Chapter III: General Political Considerations Based on My Vienna
Period
TODAY it is my conviction that in general, aside from cases of
unusual talent, a man should not engage in public political activity before his
thirtieth year. He should not do so, because up to this time, as a rule, he is
engaged in molding a general platform, on the basis of which he proceeds to
examine the various political problems and finally establishes his own position
on them. Only after he has acquired such a basic philosophy, and the resultant
firmness of outlook on the special problems of the day, is he, inwardly at
least, mature enough to be justified in partaking in the political leadership
of the general public.
Otherwise he runs the risk of either having to change his
former position on essential questions, or, contrary to his better knowledge
and understanding, of clinging to a view which reason and conviction have long
since discarded. In the former case this is most embarrassing to him
personally, since, what with his own vacillations, he cannot justifiably expect
the faith of his adherents to follow him with the same unswerving firmness as
before; for those led by him, on the other hand, such a reversal on the part of
the leader means perplexity and not rarely a certain feeling of shame toward
those whom they hitherto opposed. In the second case, there occurs a thing
which, particularly today, often confronts us: in the same measure as the
leader ceases to believe in what he says, his arguments become shallow and
flat, but he tries to make up for it by vileness in his choice of means. While
he himself has given up all idea of fighting seriously for his political
revelations (a man does not die for something which he himself does not believe
in), his demands on his supporters become correspondingly greater and more
shameless until he ends up by sacrificing the last shred of leadership and
turning into a 'politician; in other words, the kind of man whose onlv real
conviction is lack of conviction, combined with offensive impertinence and an
art of lying, often developed to the point of complete shamelessness.
If
to the misfortune of decent people such a character gets into a parliament, we
may as well realize at once that the essence of his politics will from now on
consist in nothing but an heroic struggle for the permanent possession of his
feeding-bottle for himself and his family. The more his wife and children
depend on it, the more tenaciously he will fight for his mandate. This alone
will make every other man with political instincts his personal enemy; in every
new movement he will scent the possible beginning of his end, and in every man
of any greatness the danger which menaces him through that man.
I shall have more to say about this type of parliamentary
bedbug.
Even a man of thirty will have much to learn in the course of his
life, but this will only be to supplement and fill in the framework provided
him by the philosophy he has basically adopted When he learns, his learning
will not have to be a revision of principle, but a supplementary study, and his
supporters will not have to choke down the oppressive feeling that they have
hitherto been falsely instructed by him. On the contrary: the visible organic
growth of the leader will give them satisfaction, for when he learns, he will
only be deepening their own philosophy. And this in their eyes will be a proof
for the correctness of the views they have hitherto held.
A leader who must
depart from the platform of his general philosophy as such, because he
recognizes it to be false, behaves with decency only if, in recognizing the
error of his previous insight, he is prepared to draw the ultimate consequence.
In such a case he must, at the very least, renounce the public exercise of any
further political activity. For since in matters of basic knowledge he has once
succumbed to an error, there is a possibility that this will happen a second
time. And in no event does he retain the right to continue claiming, not to
mention demanding, the confidence of his fellow citizens.
How little regard is taken of such decency today is
attested by the general degeneracy of the rabble which contemporaneously feel
justified in 'going into' politics.
Hardly a one of them is fit for
it.
I had carefully avoided any public appearance, though I think that I
studied politics more closely than many other men. Only in the smallest groups
did I speak of the things which inwardly moved or attracted me. This speaking
in the narrowest circles had many good points: I learned to orate less, but to
know people with their opinions and objections that were often so boundlessly
primitive. And I trained myself, without losing the time and occasion for the
continuance of my own education. It is certain that nowhere else in Germany was
the opportunity for this so favorable as in Vienna.
General political thinking in the old Danubian monarchy
was just then broader and more comprehensive in scope than in old Germany,
excluding parts of Prussia, Hamburg, and the North Sea coast, at the same
period. In this case, to be sure, I understand, under the designation of
'Austria,' that section of the great Habsburg Empire which, in consequence of
its German settlement, not only was the historic cause of the very formation of
this state, but whose population, moreover, exclusively demonstrated that power
which for so many centuries was able to give this structure, so artificial in
the political sense, its inner cultural life. As time progressed, the existence
and future of this state came to depend more and more on the preservation of
this nuclear cell of the Empire.
If the old hereditary territories were the heart of the
Empire continually driving fresh blood into the circulatory stream of political
and cultural life, Vienna was the brain and will in one
Its mere outward
appearance justified one in attributing to this city the power to reign as a
unifying queen amid such a conglomeration of peoples, thus by the radiance of
her own beauty causing us to forget the ugly symptoms of old age in the
structure as a whole.
The Empire might quiver and quake beneath the bloody
battles of the different nationalities, yet foreigners, and especially Germans,
saw only the charming countenance of this city. Wblt made the deception all the
greater was that Vienna at that time seemed engaged in what was perhaps its
last and greatest visible revival. Under the rule of a truly gifted mayor, the
venerable residence of the Emperors of the old regime awoke once more to a
:-niraculous youth. The last great German to be born in the ranks of the people
who had colonized the Ostmark was not officially numbered among socalled
Statesmen'; but as mayor of Vienna, this capital and imperial residence,' Dr.
Lueger conjured up one amazing achievement after another in, we may say, every
field of economic and cultural municipal politics, thereby strengthening the
heart of the whole Empire, and indirectly becoming a statesman greater than all
the so-called 'diplomats' of the time
If the conglomeration of nations called 'Austria'
nevertheless perished in the end, this does not detract in the least from the
political ability of the Germans in the old Ostmark, but was the necessary
result of the impossibility of permanently maintaining a state of fifty million
people of different nationalities by means of ten million people, unless
certain definite prerequisites were established in time.
The ideas of the German-Austrian were more than
grandiose.
He had always been accustomed to living in a great empire
and had never lost his feeling for the tasks bound up with it. He was the only
one in this state who, beyond the narrow boundaries of the crown lands, still
saw the boundaries of the Reich; indeed, when Fate finally parted him from the
common fatherland, he kept on striving to master the gigantic task and preserve
for the German people what his fathers had once wrested from the East in
endless struggles. In this connection it should be borne in mind that this had
to be done with divided energy; for the heart and memory of the best never
ceased to feel for the common mother country, and only a remnant was left for
the homeland.
The general horizon of the German-Austrian was in itself
comparatively broad. His economic connections frequently embraced almost the
entire multiform Empire. Nearly all the big business enterprises were in his
hands; the directing personnel, both technicians and officials, were in large
part provided by him. He was also in charge of foreign trade in so far as the
Jews had not laid their hands on this domain, which they have always seized for
their own. Politically, he alone held the state together. Military service
alone cast him far beyond the narrow boundaries of his homeland. The
German-Austrian recruit might join a German regiment, but the regiment itself
might equally well be in Herzegovina, Vienna, or Galicia. The officers' corps
was still German, the higher officials predominantly so. Finally, art and
science were German. Aside from the trash of the more modern artistic
development, which a nation of Negroes might just as well have produced, the
German alone possessed and disseminated a truly artistic attitude. In music,
architecture, sculpture, and painting, Vienna was the source supplying the
entire dual monarchy in inexhaustible abundance, without ever seeming to go dry
itself.
Finally, the Germans directed the entire foreign policy if we
disregard a small number of Hungarians.
And yet any attempt to preserve this Empire was in vain,
for the most essential premise was lacking.
For the Austrian state of nationalities there was only
one possibility of overcoming the centrifugal forces of the individual nations.
Either the state was centrally governed hence internally organized along the
same lines. or it was altogether inconceivable.
At various lucid moments this insight dawned on the '
supreme ' authority. But as a rule it was soon forgotten or shelved as
difficult of execution. Any thought of a more federative organization of the
Empire was doomed to failure owing to the lack of a strong political germ-cell
of outstanding power. Added to this were the internal conditions of the
Austrian state which differed essentially from the German Empire of Bismarck.
In Germany it was only a question of overcoming political conditions, since
there was always a common cultural foundation. Above all, the Reich, aside from
little foreign splinters, embraced members of only one people.
In Austria the opposite was the case.
Here the individual provinces, aside from Hungary, lacked
any political memory of their own greatness, or it had been erased by the
sponge of time, or at least blurred and obscured. In the period when the
principle of nationalities was developing, however, national forces rose up in
the various provinces, and to counteract them was all the more difficult as on
the rim of the monarchy national states began to form whose populations,
racially equivalent or related to the Austrian national splinters, were now
able to exert a greater power of attraction than, conversely, remained possible
for the GermanAustrian.
Even Vienna could not forever endure this
struggle.
With the development of Budapest into a big city, she had for the
first time a rival whose task was no longer to hold the entire monarchy
together, but rather to strengthen a part of it. In a short time Prague was to
follow her example, then Lemberg, Laibach, etc. With the rise of these former
provincial cities to national capitals of individual provinces, centers formed
for more or less independent cultural life in these provinces. And only then
did the politico-national instincts obtain their spiritual foundation and
depth. The time inevitably approached when these dynamic forces of the
individual peoples would grow sponger than the force of common interests, and
that would be the end of Austria.
Since the death of Joseph II the course of this
development was clearly discernible. Its rapidity depended on a series of
factors which in part lay in the monarchy itself and in part were the result of
the Empire's momentary position on foreign policy.
If the fighf for the
preservation of this state was to be taken up and carried on in earnest, only a
ruthless and persistent policy of centralization could lead to the goal. First
of all, the purely formal cohesion had to be emphasized by the establishment in
principle of a uniform official language, and the administration had to be
given the technical implement without which a unified state simply cannot
exist. Likewise a unified state-consciousness could only be bred for any length
of time by schools and education. This was not feasible in ten or twenty years;
it was inevitably a matter of centuries; for in all questions of colonization,
persistence assumes greater importance than the energy of the moment.
It
goes without saying that the administration as well as the political direction
must be conducted with strict uniforrnity. To me it was infinitely instructive
to ascertain why this did not occur,. or rather, why it was not done.l He who
was guilty of this omission was alone to blame for the collapse of the
Empire.
Old Austria more than any other state depended on the greatness of
her leaders. The foundation was lacking for a national state, which in its
national basis always possesses the power of survival, regardless how deficient
the leadership as such may be. A homogeneous national state can, by virtue of
the natural inertia of its inhabitants, and the resulting power of resistance,
sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst administration or
leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At such times it often seems as
though there were no more life in such a body, as though it were dead and done
for, but one fine day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of
humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force.
It is different, however, with an empire not consisting
of similar peoples, which is held together not by common blood but by a common
fist. In this case the weakness of leadership will not cause a hibernation of
the state, but an awakening of all the individual instincts which are present
in the blood, but carmot develop in times when there is a dominant will. Only
by a common education extending over centuries, by common tradition, common
interests, etc., can this danger be attenuated. Hence the younger such state
formations are, the more they depend on the greatness of leadership, and if
they are the work of outstanding soldiers and spiritual heroes, they often
crumble immediately after the death of the great solitary founder. But even
after centuries these dangers cannot be regarded as overcome; they only lie
dormant, often suddenly to awaken as soon as the weakness of the common
leadership and the force of education and all the sublime traditions can no
longer overcome the impetus of the vital urge of the individual tribes.
Not to have understood this is perhaps the tragic guilt of the House
of Habsburg.
For only a single one of them did Fate once again raise
high the torch over the future of his country, then it was extinguished
for-ever.
Joseph IIX Roman Emperor of the German nation, saw with
fear and trepidation how his House, forced to the outermost corner of the
Empire, would one day inevitably vanish in the maelstrom of a Babylon of
nations unless at the eleventh hour the omissions of his forefathers were made
good. With super-human power this 'friend of man' braced himself against the
negligence of his ancestors and endeavored to retrieve in one decade what
centuries had failed to do. If he had been granted only forty years for his
work, and if after him even two generations had continued his work as he began
it, the miracle would probably have been achieved. But when, after scarcely ten
years on the thrones worn in body and soul, he died, his work sank with him
into the grave, to awaken no more and sleep forever in the Capuchin crypt. His
successors were equal to the task neither in mind nor in will.
When the first revolutionary lightnings of a new era
flashed through Europe, Austria, too, slowly began to catch fire, little by
little. But when the fire at length broke out, the flame was fanned less by
social or general political causes than by dynamic forces of national
origin.
The revolution of 1848 may have been a class struggle everywhere,
but in Austria it was the beginning of a new racial war. By forgetting or not
recognizing this origin and putting themselves in the service of the
revolutionary uprising, the Germans sealed their own fate. They helped to
arouse the spirit of 'Western democracy,' which in a short time removed the
foundations of their own existence.
With the formation of a parliamentary representative body
without the previous establishment and crystallization of a common state
language, the cornerstone had been laid for the end of German domination of the
monarchy.' From this moment on the state itself was lost. All that followed was
merely the historic liquidation of an empire.
To follow this process of dissolution was as heartrending
as it was instructive. This execution of an historical sentence was carried out
in detail in thousands and thousands of forrns. The fact that a large part of
the people moved blindly through the manifestations of decay showed only that
the gods had willed Austria's destruction.
I shall not lose myself in details on this point, for
that is not the function of this book. I shall only submit to a more
thoroughgoing observation those events which are the everunchanging causes of
the decline of nations and states, thus possessing significance for our time as
well, and which ultimately contributed to securing the foundations of my own
political thinking.
At the head of those institutions which could most
clearly have revealed the erosion of the Austrian monarchy, even to a
shopkeeper not otherwise gifted with sharp eyes, was one which ought to have
had the greatest strength parliament, or, as it was called in Austria, the
Reichsrat.
Obviously the example of this body had been taken from England,
the land of classical 'democracy.' From there the whole blissful institution
was taken and transferred as unchanged as possible to Vienna.
The English two-chamber system was solemnly resurrected
in the Abgeordnetenhaus and the Herrenhaus. Except that the houses' themselves
were somewhat different. When Barry raised his parliament buildings from the
waters of the Thames, he thrust into the history of the British Empire and from
it took the decorations for the twelve hundred niches, consoles, and pillars of
his magnificent edifice. Thus, in their sculpture and painting, the House of
Lords and the House of Commons became the nation's Hall of Fame.
This was where the first difficulty came in for Vienna.
For when Hansen, the Danish builder, had completed the last pinnacle on the
marble building of the new parliament, there was nothing he could use as
decoration except borrowings from antiquity. Roman and &reek statesmen and
philosophers now embellish this opera house of Western democracy, and in
symbolic irony the quadrigae fiy from one another in all four directions above
the two houses, in this way giving the best external expres sion of the
activities that went on inside the building.
The 'nationalities' had vetoed the glorification of
Austrian
history in this work as an insult and provocation, just as in the
Reich itself it was only beneath the thunder of World War battles that they
dared to dedicate Wallot's Reichstag Building to the German people by an
inscription.
When, not yet twenty years old, I set foot for the first
time in the magnificent building on the Franzensring to attend a session of the
House of Deputies as a spectator and listener, I was seized with the most
conflicting sentiments.
I had always hated parliament, but not as an institution
in itself. On the contrary, as a freedom-loving man I could not even conceive
of any other possibility of government, for the idea of any sort of
dictatorship would, in view of my attitude toward the House of Habsburg, have
seemed to me a crime against freedom and all reason.
What contributed no little to this was that as a young
man, in consequence of my extensive newspaper reading, I had, without myself
realizing it, been inoculated with a certain admiration for the British
Parliament, of which I was not easily able to rid myself. The dignity with
which the Lower House there fulfilled its tasks (as was so touchingly described
in our press) impressed me immensely. Could a people have any more exalted form
of selfgovernment?
But for this very reason I was an enemy of the Austrian
parliament. I considered its whole mode of conduct unworthy of the great
example. To this the following was now added:
The fate of the Germans in the Austrian state was
dependent on their position in the Reichsrat. Up to the introduction of
universal and secret suffrage, the Germans had had a majority, though an
insignificant one, in parliament. Even this condition was precarious, for the
Social Democrats, with their unreliable attitude in national questions, always
turned against German interests in critical matters affecting the Germans-in
order not to alienate the members of the various foreign nationalities. Even in
those days the Social Democracy could not be regarded as a German party. And
with the introduction of universal suffrage the German superiority ceased even
in a purely numerical sense. There was no longer any obstacle in the path of
the further de-Germanization of the state.
For this reason my instinct of national self-preservation
caused me even in those days to have little love for a representative body in
which the Germans were always misrepresented rather than represented. Yet these
were deficiencies which, like so many others, were attributable, not to the
thing in itself, but to the Austrian state. I still believed that if a German
majority were restored in the representative bodies, there would no longer be
any reason for a principled opposition to them, that is, as long as the old
state continued to exist at all.
These were my inner sentiments when for the first time I
set foot in these halls as hallowed as they were disputed. For me, to be sure,
they were hallowed only by the lofty beauty of the magnificent building. A
Hellenic miracle on German soil!
How soon was I to grow indignant when I saw the
lamentable comedy that unfolded beneath my eyes!
Present were a few hundred of these popular
representatives who had to take a position on a question of most vital economic
importance.
The very first day was enough to stimulate me to thought
for weeks on end.
The intellectual content of what these men said was on a
really depressing level, in so far as you could understand their babbling at
all; for several of the gentlemen did not speak German, but their native Slavic
languages or rather dialects. I now had occasion to hear with my own ears what
previously I had known only from reading the newspapers. A wild gesticulating
mass screaming all at once in every different key, presided over by a
goodnatured old uncle who was striving in the sweat of his brow to revive the
dignity of the House by violently ringing his bell and alternating gentle
reproofs with grave admonitions.
I couldn't help laughing.
A few weeks later I was in the House again. The picture
was changed beyond recognition. The hall was absolutely empty. Down below
everybody was asleep. A few deputies were in their places, yawning at one
another; one was 'speaking.' A vicepresident of the House was present, looking
into the hall with obvious boredom.
The first misgivings arose in me. From now on, whenever
time offered me the slightest opportunity, I went back and, with silence and
attention, viewed whatever picture presented itself, listened to the speeches
in so far as they were intelligible, studied the more or less intelligent faces
of the elect of the peoples of this woe-begone state-and little by little
formed my own ideas.
A year of this tranquil observation sufficed totally to
change or eliminate my former view of the nature of this institution. My
innermost position was no longer against the misshapen form which this idea
assumed in Austria; no, by now I could no longer accept the parliament as such.
Up till then I had seen the misfortune of the Austrian parliament in the
absence of a German majority; now I saw that its ruination lay in the whole
nature and essence of the institution as such.
A whole series of questions rose up in me.
I began to make myself familiar with the democratic
principle of majority rule as the foundation of this whole institution, but
devoted no less attention to the intellectual and moral values of these
gentlemen, supposedly the elect of the nations, who were expected to serve this
purpose.
Thus I came to know the institution and its representatives at
once.
In the course of a few years, my knowledge and insight shaped a
plastic model of that most dignified phenomenon of modern times: the
parliamentarian. He began to impress himself upon me in a form which has never
since been subjected to any essential change.
Here again the visual instruction of practical reality had
prevented me from being stifled by a theory which at first sight seemed
seductive to so many, but which none the less must be counted among the
symptoms of human degeneration.
The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of
Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague
with the culture in which its germs can spread. In its most extreme forrn,
parliamentarianism created a 'monstrosity of excrement and fire,' in which,
however, sad to say, the 'fire' seems to me at the moment to be burned
out.
