks this surprising has only to observe the art of the fortunately Bolshevized States, which can admire with horror, as officially State-recognized art, those morbid excresences of lunatics and degenerates which we have become acquainted with since the turn of the century under the general names of Cubism and Dadaism. Even during the short life of the Councils Republic in Bavaria this phenomenon began to appear. Even here one could see how all the official posters, propaganda cartoons in the newspapers, etc., bore the stamp not only of political but of cultural decay.
Sixty years ago a political collapse of the extent we have now achieved would have been unthinkable; equally unthinkable would have been a cultural collapse such as began to appear in Futurist and Cubist creations after 1900. Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called Dadaistic “experiences” would have seemed absolutely impossible, and its promoters would have gone to the mad-house, whereas today they even become presidents of art associations. This pestilence could not have made its appearance at that time, because public opinion would not have tolerated it, nor the State have sat idly by. For it is the affair of a government to prevent its people from being driven into the arms of insanity; and some day this was bound to be the end of such a development. For upon the day that this sort of art was really in harmony with the public conception, one of the most momentous transformations of mankind would have taken place; the devolution of the human brain would have begun, and the end could scarcely be conceived.
If we pass in review from this standpoint the development of our cultural life for the last twenty-five years, we shall be horrified to see how far we have already gone in this retrogression. Everywhere we find seeds which caused the beginning of rank growths that must sooner or later destroy our civilization. Here too we recognize the symptoms of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no longer master this disease!
Such pathological states were to be discovered in almost every field of art and culture in Germany. Everything seemed to have passed its prime and to be hastening toward the abyss. The theater declined visibly, and would probably have disappeared as a cultural factor even thus early if the Court theaters at least had not still held out against the prostitution of art. Aside from them and a few other praiseworthy exceptions, the offerings of the stage were such that it would have been better for the nation to give up attendance altogether. It was a sorry sign of inner decay that one was no longer allowed to send young people to most of these so-called “shrines of Art,” which was admitted with quite shameless openness in the universal warnings outside cinemas, “for adults only.”
Remember that such precautions had to be taken at the very places which should have existed primarily for the education of young people, and not for the edification of the old and blasé. What would the great dramatists of all ages have said to such a regulation, and above all to the conditions which caused it? How Schiller would have blazed; how Goethe would have turned away in indignation!
But what, indeed, are Schiller, Goethe or Shakespeare compared to the heroes of modern German Literature? Figures old, thread-bare and outworn, nay discarded. For it was characteristic of this age not only that it had ceased to produce anything except filth, but that in addition it besmirched everything truly great in the past. This is, of course, a phenomenon always to be observed at such periods. The more vile and contemptible the products of an age and its men are, the more the witnesses of a former higher level and dignity are hated. In such periods people would really prefer to destroy the memory of mankind’s past altogether, in order to prevent any possibility of comparison, and so to pretend that their own trash is still “art.” The more miserable and contemptible any new institution is, therefore, the more it will try to rub out the last traces of the past, whereas every really valuable human innovation can make undisturbed use of the achievements of past generations, in fact may even try to give these their full value for the first time. It need not fear to pale before the past; it makes such a useful contribution itself to the general fund of human culture that it may often wish to preserve the memory of earlier achievements so that its own can be fully recognized, assuring the present’s full understanding of the new advance. Only he who has nothing of his own to give the world, but tries to act as if he would present it with Heaven knows what, will hate all existing real contributions, and try to deny or even destroy them.
This is true of new arrivals by no means only in the field of civilization, but in politics as well. Revolutionary new movements will hate the old forms the more, the more worthless they themselves are. Here too, we can see how the anxiety to make one’s own trash seem considerable leads to blind hatred of the superior product of the past. So long as historical remembrance of Frederick the Great, for instance, has not died out, Frederick Ebert can produce but limited astonishment. The hero of Sans Souci stands to the former Bremen saloon-keeper about as the sun to the moon: only after the rays of the sun are gone does the moon shine. The hatred of all the new moons of humanity for the fixed stars is only too understandable. In political life ciphers such as these are accustomed, if Fate throws temporary rulership into their laps, not only to defile and besmirch the past with tireless zeal, but by external means to withdraw themselves from the reach of public criticism. As an example we may take the Legislation to Protect the Republic in the new German Reich.
