cratic State symbolism and ceremony need also to be carefully considered. How to turn a purely monarchical edifice, like the Castle of Prague, into a democratic building and to manage the gardens and parks in democratic fashion is, for example, a problem that ought to interest the best artistic minds. As the optical, sensuous expression of an idea, ceremony has great educational significance. Poets, too, have ever been the creators and wardens of national and political ideals. I, to whom the connexion between politics, statecraft and poetry has always appealed, have sought deliberately to refine my power of imagination by reading the best poetry, and have striven, as a realist in art, to attain Goethe’s “precise imagination.” The statesman is akin to the poet. In the true Greek sense of the word he is a “creator”; and, without imagination, no creative, world-wide policy on big lines is possible.
Democracy and Anarchy.
Genuine democracy demands of every citizen a living interest in public affairs and in the State, just as the Church demands living faith from believers. In old Austria, all of us were more or less in opposition to the State and ended by thinking it enough to “call upon the Imperial and Royal Government” to do this or that. In other words we left the administration of the State to our masters and quarrelled merrily among ourselves. Very few thought of educating the people politically to take an active share in the life of the State, despite their opposition to it. We looked upon the State as our enemy, and upon participation in the Government as treason. Now that we have our own State, are there among us enough men and parties with an adequate political sense of what it means? Have they a sufficient living practical interest in it to be able to discard the old negation and positively to create a new order of things?
Whereas the old Austrian State required the people to recognize and obey the absolutism of the reigning aristocracy and bureaucracy, democracy demands that all should take interest in and understand administration and public life. In a democracy, not one man but each and all are the State; and “State sense” implies renunciation of the political indifference which was so widespread in the absolute State as to be an essential part of it. Unsupported by general interest, the Republic becomes de facto an aristocratic, bureaucratic State,