I must be more than thankful to Fate for laying this question before
me while I was in Vienna, for I fear that in Germany at that time I would have
found the answer too easily. For if I had first encountered this absurd
institution known as 'parliament' in Berlin, I might have fallen into the
opposite fallacy, and not without seemingly good cause have sided with those
who saw the salvation of the people and the Reich exclusively in furthering the
power of the imperial idea, and who nevertheless were alien and blind at once
to the times and the people involved.
In Austria this was impossible.
Here it was not so easy to go from one mistake to the
other. If parliament was worthless, the Habsburgs were even more worthless-in
no event, less so. To reject 'parliamentarianism' was not enough, for the
question still remained open: what then? The rejection and abolition of the
Reichsrat would have left the House of Habsburg the sole governing force, a
thought which, especially for me, was utterly intolerable.
The difficulty of this special case led me to a more
thorough contemplation of the problem as such than would otherwise have been
likely at such tender years.
What gave me most food for thought was the obvious absence
of any responsibility in a single person.
The parliament arrives at some decision whose consequences
may be ever so ruinous-nobody bears any responsibility for this, no one can be
taken to account. For can it be called an acceptance of responsibility if,
after an unparalleled catastrophe, the guilty government resigns? Or if the
coalition changes, or even if parliament is itself dissolved?
Can a fluctuating majority of people ever be made
responsible in any case?
Isn't the very idea of responsibility bound up with the
individual?
But can an individual directing a government be made practically
responsible for actions whose preparation and execution must be set exclusively
to the account of the will and inclination of a multitude of men?
Or will not the task of a leading statesman be seen, not
in the birth of a creative idea or plan as such, but rather in the art of
making the brilliance of his projects intelligible to a herd of sheep and
blockheads, and subsequently begging for their kind approval?
Is it the criterion of the statesman that he should
possess the art of persuasion in as high degree as that of political
intelligence in formulating great policies or decisions? Is the incapacity of a
leader shown by the fact that he does not succeed in winning for a certain idea
the majority of a mob thrown together by more or less savory accidents?
Indeed, has this mob ever understood an idea before success
proclaimed its greatness?
Isn't every deed of genius in this world a visible
protest of genius against the inertia of the mass?
And what should the
statesman do, who does not succeed in gaining the favor of this mob for his
plans by flattery?
Should he buy it?
Or, in view of the stupidity of his fellow citizens,
should he renounce the execution of the tasks which he has recognized to be
vital necessities? Should he resign or should he remain at his post?
In such
a case, doesn't a man of true character find himself in a hopeless conflict
between knowledge and decency, or rather honest conviction?
Where is the dividing line between his duty toward the
general public and his duty toward his personal honor?
Mustn't every true leader refuse to be thus degraded to
the level of a political gangster?
And, conversely, mustn't every gangster feel that he is
cut out for politics, since it is never he, but some intangible mob, which has
to bear the ultimate responsibility?
Mustn't our principle of parliamentary majorities lead to
the demolition of any idea of leadership?
Does anyone believe that the
progress of this world springs from the mind of majoritiesand not from the
brains of individuals?
Or does anyone expect that the future will be able to
dispense with this premise of human culture?
Does it not, on the contrary, today seem more
indispensable than ever?
By rejecting the authority of the individual and
replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle
of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature,
though it must be said that this view is not necessarily embodied in the
present-day decadence of our upper ten thousand.
The devastation caused by this institution of modern
parliamentary rule is hard for the reader of Jewish newspapers to imagine,
unless he has learned to think and examine independently. It is, first and
foremost, the cause of the incredible inundation of all political life with the
most inferior, and I mean the most inferior, characters of our time. Just as
the true leader will withdraw from all political activity which does not
consist primarily in creative achievement and work, but in bargaining and
haggling for the favor of the majority, in the same measure this activity will
suit the small mind and consequently attract it.
The more dwarfish one of these present-day
leathermerchants is in spirit and ability, the more clearly his own insight
makes him aware of the lamentable figure he actually cuts-that much more will
he sing the praises of a system which does not demand of him the power and
genius of a giant, but is satisfied with the craftiness of a village mayor,
preferring in fact this kind of wisdom to that of a Pericles. And this kind
doesn't have to torment himself with responsibility for his actions. He is
entirely removed from such worry, for he well knows that, regardless what the
result of his 'statesmanlike' bungling may be, his end has long been written in
the stars: one day he will have to cede his place to another equally great
mind, for it is one of the characteristics of this decadent system that the
number of great statesmen increases in proportion as the stature of the
individual decreases With increasing dependence on parliamentary majorities it
will inevitably continue to shrink, since on the one hand great minds will
refuse to be the stooges of idiotic incompetents and bigmouths, and on the
other, conversely, the representatives of the majority, hence of stupidity,
hate nothing more passionately than a superior mind.
For such an assembly of wise men of Gotham, it is always
a consolation to know that they are headed by a leader whose intelligence is at
the level of those present: this will give each one the pleasure of shining
from time to time-and, above all, if Tom can be master, what is to prevent Dick
and Harry from having their turn too?
This invention of democracy is most intimately related to
a quality which in recent times has grown to be a real disgrace, to wit, the
cowardice of a great part of our so-called 'leadership. What luck to be able to
hide behind the skirts of a so-called majority in all decisions of any real
importance!
Take a look at one of these political bandits. How
anxiously he begs the approval of the majority for every measure, to assure
himself of the necessary accomplices, so he can unload the responsibility at
any time. And this is one of the main reasons why this type of political
activity is always repulsive and hateful to any man who is decent at heart and
hence courageous, while it attracts all low characters-and anyone who is
unwilling to take personal responsibility for his acts, but seeks a shield, is
a cowardly scoundrel. When the leaders of a nation consist of such vile
creatures, the results will soon be deplorable. Such a nation will be unable to
muster the courage for any determined act; it will prefer to accept any
dishonor, even the most shameful, rather than rise to a decision; for there is
no one who is prepared of his own accord to pledge his person and his head for
the execution of a dauntless resolve.
For there is one thing which we must never forget: in
this, too, the majority can never replace the man. It is not only a
representative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well. And no more than a
hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a
hundred cowards.
The less the responsibility of the individual leader, the
more numerous will be those who, despite their most insignificant stature, feel
called upon to put their immortal forces in the service of the nation. Indeed,
they will be unable to await their turn; they stand in a long line, and with
pain and regret count the number of those waiting ahead of them, calculating
almost the precise hour at which, in all probability, their turn will come.
Consequently, they long for any change in the office hovering before their
eyes, and are thankful for any scandal which thins out the ranks ahead of them.
And if some man is unwilling to move from the post he holds, this in their eyes
is practically a breach of a holy pact of solidarity. They grow vindictive, and
they do not rest until the impudent fellow is at last overthrown, thus turning
his warm place back to the public. And, rest assured, he won't recover the
position so easily. For as soon as one of these creatures is forced to give up
a position, he will try at once to wedge his way into the 'waiting-line' unless
the hue and cry raised by the others prevents him.
The consequence of all this is a terrifying turn-over in
the most important offices and positions of such a state, a result which is
always harmful, but sometimes positively catastrophic. For it is not only the
simpleton and incompetent who will fall victim to thus custom, but to an even
greater extent the real leader, if Fate somehow manages to put one in this
place. As soon as this fact has been recognized, a solid front will form
against him, especially if such a mind has not arisen from their own ranks, but
none the less dares to enter into this exalted society. For on principle these
gentry like to be among themselves and they hate as a common enemy any brain
which stands even slightly above the zeros. And in this respect their instinct
is as much sharper as it is deficient in everything else.
The result will be a steadily expanding intellectual
impoverishment of the leading circles. The result for the nation and the state,
everyone can judge for himself, excepting in so far as he himself is one of
these kind of 'leaders.'
Old Austria possessed the parliamentary regime in its
purest form.
To be sure, the prime ministers were always appointed by
the Emperor and King, but this very appointment was nothing halt the execution
of the parliamentary will. The haggling and bargaining for the individual
portfolios represented Western democracy of the first water. And the results
corresponded to the principles applied. Particularly the change of individual
personalities occurred in shorter and shorter terms, ultimately becoming a
veritable chase. In the same measure, the stature of the ' statesmen ' steadily
diminished until finally no one remained but that type of parliamentary
gangster whose statesmanship could only be measured and recognized by their
ability in pasting together the coalitions of the moment; in other words,
concluding those pettiest of political bargains which alone demonstrate the
fitness of these representatives of the people for practical work.
Thus the
Viennese school transmitted the best impressions in this field.
But what attracted me no less was to compare the ability
and knowledge of these representatives of the people and the tasks which
awaited them. In this case, whether I liked it or not, I was impelled to
examine more closely the intellectual horizon of these elect of the nations
themselves, and in so doing, I could not avoid giving the necessary attention
to the processes which lead to the discovery of these ornaments of our public
life.
The way in which the real ability of these gentlemen was applied and
placed in the service of the fatherland-in other words, the technical process
of their activity-was also worthy of thorough study and investigation.
The more determined I was to penetrate these inner conditions, to
study the personalities and material foundations with dauntless and penetrating
objectivity, the more deplorable became my total picture of parliamentary life.
Indeed, this is an advisable procedure in dealing with an institution which, in
the person of its representatives, feels obliged to bring up ' objectivity ' in
every second sentence as the only proper basis for every investigation and
opinion. Investigate these gentlemen themselves and the laws of their sordid
existence, and you will be amazed at the result.
There is no principle which, objectively considered, is as
false a,s that of parliamentarianism.
Here we may totally disregard the manner in which our
fine representatives of the people are chosen, how they arrive at their office
and their new dignity. That only the tiniest fraction of them rise in
fulfillment of a general desire, let alone a need, will at once be apparent to
anyone who realizes that the political understanding of the broad masses is far
from being highly enough developed to arrive at definite general political
views of their own accord and seek out the suitable personalities.
The thing we designate by the word 'public opinion' rests
only in the smallest part on experience or knowledge which the individual has
acquired by hirnself, but rather on an idea which is inspired by so-called
'enlightenment,' often of a highly persistent and obtrusive type.
Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result
of upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his soul, the
political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an
incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.
By
far the greatest share in their political 'education,' which in this case is
most aptly designated by the word 'propaganda,' falls to the account of the
press. It is foremost in performing this 'work of enlightenment' and thus
represents a sort of school for grown-ups. This instruction, however, is not in
the hands of the state, but in the claws of forces which are in part very
inferior. In Vienna as a very young man I had the best opportunity to become
acquainted with the owners and spiritual manufacturers of this machine for
educating the masses. At first I could not help but be amazed at how short a
time it took this great evil power within the state to create a certain opinion
even where it meant totally falsifying profound desires and views which surely
existed among the public. In a few days a ridiculous episode had become a
significant state action, while, conversely, at the same time, vital problems
fell a prey to public oblivion, or rather were simply filched from the memory
and consciousness of the masses.
Thus, in the course of a few weeks it was possible to
conjure up names out of the void, to associate them with incredible hopes on
the part of the broad public, even to give them a popularity which the really
great man often does not obtain his whole life long; names which a month before
no one had even seen or heard of, while at the same time old and proved figures
of political or other public life, though in the best of health, simply died as
far as their fellow men were concemed, or were heaped with such vile insults
that their names soon threatened to become the symbol of some definite act of
infamy or villainy. We must study this vile Jewish technique of emptying
garbage pails full of the vilest slanders and defamations from hundreds and
hundreds of sources at once, suddenly and as if by magic, on the clean garments
of honorable men, if we are fully to appreciate the entire menace represented
by these scoundrels of the press.
There is absolutely nothing one of these spiritual
robberbarons will not do to achieve his savory aims.
He will poke into the most secret family affairs and not
rest until his trufRe-searching instinct digs up some miserable incident which
is calculated to finish off the unfortunate victim. But if, after the most
careful sniffing, absolutely nothing is found, either in the man's public or
private life, one of these scoundrels simply seizes on slander, in the firm
conviction that despite a thousand refutations something always sticks and,
moreover, through the immediate and hundredfold repetition of his defamations
by all his accomplices, any resistance on the part of the victim is in most
cases utterly impossible; and it must be borne in mind that this rabble never
acts out of motives which might seem credible or even understandable to the
rest of humanity. God forbid! While one of these scum is attacking his beloved
fellow men in the most contemptible fashion, the octopus covers himself with a
veritable cloud of respectability and unctuous phrases, prates about '
journalistic duty ' and suchlike lies, and even goes so far as to shoot off his
mouth at committee meetings and congresses- that is, occasions where these
pests are present in large numbers -about a very special variety of 'honor,' to
wit, the journalistic variety, which the assembled rabble gravely and mutually
confirm.
These scum manufacture more than three quarters of the so-called
'public opinion,' from whose foam the parliamentarian Aphrodite arises. To give
an accurate description of this process and depict it in all its falsehood and
improbability, one would have to write volumes. But even if we disregard all
this and examine only the given product along with its activity, this seems to
me enough to make the objective lunacy of this institution dawn on even the
naivest mind.
This human error, as senseless as it is dangerous, will
most readily be understood as soon as we compare democratic parliamentarianism
with a truly Germanic democracy.
The distinguishing feature of the former is that a body
of, let us say five hundred men, or in recent times even women, is chosen and
entrusted with making the ultimate decision in any and all matters. And so for
practical purposes they alone are the government; for even if they do choose a
cabinet which undertakes the external direction of the affairs of state, this
is a mere sham. In reality this so-called government cannot take a step without
first obtaining the approval of the general assembly. Consequently, it cannot
be made responsible for anything, since the ultimate decision never lies with
it, but with the majority of parliament. In every case it does nothing but
carry out the momentary will of the majority. Its political ability can only be
judged according to the skill with which it understands how either to adapt
itself to the will of the majority or to pull the majority over to its side.
Thereby it sinks from the heights of real government to the level of a beggar
confronting the momentary majority. Indeed, its most urgent task becomes
nothing more than either to secure the favor of the existing majority, as the
need arises, or to form a majority with more friendly inclinations. If this
succeeds, it may 'govern' a little while longer; if it doesn't succeed, it can
resign. The soundness of its purposes as such is beside the point.
For practical purposes, this excludes all
responsibility
To what consequences this leads can be seen from a few
simple considerations:
The internal composition of the five hundred chosen
representatives of the people, with regard to profession or even individual
abilities, gives a picture as incoherent as it is usually deplorable. For no
one can believe that these men elected by the nation are elect of spirit or
even of intelligence ! It is to be hoped that no one will suppose that the
ballots of an electorate which is anything else than brilliant will give rise
to statesmen by the hundreds. Altogether we cannot be too sharp in condemning
the absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections. In the
first place, a nation only produces a real statesman once in a blue moon and
not a hundred or more at once; and in the second place, the revulsion of the
masses for every outstanding genius is positively instinctive. Sooner will a
camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be ' discovered' by an
election.
In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the
broad average usually announces himself personally.
As it is, however, five hundred men, whose stature is to
say the least modest, vote on the most important affairs of the nation, appoint
governments which in every single case and in every special question have to
get the approval of the exalted assembly, so that policy is really made by five
hundred.
And that is just what it usually looks like.
But even leaving the genius of these representatives of
the people aside, bear in mind how varied are the problems awaiting attention,
in what widely removed fields solutions and decisions must be made, and you
will realize how inadequate a governing institution must be which transfers the
ultimate right of decision to a mass assembly of people, only a tiny fraction
of which possess knowledge and experience of the matter to be treated. The most
important economic measures are thus submitted to a forum, only a tenth of
whose members have any economic education to show. This is nothing more nor
less than placing the ultimate decision in a matter in the hands of men totally
lacking in every prerequisite for the task.
The same is true of every other question. The decision is
always made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the
composition of this institution remains unchanged while the problems under
treatment extend to nearly every province of public life and would thereby
presuppose a constant turn-over in the deputies who are to judge and decide on
them, since it is impossible to let the same persons decide matters of
transportation as, let us say, a question of high for eign policy. Otherwise
these men would all have to be universal geniuses such as we actually seldom
encounter once in centuries. Unfortunately we are here confronted, for the most
part, not with 'thinkers,' but with dilettantes as limited as they are
conceited and infiated, intellectual demimonde of the worst sort. And this is
the source of the often incomprehensible frivolity with which these gentry
speak and decide on things which would require careful meditation even in the
greatest minds. Measures of the gravest significance for the future of a whole
state, yes, of a nation, are passed as though a game of schafDopf or tarock,l
which would certainly be better suited to their abilities, lay on the table
before them and not the fate of a race.
Yet it would surely be unjust to believe that all of the
deputies in such a parliament were personally endowed with so little sense of
responsibility.
No, by no means.
But by forcing the individual to take a position on such
questions completely ill-suited to him, this system gradually ruins hus
character. No one will summon up the courage to declare: Gentlemen, I believe
we understand nothing about this matter I personally certainly do not.'
(Besides, this would change mat ters little, for surely this kind of honesty
would remain totally unappreciated, and what is more, our friends would
scarcely allow one honorable jackass to spoil their whole game.) Anyone with a
knowledge of people will realize that in such an illustrious company no one is
eager to be the stupidest, and in certain circles honesty is almost synonymous
with stupidity
Thus, even the representative who at first was honest is
thrown
end page 89
Page 90
into this track of general
falsehood and deceit. The very conviction that the non-participation of an
individual in the business would in itself change nothing kills every honorable
impulse which may rise up in this or that deputy. And finally, moreover, he may
tell himself that he personally is far from being the worst among the others,
and that the sole effect of his collaboration is perhaps to prevent worse
things from happening.
It will be objected, to be sure, that. though the
individual deputy possesses no special understanding in this or that matter,
his position has been discussed by the fraction which directs the policy of the
gentleman in question, and that the fraction has its special committees which
are more than adequately enlightened by experts anyway.
At first glance this seems to be true. But then the
question arises: Why are five hundred chosen when only a few possess the
necessary wisdom to take a position in the most important matters?
And this is the worm in the apple!
It is not the aim of our present-day parliamentarianism
to constitute an assembly of wise men, but rather to compose a band of mentally
dependent nonentities who are the more easily led in certain directions, the
greater is the personal limitation of the individual. That is the only way of
carrying on party politics in the malodorous present-day sense. And only in
this way is it possible for the real wirepuller to remain carefully in the
background and never personally be called to responsibility. For then every
decision, regardless how harmful to the nation, will not be set to the account
of a scoundrel visible to all, but will be unloaded on the shoulders of a whole
fraction.
And thereby every practical responsibility vanishes. For
responsibility can lie only in the obligation of an individual and not in a
parliamentary bull session.
Such an institution can only please the biggest liars and
sneaks of the sort that shun the light of day, because it is inevitably hateful
to an honorable, straightforward man who welcomes personal
responsibility.
And that is why this type of democracy has become the
instrument of that race which in its inner goals must shun the light of day,
now and in all ages of the future. Only the Jew can praise an institution which
is as dirty and false as he himself.
Juxtaposed to this is the truly Germanic democracy
characterized by the free election of a leader and his obligation fully to
assume all responsibility for his actions and omissions. In it there is no
majority vote on individual questions, but only the decision of an individual
who must answer with his fortune and his life for his choice.
If it be objected that under such conditions scarcely
anyone would be prepared to dedicate his person to so risky a task, there is
but one possible answer:
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that
any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his
national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be
assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened off.
But if, nevertheless, one of these scoundrels should
attempt to sneak in, we can find him more easily, and mercilessly challenge
him: Out, cowardly scoundrel! Remove your foot, you are besmirching the steps;
the front steps of the Pantheon of history are not for sneak-thieves, but for
heroes!