If, therefore, some new idea, doctrine, new world-concept or political or economic movement tries to deny the entire past, calling it bad and worthless, we must be extremely careful and suspicious for this reason in itself. Mostly the reason for such hatred is its own worthlessness, or even an actual ill intention. A really fruitful renewal of humanity will always have to go on building at the spot where the last good foundation stopped. It will not need to be ashamed of using already existing truths. The whole of human culture, and man himself, are after all only the product of one long development in which each generation has added a new stone to the structure. The meaning and purpose of revolution is not to tear down the whole building, but to remove what is badly joined or unsuitable, and to build onward and upward from the spot thus once more laid bare.
Only so may we talk of the progress of mankind. Otherwise the world would never be delivered from chaos; each generation would have the right to refuse the past, and each might destroy the works of the past in preparation for its own.
And so the saddest thing about the condition of our entire civilization before the war was not only the absolute impotence of artistic and general cultural creative power, but the hatred with which the memory of a greater past was befouled and extinguished. In almost every department of art, particularly in the theater and literature, people began about the turn of the century not so much to produce anything new and significant as to depreciate the best of the old, representing it as inferior and outworn—as if such a shamefully inferior age could look down on anything whatever! But this striving to put the past out of sight of the present revealed plainly and distinctly the evil intent of these apostles of the future. That should have taught people that this was no matter of new, even if wrong cultural attitudes, but of a process of destroying the foundation of all culture, of the bemusement of healthy art-sense thus made possible—and of laying the intellectual groundwork for political Bolshevism. For if the Age of Pericles seemed embodied in the Parthenon, so is the Bolshevist present day in a Cubist travesty of a face.
In this connection reference must be made to the cowardice, thus once more revealed, among that part of our people who by education and position had the duty of making a stand against this cultural scandal. From pure fear of the outcry of the Bolshevist art-apostles (who violently attacked everyone that would not recognize them as the summit of creation, pillorying him as old-fashioned and a Philistine), people abandoned any serious resistance, and resigned themselves to what seemed after all to be inevitable. People were positively in terror of being called obtuse by these half-lunatics or frauds—as if it were any disgrace not to understand the products of mental degenerates or wily swindlers! These apostles of culture did, it is true, have one very simple means to stamp their nonsense with Heaven knows what grandeur; all their incomprehensible and obviously insane rubbish they presented to an open-mouthed public as so-called inner experience, in this cheap fashion taking any reply out of most people’s mouths. For of course there was not the slightest doubt that even this might be an inner experience; but there is doubt that it is permissible to offer the hallucinations of lunatics or criminals to the healthy part of the world. The works of a Moritz von Schwind or a Böcklin were inner experience too, but of artists favored by Heaven, not of merry-andrews.
This was a fine chance to study the pitiable cowardice of our so-called intelligentsia, which evaded any serious resistance to this poisoning of our people’s sound instincts, and left it to the people itself to deal with this impudent nonsense. So as not to be considered artistically illiterate, people accepted any travesty of art, and finally became actually uncertain in their judgment of good and bad.
Altogether these were signs of an evil time to come.
Another suspicious sign is the following:
In the nineteenth century our cities began more and more to lose the character of centers of culture, and to decline into mere human settlements. The small feeling of connection with the place it lives in which our present metropolitan proletariat has results from the fact that these places are the mere temporary physical location of individuals, and nothing more. It has to do in part with the frequent change of residence imposed by social conditions, so that a man has no time to acquire a close relation to his city; but a further cause is the general cultural insignificance and poverty of modern cities in themselves.
At the time of the Wars of Liberation German cities were not only few in number but modest in size. Most of the few really big cities were royal residences, and as such almost always had a certain cultural value, and usually also a definite artistic stamp. The few towns of more than fifty thousand inhabitants were rich in treasures of science and art by comparison with cities of the same population today. When Munich counted sixty thousand souls, it was already on its way to being one of the leading German art centers; by now almost every factory town has reached that size, if not far surpassed it, but often without having the slightest real values to call its own. They are pure collections of tenements, and nothing more. How, with such meaninglessness as this, any special feeling of relationship to a town is to arise, is a puzzle. No one is going to be particularly attached to a city which has no more to offer than any other, which lacks any individual note, and where everything which might so much as resemble art or the like has been scrupulously avoided.
But as if this were not enough, even the really big cities become proportionately poorer in true works of art as their population increases. They seem more and more to have been ground down to a dead level, and they have just the same aspect, though on a larger scale, as the little poverty-stricken factory towns. What modern times have added to the cultural substance of our great cities is entirely inadequate. All our cities are living on the glory and the treasures of the past. Take away from present-day Munich everything that was done under Ludwig I, and you will be horrified to see how trivial is the increase in significant artistic creations since that time. The same thing is true of Berlin and most of the other great cities.