I had fought my way to this conclusion after two years
attendance at the Vienna parliament.
After that I never went back.
The parliamentary regime shared the chief blame for the
weakness, constantly increasing in the past few years, of the Habsburg state.
The more its activities broke the predominance of the Germans, the more the
country succumbed to a system of playing off the nationalities against one
another. In the Reichsrat itself this was always done at the expense of the
Germans and thereby, in the last analysis, at the expense of the Empire; for by
the turn of the century it must have been apparent even to the simplest that
the monarchy's force of attraction would no longer be able to withstand the
separatist tendencies of the provinces.
On the contrary.
The more pathetic became the means which the state had to
employ for its preservation, the more the general contempt for it increased.
Not only in Hungary, but also in the separate Slavic provinces, people began to
identify themselves so little with the common monarchy that they did not regard
its weakness as their own disgrace. On the contrary, they rejoiced at such
symptoms of old age; for they hoped more for the Empire's death than for its
recovery.
In parliament, for the moment, total collapse was averted
by undignified submissiveness and acquiescence at every extortion, for which
the German had to pay in the end; and in the country, by most skillfully
playing off the different peoples against each other. But the general line of
development was nevertheless directed against the Germans. Especially since
Archduke Francis Ferdinand became heir apparent and began to enjoy a certain
influence, there began to be some plan and order in the policy of Czechization
from above. With all possible means, this future ruler of the dual monarchy
tried to encourage a policy of deGermanization, to advance it himself or at
least to sanction it. Purely German towns, indirectly through government
official dom, were slowly but steadily pushed into the mixed-language danger
zones. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make increasingly rapid
progress, and many Czechs considered Vienna their largest city.
The central idea of this new Habsburg, whose family had
ceased to speak anything but Czech (the Archduke's wife, a former Czech
countess, had been morganatically married to the Prince-she came from circles
whose anti-German attitude was traditional), was gradually to establish a
Slavic state in Central Europe which for defense against Orthodox Russia should
be placed on a strictly Catholic basis. Thus, as the Habsburgs had so often
done before, religion was once again put into the service of a purely political
idea, and what was worse-at least from the German viewpoint-of a catastrophic
idea.
The result was more than dismal in many respects. Neither the House
of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church received the expected reward.
Habsburg lost the throne, Rome a great state.
For by employing religious forces in the service of its
political considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at the outset it had
not considered possible.
In answer to the attempt to exterminate the Germans in
the old monarchy by every possible means, there arose the PanGerman movement in
Austria.
By the eighties the basic Jewish tendency of Manchester liberalism
had reached, if not passed, its high point in the monarchy. The reaction to it,
however, as with everything in old Austria, arose primarily from a social, not
from a national standpoint. The instinct of self-preservation forced the
Germans to adopt the sharpest measures of defense. Only secondarily did
economic considerations begin to assume a decisive influence. And so, two party
formations grew out of the general political confusion, the one with the more
national, the other with the more social, attitude, but both highly interesting
and instructive for the future.
After the depressing end of the War of 1866, the House of
Habsburg harbored the idea of revenge on the battlefield. Only the death of
Emperor Max of Mexico, whose unfortunate expedition was blamed primarily on
Napoleon III and whose abandonment by the French aroused general indignation,
prevented a closer collaboration with France. Habsburg nevertheless lurked in
wait. If the War of 1870-71 had not been so unique a triumph, the Vienna Court
would probably have risked a bloody venture to avenge Sadowa. But when the
first amazing and scarcely credible, but none the less true, tales of heroism
arrived from the battlefields, the 'wisest' of all monarchs recognized that the
hour was not propitious and put the best possible face on a bad
business.
But the heroic struggle of these years had accomplished an even
mightier miracle; for with the Habsburgs a change of position never arose from
the urge of the innermost heart, but from the compulsion of circumstances.
However, the German people of the old Ostmark were swept along by the Reich's
frenzy of victory, and looked on with deep emotion as the dream of their
fathers was resurrected to glorious reality.
For make no mistake: the truly German-minded Austrian
had, even at Koniggratz, and from this time on, recognized the tragic but
necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of a Reich which would no longer
be-and actually was not-afflicted with the foul morass of the old Union. Above
all, he had come to understand thoroughly, by his own suffering, that the House
of Habsburg had at last concluded its historical mission and that the new Reich
could choose as Emperor only him whose heroic convictions made him worthy to
bear the 'Crown of the Rhine.' But how much more was Fate to be praised for
accomplishing this investiture in the scion of a house which in Frederick the
Great had given the nation a gleaming and eternal symbol of its
resurrection.
But when after the great war the House of Habsburg began
with desperate determination slowly but inexorably to exterminate the dangerous
German element in the dual monarchy (the inner convictions of this element
could not be held in doubt), for such would be the inevitable result of the
Slavization policy- the doomed people rose to a resistance such as modern
German history had never seen.
For the first time, men of national and patriotic mind
became rebels.
Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state
as such, but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction
would inevitably lead to the destruction of their own nationality.
For the first time in modern German history, traditional
dynastic patriotism parted ways with the national love of fatherland and
people.
The Pan-German movement in German-Austria in the nineties is to be
praised for demonstrating in clear, unmistakable terms that a state authority
is entitled to demand respect and protection only when it meets the interests
of a people, or at least does not harm them.
There can be no such thing as state authority as an end in
itself, for, if there were, every tyranny in this world would be unassailable
and sacred.
If, by the instrument of governmental power, a
nationality is led toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right
of every member of such a people-it is his duty.
And the question-when is this the case?-is decided not by
theoretical dissertations, but by force and-results.
Since, as a matter of course, all governmental power
claims the duty of preserving state authority-regardless how vicious it is,
betraying the interests of a people a thousandfold-the national instinct of
self-preservation, in overthrowing such a power and achieving freedom or
independence, will have to employ the same weapons by means of which the enemy
tries to maintain his power. Consequently, the struggle will be carried on with
'legal' means as long as the power to be overthrown employs such means; but it
will not shun illegal means if the oppressor uses them.
In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim
of human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a government,
but the preservation of the species.
And if the species itself is in danger of being oppressed
or utterly eliminated, the question of legality is reduced to a subordinate
role. Then, even if the methods of the ruling power are alleged to be legal a
thousand times over, nonetheless the oppressed people's instinct of
self-preservation remains the loftiest justification of their struggle with
every weapon.
Only through recognition of this principle have wars of
liberation against internal and external enslavement of nations on this earth
come down to us in such majestic historical examples.
Human law cancels out state law.
And if a people is defeated in its struggle for human
rights, this merely means that it has been found too light in the scale of
destiny for the happiness of survival on this earth. For when a people is not
willing or able to fight for its existence- Providence in its eternal justice
has decreed that people's end.
The world is not for cowardly peoples.
How easy it is for a tyranny to cover itself with the
cloak of so-called 'legality' is shown most clearly and penetratingly by the
example of Austria.
The legal state power in those days was rooted in the
antiGerman soil of parliament with its non-German majorities- and in the
equally anti-German ruling house. In these two factors the entire state
authority was embodied. Any attempt to change the destinies of the
German-Austrian people from this position was absurd. Hence, in the opinions of
our friends the worshipers of state authority as such and of the 'legal' way,
all resistance would have had to be shunned, as incompatible with legal
methods. But this, with compelling necessity, would have meant the end of the
German people in the monarchy-and in a very short time. And, as a matter of
fact, the Germans were saved from this fate only by the collapse of this
state.
The bespectacled theoretician, it is true, would still prefer to die
for his doctrine than for his people.
Since it is men who make the laws, he believes that they
live for the sake of these laws.
The Pan-German movement in Austria had the merit of
completely doing away with this nonsense, to the horror of all theoretical
pedants and other fetish-worshiping isolationists in the government.
Since the Habsburgs attempted to attack Germanism with all possible
means, this party attacked the 'exalted' ruling house itself, and without
mercy. For the first time it probed into this rotten state and opened the eyes
of hundreds of thousands. To its credit be it said that it released the
glorious concept of love of fatherland from the embrace of this sorry
dynasty.
In the early days of its appearance, its following was extremely
great, threatening to become a veritable avalanche. But the success did not
last. When I came to Vienna, the movement had long been overshadowed by the
Christian Social Party which had meanwhile attained power-and had indeed been
reduced to almost complete insignificance.
This whole process of the growth and passing of the
Pan-German movement on the one hand, and the unprecedented rise of the
Christian Social Party on the other, was to assume the deepest significance for
me as a classical object of study.
When I came to Vienna, my sympathies were fully and
wholly on the side of the Pan-German tendency.
That they mustered the courage to cry 'Loch Hohenzollern'
impressed me as much as it pleased me; that they still regarded themselves as
an only temporarily severed part of the German Reich, and never let a moment
pass without openly attesting this fact, inspired me with joyful confidence;
that in all questions regarding Germanism they showed their colors without
reserve, and never descended to compromises, seemed to me the one still
passable road to the salvation of our people; and I could not understand how
after its so magnificent rise the movement should have taken such a sharp
decline. Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this
same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached
the apogee of its glory.
As I set about comparing these movements, Fate,
accelerated by my otherwise sad situation, gave me the best instruction for an
understanding of the causes of this riddle.
I shall begin my comparisons with the two men who may be
regarded as the leaders and founders of the two parties: Georg von Schonerer
and Dr. Karl Lueger.
From a purely human standpoint they both tower far above
the scope and stature of so-called parliamentary figures. Amid the morass of
general political corruption their whole life remained pure and unassailable.
Nevertheless my personal sympathy lay at first on the side of the Pan-German
Schonerer, and turned only little by little toward the Christian Social leader
as well.
Compared as to abilities, Schonerer seemed to me even then the
better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He foresaw the
inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and correctly than anyone
else. If, especially in the Reich, people had paid more attention to his
warnings
against the Habsburg monarchy, the calamity of Germany's World War
against all Europe would never have occurred.
But if Schonerer recognized the problems in their
innermost essence, he erred when it came to men.
Here, on the other hand, lay Dr. Lueger's
strength.
He had a rare knowledge of men and in particular took good care not
to consider people better than they are. Consequently, he reckoned more with
the real possibilities of life while Schonerer had but little understanding for
them. Theoretically speaking, all the Pan-German's thoughts were correct, but
since he lacked the force and astuteness to transmit his theoretical knowledge
to the masses-that is, to put it in a form suited to the receptivity of the
broad masses, which is and remains exceedingly limited-all his knowledge was
visionary wisdom, and could never become practical reality.
And this lack of actual knowledge of men led in the
course of time to an error in estimating the strength of whole movements as
well as age-old institutions.
Finally, Schonerer realized, to be sure, that questions
of basic philosophy were involved, but he did not understand that only the
broad masses of a people are primarily able to uphold such well-nigh religious
convictions.
Unfortunately, he saw only to a limited extent the
extra-ordinary limitation of the will to fight in so-called 'bourgeois'
circles, due, if nothing else, to their economic position which makes the
individual fear to lose too much and thereby holds him in check.
And yet, on the whole, a philosophy can hope for victory
only if the broad masses adhere to the new doctrine and declare their readiness
to undertake the necessary struggle.
From this deficient understanding of the importance of the
lower strata of the people arose a completely inadequate con-ception of the
social question.
In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of
Schonerer.
His thorough knowledge of men enabled him to judge the
possible forces correctly, at the same time preserving him from underestimating
existing institutions, and perhaps for this very reason taught him to make use
of these institutions as instruments for the achievement of his purposes.
He
understood only too well that the political fighting power of the upper
bourgeoisie at the present time was but slight and inadequate for achieving the
victory of a great movement. He therefore laid the greatest stress in his
political activity on winning over the classes whose existence was threatened
and therefore tended to spur rather than paralyze the will to fight. Likewise
he was inclined to make use of all existing implements of power, to incline
mighty existing institutions in his favor, drawing from these old sources of
power the greatest possible profit for his own movement.
Thus he adjusted his new party primarily to the middle
class menaced with destruction, and thereby assured himself of a following that
was difficult to shake, whose spirit of sacrifice was as great as its fighting
power. His policy toward the Catholic Church, fashioned with infinite
shrewdness, in a short time won over the younger clergy to such an extent that
the old Clerical Party was forced either to abandon the field, or, more wisely,
to join the new party, in order slowly to recover position after
position.
To take this alone as the characteristic essence of the man would be
to do him a grave injustice. For in addition to being an astute tactician, he
had the qualities of a truly great and brilliant reformer: though here, too, he
observed the limits set by a precise knowledge of the existing possibilities as
well as his own personal abilities.
It was an infinitely practical goal that this truly
significant man had set himself. He wanted to conquer Vienna. Vienna was the
heart of the monarchy; from this city the last flush of life flowed out into
the sickly, old body of the crumbling empire. The healthier the heart became,
the more the rest of the body was bound to revive: an idea, correct in
principle, but which could be applied only for a certain limited time.
And herein lay this man's weakness.
What he had done as mayor of Vienna is immortal in the
best sense of the word; but he could no longer save the monarchy, it was too
late.
His opponent, Schonerer, had seen this more clearly
All Dr. Lueger's practical efforts were amazingly
successfulthe hopes he based on them were not realized.
Schonerer's efforts were not successful, but his most
terrible fears came true.
Thus neither man realized his ultimate goal. Lueger could
no longer save Austria, and Schonerer could no longer save the German people
from ruin.
It is infinitely instructive for our present day to study
the causes for the failure of both parties. This is particularly useful for my
friends, since in many points conditions today are similar to then and errors
can thereby be avoided which at that time caused the end of the one movement
and the sterility of the other.
To my mind, there were three causes for the collapse of
the Pan-German movement in Austria.
In the first place, its unclear conception of the
significance of the social problem, especially for a new and essentially
revolutionary party.
Since Schonerer and his followers addressed themselves
principally to bourgeois circles, the result was bound to be very feeble and
tame.
Though some people fail to suspect it, the German bourgeoisie,
especially in its upper circles, is pacifistic to the point of positive
self-abnegation, where internal affairs of the nation or state are concerned.
In good times that is, in this case, in times of good government such an
attitude makes these classes extremely valuable to the state; but in times of
an inferior regime it is positively ruinous. To make possible the waging of any
really serious struggle, the Pan-German movement should above all have
dedicated itself to winning the masses. That it failed to do so deprived it in
advance of the elemental impetus which a wave of its kind simply must have if
it is not in a short time to ebb away.
Unless this principle is borne in mind and carried out
from the very start, the new party loses all possibility of later making up for
what has been lost. For, by the admission of numerous moderate bourgeois
elements, the basic attitude of the movement will always be governed by them
and thus lose any further prospect of winning appreciable forces from the broad
masses. As a result, such a movement will not rise above mere grumbling and
criticizing. The faith bordering more or less on religion, combined with a
similar spirit of sacrifice, will cease to exist; in its place will arise an
effort gradually to grind off the edges of struggle by means of 'positive'
collaboration; that is, in this case, by acceptance of the existing order, thus
ultimately leading to a putrid peace.
And this is what happened to the Pan-German movement
because it had not from the outset laid its chief stress on winning supporters
from the circles of the great masses. It achieved 'bourgeois respectability and
a muffled radicalism.'
From this error arose the second cause of its rapid
decline.
At the time of the emergence of the Pan-German movement the
situation of the Germans in Austria was already desperate. From year to year
the parliament had increasingly become an institution for the slow destruction
of the German people. Any attempt at salvation in the eleventh hour could offer
even the slightest hope of success only if this institution were
eliminated.
Thus the movement was faced with a question of basic
importance:
Should its members, to destroy parliament, go into
parliament, in order, as people used to say, 'to bore from within,' or should
they carry on the struggle from outside by an attack on this institution as
such?
They went in and they came out defeated.
To be sure, they couldn't help but go in.
To carry on the struggle against such a power from
outside means to arm with unflinching courage and to be prepared for endless
sacrifices. You seize the bull by the horns, you suffer many heavy blows, you
are sometimes thrown to the earth, sometimes you get up with broken limbs, and
only after the hardest contest does victory reward the bold assailant. Only the
greatness of the sacrifices will win new fighters for the cause, until at last
tenacity is rewarded by success.
But for this the sons of the broad masses are
required.
They alone are determined and tough enough to carry
through the fight to its bloody end.
And the Pan-German movement did not possess these broad
masses; thus no course remained open but to go into parliament
It would be a mistake to believe that this decision was
the result of long soul torments, or even meditations; no, no other idea
entered their heads. Participation in this absurdity was only the
sediment
resulting from general, unclear conceptions regarding the significance and
effect of such a participation in an institution which had in principle been
recognized as false. In general, the
party hoped that this would facilitate
the enlightenment of the broad masses, since it would now have an opportunity
to speak before the 'forum of the whole nation.' Besides, it seemed plausible
that attacking the root of the evil was bound to be more successful than
storming it from outside. They thought the security of the individual fighter
was increased by the protection of parliamentary immunity, and that this could
only enhance the force of the attack.
In reality, it must be said, things turned out very
differently.
The forum before which the Pan-German deputies spoke had
not become greater but smaller; for each man speaks only to the circle which
can hear him, or which obtains an account of his words in the
newspapers.
And, not the halls of parliament, but the great public
meeting, represents the largest direct forum of listeners.
For, in the latter, there are thousands of people who
have come only to hear what the speaker has to say to them, while in the halls
of parliament there are only a few hundreds, and most of these are present only
to collect their attendance fees, and cer-tainly not to be illuminated by the
wisdom of this or that fellow 'representative of the people.'
And above all:
This is always the same public, which will never learn
anything new, since, aside from the intelligence, it is lacking in the very
rudiments of will.
Never will one of these representatives of the people
honor a superior truth of his own accord, and place himself in its
service.
No, this is something that not a single one of them will do unless
he has reason to hope that by such a shift he may save his mandate for one more
session. Only when it is in the air that the party in power will come off badly
in a coming election, will these ornaments of virility shift to a party or
tendency which they presume will come out better, though you may be confident
that this change of position usually occurs amidst a cloudburst of moral
justifications. Consequently, when an existing party appears to be falling
beneath the disfavor of the people to such an extent that the probability of an
annihilating defeat threatens, such a great shift will always begin: then the
parliamentary rats leave the party ship.
All this has nothing to do with better knowledge or
intentions, but only with that prophetic gift which warns these parliamentary
bedbugs at the right moment and causes them to drop, again and again, into
another warm party bed.
But to speak to such a 'forum' is really to cast pearls
before the well-known domestic beasts. It is truly not worth while. The result
can be nothing but zero.
And that is just what it was.
The Pan-German deputies could talk their throats hoarse:
the effect was practically nil.
The press either killed them with silence or mutilated
their speeches in such a way that any coherence, and often even the sense, was
twisted or entirely lost, and public opinion received a very poor picture of
the aims of the new movement. What the various gentlemen said was quite
unimportant; the important thing was what people read about them. And this was
an extract from their speeches, so disjointed that it could-as intended- only
seem absurd. The only forum to which they really spoke consisted of five
hundred parliamentarians, and that is enough said.
But the worst was the following:
The Pan-German movement could count on success only if it
realized from the very first day that what was required was not a new party,
but a new philosophy. Only the latter could produce the inward power to fight
this gigantic struggle to its end. And for this, only the very best and
courageous minds can serve as leaders.
If the struggle for a philosophy is not lead by heroes
prepared to make sacrifices, there will, in a short time, cease to be any
warriors willing to die. The man who is fighting for his own existence cannot
have much left over for the community.
In order to maintain this requirement, every man must
know that the new movement can offer the present nothing but honor and fame in
posterity. The more easily attainable posts and offices a movement has to hand
out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end these political
hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter
of former days no longer recognizes the old movement and the new arrivals
definitely reject him as an unwelcome intruder. When this happens, the
'mission' of such a movement is done for.
As soon as the Pan-German movement sold its soul to
parlia-ment, it attracted 'parliamentarians' instead of leaders and
fighters.
Thus it sank to the level of the ordinary political
parties of the day and lost the strength to oppose a catastrophic destiny with
the defiance of martyrdom. Instead of fighting, it now learned to
make
speeches and 'negotiate.' And in a short time the new parliamentarian found it
a more attractive, because less dangerous, duty to fight for the new philosophy
with the 'spiritual' weapons of parliamentary eloquence, than to risk his own
life, if necessary, by throwing himself into a struggle whose issue was
uncertain and which in any case could bring him no profit.
Once they had members in parliament, the supporters
outside began to hope and wait for miracles which, of course, did not occur and
could not occur. For this reason they soon became impatient, for even what they
heard from their own deputies was by no means up to the expectations of the
voters. This was perfectly natural, since the hostile press took good care not
to give the people any faithful picture of the work of the Pan-German
deputies.
The more the new representatives of the people developed a taste for
the somewhat gentler variety of 'revolutionary' struggle in parliament and the
provincial diets, the less prepared they were to return to the more dangerous
work of enlightening the broad masses of the people. The mass meeting, the only
way to exert a truly effective, because personal, influence on large sections
of the people and thus possibly to win them, was thrust more and more into the
background.
Once the platform of parliament was definitely
substituted for the beer table of the meeting hall, and from this forum
speeches were poured, not into the people, but on the heads of their so called
'elect,' the Pan-German movement ceased to be a movement of the people and in a
short time dwindled into an academic discussion club to be taken more or less
seriously.
Consequently, the bad impression transmitted by the press
was in no way corrected by personal agitation at meetings by the individual
gentlemen, with the result that finally the word 'PanGerman' began to have a
very bad sound in the ears of the broad masses.
For let it be said to all our present-day fops and
knights of the pen: the greatest revolutions in this world have never been
directed by a goose-quill!
No, to the pen it has always been reserved to provide
their theoretical foundations.
But the power which has always started the greatest
religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial
been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone.
Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved
only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements,
volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either
by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among
the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes
and drawingroom heroes.
Only a storm of hot passion can turn the destinies of
peoples, and he alone can arouse passion who bears it within himself.
It
alone gives its chosen one the words which like hammer blows can open the gates
to the heart of a people.
But the man whom passion fails and whose lips are sealed-
he has not been chosen by Heaven to proclaim its will.
Therefore, let the writer remain by his ink-well,
engaging in 'theoretical' activity, if his intelligence and ability are equal
to it; for leadership he is neither born nor chosen.
A movement with great aims must therefore be anxiously on
its guard not to lose contact with the broad masses.
It must examine every question primarily from this
standpoint and make its decisions accordingly.
It must, furthermore, avoid everything which might
diminish or even weaken its ability to move the masses, not for 'demagogic'
reasons, but in the simple knowledge that without the mighty force of the mass
of a people, no great idea, however lofty and noble it may seem, can be
realized.
Hard reality alone must determine the road to the goal;
unwillingness to travel unpleasant roads only too often in this world means to
renounce the goal; which may or may not be what you want.
As soon as the Pan-German movement by its parliamentary
attitude had shifted the weight of its activity to parliament instead of the
people, it lost the future and instead won cheap successes of the
moment.
It chose the easier struggle and thereby became unworthy of ultimate
victory.
Even in Vienna I pondered this very question with the greatest care,
and in the failure to recognize it saw one of the main causes of the collapse
of the movement which in those days, in my opinion, was predestined to
undertake the leadership of the German element.
The first two mistakes which caused the Pan-German
movement to founder were related to each other. Insufficient knowledge of the
inner driving forces of great revolutions led to an insufficient estimation of
the importance of the broad masses of the people; from this resulted its
insufficient interest in the social question, its deficient and inadequate
efforts to win the soul of the lower classes of the nation, as well as its
over-favorable attitude toward parliament.
If they had recognized the tremendous power which at all
times must be attributed to the masses as the repository of revolutionary
resistance, they would have worked differently in social and propagandist
matters. Then the movement's center of gravity would not have been shifted to
parliament, but to the workshop and the street.
Likewise the third error finds its ultimate germ in
failure to recognize the value of the masses, which, it is true, need superior
minds to set them in motion in a given direction, but which then, like a
flywheel, lend the force of the attack momentum and uniform
persistence.
The hard struggle which the Pan-germans fought with the
Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient understanding
of the spiritual nature of the people.
The causes for the new party's violent attack on Rome
were as follows:
As soon as the House of Habsburg had definitely made up
its mind to reshape Austria into a Slavic state, it seized upon every means
which seemed in any way suited to this tendency. Even religious institutions
were, without the
slightest qualms, harnessed to the service of the new '
state idea ' by
this unscrupulous ruling house.
The use of Czech pastorates and their spiritual shepherds
was but one of the many means of attaining this goal, a general Slavization of
Austria.
The process took approximately the following form:
Czech pastors were appointed to German communities;
slowly but surely they began to set the interests of the Czech people above the
interests of the churches, becoming germ-cells of the de-Germanization process.
The German clergy did practically nothing to counter these methods.
Not only were they completely useless for carrying on this struggle in a
positive German sense; they were even unable to oppose the necessary resistance
to the attacks of the adversary. Indirectly, by the misuse of religion on the
one hand, and owing to insufficient defense on the other, Germanism was slowly
but steadily forced back.
If in small matters the situation was as described, in
big things, unfortunately, it was not far different.
Here, too, the anti-German efforts of the Habsburgs did
not encounter the resistance they should have, especially on the part of the
high clergy, while the defense of German interests sank completely into the
background.
The general impression could only be that the Catholic
clergy as such was grossly infringing on German rights.
Thus the Church did not seem to feel with the German
people, but to side unjustly with the enemy. The root of the whole evil lay,
particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the di-recting body of
the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it
was hostile to the interests of our nationality.
The so-called cultural problems, in this as in virtually
every other connection in Austria at that time, were relegated almost entirely
to the background. The attitude of the Pan-German movement toward the Catholic
Church was determined far less by its position on science, etc., than by its
inadequacy in the championing of German rights and, conversely, its continued
aid and comfort to Slavic arrogance and greed.
Georg Schonerer was not the man to do things by halves.
He took up the struggle toward the Church in the conviction that by it alone he
could save the German people. The 'AwayfromRome' movement seemed the most
powerful, though, to be sure, the most difficult, mode of attack, which would
inevitably shatter the hostile citadel. If it was successful, the tragic church
schism in Germany would be healed, and it was possible that the inner strength
of the Empire and the German nation would gain enormously by such a
victory.
But neither the premise nor the inference of this struggle was
correct.
Without doubt the national force of resistance of the Catholic
clergy of German nationality, in all questions connected with Germanism, was
less than that of their non-German, particularly Czech, brethren.
Likewise only an ignoramus could fail to see that an
offensive in favor of German interests was something that practically never
occurred to the German clergyman.
And anyone who was not blind was forced equally to admit
that this was due primarily to a circumstance under which all of us Germans
have to suffer severely: that is, the objectivity of our attitude toward our
nationality as well as everything else.
While the Czech clergyman was
subjective in his attitude toward his people and objective only toward the
Church, the German pastor was subjectively devoted to the Church and remained
objective toward the nation. A phenomenon which, to our misfortune, we can
observe equally well in thousands of other cases.
This is by no means a
special legacy of Catholicism, but with us it quickly corrodes almost every
institution, whether it be governmental or ideal.
Just compare the position which our civil servants, for
example, take toward the attempts at a national awakening with the position
which in such a case the civil servants of another people would take. Or does
anyone believe that an officers' corps anywhere else in the world would
subordinate the interests of the nation amid mouthings about 'state authority,'
in the way that has been taken for granted in our country for the last five
years, in fact, has been viewed as especially meritorious? In the Jewish
question, for example, do not both denominations today take a standpoint which
corresponds neither to the requirements of the nation nor to the real needs of
religion? Compare the attitude of a Jewish rabbi in all questions of even the
slightest importance for the Jews as a race with the attitude of by far the
greatest part of our clergy-of both denominations, if you please!
We always find this phenomenon when it is a question of
defending an abstract idea as such.
'State authority,' 'democracy,' 'pacifism,'
'international solidarity,' etc., are all concepts which with us nearly always
become so rigid and purely doctrinaire that subsequently all purely national
vital necessities are judged exclusively from their standpoint.
This catastrophic way of considering all matters from the
angle of a preconceived opinion kills every possibility of thinking oneself
subjectively into a matter which is objectively opposed to one's own doctrine,
and finally leads to a total reversal of means and ends. People will reject any
attempt at a national uprising if it can take place only after the elimination
of a bad, ruinous regime, since this would be an offense against 'state
authority,' and ' state authority ' is not a means to an end, but in the eyes
of such a fanatical objectivist rather represents the aim itself, which is
sufficient to fill out his whole lamentable life. Thus, for example, they would
indignantly oppose any attempt at a dictatorship, even if it was represented by
a Frederick the Great and the momentary political comedians of a parliamentary
majority were incapable dwarfs or really inferior characters, just because the
law
of democracy seems holier to such a principle-monger than the welfare of
a nation. The one will therefore defend the worst tyranny, a tyranny which is
ruining the people, since at the moment it embodies 'state authority,' while
the other rejects even the most beneficial government as soon as it fails to
satisfy his conception of 'democracy.'
In exactly the same way, our German pacifist will accept
in silence the bloodiest rape of our nation at-the hands of the most vicious
military powers if a change in this state of affairs can be achieved only by
resistance-that is, force-for this would be contrary to the spirit of his peace
society. Let the international German Socialist be plundered in solidarity by
the rest of the world, he will accept it with brotherly affection and no
thought of retribution or even defense, just because he is-a German.
This may be a sad state of affairs, but to change a thing means to
recognize it first.
The same is true of the weak defense of German interests
by a part of the clergy.
It is neither malicious ill will in itself, nor is it
caused, let us say, by commands from 'above'; no, in such a lack of national
determination we see merely the result of an inadequate education in Germanism
from childhood up and, on the other hand, an unlimited submission to an idea
which has become an idol.
Education in democracy, in socialism of the international
variety, in pacifism, etc., is a thing so rigid and exclusive, so purely
subjective from these points of view, that the general picture of the remaining
world is colored by this dogmatic conception, while the attitude toward
Germanism has remained exceedingly objective from early youth. Thus, the
pacifist, by giving himself subjectively and entirely to his idea, will, in the
presence of any menace to his people, be it ever so grave and unjust, always
(in so far as he is a German) seek after the objective right and never from
pure instinct of self-preservation join the ranks of his herd and fight with
them.
To what extent this is also true of the different religions is shown
by the following:
Protestantism as such is a better defender of the
interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later
tradition: it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national
interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general
line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some
reason rejected.
Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the
advancement of all Germanism as such, as long as matters of inner purity or
national deepening as well as German freedom are involved since all these
things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the
greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its
most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more
or less dogmatically established. Yet here we are facing the question without
whose solution all other attempts at a German reawakening or resurrection are
and remain absolutely senseless and impossible.
In my Vienna period I had leisure and opportunity enough
for an unprejudiced examination of this question too, and in my daily contacts
was able to establish the correctness of this view a thousand times
over.
In this focus of the most varied nationalities, it immediately
becomes clearly apparent that the German pacifist is alone in always attempting
to view the interests of his own nation objectively, but that the Jew will
never regard those of the Jewish people in this way; that only the German
Socialist is linternaticnal' in a sense which forbids him to beg justice for
his own people except by whimpering and whining in the midst of his
international comrades, but never a Czech or a Pole, etc.; in short, I
recognized even then that the misfortune lies only partly in these doctrines,
and partly in our totally inadequate education in national sentiment and a
resultant lack of devotion to our nation.
Thus, the first theoretical foundation for a struggle of
the PanGerman movement against Catholicism as such was lacking.
Let the German people be raised from childhood up with
that exclusive recognition of the rights of their own nationality, and let not
the hearts of children be contaminated with the curse of our 'objectivity,'
even in matters regarding the preservation of their own ego. Then in a short
time it will be seen that (presupposing, of course, a radically national
government) in Germany, as in Ireland, Poland, or France, the Catholic will
always be a German.
The mightiest proof of this was provided by that epoch
which for the last time led our nation into a life-and-death struggle before
the judgment seat of history in defense of its own existence.
As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the
people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant
pastor or Catholic priest, both together contributed infinitely in maintaining
for so long our power to resist, not only at the front but also at home. In
these years and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both
camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man
turned to his own heaven.
The Pan-German movement in Austria should have asked
itself one question:
Is the preservation of German-Austrianism possible
under a Catholic faith, or is it not? If yes, the political party had no right
to concern itself with religious or denominational matters; if not, then what
was needed was a religious reformation and never a political party.
Anyone who thinks he can arrive at a religious reformation by the
detour of a political organization only shows that he has no glimmer of
knowledge of the development of religious ideas or dogmas and their
ecclesiastical consequences.
Verily a man cannot serve two masters. And I consider the
foundation or destruction of a religion far greater than the foundation or
destruction of a state, let alone a party.
And let it not be said that this is only a defense
against the attacks from the other side!
It is certain that at all times unscrupulous scoundrels
have not shunned to make even religion the instrument of their political
bargains (for that is what such rabble almost always and exclusively deal in):
but just as certainly it is wrong to make a religious denomination responsible
for a
number of tramps who abuse it in exactly the same way as they would
probably make anything else serve their low instincts.
Nothing can better suit one of these parliamentarian
good-for-nothings and lounge-lizards than when an opportunity is offered to
justify his political swindling, even after the fact.
For as soon as religion or even denomination is made
responsible for his personal vices and attacked on that ground, this shameless
liar sets up a great outcry and calls the whole world to witness that his
behavior has been completely justified and that he alone and his eloquence are
to be thanked for saving religion of the Church. The public, as stupid as it is
forgetful, is, as a rule, prevented by the very outcry from recognizing the
real instigator of the struggle or else has forgotten him, and the scoundrel
has to all intents and purposes achieved his goal.
The sly fox knows perfectly well that this has nothing to
do with religion; and he will silently laugh up his sleeve while his honest but
clumsy opponent loses the game and one day, despairing of the loyalty and faith
of humanity, withdraws from it all.
And in another sense it would be unjust to make religion
as such or even the Church responsible for the failings of individuals. Compare
the greatness of the visible organization before our eyes with the average
fallibility of man in general, and you will have to admit that in it the
relation of good and evil is better than anywhere else. To be sure, even among
the priests themselves there are those to whom their holy office is only a
means of satisfying their political ambition, yes, who in political struggle
forget, in a fashion which is often more than deplorable that they are supposed
to be the guardians of a higher truth and not the representatives of lies and
slander-but for one such unworthy priest there are a thousand and more
honorable ones, shepherds most loyally devoted to their mission, who, in our
present false and decadent period, stand out of the general morass like little
islands.
No more than I condemn, or would be justified in condemning, the
Church as such when a degenerate individual in a cassock obscenely transgresses
against morality, do I condemn it when one of the many others besmirches and
betrays his nationality at a time when this is a daily occurrence anyway.
Particularly today, we must not forget that for one such Ephialtes there are
thousands who with bleeding heart feel the misfortune of their people and like
the best of our nation long for the hour in which Heaven will smile on us
again.
And if anyone replies that here we are not concerned with such
everyday problems, but with questions of principle and truth or dogmatic
content, we can aptly counter with another question:
If you believe that you have been chosen by Fate to
reveal the truth in this matter, do so; but then have the courage to do so, not
indirectly through a political party-for this is a swindle; but for today's
evil substitute your future good.
But if you lack courage, or if your good is not quite
clear even to yourself, then keep your fingers out of the matter; in any case,
do not attempt by roundabout sneaking through a political movement to do what
you dare not do with an open vizor.
Political parties have nothing to do with religious
problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals
and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the
scheming of political parties.
When Church dignitaries make use of religious
institutions or doctrines to injure their nation, we must never follow them on
this path and fight with the same methods.
For the political leader the religious doctrines and
institutions of his people trust always remain inviolable; or else he has no
right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it
takes!
Especially in Germany any other attitude would lead to a
catastrophe.
In my study of the Pan-German movement and its struggle
against Rome, I then, and even more in the years to come, arrived at the
following conviction: This movement's inadequate appreciation of the importance
of the social problem cost it the truly militant mass of the people; its entry
into parliament took away its mighty impetus and burdened it with all the
weaknesses peculiar to this institution; the struggle against the Catholic
Church made it impossible in numerous small and middle circles, and thus robbed
it of countless of the best elements that the nation can call its own.
The practical result of the Austrian Kulturkampf At was next
to
To be sure, it succeeded in tearing some hundred thousand members
away from the Church, yet without causing it any particular damage. In this
case the Church really had no need to shed tears over the lost 'lambs'; for it
lost only those who had long ceased to belong to it. The difference between the
new reformation and the old one was that in the old days many of the best
people in the Church turned away from it through profound religious conviction,
while now only those who were lukewarm to begin with departed, and this from
'considerations' of a political nature.
And precisely from the political standpoint the result
was just as laughable as it was sad.
Once again a promising political movement for the
salvation of the German nation had gone to the dogs because it had not been led
with the necessary cold ruthlessness, but had lost itself in fields which could
only lead to disintegration.
For one thing is assuredly true:
The Pan-German movement would never have made this
mistake but for its insufficient understanding of the psyche of the broad
masses. If its leaders had known that to achieve any success one should, on
purely psychological grounds, never show the masses two or more opponents,
since this leads to a total disintegration of their fighting power, for this
reason alone the thrust of the Pan-German movement would have been directed at
a single adversary. Nothing is more dangerous for a political party than to be
led by those jacks-of-all-trades who want everything but can never really
achieve anything.
Regardless how much room for criticism there was in any
religious denomination a political party must never for a moment lose sight of
the fact that in all previous historical experience a purely political party in
such situations had never succeeded in producing a religious reformation. And
the aim of studying history is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises
for its practical application, or to decide that the present situation is
different after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer
applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its lesson for the
present. The man who cannot do this must not conceive of himself as a political
leader; in reality he is a shallow, though usually very conceited, fool, and no
amount of good will can excuse his practical incapacity.
In general the art of all truly great national leaders at
all times consists among other things primarily in not dividing the attention
of a people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe. The more unified the
application of a people's will to fight, the greater will be the magnetic
attraction of a movement and the mightier will be the impetus of the thrust. It
belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed
from one another seem to belong to a single category, because in weak and
uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too
readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right.
Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against
too many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing open the
question whether all others are really wrong and only their own people or their
own movement are in the right.
And this brings about the first paralysis of their own
power. Hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be
combined
so that in the eyes of the masses of one's own supporters the struggle is
directed against only one enemy. This strengthens their faith in their own
right and enhances their bitterness against those who attack it.
That the old Pan-German movement failed to understand
this deprived it of success.
Its goal had been correct, its will pure, but the road it
chose was wrong. It was like a mountain climber who keeps the peak to be
climbed in view and who sets out with the greatest determination and energy,
but pays no attention to the trail, for his eyes are always on his goal, so
that he neither sees nor feels out the character of the ascent and thus comes
to grief in the end.