But here is the essential point: our modern great cities have no monuments dominating the skyline that might be considered symbols of the whole age. Such was, however, the case in the cities of antiquity, where almost every town had some special monuments to its pride. The characteristic feature of each city was not the private buildings, but the monuments of the community, which seemed meant not for the moment, but for eternity, because they were intended to reflect the greatness and importance of the community instead of the wealth of an individual owner. Thus arose monuments well calculated to attach the individual inhabitant to his city in a way which sometimes seems incomprehensible to us today. For what he had before his eyes was not so much the shabby houses of private owners as the splendid structures of the whole community. By comparison with them the dwelling-house was merely a secondary triviality.
It is necessary to compare the relative size of ancient public buildings with the dwellings of their time to understand the overwhelming force and impact of this emphasis upon the principle that public structures must have the first place. What we admire today as a few remaining colossi rising from the rubbish-heaps and ruins of the ancient world are not former commercial palaces, but temples and government buildings—works, that is, whose proprietor was the community. Even in the pomp of late Rome it was not the villas and palaces of individual citizens that occupied the first place, but the temples and baths, the stadiums, the circuses, aqueducts, basilicas, etc. of the state, that is of the whole people.
Even the Germanic Middle Ages maintained the same guiding principle, though their approach to art was entirely different. That which in antiquity had been expressed in the Acropolis or the Pantheon now took on the form of the Gothic cathedral. Like giants these monumental structures towered above the little hive of half-timbered, wooden or brick buildings of the medieval city, and thus became landmarks which stamp the character and the skyline of these towns even today, when the tenements are climbing ever higher beside them. Cathedrals, town halls, and grain-magazines and fortified towers are the visible signs of a conception which at bottom was still that of antiquity.
But how truly pitiful is the relation between public and private buildings today! If Berlin should suffer the fate of Rome, posterity would admire as the mightiest works of our age and the characteristic expression of its civilization the department stores of a few Jews and the hotels of a few corporations. Compare the grave disproportion in a city like Berlin itself between the buildings of the Reich and those of finance and commerce.
Even the amount of money spent on the government buildings is usually altogether ridiculous and inadequate. These are no works made for eternity, but usually only for the need of the moment. No higher thought is kept in mind at all. The Castle at Berlin was, at the time it was built, a work of very different importance from, let us say, the new Library, judged by the scale of the present. While a single battleship represented about sixty million marks, the appropriation for the first show-place of Germany, which was supposed to be meant for eternity, the Reichstag building, was scarcely half as much. More than that, when the question of the interior came to a vote, the Exalted House voted against the employment of stone, and ordered the walls covered with plaster—though this time, for once, the parliamentarians really acted rightly. Plaster-pates are indeed out of place among stone walls.
Thus our present-day cities lack any towering landmarks of the people’s community, and we must not be surprised if the community does not see its cities as symbols of itself. A desolation is bound to come which takes effect in the modern metropolitan citizen’s complete lack of interest in the concerns of his city.
This too is a sign of our declining civilization and our general collapse. The age is smothered in the pettiest utilitarianism, or rather, in slavery to money. And we must not be surprised if under such a deity little feeling for heroism remains. The immediate present is only reaping what the recent past sowed.
At bottom all these symptoms of decay are results of the lack of a definite, universally recognized world-concept, and of the consequent general uncertainty in judging and dealing with the various great questions of the time. And this is why everything, beginning with education, is half-hearted and wavering, shuns responsibility, and thus winds up in cowardly toleration even of recognized abuses. The humaneness craze has become fashionable; and by weakly yielding to the aberrations, and sparing individuals, we sacrifice the future of millions.
To what extent the general disunity had spread can be seen from observation of religious conditions before the war. Here, too, great sections of the nation had long since lost any unified and effective conviction which might have amounted to a world-concept. In this those who officially left the church had a smaller share than did those who were simply indifferent. While both Churches maintain missions in Asia and Africa to gain new converts for their doctrines—an activity which, compared with the advance especially of the Mohammedan faith, has but very modest results to show—in Europe itself they are losing millions upon millions of followers who either are complete strangers to religious life or prefer to go their own way. The results, particularly from a moral angle, are by no means happy.