The opposite state of affairs seemed to prevail with its
great competitor, the Christian Social Party.
The road it chose was correct and well-chosen, but it
lacked clear knowledge of its goal.
In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German
movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct
and well-planned.
It possessed the necessary understanding for the
importance of the masses and from the very first day assured itself of at least
a part of them by open emphasis on its social character. By aiming essentially
at winning the small and lower middle classes and artisans, it obtained a
following as enduring as it was self-sacrificing. It avoided any struggle
against a religious institution and thus secured the support of that mighty
organization which the Church represents. Consequently, it possessed only a
single truly great central opponent. It recognized the value of large-scale
propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the
broad masses of its adherents.
If nevertheless it was unable to achieve its goal and
dream of saving Austria, this was due to two deficiencies in its method and to
its lack of clarity concerning the aim itself.
The anti-Semitism of the new movement was based on
religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. The reason for the intrusion of
this mistake was the same which brought about the second fallacy
If the Christian Social Party wanted to save Austria,
then is; the opinion of its founders it must not operate from the standpoint of
the racial principle, for if it did a dissolution of the state would, in a
short time, inevitably occur. Particularly the situation in Vienna itself, in
the opinion of the party leaders, demanded that all points which would divide
their following should be set aside as much as possible, and that all unifying
conceptions be emphasized in their stead.
At that time Vienna was so strongly permeated especially
with Czech elements that only the greatest tolerance with regard to all racial
questions could keep them in a party which was not anti-German to begin with.
If Austria were to be saved, this was indispensable. And so they attempted to
win over small Czech artisans who were especially numerous in Vienna, by a
struggle against liberal Manchesterism, and in the struggle against the Jews on
a religious basis they thought they had discovered a slogan transcending all of
old Austria's national differences.
It is obvious that combating Jewry on such a basis could
provide the Jews with small cause for concern. If the worst came to the worst,
a splash of baptismal water could always save the business and the Jew at the
same time. With such a superficial motivation, a serious scientific treatment
of the whole problem was never achieved, and as a result far too many people,
to whom this type of anti-Semitism was bound to be incomprehensible, were
repelled. The recruiting power of the idea was limited almost exclusively to
intellectually limited circles, unless true knowledge were substituted for
purely emotional feeling. The intelligentsia remained aloof as a matter of
principle. Thus the whole movement came to look more and more like an attempt
at a new conversion of the Jews, or perhaps even an expression of a certain
competitive envy. And hence the struggle lost the character of an inner and
higher consecration; to many, and not necessarily the worst people, it came to
seem immoral and reprehensible. Lacking was the conviction that this was a
vital question for all humanity, with the fate of all non-Jewish peoples
depending on its solution.
Through this halfheartedness the anti-Semitic line of the
Christian Social Party lost its value.
It was a sham anti-Semitism which was almost worse than
none at all; for it lulled people into security; they thought they had the foe
by the ears, while in reality they themselves were being led by the nose.
In
a short time the Jew had become so accustomed to this type of anti-Semitism
that he would have missed its disappearance more than its presence
inconvenienced him.
If in this the Christian Social Party had to make a heavy
sacrifice to the state of nationalities, they had to make an even greater one
when it came to championing Germanism as such.
They could not be 'nationalistic' unless they wanted to
lose the ground from beneath their feet in Vienna. They hoped that by a
pussy-footing evasion of this question they could still save the Habsburg
state, and by that very thing they encompassed its ruin. And the movement lost
the mighty source of power which alone can fill a political party with inner
strength for any length of time.
Through this alone the Christian Social Party became a
party like any other.
In those days I followed both movements most attentively
One, by feeling the beat of its innermost heart, the other, carried away by
admiration for the unusual man who even then seemed to me a bitter symbol of
all Austrian Germanism.
When the mighty funeral procession bore the dead mayor
from the City Hall toward the Ring, I was among the many hundred thousands
looking on at the tragic spectacle. I was profoundly moved and my feelings told
me that the work, even of this man, was bound to be in vain, owing to the fatal
destiny which would inevitably lead this state to destruction. If Dr. Karl
Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of
our people; that he lived and worked in this impossible state was the
misfortune of his work and of himself.
When he died, the little flames in the Balkans were
beginning to leap up more greedily from month to month, and it was a gracious
fate which spared him from witnessing what he still thought he could
prevent.
Out of the failure of the one movement and the miscarriage of the
other, I for my part sought to find the causes, and came to the certain
conviction that, quite aside from the impossibility of bolstering up the state
in old Austria, the errors of the two parties were as follows:
The Pan-German movement was right in its theoretical view
about the aim of a German renascence, but unfortunate in its choice of methods.
It was nationalistic, but unhappily not socialistic enough to win the masses.
But its anti-Semitism was based on a correct understanding of the importance of
the racial problem, and not on religious ideas. Its struggle against a definite
denomination, however, was actually and tactically false.
The Christian Social movement had an unclear conception
of the aim of a German reawakening, but had intelligence and luck in seeking
its methods as a party. It understood the importance of the social question,
erred in its struggle against the Jews, and had no notion of the power of the
national idea.
If, in addition to its enlightened knowledge of the broad
masses, the Christian Social Party had had a correct idea of the importance of
the racial question, such as the Pan-German movement had achieved; and if,
finally, it had itself been nationalistic, or if the Pan-German movement, in
addition to its correct knowledge of the aim of the Jewish question, had
adopted the practical shrewdness of the Christian Social Party, especially in
its attitude toward socialism, there would have resulted a movement which even
then in my opinion might have successfully intervened in German
destiny.
If this did not come about, it was overwhelmingly due to the nature
of the Austrian state.
Since I saw my conviction realized in no other party, I
could in the period that followed not make up my mind to enter, let alone fight
with, any of the existing organizations. Even then I regarded all political
movements as unsuccessful and unable to carry out a national reawakening of the
German people on a larger and not purely external scale.
But in this period my inner revulsion toward the Habsburg
state steadily grew.
The more particularly I concerned myself with questions of
foreign policy, the more my conviction rose and took root that this political
formation could result in nothing but the misfortune of Germanism. More and
more clearly I saw at last that the fate of the German nation would no longer
be decided here, but in the Reich itself. This was true, not only of political
questions, but no less for all manifestations of cultural life in
general.
Also in the field of cultural or artistic affairs, the Austrian
state showed all symptoms of degeneration, or at least of unimportance for the
German nation. This was most true in the field of architecture. The new
architecture could achieve no special successes in Austria, if for no other
reason because since the completion of the Ring its tasks, in Vienna at least,
had become insignificant in comparison with the plans arising in
Germany.
Thus more and more I began to lead a double life; reason and reality
told me to complete a school as bitter as it was beneficial in Austria, but my
heart dwelt elsewhere.
An oppressive discontent had seized possession of me, the
more I recognized the inner hollowness of this state and the impossibility of
saving it, and felt that in all things it could be nothing but the misfortune
of the German people.
I was convinced that this state inevitably oppressed and
handicapped any really great German as, conversely, it would help every
un-German figure.
I was repelled by the conglomeration of races which the
capital showed me, repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians,
Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere, the eternal mushroom of
humanity-Jews and more Jews.
To me the giant city seemed the embodiment of racial
desecration.
The German of my youth was the dialect of Lower Bavaria,
I could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon. The longer I lived in
this city, the more my hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples which had
begun to corrode this old site of German culture.
The idea that this state could be maintained much longer
seemed to me positively ridiculous.
Austria was then like an old mosaic; the cement, binding
the various little stones together, had grown old and begun to crumble; as long
as the work of art is not touched, it can continue to give a show of existence,
but as soon as it receives a blow, it breaks into a thousand fragments. The
question was only when the blow would come.
Since my heart had never beaten for an Austrian monarchy,
but only for a German Reich, the hour of this state's downfall could only seem
to me the beginning of the redemption of the German nation.
For all these reasons a longing rose stronger and
stronger in me, to go at last whither since my childhood secret desires and
secret love had drawn me.
I hoped some day to make a name for myself as an
architect and thus, on the large or small scale which Fate would allot me, to
dedicate my sincere services to the nation.
But finally I wanted to enjoy the happiness of living and
working in the place which some day would inevitably bring about the
fulfillment of my most ardent and heartfelt wish: the union of my beloved
homeland with the common fatherland, the German Reich.
Even today many would be unable to comprehend the
greatness of such a longing, but I address myself to those to whom Fate has
either hitherto denied this, or from whom in harsh cruelty it has taken it
away; I address myself to all those who, detached from their mother country,
have to fight even for the holy treasure of their language, who are persecuted
and tortured for their loyalty to the fatherland, and who now, with poignant
emotion, long for the hour which will permit them to return to the heart of
their faithful mother; I address myself to all these, and I know that they will
understand me !
Only he who has felt in his own skin what it means to be a
German, deprived of the right to belong to his cherished fatherland, can
measure the deep longing which burns at all times in the hearts of children
separated from their mother country. It torments those whom it fills and denies
them contentment and happiness until the gates of their father's house open,
and in the common Reich, common blood gains peace and tranquillity.
Yet Vienna was and remained for me the hardest, though most
thorough, school of my life. I had set foot in this town while still half a boy
and I left it a man, grown quiet and grave. In it I obtained the foundations
for a philosophy in general and a political view in particular which later I
only needed to supplement in detail, but which never left me. But not until
today have I been able to estimate at their full value those years of
study.
That is why I have dealt with this period at some length, because it
gave me my first visual instruction in precisely those questions which belonged
to the foundations of a party which, arising from smallest beginnings, after
scarcely five years is beginning to develop into a great mass movement. I do
not know what my attitude toward the Jews, Social Democracy, or rather Marxism
as a whole, the social question, etc., would be today if at such an early time
the pressure of destiny-and my own study -had not built up a basic stock of
personal opinions within me.
For if the misery of the fatherland can stimulate
thousands and thousands of men to thought on the inner reasons for this
collapse, this can never lead to that thoroughness and deep insight which are
disclosed to the man who has himself mastered Fate only after years of
struggle.
Chapter IV: Munich
IN THE SPRING of 1912 I came at last to Munich.
The city itself was as familiar to me as if I had lived
for years within its walls. This is accounted for by my study which at every
step had led me to this metropolis of German art. Not only has one not seen
Germany if one does not know Munich-no, above all, one does not know German art
if one has not seen Munich.
In any case, this period before the War was the happiest
and by far the most contented of my life. Even if my earnings were still
extremely meager, I did not live to be able to paint, but painted only to be
able to secure my livelihood or rather to enable myself to go on studying. I
possessed the conviction that I should some day, in spite of all obstacles,
achieve the goal I had set myself. And this alone enabled me to bear all other
petty cares of daily existence lightly and without anxiety.
In addition to
this, there was the heartfelt love which seized me for this city more than for
any other place that I knew, almost from the first hour of my sojourn there. A
German city! What a difference from Vienna! I grew sick to my stomach when I
even thought back on this Babylon of races. In addition, the dialect, much
closer to me, which particularly in my contacts with Lower Bavarians, reminded
me of my former childhood. There were a thousand and more things which were or
became inwardly dear and precious to me. But most of all I was attracted by
this wonderful marriage of primordial power and fine artistic mood, this single
line from the Hofbrauhaus to the Odeon, from the October Festival to the
Pinakothek, etc. If today I am more attached to this city than to any other
spot of earth in this world, it is partly due to the fact that it is and
remains inseparably bound up with the development of my own life; if even then
I achieved the happiness of a truly inward contentment, it can be attributed
only to the magic which the miraculous residence of the Wittelsbachs exerts on
every man who is blessed, not only with a calculating mind but with a feeling
soul.
What attracted me most aside from my professional work was, here
again, the study of the political events of the day, among them particularly
the occurrences in the field of foreign affairs. I came to these latter
indirectly through the German alliance policy which from my Austrian days I
considered absolutely mistaken. However, the full extent of this self-deception
on the part of the Reich had not been clear to me in Vienna. In those days I
was inclined to assume-or perhaps I merely talked myself into it as an
excuse-that Berlin perhaps knew how weak and unreliable the ally would be in
reality, yet, for more or less mysterious reasons, held back this knowledge in
order to bolster up an alliance policy which after all Bismarck himself had
founded and the sudden cessation of which could not be desirable, if for no
other reason lest the lurking foreigner be alarmed in any way, or the
shopkeeper at home be worried.
To be sure, my associations, particularly among the
people itself, soon made me see to my horror that this belief was false. To my
amazement I could not help seeing everywhere that even in otherwise
well-informed circles there was not the slightest glimmer of knowledge
concerning the nature of the Habsburg monarchy. Particularly the common people
were caught in the mad idea that the ally could be regarded as a serious power
which in the hour of need would surely rise to the situation. Among the masses
the monarchy was still regarded as a ' German' state on which we could count.
They were of the opinion that there, too, the power could be measured by the
millions as in Germany itself, and completely forgot that, in the first place:
Austria had long ceased to be a German state; and in the second place: the
internal conditions of this Empire were from hour to hour moving closer to
disintegration.
I had come to know this state formation better than the
so-called official 'diplomats,' who blindly, as almost always, rushed headlong
toward catastrophe; for the mood of the people was always a mere discharge of
what was funneled into public opinion from above. But the people on top made a
cult of the 'ally,' as if it were the Golden Calf. They hoped to replace by
cordiality what was lacking in honesty. And words were always taken for coin of
the realm.
Even in Vienna I had been seized with anger when I reflected on
the disparity appearing from time to time between the speeches of the official
statesmen and the content of the Viennese press. And yet Vienna, in appearance
at least, was still a German city. How different it was if you left Vienna, or
rather German-Austria, and went to the Slavic provinces of the Empire ! You had
only to take up the Prague newspapers to find out what they thought of the
whole exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance. There there was nothing but
bitter scorn and mockery for this 'masterpiece of statecraft.' In the midst of
peace, with both emperors pressing kisses of friendship on each other's
foreheads, the Czechs made no secret of the fact that this alliance would be
done for on the day when an attempt should be made to translate it from the
moonbeams of the Nibelungen ideal into practical reality.
What excitement seized these same people several years
later when the time finally came for the alliances to show their worth and
Italy leapt out of the triple pact, leaving her two comrades in the lurch, and
in the end even becoming their enemy ! That anyone even for a moment should
have dared to believe in the possibility of such a miracle-to wit, the mirade
that Italy would fight side by side with Austria-could be nothing but
incomprehensible to anyone who was not stricken with diplomatic blindness. But
in Austria things were not a hair's-breadth different.
In Austria the only exponents of the alliance idea were
the Habsburgs and the Germans. The Habsburgs, out of calculation and
compulsion; the Germans, from good faith and political-stupidity. From good
faith, for they thought that by the Triple Alliance they were performing a
great service for the German Reich itself, helping to strengthen and secure it;
from political stupidity, because neither did the first-mentioned occur, but on
the contrary, they thereby helped to chain the Reich to the corpse of a state
which would inevitably drag them both into the abyss, and above all because
they themselves, solely by virtue of this alliance, fell more and more a prey
to de-Germanization. For by the alliance with the Reich, the Habsburgs thought
they could be secure against any interference from this side, which
unfortunately was the case, and thus they were able far more easily and safely
to carry through their internal policy of slowly eliminating Germanism. Not
only that in view of our well-known ' objectivity' they had no need to fear any
intervention on the part of the Reich government, but, by pointing to the
alliance, they could also silence any embarrassing voice among the
Austrian-Germans which might rise in German quarters against Slavization of an
excessively disgraceful character.
For what was the German in Austria to do if the Germans
of the Reich recognized and expressed confidence in the Habsburg government?
Should he offer resistance and be branded by the entire German public as a
traitor to his own nationality? When for decades he had been making the most
enormous sacrifices precisely for his nationality!
But what value did this alliance have, once Germanism had
been exterminated in the Habsburg monarchy? Wasn't the value of the Triple
Alliance for Germany positively dependent on the preservation of German
predominance in Austria? Or did they really believe that they could live in an
alliance with a SlavicHabsburg Empire?
The attitude of official German diplomacy and of all
public opinion toward the internal Austrian problem of nationalities was beyond
stupidity, it was positively insane ! They banked on an alliance, made the
future and security of a people of seventy millions dependent on it-and looked
on while the sole basis for this alliance was from year to year, inexorably and
by plan, being destroyed in the partner-nation. The day was bound to come when
a ' treaty ' with Viennese diplomacy would remain, but the aid of an allied
empire would be lost.
With Italy this was the case from the very
beginning.
If people in Germany had only studied history a little
more clearly, and gone into the psycholog of nations, they would not have been
able to suppose even for an hour that the Quirinal and the Vienna Hofburg would
ever stand together n a common fighting front. Sooner would Italy have turned
into a volcano than a government have dared to send even a single Italian to
the battlefield for the fanatically hated Habsburg state, except as an enemy.
More than once in Vienna I saw outbursts of the passionate contempt and
bottomless hatred with which the Italian was ' devoted ' to the Austrian state.
The sins of the House of Habsburg against Italian freedom and independence in
the course of the centuries was too great to be forgotten, even if the will to
forget them had been present. And it was not present; neither in the people nor
in the Italian government. For Italy there were therefore two possibilities for
relations with Austna: either alliance or war.
By choosing the first, the Italians were able to prepare,
undisturbed, for the second.
Especially since the relation of Austria to Russia had
begun to drive closer and closer to a military clash, the German alliance
policy was as senseless as it was dangerous.
This was a classic case, bearing witness to the absence
of any broad and correct line of thinking.
Why, then, was an alliance concluded? Only in order
better to guard the future of the Reich than, reduced to her own resources, she
would have been in a position to do. And this future of the Reich was nothing
other than the question of preserving the German people's possibility of
existence.
Therefore the question could be formulated only as
follows:
What form must the life of the German nation assume in the tangible
future, and how can this development be provided with the necessary foundations
and the required security within the framework of general European relation of
forces?
A clear examination of the premises for foreign activity on the part
of German statecraft inevitably led to the following conviction:
Germany has an annual increase in population of nearly
nine hundred thousand souls. The difficulty of feeding this army of new
citizens must grow greater from year to year and ultimately end in catastrophe,
unless ways and means are found to forestall the danger of starvation and
misery in time.
There were four ways of avoiding so terrible a
development for the future:
1. Following the French example, the increase of births
could be artificially restricted, thus meeting the problem of
overpopulation
Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climactic
conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of
population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise
as it is ruthless. She diminishes, not the power of procreation as such, but
the conservation of the procreated, by exposing them to hard trials and
deprivations with the result that all those who are less strong and less
healthy are forced back into the womb of the eternal unknown. Those whom she
permits to survive the inclemency of existence are a thousandfold tested
hardened, and well adapted to procreate-in turn, in order that the process of
thoroughgoing selection may begin again from the beginning. By thus brutally
proceeding against the individual and immediately calling him back to herself
as soon as he shows himself unequal to the storm of life, she keeps the race
and species strong, in fact, raises them to the highest
accomplishments.
At the same time the diminution of number strengthens the
individual and thus in the last analysis fortifies the species.
It is different, however, when man undertakes the
limitation of his number. He is not carved of the same wood, he is ' humane.'
He knows better than the cruel queen of wisdom. He limits not the conservation
of the individual, but procreation itself. This seems to him, who always sees
himself and never the race, more human and more justified than the opposite
way. Unfortunately, however, the consequences are the reverse:
While Nature, by making procreation free, yet submitting
survival to a hard trial, chooses from an excess number of individuals the best
as worthy of living, thus preserving them alone and in them conserving their
species, man limits procreation, but is hysterically concerned that once a
being is born it should be preserved at any price. This correction of the
divine will seems to him as wise as it is humane, and he takes delight in
having once again gotten the best of Nature and even having proved her
inadequacy. The number, to be sure, has really been limited, but at the same
time the value of the individual has dirninished; this, however, is something
the dear little ape of the Almighty does not want to see or hear about.