Another thing worthy of remark is the ever more violent attack upon the dogmatic foundations of the various Churches, foundations without which the practical existence of a religious faith in this world of human beings is unthinkable. The broad masses of a people are not made up of philosophers; but precisely for the masses faith is often the sole foundation of any moral world-concept whatever. The success of the various proposed substitutes has not been so great that we can see in them anything which would usefully replace previous religious denominations. But if religious teachings and faith are really to take hold of broad groups, the absolute authority of the substance of this faith is the basis of any effectiveness. That which a given way of living (without which no doubt hundreds of thousands of superior persons would live wisely and sensibly, but millions of others would not) is to ordinary life, the principles of government are to the State, and the dogmas to the religion in question. The purely intellectual idea is wavering and susceptible to infinite interpretations, and the dogmas alone definitely bound it and put it into a form without which it could never become a faith. Otherwise the idea would grow beyond the status of a metaphysical view, nay, to put it plainly, of a philosophic opinion. The attack upon dogmas as such therefore very strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundation of the State; and just as the State would perish in a complete governmental anarchy, so religion would in a worthless religious nihilism.
But the politician must judge the value of a religion less by any faults that may be attached to it than by the goodness of a visibly superior substitute. So long as a substitute appears to be lacking, that which exists can be destroyed only by fools or criminals.
It is true that no small part of the responsibility for the far-from-satisfactory state of religion falls upon those who overload the religious concept with purely earthly things, and thus frequently come into wholly unnecessary conflict with so-called exact science. Here, even if only after a hard struggle, the latter will almost always carry off the victory, while, in the eyes of people unable to rise above purely external knowledge, religion will suffer severe damage.
But the worst havoc is wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political purposes. No condemnation is strong enough for the miserable tricksters who see in religion a means of doing themselves political, or rather business, services. Of course these bold liars shout their profession of faith to all the world in stentorian tones so that the other sinners shall hear it—not, however, to die for it if necessary, but in order to live better. For a single political fraud of appropriate value they would sell the meaning of a whole faith; for ten seats in Parliament they will league themselves with the deadly Marxist enemies of all religion; and for a minister’s portfolio they would probably marry the Devil, unless he were prevented by a last remnant of decency.
If religious life in pre-war Germany had an unpleasant taste in many people’s mouths, it was to be ascribed to the abuse of Christianity by a so-called “Christian” party, as well as to the boldness with which it was attempted to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.
This bold imputation was a fatal stroke which brought seats in Parliament to a number of good-for-nothings, but harm to the Church.
The whole nation had to take the consequences, because the loosening of religious life thus produced had its results at a time when everything else was beginning to waver and give way also, and the traditional foundations of morals and propriety were threatening to collapse.
These too were faults and cracks in our body politic which might not have been dangerous so long as there was no particular strain, but which were bound to be disastrous when the impact of great events lent decisive importance to the question of the inner solidity of the nation.
In the realm of politics, also, an observant eye detected evils which could and had to be considered signs of a coming decay of the Empire unless change or improvement was undertaken within a reasonably short time. The aimlessness of German domestic and foreign policy was plain to anyone not deliberately blind. The system of compromises seemed most closely to follow Bismarck’s conception of politics as “the art of the possible.” But between Bismarck and later German Chancellors there was one small difference which allowed the former to drop such a remark upon the nature of politics, while the same idea in the mouths of his successors was bound to have an entirely different meaning. Bismarck meant to say only that in attaining a given political object every possibility must be used or exploited to the full; whereas in this statement his successors saw formal absolution from the necessity of having any political aims or even ideas at all. And political aims in the government of the Empire at that time really no longer existed; for the necessary basis—a definite world-concept and the requisite grasp of the inner laws of development of political life in general—was not there.
There were not a few who foresaw the worst in this direction, and denounced the lack of plan and thought in the Empire’s policy, thus showing that they plainly recognized its inner weakness and hollowness; but these were only outsiders in political life. Official government quarters passed heedlessly by the intuitions of a Houston Stewart Chamberlain, as they still do. These people are too stupid to think anything themselves, and too conceited to learn what they need from others—an eternal truth which caused Oxenstierna to exclaim: “The world is ruled by only a fraction of all Wisdom,” of which fraction almost any Ministerial Councillor embodies but one atom. Since Germany has become a Republic, however, this is no longer true—that is why the Law to Protect the Republic forbids any one to say or even to believe such a thing. But it was lucky for Oxenstierna that he lived when he did, and not in this, our wise Republic.
Even before the war many people recognized as the chief element of weakness the very institution which should have embodied the strength of the Empire: the Parliament, the Reichstag. Cowardice and irresponsibility were here perfectly mated.
One of the thoughtless statements frequently heard today is that parliamentarism in Germany has been “a failure since the Revolution.” This all too easily gives the impression that before the Revolution things were different. In reality this institution cannot possibly have any but a devastating effect—and this it did even in the days when most people, still wearing blinders, could or would see nothing. For we owe it not least to this institution that Germany was overthrown; that the catastrophe did not occur even earlier, however, cannot be considered the merit of the Reichstag, but is due to the resistance still offered during the years of peace to the activity of these grave-diggers of the German nation and the German Empire.