For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of
births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the
strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to '
save ' even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed
of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the
longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues.
And the end will be that such a people will some day be
deprived of its existence on this earth; for man can defy the eternal laws of
the will to conservation for a certain time, but sooner or later vengeance
comes. A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its
ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd fetters of the
so-called humanity of individuals, in order to replace it by the humanity of
Nature which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong.
Therefore, anyone who wants to secure the existence of
the German people by a self-limitation of its reproduction is robbing it of its
future.
2. A second way would be one which today we, time and time again,
see proposed and recommended: internal colonization. This is a proposal which
is well meant by just as many as by most people it is misunderstood, thus doing
the greatest conceivable damage that anyone can imagined
Without doubt the productivity of the soil can be
increased up to a certain limit. But only up to a certain limit, and not
continuously without end. For a certain time it will be possible to compensate
for the increase of the German people without having to think of hunger, by
increasing the productivity of our soil. But beside this, we must face the fact
that our demands on life ordinarily nse even more rapidly than the number of
the population Man's requirements with regard to food and clothing increase
from year to year, and even now, for example, stand in no relation to the
requirements of our ancestors, say a hundred years ago. It IS, therefore,
insane to believe that every rise in production provides the basis for an
increase in population: no; this is true only up to a certain degree, since at
least a part of the increased production of the soil is spent in satisfying the
increased needs of men. But even with the greatest limitation on the one hand
and the utmost industry on the other, here again a limit will one day be
reached, created by the soil itself. With the utmost toil it will not be
possible to obtain any more from its and then, though postponed for a certain
time, catastrophe again manifests itself. First, there will be hunger from time
to time, when there is famine, etc. As the population increases, this will
happen more and more often, so that finally it will only be absent when rare
years of great abundance fill the granaries. But at length the time approaches
when even then it will not be possible to satisfy men's needs, and hunger has
become the eternal companion of such a people. Then Nature must help again and
make a choice among those whom she has chosen for life; but again man helps
himself; that is, he turns to artificial restriction of his increase with all
the above-indicated dire consequences for race and species.
The objection may still be raised that this future will
face the whole of humanity in any case and that consequently the individual
nation can naturally not avoid this fate.
At first glance this seems perfectly correct. Yet here
the following must be borne in mind:
Assuredly at a certain time the whole of humanity will be
compelled, in consequence of the impossibility of making the fertility of the
soil keep pace with the continuous increase in population, to halt the increase
of the human race and either let Nature again decide or, by self-help if
possible, create the necessary balance, though, to be sure, in a more correct
way than is done today. But then this will strike all peoples, while today only
those races are stricken with such suffering which no longer possess the force
and strength to secure for themselves the necessary territories in this world.
For as matters stand there are at the present time on this earth immense areas
of unusued soil, only waiting for the men to till them. But it is equally true
that Nature as such has not reserved this soil for the future possession of any
particular nation or race; on the contrary, this soil exists for the people
which possesses the force to take it and the industry to cultivate it.
Nature knows no political boundaries. First, she puts living
creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers
the master's right on her favorite child, the strongest in courage and
industry.
When a people limits itself to internal colonization because other
races are clinging fast to greater and greater surfaces of this earth, it will
be forced to have recourse to self-limitation at a time when the other peoples
are still continuing to increase. Some day this situation will arise, and the
smaller the living space at the disposal of the people, the sooner it will
happen. Since in general, unfortunately, the best nations, or, even more
correctly, the only truly cultured races, the standard-bearers of all human
progress, all too frequently resolve in their pacifistic blindness to renounce
new acquisitions of soil and content themselves with 'internal' colonization,
while the inferior races know how to secure immense living areas in this world
for themselves-this would lead to the following final result:
The culturally superior, but less ruthless races, would
in consequence of their limited soil, have to limit their increase at a time
when the culturally inferior but more brutal and more natural t peoples, in
consequence of their greater living areas, would still be in a position to
increase without limit. In other words: some day the world will thus come into
possession of the culturally inferior but more active men.
Then, though in a perhaps very distant future, there will
be but two possibilities either the world will be governed according to the
ideas of our modern democracy, and then the weight of any decision will result
in favor of the numerically stronger races, or the world will be dominated in
accordance with the laws of the natural order of force, and then it is the
peoples of brutal will who will conquer, and consequently once again not the
nation of selfrestriction.
No one can doubt that this world will some day be exposed
to the severest struggles for the existence of mankind. In the end, only the
urge for self-preservation can conquer. Beneath it socalled humanity, the
expression of a mixture of stupidity, cowardice, and know-it-all conceit, will
melt like snow in the March sun. Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle,
and only in eternal peace does it perish.
For us Germans the slogan of 'inner colonization' is
catastrophic, if for no other reason because it automatically reinforces us in
the opinion that we have found a means which, in accordance with the pacifistic
tendency, allows us ' to earn ' our right to exist by labor in a life of sweet
slumbers. Once this doctrine were taken seriously in our country, it would mean
the end of every exertion to preserve for ourselves the place which is our due.
Once the average German became convinced that he could secure his life and
future in this way, all attempts at an active, and hence alone fertile, defense
of German vital necessities would be doomed to failure. In the face of such an
attitude on the part of the nation any really beneficial foreign policy could
be regarded as buried, and with it the future of the German people as a
whole.
Taking these consequences into account, it is no accident that it is
always primarily the Jew who tries and succeeds in planting such mortally
dangerous modes of thought in our people. He knows his customers too well not
to realize that they gratefully let themselves be swindled by any gold-brick
salesman who can make them think he has found a way to play a little trick on
Nature, to make the hard, inexorable struggle for existence superfluous, and
instead, sometimes by work, but sometimes by plain doing nothing, depending on
how things 'come out,' to become the lord of the planet.
It cannot be emphasized sharply enough that any German
internal colonization must serve to eliminate social abuses particularly to
withdraw the soil from widespread speculation, best can never suffice to secure
the future of the nation without the acquisition of new soil.
If we do not do this, we shall in a short time have
arrived, not only at the end of our soil, but also at the end of our
strength.
Finally, the following must be stated:
The limitation to a definite small area of soil, inherent
in internal colonization, like the same final effect obtained by restriction of
procreation, leads to an exceedingly unfavorable politicomilitary situation in
the nation in question.
The size of the area inhabited by a people constitutes in
itself an essential factor for determining its outward security. The greater
the quantity of space at the disposal of a people, the greater its natural
protection; for military decisions against peoples living in a small restricted
area have always been obtained more quickly and hence more easily, and in
particular more effectively and completely than can, conversely, be possible
against territorially extensive states. In the size of a state's territory
there always lies a certain protection against frivolous attacks, since success
can be achieved only after hard struggles, and therefore the risk of a rash
assault will seem too great unless there are quite exceptional grounds for it.
Hence the very size of a state offers in itself a basis for more easily
preserving the freedom and independence of a people, while, conversely, the
smallness of such a formation is a positive invitation to seizure.
Actually the two first possibilities for creating a
balance between the rising population and the stationary amount of soil were
rejected in the so-called national circles of the Reich. The reasons for this
position were, to be sure, different from those above mentioned: government
circles adopted a negative attitude toward the limitation of births out of a
certain moral feeling; they indignantly rejected internal colonization because
in it they scented an attack against large landholdings and therein the
beginning of a wider struggle against private property in general. In view of
the form in which particularly the latter panacea was put forward, they may
very well have been right in this assumption.
On the whole, the defense against the broad masses was not
very skillful and by no means struck at the heart of the problem.
Thus there
remained but two ways of securing work and bread for the rising
population.
3. Either new soil could be acquired and the superfluous
millions sent off each year, thus keeping the nation on a selfsustaining basis;
or we could
4. Produce for foreign needs through industry and
commerce, and defray the cost of living from the proceeds.
In other words: either a territorial policy, or a
colonial and commercial policy.
Both ways were contemplated, examined, recommended, and
combated by different political tendencies, and the last was finally
taken.
The healthier way of the two would, to be sure, have been the
first.
The acquisition of new soil for the settlement of the excess
population possesses an infinite number of advantages, particularly if wee turn
from the present to the future.
For once thing, the possibility of preserving a healthy
peasant class as a foundation for a whole nation can never be valued highly
enough. Many of our present-day sufferings are only the consequence of the
unhealthy relationship between rural and city population A solid stock of small
and middle peasants has at all times been the best defense against social ills
such as we possess today. And, moreover this is the only solution which enables
a nation to earn its daily bread within the inner circuit of its economy.
Industry and commerce recede from their unhealthy leading position and adjust
themselves to the general framework of a national economy of balanced supply
and demand. Both thus cease to be the basis of the nation's sustenance and
become a mere instrument to that end. Since they now have only a balance '
Aberdeen domestic production and demand in all fields, they make the
Subsistence of the people as a whole more or less independent foreign
countries, and thus help to secure the freedom of the stite and the
independence of the nation, particularly in difficult Periods.
It must be
said that such a territorial policy cannot be fulfilled in the Cameroons, but
today almost exclusively in Europe. We must, therefore, coolly and objectively
adopt the standpoint that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to
give one people fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another. In
this case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of
eternal justice. If this earth really has room for all to live in, let us be
given the soil we need for our livelihood.
True, they will no t willingly do this. But then the law
of selfpreservaion goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods,
it is up to the fist to take. If our forefathers had let their decisions depend
on the same pacifistic nonsense as our contemporaries, we should possess only a
third of our present territory; but in that case there would scarcely be any
German people for us to worry about in Europe today. No-it is to our natural
determination to fight for our own existence that we owe the two Ostmarks of
the Reich and hence that inner strength arising from the greatness of our state
and national territory which alone has enabled us to exist up to the
present.
And for another reason this would have been the correct
solution
Today many European states are like pyramids stood on their heads.
Their European area is absurdly small in comparison to their weight of
colonies, foreign trade, etc. We may say: summit in Europe, base in the whole
world; contrasting with the American Union which possesses its base in its own
continent and touches the rest of the earth only with its summit. And from this
comes the immense inner strength of this state and the weakness of most
European colonial powers.
Nor is England any proof to the contrary, since in
consideration of the British Empire we too easily forget the Anglo-Saxon world
as such. The position of England, if only because of her linguistic and
cultural bond with the American Union, can be compared to no other state in
Europe.
For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying out a
healthy territorial policy lay in the acquisition of new land in Europe itself.
Colonies cannot serve this purpose unless they seem in large part suited for
settlement by Europeans. But in the nineteenth century such colonial
territories were no longer obtainable by peaceful means. Consequently, such a
colonial policy could only have been carried out by means of a hard struggle
which, however, would have been carried on to much better purpose, not for
territories outside of Europe, but for land on the home continent
itself.
Such a decision, it is true, demands undivided devotion.
It is not permissible to approach with half measures or even with hesitation a
task whose execution seems possible only by the harnessing of the very last
possible ounce of energy. This means that the entire political leadership of
the Reich should have devoted itself to this exclusive aim; never should any
step have been taken, guided by other considerations than the recognition of
this task and its requirements. It was indispensable to see dearly that this
aim could be achieved only by struggle, and consequently to face the contest of
arms with calm and composure.
All alliances, therefore, should have been viewed
exclusively from this standpoint and judged according to their possible
utilization. If land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by and large
only at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the new Reich must again set
itself on the march along the road of the Teutonic Knights of old, to obtain by
the German sword sod for the German plow and daily bread for the
nation.
For such a policy there was but one ally in Europe: England.
With England alone was it possible, our rear protected, to begin the
new Germanic march. Our right to do this would have been no less than the right
of our forefathers. None of our pacifists refuses to eat the bread of the East,
although the first plowshare in its day bore the name of 'sword' !
Consequently, no sacrifice should have been too great for
winning England's willingness. We should have renounced colonies and sea power,
and spared English industry our competition.
Only an absolutely clear orientation could lead to such a
goal: renunciation of world trade and colonies; renunciation of a German war
fleet; concentration of all the state's instruments of power on the land
army.
The result, to be sure, would have been a momentary limitation but a
great and mighty future.
There was a time when England would have listened to
reason on this point, since she was well aware that Germany as a result of her
increased population had to seek some way out and either find it with England
in Europe or without England in the world.
And it can primarily be attributed to this realization if
at the turn of the century London itself attempted to approach Germany. For the
first time a thing became evident which in the last years we have had occasion
to observe in a truly terrifying fashion. People were unpleasantly affected by
the thought of having to pull Fngland's chestnuts out of the fire; as though
there ever could be an alliance on any other basis than a mutual business deal.
And with England such a deal could very well have been made. British diplomacy
was still clever enough to realize that no service can be expected without a
return.
Just suppose that an astute German foreign policy had taken over the
role of Japan in 1904, and we can scarcely measure the consequences this would
have had for Germany.
There would never have been any 'World War.'
The bloodshed in the year 1904 would have saved ten times
as much in the years 1914 to 1918.
And what a position Germany would occupy in the world
today!
In that light, to be sure, the alliance with Austria was an
absurdity.
For this mummy of a state allied itself with Germany, not
in order to fight a war to its end, but for the preservation of an eternal
peace which could astutely be used for the slow but certain extermination of
Germanism in the monarchy.
This alliance was an impossibility for another reason:
because we could not expect a state to take the offensive in championing
national German interests as long as this state did not possess the power and
determination to put an end to the process of de-Germanization on its own
immediate borders. If Germany did not possess enough national awareness and
ruthless determination to snatch power over the destinies of ten million
national comrades from the hands of the impossible Habsburg state, then truly
we had no right to expect that she would ever lend her hand to such farseeing
and bold plans. The attitude of the old Reich on the Austrian question was the
touchstone of its conduct in the struggle for the destiny of the whole
nation.
In any case we were not justified in looking on, as year after year
Germanism was increasingly repressed, since the value of Aushia's fitness for
alliance was determined exclusively by the preservation of the German
element.
This road, however, was not taken at all.
These people feared nothing so much as struggle, yet they
were finally forced into it at the most unfavorable hour.
They wanted to run away from destiny, and it caught up
with them. They dreamed of preserving world peace, and landed in the World
War.
And this was the most significant reason why this third way of
molding the German future was not even considered. They knew that the
acquisition of new soil was possible only in the East, they saw the struggle
that would be necessary and yet wanted peace at any price; for the watchword of
German foreign policy had long ceased to be: preservation of the German nation
by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means. With what
success, everyone knows.
I shall return to this point in particular.
Thus there remained the fourth possibility
Industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.
Such a development, to be sure, was at first easier and also more
quickly attainable. The settlement of land is a slow process, often lasting
centuries; in fact, its inner strength is to be sought precisely in the fact
that it is not a sudden blaze, but a gradual yet solid and continuous growth,
contrasting with an industrial development which can be blown up in the course
of a few years, but in that case is more like a soapbubble than solid strength.
A fieet, to be sure, can be built more quickly than farms can be established in
stubborn struggle and settled with peasants, but it is also more rapidly
destroyed than the latter.
If, nevertheless, Germany took this road, she should at
least have clearly recognized that this development would some day likewise end
in struggle. Only children could have thought that they could get their bananas
in the 'peaceful contest of nations,' by friendly and moral conduct and
constant emphasis on their peaceful intentions, as they so high-soundingly and
unctuously babbled; in other words, without ever having to take up arms. No: if
we chose this road, England would some day inevitably become our enemy. It was
more than senseless-but quite in keeping with our own innocence-to wax
indignant over the fact that England should one day take the liberty to oppose
our peaceful activity with the brutality of a violent egoist.
It is true that we, I am sorry to say, would never have
done such a thing.
If a European territorial policy was only possible against
Russia in alliance with England, conversely, a policy of colonies and world
trade was conceivable only against England and with Russia. But then we had
dauntlessly to draw the consequences- and, above all, abandon Austria in all
haste.
Viewed from all angles, this alliance with Austria was real madness
by the turn of the century.
But we did not think of concluding an alliance with Russia
against England, any more than with England against Russia, for in both cases
the end would have been war, and to prevent this we decided in favor of a
policy of commerce and industry. In the 'peaceful economic ' conquest of the
world we possessed a recipe which was expected to break the neck of the former
policy of violence once and for all.l Occasionally, perhaps, we were not quite
sure of ourselves, particularly when from time to time incomprehensible threats
came over from England; therefore, we decided to build a fleet, though not to
attack and destroy England, but for the 'defense' of our old friend 'world
peace' and 'peaceful ' conquest of the world. Consequently, it was kept on a
somewhat more modest scale in all respects, not only in number but also in the
tonnage of the individual ships as well as in armament, so as in the final
analysis to let our 'peaceful' intentions shine through after all.
The talk about the 'peaceful economic' conquest of the
world was possibly the greatest nonsense which has ever been exalted to be a
guiding principle of state policy. What made this nonsense even worse was that
its proponents did not hesitate to call upon England as a crown witness for the
possibility of such an achievement. The crimes of our academic doctrine and
conception of history in this connection can scarcely be made good and are only
a striking proof of how many people there are who 'learn' history without
understanding or even comprehending it. England, in particular, should have
been recognized as the striking refutation of this theory; for no people has
ever with greater brutality better prepared its economic conquests with the
sword, and later ruthlessly defended theme than the English nation. Is it not
positively the distinguishing feature of British statesmanship to draw economic
acquisitions from political strength, and at once to recast every gain in
economic strength into political power? And what an error to believe that
England is personally too much of a coward to stake her own blood for her
economic policy! The fact that the English people possessed no 'people's army'
in no way proved the contrary; for what matters is not the momentary military
form of the fighting forces, but rather the will and determination to risk
those which do exist. England has always possessed whatever armament she
happened to need. She always fought with the weapons which success demanded.
She fought with mercenaries as long as mercenaries sufficed; but she reached
down into the precious blood of the whole nation when only such a sacrifice
could bring victory; but the determination for victory, the tenacity and
ruthless pursuit of this struggle, remained unchanged.
In Germany, however, the school, the press, and comic
magazines cultivated a conception of the Englishman's character, and almost
more so of his empire, which inevitably led to one of the most insidious
delusions; for gradually everyone was infected by this nonsense, and the
consequence was an underestimation for which we would have to pay most
bitterly. This falsification went so deep that people became convinced that in
the Englishman they faced a business man as shrewd as personally he was
unbelievably cowardly. The fact that a world empire the size of the British
could not be put together by mere subterfuge and swindling was unfortunately
something that never even occurred to our exalted professors of academic
science. The few who raised a voice of warning were ignored or killed by
silence. I remember well my comrades' looks of astonishment when we faced the
Tommies in person in Flanders. After the very first days of battle the
conviction dawned on each and every one of them that these Scotsmen did not
exactly jibe with the pictures they had seen fit to give us in the comic
magazines and press dispatches.
It was then that I began my first reflections about the
importance of the form of propaganda.
This falsification, however, did have
one good side for those who spread it: by this example, even though it was
incorrect, they were able to demonstrate the correctness of the economic
conquest of the world. If the Englishman had succeeded, we too were bound to
succeed, and our definitely greater honesty, the absence in us of that
specifically English 'perfidy,' was regarded as a very special plus. For it was
hoped that this would enable us to win the affection, particularly of the
smaller nations, and the confidence of the large ones the more easily.