From the enormous total of devastating effects owed directly or indirectly to this institution I will pick out but one single calamity, which is most completely in accord with the inner nature of this most irresponsible institution of all time: the awful half-heartedness and weakness of the political leadership of the Reich within and without, which were due primarily to the workings of the Reichstag, and became one of the chief causes of the political collapse.
Everything in any way subject to the influence of this parliament was but partial, look in what direction we will.
The alliance policy of the Empire outside was half-hearted and weak. By trying to preserve peace they inevitably steered into war.
The Polish policy was a half-measure. They irritated without ever seriously interfering. The result was neither a victory for Germanity nor the conciliation of the Poles, but Russia’s enmity.
The question of Alsace-Lorraine was half solved. Instead of brutally crushing the head of the French hydra once and for all, and then giving equal rights to the Alsatian, they did neither. Nor, in fact, could they, for the ranks of the greatest parties also included the greatest traitors—in the Center, for instance, Mr. Wetterlé.
But all this would still have been bearable if the general half-heartedness had not also sacrificed the power upon whose existence the survival of the Empire finally depended—the army.
The crime of the so-called “German Reichstag” here alone was enough to burden it for all time with the curses of the German nation. For the most contemptible reasons the parliamentary party rogues stole and knocked the weapon for self-preservation, the sole protection of our people’s freedom and independence, from the nation’s hands. If the graves in the Flanders plain were to open today, the bleeding accusers would rise from them, hundreds of thousands of the best young Germans, who were sent poorly trained and half-trained into the arms of death by the consciencelessness of these parliamentary criminals; them and millions of others, crippled and dead, the Fatherland lost simply and solely to make political jobbery, extortion or even the grinding-out of doctrinaire theories possible for a few hundred swindlers of the people.
While Jewry through its Marxist democratic press was shouting the lie of “German militarism” to the world, and thus trying to hamper Germany by every means, the Marxist and Democratic parties refused any inclusive training of the German national strength. And yet the monstrous crime thus committed must at once have been clear to anyone who considered for a moment that in case of a war the whole nation would have to take up arms, and that consequently the rascality of these fine specimens of their own so-called “popular representation” would drive millions of Germans half-trained and badly trained against the enemy. But even the result of the crude and brutal consciencelessness of these parliamentary fancy-men quite aside, the lack of trained soldiers at the beginning of war might all too easily lead to defeat, as was in fact so fearfully shown in the great World War.
The loss of the struggle for the freedom and independence of the German nation was the result of half-measures and weakness, beginning during peace-time, in drawing upon the entire strength of the people for the defense of the Fatherland.
If too few recruits were being trained on land, at sea the same half-heartedness was at work to make the weapon for national self-preservation more or less worthless. Unfortunately the naval command itself was infected with the spirit of half-measures. The tendency always to build the ships whose keels were being laid somewhat smaller than the English ones being launched at the same time was scarcely far-sighted and still less inspired. A navy which from the outset cannot in pure point of numbers be put on an equal footing with its probable opponent must try to make up for the lack of numbers by the outstanding fighting effectiveness of the individual ships. Superior fighting effectiveness is what counts, and not a mythical superiority in “merit.”
As a matter of fact modern technique has progressed so far and is so nearly uniform in the various civilized states that it must be considered impossible to give ships of one power an appreciably greater fighting value than the ships of the same tonnage belonging to another state. Even less is it thinkable to achieve superiority for a smaller displacement as against a greater.
As a matter of fact the smaller tonnage of the German ships was bound to be at the expense of speed and armament. The excuse by which it was attempted to justify this fact showed a very grave lack of logic on the part of the office in charge during times of peace. The German artillery equipment was declared to be so plainly superior to the British that the performance of the German 28-centimeter gun was in no way inferior to that of the British 30.5-centimeter gun!
For this very reason it should have been their duty to go over also to the 30.5-centimeter gun, since the purpose ought to have been the achievement not of equal but of superior fighting strength. Otherwise the adoption of the 42-centimeter mortar in the army would also have been unnecessary, since the German 21-centimeter mortar was in itself far superior to any French mortar existing at that time, and the fortifications would probably have succumbed to the 30.5-centimeter mortar. But the Command of the army reasoned rightly, while that of the navy unfortunately did not.
The renunciation of superior artillery effectiveness as well as of superior speed was based on the completely mistaken so-called “risk idea.” By the very way in which it enlarged the fleet the Naval Command abandoned all attack, and thus from the outset forcibly confined itself to the defensive. But thus they were surrendering final success, which after all can lie only in attack.