It
did not occur to us that our honesty was a profound horror to the others, if
for no other reason because we ourselves believed all these things seriously
while the rest of the world regarded such behavior as the expression of a
special slyness and disingenuousness, until, to their great, infinite
amazement, the revolution gave them a deeper insight into the boundless
stupidity of our honest convictions.
However, the absurdity of this 'economic conquest' at once
made the absurdity of the Triple Alliance clear and comprehensible. For with
what other state could we ally ourselves? In alliance with Austria, to be sure,
we could not undertake any military conquest, even in Europe alone. Precisely
therein consisted the inner weakness of the alliance from the very first day. A
Bismarck could permit himself this makeshift, but not by a long shot every
bungling successor, least of all at a time when certain essential premises of
Bismarck's alliance had long ceased to exist; for Bismarck still believed that
in Austria he had to do with a German state. But with the gradual introduction
of universal suffrage, this country had sunk to the status of an unGerman
hodgepodge with a parliamentary government.
Also from the standpoint of racial policy, the alliance
with Austria was simply ruinous. It meant tolerating the growth of a new Slavic
power on the borders of the Reich, a power which sooner or later would have to
take an entirely different attitude toward Germany than, for example, Russia.
And from year to year the alliance itself was bound to grow inwardly hollower
and weaker in proportion as the sole supporters of this idea in the monarchy
lost influence and were shoved out of the most decisive positions.
By the turn of the century the alliance with Austria had
entered the very same stage as Austria's pact with Italy.
Here again there were only two possibilities: either we
were in a pact with the Habsburg monarchy or we had to lodge protest against
the repression of Germanism. But once a power embarks on this kind of
undertaking, it usually ends in open struggle.
Even psychologically the value of the Triple Alliance was
small, since the stability of an alliance increases in proportion as the
individual contracting parties can hope to achieve definite and tangible
expansive aims. And, conversely, it will be the weaker the more it limits
itself to the preservation of an existing condition. Here, as everywhere else,
strength lies not in defense but in attack.
Even then this was recognized in various quarters,
unfortunately not by the so-called 'authorities.' Particularly Ludendorff, then
a colonel and officer in the great general staff, pointed to these weaknesses
in a memorial written in 1912. Of course, none of the 'statesmen' attached any
value or significance to the matter; for clear common sense is expected to
manifest itself expediently only in common mortals, but may on principle remain
absent where 'diplomats' are concenned.
For Germany it was sheer good fortune that in 1914 the
war broke out indirectly through Austria, so that the Habsburgs were forced to
take part; for if it had happened the other way around Germany would have been
alone. Never would the Habsburg state have been able, let alone willing, to
take part in a confiict which would have arisen through Germany. What we later
so condemned in Italy would then have happened even earlier with Austria: they
would have remained 'neutral' in order at least to save the state from a
revolution at the very start. Austrian Slavdom would rather have shattered the
monarchy even in 1914 than permit aid to Germany.
How great were the dangers and difficulties entailed by
the alliance with the Danubian monarchy, only very few realized a' that
time.
In the first place, Austria possessed too many enemies who were
planning to grab what they could from the rotten state to prevent a certain
hatred from arising in the course of time against Germany, in whom they saw the
cause of preventing the generally hoped and longed-for collapse of the
monarchy. They came to the conviction that Vienna could finally be reached only
by a detour through Berlin.
In the second place, Germany thus lost her best and most
hopeful possibilities of alliance. They were replaced by an evermounting
tension with Russia and even Italy. For in Rome the general mood was just as
pro-German as it was antiAustrian, slumbering in the heart of the very last
Italian and often brightly flanng up.
Now, since we had thrown ourselves into a policy of
commerce and industry, there was no longer the slightest ground for war against
Russia either. Only the enemies of both nations could still have an active
interest in it. And actually these were primarily the Jews and the Marxists,
who, with every means, incited and agitated for war between the two
states.
Thirdly and lastly, this alliance inevitably involved an infinite
peril for Germany, because a great power actually hostile to Bismarck's Reich
could at any time easily succeed in mobilizing a whole series of states against
Germany, since it was in a position to promise each of them enrichment at the
expense of our Austrian ally.
The whole East of Europe could be stirred up against the
Danubian monarchy-particularly Russia and Italy. Never would the world
coalition which had been forming since the initiating efforts of King Edward
have come into existence if Austria as Germany's ally had not represented too
tempting a legacy. This alone made it possible to bring states with otherwise
so heterogeneous desires and aims into a single offensive front. Each one could
hope that in case of a general action against Germany it, too, would achieve
enrichment at Austria's expense. The danger was enormously increased by the
fact that Turkey seemed to be a silent partner in this unfortunate
alliance.
International Jewish world finance needed these lures to
enable it to carry out its long-desired plan for destroying the Germany which
thus far did not submit to its widespread superst3te control of finance and
economics. Only in this way could they forge a coalition made strong and
courageous by the sheer numbers of the gigantic armies now on the march and
prepared to attack the horny Siegfried at last.
The alliance with the Habsburg monarchy, which even in
Austria had filled me with dissatisfaction, now became the source of long inner
trials which in the time to come reinforced me even more in the opinion I had
already conceived.
Even then, among those few people whom I frequented I
made no secret of my conviction that our catastrophic alliance with a state on
the brink of ruin would also lead to a fatal collapse of Germany unless we knew
enough to release ourselves from it on time. This conviction of mine was firm
as a rock, and I did not falter ill it for one moment when at last the storm of
the World War seemed to have excluded all reasonable thought and a frenzy of
enthusiasm had seized even those quarters for which there should have been only
the coldest consideration of reality. And while I myself was at the front, I
put forwards whenever these problems were discussed, my opinion that the
alliance had to be broken off, the quicker the better for the German nation,
and that the sacrifice of the Habsburg monarchy would be no sacrifice at all to
make if Germany thereby could achieve a restriction of her adversaries; for it
was not for the preservation of a debauched dynasty that the millions had
donned the steel helmet, but for the salvation of the German
nation.
On a few occasions before the War it seemed as though, in
one camp at least, a gentle doubt was arising as to the correctness of the
alliance policy that had been chosen. German conservative circles began from
time to time to warn against excessive confidence, but, like everything else
that was sensible, this was thrown to the winds. They were convinced that they
were on the path to a world ' conquest,' whose success would be tremendous and
which would entail practically no sacrifices.
There was nothing for those not in authority to do but to
watch in silence why and how the ' authorities' marched straight to
destruction, drawing the dear people behind them like the Pied Piper of
Hamelin.
The deeper cause that made it possible to represent the
absurdity of an ' economic conquest ' as a practical political method, and the
preservation of 'world peace' as a political goal for a whole people, and even
to make these things intelligible, lay in the general sickening of our whole
political thinking.
With the victorious march of German technology and
industry, the rising successes of German commerce, the realization was
increasingly lost that all this was only possible on the basis of a strong
state. On the contrary, many circles went so far as to put forward the
conviction that the state owed its very existence to these phenomena, that the
state itself Drimarilv represented an economic institution, that it could be
governed according to economic requirements, and that its very existence
depended on economics, a state of affairs which was regarded and glorified as
by far the healthiest and most natural.
But the state has nothing at all to do with any definite
economic conception or development.
It is not a collection of economic contracting parties in
a definite delimited living space for the fulfillment of economic tasks, but
the organization of a community of physically and psychologically similar
living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their species
and the achievement of the aim which has been allotted to this species by
Providence. This and nothing else is the aim and meaning of a state. Economics
is only one of the many instruments required for the achievement of this aim.
It is never the cause or the aim of a state unless this state is based on a
false, because unnatural, foundation to begin with. Only in this way can it be
explained that the state as such does not necessarily presuppose territorial
limitation. This will be necessary only among the peoples who want to secure
the maintenance of their national comrades by their own resources; in other
words, are prepared to fight the struggle for existence by their own labor.
Peoples who can sneak their way into the rest of mankind like drones, to make
other men work for them under all sorts of pretexts, can form states even
without any definitely delimited living space of their own. This applies first
and foremost to a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is
suffering, today more than ever: the Jews.
The Jewish state was never spatially limited in itself,
but universally unlimited as to space, though restricted in the sense of
embracing but one race. Consequently, this people has always formed a state
within states. It is one of the most ingenious tricks that was ever devised, to
make this state sail under the fiag of 'religion,' thus assuring it of the
tolerance which the Aryan is always ready to accord a religious creed. For
actually the Mosaic religion is nothing other than a doctrine for the
preservation of the Jewish race. It therefore embraces almost all sociological,
political, and economic fields of knowledge which can have any bearing on this
function.
The urge to preserve the species is the first cause for
the formation of human communities; thus the state is a national organism and
not an economic organization. A difference which is just as large as it is
incomprehensible, particularly to our so-called ' statesmen ' of today. That is
why they think they can build up the state through economics while in reality
it results and always will result solely from the action of those qualities
which lie in line with the will to preserve the species and race. And these are
always heroic virtues and never the egoism of shopkeepers, since the
preservation of the existence of a species presupposes a spirit of sacrifice in
the individual. The sense of the poet's words, 'If you will not stake your
life, you will win no life,' is that the sacrifice of personal existence is
necessary to secure the preservation of the species. Thus, the most sensible
prerequisite for the formation and preservation of a state is the presence of a
certain feeling of cohesion based on similarity of nature and species, and a
willingness to stake everything on it with all possible means, something which
in peoples with soil of their own will create heroic virtues, but in parasites
will create lying hypocrisy and malignant cruelty, or else these qualities must
already be present as the necessary and demonstrable basis for their existence
as a state so different in form. The formation of a state, originally at least,
will occur through the exercise of these qualities, and in the subsequent
struggle for self-preservation those nations will be defeated- that is, will
fall a prey to subjugation and thus sooner or later die out which in the mutual
struggle possess the smallest share of heroic virtues, or are not equal to the
lies and trickery of the hostile parasite. But in this case, too, this must
almost always be attributed less to a lack of astuteness than to a lack of
determination and courage, which only tries to conceal itself beneath a cloak
of humane convictions.
How little the state-forming and state-preserving
qualities are connected with economics is most clearly shown by the fact that
the inner strength of a state only in the rarest cases coincides with so-called
economic prosperity, but that the latter, in innumerable cases, seems to
indicate the state's approaching decline. If the formation of human societies
were primarily attributable to economic forces or even impulses, the highest
economic development would have to mean the greatest strength of the state and
not the opposite.
Belief in the state-forming and state-preserving power of
economics seems especially incomprehensible when it obtains in a country which
in all things clearly and penetratingly shows the historic reverse. Prussia, in
particular, demonstrates with marvelous sharpness that not material qualities
but ideal virtues alone make possible the formation of a state. Only under
their protection can economic life flourish, until with the collapse of the
pure state-forming faculties the economy collapses too; a process which we can
observe in so terrible and tragic a form right now. The material interests of
man can always thrive best as long as they remain in the shadow of heroic
virtues; but as soon as they attempt to enter the primary sphere of existence,
they destroy the basis for their own existence.
Always when in Germany there
was an upsurge of political power, the economic conditions began to improve;
but always when economics became the sole content of our people's life,
stifling the ideal virtues, the state collapsed and in a short time drew
economic life along with it.
If, however, we consider the question, what, in reality,
are the state-forming or even state-preserving forces, we can sum them up under
one single head: the ability and will of the individual to sacrifice himself
for the totality. That these virtues have nothing at all to do with economics
can be seen from the simple realization that man never sacrifices himself for
the latter, or, in other words: a man does not die for business, but only for
ideals. Nothing proved the Englishman's superior psychological knowledge of the
popular soul better than the motivation which he gave to his struggle. While we
fought for bread, England fought for 'freedom'; and not even for her own, no,
for that of the small nations. In our country we laughed at this effrontery, or
were enraged at it, and thus only demonstrated how emptyheaded and stupid the
so-called statesmen of Germany had becorne even before the War. We no longer
had the slightest idea concerning the essence of the force which can lead men
to their death of their own free will and decision.
In 1914 as long as the German people thought they were
fighting for ideals, they stood firm; but as soon as they were told to fight
for their daily bread, they preferred to give up the game.
And our brilliant 'statesmen' were astonished at this
change in attitude. It never became clear to them that from the moment when a
man begins to fight for an economic interest, he avoids death as much as
possible, since death wo lid forever deprive him of his reward for fighting.
Anxiety for the rescue of her own child makes a heroine of even the feeblest
mother, and only the struggle for the preservation of the species and the
hearth, or the state that protects it, has at all times driven men against the
spears of their enemies.
The following theorem may be established as an eternally
valid truth:
Never yet has a state been founded by peaceful economic
means, but always and exclusively by the instincts of preservation of the
species regardless whether these are found in the province of heroic virtue or
of cunning craftiness; the one results in Aryan states based on work and
culture, the other in Jewish colonies of parasites. As soon as economics as
such begins to choke out these Instincts in a people or in a state, it becomes
the seductive cause of subjugation and oppression.
The belief of pre-war days that the world could be
peacefully opened up to, let alone conquered for, the German people by a
commercial and colonial policy was a classic sign of the loss of real
state-forming and state-preserving virtues and of all the insight, will power,
and active determination which follow from them; the penalty for this,
inevitable as the law of nature, was the World War with its
consequences.
For those who do not look more deeply into the matter,
this attitude of the German nation-for it was really as good as general-could
only represent an insoluble riddle: for was not Germany above all other
countries a marvelous example of an empire which had risen from foundations of
pure political power? Prussia, the germ-cell of the Empire, came into being
through resplendent heroism and not through financial operations or commercial
deals, and the Reich itself in turn was only the glorious reward of aggressive
political leadership and the death defying courage of its soldiers. How could
this very German people have succumbed to such a sickening of its political
instinct? For here we face, not an isolated phenomenon, but forces of decay
which in truly terrifying number soon began to flare up like will-o'-the-wisps,
brushing up and down the body politic, or eating like poisonous abscesses into
the nation, now here and now there. It seemed as though a continuous stream of
poison was being driven into the outermost blood-vessels of this once heroic
body by a mysterious power, and was inducing progressively greater paralysis of
sound reason and the simple instinct of selfpreservation .
As innumerable times I passed in review all these
questions, arising through my position on the German alliance policy and the
economic policy of the Reich in the years 1912 to 1914-the only remaining
solution to the riddle became to an ever-increasing degree that power which,
from an entirely different viewpoint, I had come to know earlier in Vienna: the
Marxist doctrine and philosophy, and their organizational results.
For the second time I dug into this doctrine of
destruction- this time no longer led by the impressions and effects of my daily
associations, but directed by the observation of general processes of political
life. I again immersed myself in the theoretical literature of this new world,
attempting to achieve clarity concerning its possible effects, and then
compared it with the actual phenomena and events it brings about in political,
cultural, and economic life.
Now for the first time I turned my attention to the
attempts to master this world plague.
I studied Bismarck's Socialist legislation 1 in its
intention struggle, and success. Gradually I obtained a positively granite
foundation for my own conviction, so that since that time I have never been
forced to undertake a shift in my own inner view on this question. Likewise the
relation of Marxism to the Jews was submitted to further thorough
examination.
Though previously in Vienna, Germany above all had seemed
to me an unshakable colossus, now anxious misgivings sometimes entered my mind.
In silent solitude and in the small circles of my acquaintance, I was filled
with wrath at German foreign policy and likewise with what seemed to me the
incredibly frivolous way in which the most important problem then existing for
Germany, Marxism, was treated. It was really beyond me how people could rush so
blindly into a danger whose effects, pursuant to the Marxists' own intention,
were bound some day to be monstrous. Even then, among my acquaintance, just as
today on a large scale, I warned against the phrase with which all wretched
cowards comfort themselves: 'Nothing can happen to us!' This pestilential
attitude had once been the downfall of a gigantic empire. Could anyone believe
that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human
organisms?
In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in
various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist
movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the
German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.
In the catastrophic German alliance policy I saw only one
of the consequences called forth by the disruptive work of this doctrine; for
the terrible part of it was that this poison almost invisibly destroyed all the
foundations of a healthy conception of economy and state, and that often those
affected by it did not themselves realize to what an extent their activities
and desires emanated from this philosophy srhich they otherwise sharply
ejected.
The internal decline of the German nation had long since begun, yet,
as so often in life, people had not achieved clarity concerning the force that
was destroying their existence. Sometimes they tinkered around with the
disease, but confused the forms of the phenomenon with the virus that had
caused it. Since they did not know or want to know the cause, the struggle
against Malsisrs was no better than bungling quackery.
Period
TODAY it is my conviction that in general, aside from cases of
unusual talent, a man should not engage in public political activity before his
thirtieth year. He should not do so, because up to this time, as a rule, he is
engaged in molding a general platform, on the basis of which he proceeds to
examine the various political problems and finally establishes his own position
on them. Only after he has acquired such a basic philosophy, and the resultant
firmness of outlook on the special problems of the day, is he, inwardly at
least, mature enough to be justified in partaking in the political leadership
of the general public.
Otherwise he runs the risk of either having to change his
former position on essential questions, or, contrary to his better knowledge
and understanding, of clinging to a view which reason and conviction have long
since discarded. In the former case this is most embarrassing to him
personally, since, what with his own vacillations, he cannot justifiably expect
the faith of his adherents to follow him with the same unswerving firmness as
before; for those led by him, on the other hand, such a reversal on the part of
the leader means perplexity and not rarely a certain feeling of shame toward
those whom they hitherto opposed. In the second case, there occurs a thing
which, particularly today, often confronts us: in the same measure as the
leader ceases to believe in what he says, his arguments become shallow and
flat, but he tries to make up for it by vileness in his choice of means. While
he himself has given up all idea of fighting seriously for his political
revelations (a man does not die for something which he himself does not believe
in), his demands on his supporters become correspondingly greater and more
shameless until he ends up by sacrificing the last shred of leadership and
turning into a 'politician; in other words, the kind of man whose onlv real
conviction is lack of conviction, combined with offensive impertinence and an
art of lying, often developed to the point of complete shamelessness.
If
to the misfortune of decent people such a character gets into a parliament, we
may as well realize at once that the essence of his politics will from now on
consist in nothing but an heroic struggle for the permanent possession of his
feeding-bottle for himself and his family. The more his wife and children
depend on it, the more tenaciously he will fight for his mandate. This alone
will make every other man with political instincts his personal enemy; in every
new movement he will scent the possible beginning of his end, and in every man
of any greatness the danger which menaces him through that man.
I shall have more to say about this type of parliamentary
bedbug.
Even a man of thirty will have much to learn in the course of his
life, but this will only be to supplement and fill in the framework provided
him by the philosophy he has basically adopted When he learns, his learning
will not have to be a revision of principle, but a supplementary study, and his
supporters will not have to choke down the oppressive feeling that they have
hitherto been falsely instructed by him. On the contrary: the visible organic
growth of the leader will give them satisfaction, for when he learns, he will
only be deepening their own philosophy. And this in their eyes will be a proof
for the correctness of the views they have hitherto held.
A leader who must
depart from the platform of his general philosophy as such, because he
recognizes it to be false, behaves with decency only if, in recognizing the
error of his previous insight, he is prepared to draw the ultimate consequence.
In such a case he must, at the very least, renounce the public exercise of any
further political activity. For since in matters of basic knowledge he has once
succumbed to an error, there is a possibility that this will happen a second
time. And in no event does he retain the right to continue claiming, not to
mention demanding, the confidence of his fellow citizens.