A ship of less speed and inferior armament is usually blown out of the water by its faster and better-armed adversary at the range most convenient for the latter. A considerable number of our cruisers discovered this to their bitter sorrow. How completely mistaken the peace-time views of the Naval Command were was shown by the war, which forced the re-equipment of old ships and the improved equipment of new ones wherever at all possible. And if in the battle of the Skagerrak the German ships had had the same tonnage, the same equipment and the same speed as the English ones, the British navy would have gone to a watery grave under the hurricane of accurate and more effective German 38-centimeter shells.
Japan’s naval policy used to be different. There, as a matter of principle, the whole emphasis was put upon gaining in each new ship a fighting strength superior to the probable adversary. And the offensive use of the fleet thus made possible was the reward.
While the Army Command still kept itself free from such basically erroneous reasoning, the navy (which unfortunately had better “parliamentary” representation) was subject to the spirit of Parliament. It was organized by halves, and was later used in the same way. What immortal fame the navy nevertheless did earn was to be credited only to the good workmanship of German armorers and the competent and incomparable heroism of individual officers and crews. If the former Supreme Command of the navy had been equally brilliant, the sacrifices would not have been in vain.
Perhaps the navy’s very undoing was caused by the superior parliamentary skill of its leading brains in peace-time, the reason being that, even in its building-up, parliamentary instead of purely military considerations began to be the deciding factor. The half-heartedness and weakness and the poor logic in thinking which characterize the parliamentary institution spread to the Command of the Navy.
The army, as I have already emphasized, still kept away from such fundamentally mistaken trains of thought. Particularly the then Colonel on the Great General Staff, Ludendorff, fought a desperate battle against the criminal half-heartedness and weakness with which the Reichstag faced and usually opposed the questions vital to the nation. If the struggle which this officer then carried on was nevertheless in vain, one half of the guilt lay with the Parliament, the other half with the (if possible) yet more pitiful attitude and weakness of the Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg. But this is far from preventing those guilty of the German collapse from trying to put the blame on the one man who had resisted this fatal neglect of national interests—after all, one fraud more or less means nothing to these born tricksters.
Anyone who thinks of all the sacrifices imposed on the nation by the criminal carelessness of these utter irresponsibles, who reviews in his mind’s eye all the futilely dead and crippled, the boundless disgrace and shame, the immeasurable wretchedness which has now befallen us, and knows that this all took place just to clear the path to ministers’ portfolios for a gang of conscienceless climbers and position-hunters, will understand that these creatures can really be described only by such words as wretch, scoundrel, knave and criminal—otherwise meaning and purpose of the existence of these expressions in the language would be incomprehensible. By comparison with these betrayers of their nation any kept man is a gentleman of honor.
But oddly enough the really dark sides of old Germany were made conspicuous only when this might harm the inner solidity of the nation. In such cases the disagreeable truths were positively shouted at the great masses, whereas many other things were bashfully kept quiet, and sometimes simply denied. This was the case when open treatment of a question might perhaps have brought about improvement. The competent quarters of the government understood next to nothing of the value and nature of propaganda. That the shrewd and persistent use of propaganda may make even Heaven seem like Hell to a people, and conversely the wretchedest of lives like a paradise, only the Jew knew, and he acted accordingly; the German, or rather his government, had not the faintest idea of it.
The gravest results of this were to come during the War.
As against the evils here indicated, and countless others, in German life before the War, there were in turn many advantages. If we judge fairly we must even recognize that most of our ailments were also largely in possession of the other countries and peoples, which in fact often put us far in the shade, while they lacked many of our actual advantages.
The chief of these virtues may be considered among others the fact that of almost all European peoples Germany tried hardest to preserve the national character of her economy, and was, despite many an evil portent, still the least subject to the control of international finance. A dangerous virtue, it is true, which later was the largest cause of the World War.
But putting this and much else aside, we must segregate from the vast number of the nation’s sound sources of strength three institutions which were models of their kind, and in part quite unequalled.
The first was the form of the State as such and the special stamp it received in the Germany of modern times.
Here we may reasonably overlook individual monarchs who as human beings were subject to all the weaknesses usually visited upon this earth and its children—if we were not indulgent to them, we must needs despair altogether of the present; the representatives of the present regimé, after all, likewise considered as personalities, are morally and intellectually probably the humblest that can be imagined even after long thought. Anyone who measures the “merit” of the German Revolution by the merit and stature of the persons it has given to the German people since November 1918, will hide his head in shame before the judgment of posterity, which cannot be gagged by protective laws, etc., and which will therefore say what we all realize even now, to wit that the brains and virtues of our new German leaders are in inverse proportion to their big mouths and their vices.
No doubt many people, the common people above all, had lost touch with the Monarchy. This was a result of the fact that the monarchs were not always surrounded by the (shall we say?) most alert and particularly not the most candid minds. Unfortunately some of the monarchs liked flatterers better than forthright natures, and so the former were the ones who “informed” them. It did grave harm in an age when the world was undergoing a great transformation of many old opinions, and naturally did not hesitate to sit in judgment upon various ancient traditions of the Court.
By the turn of the century the ordinary man could no longer summon any particular enthusiasm for the Princess riding along the front in uniform. Apparently no one had any real idea of how this sort of ostentation looked to the people, or such unfortunate performances could never have occurred. The not always entirely genuine craze for the human touch in these circles also repelled more than it attracted. For instance, if Princess X deigned to sample the product of a soup kitchen, with the familiar result, while it might once have made a perfectly good impression, the result by now was quite the opposite. It is quite safe to assume that Her Highness really never dreamed that on the day she tasted it the food was just a little different from what it usually was; but it was quite enough that everybody else knew it.
Thus what may have been the best of intentions became ridiculous, if not absolutely provocative.
Descriptions of the always proverbial abstemiousness of the Monarch, of how he got up much too early, and absolutely slaved till late at night, even with the ever-present peril of imminent malnutrition—these gave rise to quite alarming utterances. Nobody wants to know what and how much the Monarch deigned to partake of; nobody begrudged him a “square” meal; nor was anyone trying to refuse him the necessary sleep; people were satisfied if he did honor to the name of his House and his nation as a man and a character, and fulfilled his duties as a ruler. The telling of nursery tales did little good, and more harm.
But all this and much else like it was a mere trifle. Much worse were the results, unfortunately growing throughout a large part of the nation, of the belief that governing was done from above anyway, and that the individual need no longer trouble his head about it. As long as the government was really a good one, or at least had the best of intentions, the thing was still possible. But woe! if the fundamentally well-meaning old government were replaced by a new and less satisfactory one; then the existing spiritless docility and child-like faith were the worst misfortunes that could possibly be imagined.
But to offset these and many other weaknesses there were undeniable advantages.
One was the stability of rule imposed by the monarchical form of government, and the removal of the highest posts in the State from ambitious politicians’ field of speculation. Further there was the venerability of the institution in itself, and the authority which this lent; likewise the elevation of government functionaries and particularly of the army above the level of party obligations.
There was the further advantage that the Monarch himself was the personified head of the State, and the example set by the Monarch in bearing a responsibility greater than that assumed by the chance mob of a parliamentary majority; the proverbial integrity of the German administration was due primarily to this. And lastly the cultural value of Monarchy to the German people was great, and easily offset other disadvantages. The Residences of the German princes remained a stronghold of an art-sense which threatens more and more to die out in our materialistic age. What the German princes did for art and science, particularly in the nineteenth century, was a model for anything of the kind. The present day, in any case, is not to be compared with it.
But as the greatest asset, at that time of the beginning and slowly spreading disintegration of our body politic, we must reckon the army. It was the greatest school of the German nation, and not for nothing was the hatred of every enemy directed squarely at this shield of national self-preservation and freedom. There can be no more splendid monument to this unique institution than the statement of the fact that it was slandered, hated, combatted, but also feared by every one of the inferior element. That the fury of the international exploiters of the people of Versailles was directed primarily at the old German army merely shows more than ever that the army was the stronghold of our people’s freedom against the power of the stock exchange. Without this warning force the intentions of Versailles toward our people would long since have been fulfilled. What the German people owes to the army can be summed up in a single word: everything.
The army trained up a sense of absolute responsibility at a time when this quality had already become very rare, and evasion was ever more the order of the day, taking after that model of all irresponsibility, the Parliament; further, it trained to personal courage in an age when cowardice threatened to become a raging disease, and the readiness to sacrifice oneself for the general welfare was considered as almost stupidity, and the only man who seemed sensible was the man who could best shield and advance his own ego; this was the school which still taught the individual German to seek the salvation of the nation not in the lying cant of international brotherhood among negroes, Germans, Chinese, Frenchmen, Englishmen, etc., but in the strength and unity of his own nationality.
The army bred decisiveness, while elsewhere in life indecision and doubt were beginning to determine men’s actions. In an age when the wiseacres everywhere set the tone, it meant something to maintain the principle that an order is always better than none. This one principle embodied a robust, unspoiled health which would long since have been lost in our lives if the army and its training had not taken care of the perpetual renewal of this primitive vigor. One has only to look at the dreadful indecision of our present leadership, which can make up its mind to no action unless it be the forced signature of some new pillaging decree; in that case, indeed, it declines all responsibility, and signs with the speed of a court stenographer anything that is laid before it; for in this case the decision is easily made—it is taken from dictation.
The army bred idealism and devotion to the Fatherland and its greatness, while in civil fife greed and materialism were rampant. It trained a united people, as against the division by classes, and here exhibited perhaps its sole fault, the institution of One-Year Volunteers. A fault because it broke through the principle of absolute quality, and put the better-educated individual outside the confines of the common surroundings, whereas the very opposite would have been advantageous. Our upper classes are so largely isolated from the world anyway, becoming more and more aliens to their own people, that the army could have had a particularly salutary effect if it had avoided, at least in its ranks, any segregation of the so-called intelligentsia. Not to do this was a mistake; but where is the institution in this world without a mistake? In any case the good predominated so heavily here that the few defects were far below the average level of human imperfection.
But we must account it the greatest merit of the army of the old Empire that it placed heads above majorities at a time when majorities were swamping heads. In opposition to the Jewish-Democratic idea of blind worship of numbers, the army upheld faith in personalities. And so it did in fact train what recent times have most urgently needed—men. In the slough of a universally spreading softness and effeminacy three hundred and fifty thousand young men overflowing with vigor sprang every year from the ranks of the army; in two years’ training they had lost the softness of youth and gained bodies hard as steel. And the young man who practiced obedience during this time could afterward learn to command. Merely by this step one could distinguish a soldier who had done his service.
This was the great school of the German nation, and it was not for nothing that the fierce hatred of all those who through envy and greed had reason to wish and need the impotence of the Empire and the defenselessness of its citizens centered on it. What many Germans in their blindness or evil intentions would not see, the world abroad recognized: the German army was the mightiest weapon that served the freedom of the German nation and the sustenance of its children.
Along with the form of government and the army there was a third foot to the tripod: the incomparable body of civil servants in the old Empire.
Germany was the best organized and best administered country in the world. It was easy to reproach the German civil service with bureaucratic red tape, but other states were no better off, and in fact rather worse. But what the other states did not possess was the marvelous solidity of the machine, and the incorruptibly honorable spirit of those who made it up. Better a little red tape, but honest and faithful, than enlightened and modern, but unsound in character, and (as so often today) ignorant and incompetent. For to those who like now to pretend that pre-war German administration, while no doubt bureaucratically efficient, was bad from a commercial standpoint, we can only reply: What country in the world had a better-managed and commercially better-organized business than Germany in its government railroads? It was left for the Revolution to destroy this model structure, until at last it seemed ready to be taken from the hands of the nation, and socialized in the meaning of the founders of this Republic—that is, to serve international finance capital, the purchaser of the German Revolution.
The thing which particularly distinguished the body of German civil servants and the German administrative structure was its independence of individual governments, whose momentary politics could have no influence on the position of German State functionaries. Since the Revolution, it must be admitted, there has been a complete change. Party regularity has come to take the place of ability and aptitude, and a self-reliant, independent character is rather a hindrance than a help.
Upon the form of government, the army, and the body of State officials rested the wonderful strength and vigor of the old Empire. These were the prime causes of a quality completely lacking in the State today: the State’s authority. For this depends not on gossip in Parliaments or Landtags, nor on laws for its protection, nor on court sentences to intimidate those who boldly deny it, etc., but on the universal confidence which can be placed in the direction and administration of a commonwealth. This confidence in turn is but the result of an unshakable inner conviction of the unselfishness and honesty of the government and administration of a country, and of the agreement of the spirit of the laws with the general attitude toward morals. For in the long run, government systems are maintained not by pressure or force, but by faith in their goodness and in the truthfulness with which they uphold and promote the interests of a people.
Gravely as certain evils of pre-war days may have threatened to eat away and undermine the inner strength of the nation, it must not be forgotten that other states suffered from most of these diseases even more than Germany did, and yet did not fail and go to destruction at the critical moment of peril. And when we consider that for every German weak point before the war there was an equally great strong point, the final cause of the collapse can and must lie in another direction; and such is indeed the case.
The deepest and final cause of the downfall of the old Empire lay in its failure to recognize the race problem and to see its importance for the historical development of peoples. For the events in the life of nations are not expressions of chance but processes of natural law, of the urge toward self-preservation and increase of species and race, even though men are not conscious of the inner cause of their action.