How little regard is taken of such decency today is
attested by the general degeneracy of the rabble which contemporaneously feel
justified in 'going into' politics.
Hardly a one of them is fit for
it.
I had carefully avoided any public appearance, though I think that I
studied politics more closely than many other men. Only in the smallest groups
did I speak of the things which inwardly moved or attracted me. This speaking
in the narrowest circles had many good points: I learned to orate less, but to
know people with their opinions and objections that were often so boundlessly
primitive. And I trained myself, without losing the time and occasion for the
continuance of my own education. It is certain that nowhere else in Germany was
the opportunity for this so favorable as in Vienna.
General political thinking in the old Danubian monarchy
was just then broader and more comprehensive in scope than in old Germany,
excluding parts of Prussia, Hamburg, and the North Sea coast, at the same
period. In this case, to be sure, I understand, under the designation of
'Austria,' that section of the great Habsburg Empire which, in consequence of
its German settlement, not only was the historic cause of the very formation of
this state, but whose population, moreover, exclusively demonstrated that power
which for so many centuries was able to give this structure, so artificial in
the political sense, its inner cultural life. As time progressed, the existence
and future of this state came to depend more and more on the preservation of
this nuclear cell of the Empire.
If the old hereditary territories were the heart of the
Empire continually driving fresh blood into the circulatory stream of political
and cultural life, Vienna was the brain and will in one
Its mere outward
appearance justified one in attributing to this city the power to reign as a
unifying queen amid such a conglomeration of peoples, thus by the radiance of
her own beauty causing us to forget the ugly symptoms of old age in the
structure as a whole.
The Empire might quiver and quake beneath the bloody
battles of the different nationalities, yet foreigners, and especially Germans,
saw only the charming countenance of this city. Wblt made the deception all the
greater was that Vienna at that time seemed engaged in what was perhaps its
last and greatest visible revival. Under the rule of a truly gifted mayor, the
venerable residence of the Emperors of the old regime awoke once more to a
:-niraculous youth. The last great German to be born in the ranks of the people
who had colonized the Ostmark was not officially numbered among socalled
Statesmen'; but as mayor of Vienna, this capital and imperial residence,' Dr.
Lueger conjured up one amazing achievement after another in, we may say, every
field of economic and cultural municipal politics, thereby strengthening the
heart of the whole Empire, and indirectly becoming a statesman greater than all
the so-called 'diplomats' of the time
If the conglomeration of nations called 'Austria'
nevertheless perished in the end, this does not detract in the least from the
political ability of the Germans in the old Ostmark, but was the necessary
result of the impossibility of permanently maintaining a state of fifty million
people of different nationalities by means of ten million people, unless
certain definite prerequisites were established in time.
The ideas of the German-Austrian were more than
grandiose.
He had always been accustomed to living in a great empire
and had never lost his feeling for the tasks bound up with it. He was the only
one in this state who, beyond the narrow boundaries of the crown lands, still
saw the boundaries of the Reich; indeed, when Fate finally parted him from the
common fatherland, he kept on striving to master the gigantic task and preserve
for the German people what his fathers had once wrested from the East in
endless struggles. In this connection it should be borne in mind that this had
to be done with divided energy; for the heart and memory of the best never
ceased to feel for the common mother country, and only a remnant was left for
the homeland.
The general horizon of the German-Austrian was in itself
comparatively broad. His economic connections frequently embraced almost the
entire multiform Empire. Nearly all the big business enterprises were in his
hands; the directing personnel, both technicians and officials, were in large
part provided by him. He was also in charge of foreign trade in so far as the
Jews had not laid their hands on this domain, which they have always seized for
their own. Politically, he alone held the state together. Military service
alone cast him far beyond the narrow boundaries of his homeland. The
German-Austrian recruit might join a German regiment, but the regiment itself
might equally well be in Herzegovina, Vienna, or Galicia. The officers' corps
was still German, the higher officials predominantly so. Finally, art and
science were German. Aside from the trash of the more modern artistic
development, which a nation of Negroes might just as well have produced, the
German alone possessed and disseminated a truly artistic attitude. In music,
architecture, sculpture, and painting, Vienna was the source supplying the
entire dual monarchy in inexhaustible abundance, without ever seeming to go dry
itself.
Finally, the Germans directed the entire foreign policy if we
disregard a small number of Hungarians.
And yet any attempt to preserve this Empire was in vain,
for the most essential premise was lacking.
For the Austrian state of nationalities there was only
one possibility of overcoming the centrifugal forces of the individual nations.
Either the state was centrally governed hence internally organized along the
same lines. or it was altogether inconceivable.
At various lucid moments this insight dawned on the '
supreme ' authority. But as a rule it was soon forgotten or shelved as
difficult of execution. Any thought of a more federative organization of the
Empire was doomed to failure owing to the lack of a strong political germ-cell
of outstanding power. Added to this were the internal conditions of the
Austrian state which differed essentially from the German Empire of Bismarck.
In Germany it was only a question of overcoming political conditions, since
there was always a common cultural foundation. Above all, the Reich, aside from
little foreign splinters, embraced members of only one people.
In Austria the opposite was the case.
Here the individual provinces, aside from Hungary, lacked
any political memory of their own greatness, or it had been erased by the
sponge of time, or at least blurred and obscured. In the period when the
principle of nationalities was developing, however, national forces rose up in
the various provinces, and to counteract them was all the more difficult as on
the rim of the monarchy national states began to form whose populations,
racially equivalent or related to the Austrian national splinters, were now
able to exert a greater power of attraction than, conversely, remained possible
for the GermanAustrian.
Even Vienna could not forever endure this
struggle.
With the development of Budapest into a big city, she had for the
first time a rival whose task was no longer to hold the entire monarchy
together, but rather to strengthen a part of it. In a short time Prague was to
follow her example, then Lemberg, Laibach, etc. With the rise of these former
provincial cities to national capitals of individual provinces, centers formed
for more or less independent cultural life in these provinces. And only then
did the politico-national instincts obtain their spiritual foundation and
depth. The time inevitably approached when these dynamic forces of the
individual peoples would grow sponger than the force of common interests, and
that would be the end of Austria.
Since the death of Joseph II the course of this
development was clearly discernible. Its rapidity depended on a series of
factors which in part lay in the monarchy itself and in part were the result of
the Empire's momentary position on foreign policy.
If the fighf for the
preservation of this state was to be taken up and carried on in earnest, only a
ruthless and persistent policy of centralization could lead to the goal. First
of all, the purely formal cohesion had to be emphasized by the establishment in
principle of a uniform official language, and the administration had to be
given the technical implement without which a unified state simply cannot
exist. Likewise a unified state-consciousness could only be bred for any length
of time by schools and education. This was not feasible in ten or twenty years;
it was inevitably a matter of centuries; for in all questions of colonization,
persistence assumes greater importance than the energy of the moment.
It
goes without saying that the administration as well as the political direction
must be conducted with strict uniforrnity. To me it was infinitely instructive
to ascertain why this did not occur,. or rather, why it was not done.l He who
was guilty of this omission was alone to blame for the collapse of the
Empire.
Old Austria more than any other state depended on the greatness of
her leaders. The foundation was lacking for a national state, which in its
national basis always possesses the power of survival, regardless how deficient
the leadership as such may be. A homogeneous national state can, by virtue of
the natural inertia of its inhabitants, and the resulting power of resistance,
sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst administration or
leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At such times it often seems as
though there were no more life in such a body, as though it were dead and done
for, but one fine day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of
humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force.
It is different, however, with an empire not consisting
of similar peoples, which is held together not by common blood but by a common
fist. In this case the weakness of leadership will not cause a hibernation of
the state, but an awakening of all the individual instincts which are present
in the blood, but carmot develop in times when there is a dominant will. Only
by a common education extending over centuries, by common tradition, common
interests, etc., can this danger be attenuated. Hence the younger such state
formations are, the more they depend on the greatness of leadership, and if
they are the work of outstanding soldiers and spiritual heroes, they often
crumble immediately after the death of the great solitary founder. But even
after centuries these dangers cannot be regarded as overcome; they only lie
dormant, often suddenly to awaken as soon as the weakness of the common
leadership and the force of education and all the sublime traditions can no
longer overcome the impetus of the vital urge of the individual tribes.
Not to have understood this is perhaps the tragic guilt of the House
of Habsburg.
For only a single one of them did Fate once again raise
high the torch over the future of his country, then it was extinguished
for-ever.
Joseph IIX Roman Emperor of the German nation, saw with
fear and trepidation how his House, forced to the outermost corner of the
Empire, would one day inevitably vanish in the maelstrom of a Babylon of
nations unless at the eleventh hour the omissions of his forefathers were made
good. With super-human power this 'friend of man' braced himself against the
negligence of his ancestors and endeavored to retrieve in one decade what
centuries had failed to do. If he had been granted only forty years for his
work, and if after him even two generations had continued his work as he began
it, the miracle would probably have been achieved. But when, after scarcely ten
years on the thrones worn in body and soul, he died, his work sank with him
into the grave, to awaken no more and sleep forever in the Capuchin crypt. His
successors were equal to the task neither in mind nor in will.
When the first revolutionary lightnings of a new era
flashed through Europe, Austria, too, slowly began to catch fire, little by
little. But when the fire at length broke out, the flame was fanned less by
social or general political causes than by dynamic forces of national
origin.
The revolution of 1848 may have been a class struggle everywhere,
but in Austria it was the beginning of a new racial war. By forgetting or not
recognizing this origin and putting themselves in the service of the
revolutionary uprising, the Germans sealed their own fate. They helped to
arouse the spirit of 'Western democracy,' which in a short time removed the
foundations of their own existence.
With the formation of a parliamentary representative body
without the previous establishment and crystallization of a common state
language, the cornerstone had been laid for the end of German domination of the
monarchy.' From this moment on the state itself was lost. All that followed was
merely the historic liquidation of an empire.
To follow this process of dissolution was as heartrending
as it was instructive. This execution of an historical sentence was carried out
in detail in thousands and thousands of forrns. The fact that a large part of
the people moved blindly through the manifestations of decay showed only that
the gods had willed Austria's destruction.
I shall not lose myself in details on this point, for
that is not the function of this book. I shall only submit to a more
thoroughgoing observation those events which are the everunchanging causes of
the decline of nations and states, thus possessing significance for our time as
well, and which ultimately contributed to securing the foundations of my own
political thinking.
At the head of those institutions which could most
clearly have revealed the erosion of the Austrian monarchy, even to a
shopkeeper not otherwise gifted with sharp eyes, was one which ought to have
had the greatest strength parliament, or, as it was called in Austria, the
Reichsrat.
Obviously the example of this body had been taken from England,
the land of classical 'democracy.' From there the whole blissful institution
was taken and transferred as unchanged as possible to Vienna.
The English two-chamber system was solemnly resurrected
in the Abgeordnetenhaus and the Herrenhaus. Except that the houses' themselves
were somewhat different. When Barry raised his parliament buildings from the
waters of the Thames, he thrust into the history of the British Empire and from
it took the decorations for the twelve hundred niches, consoles, and pillars of
his magnificent edifice. Thus, in their sculpture and painting, the House of
Lords and the House of Commons became the nation's Hall of Fame.
This was where the first difficulty came in for Vienna.
For when Hansen, the Danish builder, had completed the last pinnacle on the
marble building of the new parliament, there was nothing he could use as
decoration except borrowings from antiquity. Roman and &reek statesmen and
philosophers now embellish this opera house of Western democracy, and in
symbolic irony the quadrigae fiy from one another in all four directions above
the two houses, in this way giving the best external expres sion of the
activities that went on inside the building.
The 'nationalities' had vetoed the glorification of
Austrian
history in this work as an insult and provocation, just as in the
Reich itself it was only beneath the thunder of World War battles that they
dared to dedicate Wallot's Reichstag Building to the German people by an
inscription.
When, not yet twenty years old, I set foot for the first
time in the magnificent building on the Franzensring to attend a session of the
House of Deputies as a spectator and listener, I was seized with the most
conflicting sentiments.
I had always hated parliament, but not as an institution
in itself. On the contrary, as a freedom-loving man I could not even conceive
of any other possibility of government, for the idea of any sort of
dictatorship would, in view of my attitude toward the House of Habsburg, have
seemed to me a crime against freedom and all reason.
What contributed no little to this was that as a young
man, in consequence of my extensive newspaper reading, I had, without myself
realizing it, been inoculated with a certain admiration for the British
Parliament, of which I was not easily able to rid myself. The dignity with
which the Lower House there fulfilled its tasks (as was so touchingly described
in our press) impressed me immensely. Could a people have any more exalted form
of selfgovernment?
But for this very reason I was an enemy of the Austrian
parliament. I considered its whole mode of conduct unworthy of the great
example. To this the following was now added:
The fate of the Germans in the Austrian state was
dependent on their position in the Reichsrat. Up to the introduction of
universal and secret suffrage, the Germans had had a majority, though an
insignificant one, in parliament. Even this condition was precarious, for the
Social Democrats, with their unreliable attitude in national questions, always
turned against German interests in critical matters affecting the Germans-in
order not to alienate the members of the various foreign nationalities. Even in
those days the Social Democracy could not be regarded as a German party. And
with the introduction of universal suffrage the German superiority ceased even
in a purely numerical sense. There was no longer any obstacle in the path of
the further de-Germanization of the state.
For this reason my instinct of national self-preservation
caused me even in those days to have little love for a representative body in
which the Germans were always misrepresented rather than represented. Yet these
were deficiencies which, like so many others, were attributable, not to the
thing in itself, but to the Austrian state. I still believed that if a German
majority were restored in the representative bodies, there would no longer be
any reason for a principled opposition to them, that is, as long as the old
state continued to exist at all.
These were my inner sentiments when for the first time I
set foot in these halls as hallowed as they were disputed. For me, to be sure,
they were hallowed only by the lofty beauty of the magnificent building. A
Hellenic miracle on German soil!
How soon was I to grow indignant when I saw the
lamentable comedy that unfolded beneath my eyes!
Present were a few hundred of these popular
representatives who had to take a position on a question of most vital economic
importance.
The very first day was enough to stimulate me to thought
for weeks on end.
The intellectual content of what these men said was on a
really depressing level, in so far as you could understand their babbling at
all; for several of the gentlemen did not speak German, but their native Slavic
languages or rather dialects. I now had occasion to hear with my own ears what
previously I had known only from reading the newspapers. A wild gesticulating
mass screaming all at once in every different key, presided over by a
goodnatured old uncle who was striving in the sweat of his brow to revive the
dignity of the House by violently ringing his bell and alternating gentle
reproofs with grave admonitions.
I couldn't help laughing.
A few weeks later I was in the House again. The picture
was changed beyond recognition. The hall was absolutely empty. Down below
everybody was asleep. A few deputies were in their places, yawning at one
another; one was 'speaking.' A vicepresident of the House was present, looking
into the hall with obvious boredom.
The first misgivings arose in me. From now on, whenever
time offered me the slightest opportunity, I went back and, with silence and
attention, viewed whatever picture presented itself, listened to the speeches
in so far as they were intelligible, studied the more or less intelligent faces
of the elect of the peoples of this woe-begone state-and little by little
formed my own ideas.
A year of this tranquil observation sufficed totally to
change or eliminate my former view of the nature of this institution. My
innermost position was no longer against the misshapen form which this idea
assumed in Austria; no, by now I could no longer accept the parliament as such.
Up till then I had seen the misfortune of the Austrian parliament in the
absence of a German majority; now I saw that its ruination lay in the whole
nature and essence of the institution as such.
A whole series of questions rose up in me.
I began to make myself familiar with the democratic
principle of majority rule as the foundation of this whole institution, but
devoted no less attention to the intellectual and moral values of these
gentlemen, supposedly the elect of the nations, who were expected to serve this
purpose.
Thus I came to know the institution and its representatives at
once.
In the course of a few years, my knowledge and insight shaped a
plastic model of that most dignified phenomenon of modern times: the
parliamentarian. He began to impress himself upon me in a form which has never
since been subjected to any essential change.
Here again the visual instruction of practical reality had
prevented me from being stifled by a theory which at first sight seemed
seductive to so many, but which none the less must be counted among the
symptoms of human degeneration.
The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of
Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague
with the culture in which its germs can spread. In its most extreme forrn,
parliamentarianism created a 'monstrosity of excrement and fire,' in which,
however, sad to say, the 'fire' seems to me at the moment to be burned
out.
I must be more than thankful to Fate for laying this question before
me while I was in Vienna, for I fear that in Germany at that time I would have
found the answer too easily. For if I had first encountered this absurd
institution known as 'parliament' in Berlin, I might have fallen into the
opposite fallacy, and not without seemingly good cause have sided with those
who saw the salvation of the people and the Reich exclusively in furthering the
power of the imperial idea, and who nevertheless were alien and blind at once
to the times and the people involved.
In Austria this was impossible.
Here it was not so easy to go from one mistake to the
other. If parliament was worthless, the Habsburgs were even more worthless-in
no event, less so. To reject 'parliamentarianism' was not enough, for the
question still remained open: what then? The rejection and abolition of the
Reichsrat would have left the House of Habsburg the sole governing force, a
thought which, especially for me, was utterly intolerable.
The difficulty of this special case led me to a more
thorough contemplation of the problem as such than would otherwise have been
likely at such tender years.
What gave me most food for thought was the obvious absence
of any responsibility in a single person.
The parliament arrives at some decision whose consequences
may be ever so ruinous-nobody bears any responsibility for this, no one can be
taken to account. For can it be called an acceptance of responsibility if,
after an unparalleled catastrophe, the guilty government resigns? Or if the
coalition changes, or even if parliament is itself dissolved?
Can a fluctuating majority of people ever be made
responsible in any case?
Isn't the very idea of responsibility bound up with the
individual?
But can an individual directing a government be made practically
responsible for actions whose preparation and execution must be set exclusively
to the account of the will and inclination of a multitude of men?
Or will not the task of a leading statesman be seen, not
in the birth of a creative idea or plan as such, but rather in the art of
making the brilliance of his projects intelligible to a herd of sheep and
blockheads, and subsequently begging for their kind approval?
Is it the criterion of the statesman that he should
possess the art of persuasion in as high degree as that of political
intelligence in formulating great policies or decisions? Is the incapacity of a
leader shown by the fact that he does not succeed in winning for a certain idea
the majority of a mob thrown together by more or less savory accidents?
Indeed, has this mob ever understood an idea before success
proclaimed its greatness?
Isn't every deed of genius in this world a visible
protest of genius against the inertia of the mass?
And what should the
statesman do, who does not succeed in gaining the favor of this mob for his
plans by flattery?
Should he buy it?
Or, in view of the stupidity of his fellow citizens,
should he renounce the execution of the tasks which he has recognized to be
vital necessities? Should he resign or should he remain at his post?
In such
a case, doesn't a man of true character find himself in a hopeless conflict
between knowledge and decency, or rather honest conviction?
Where is the dividing line between his duty toward the
general public and his duty toward his personal honor?
Mustn't every true leader refuse to be thus degraded to
the level of a political gangster?
And, conversely, mustn't every gangster feel that he is
cut out for politics, since it is never he, but some intangible mob, which has
to bear the ultimate responsibility?
Mustn't our principle of parliamentary majorities lead to
the demolition of any idea of leadership?
Does anyone believe that the
progress of this world springs from the mind of majoritiesand not from the
brains of individuals?
Or does anyone expect that the future will be able to
dispense with this premise of human culture?
Does it not, on the contrary, today seem more
indispensable than ever?
By rejecting the authority of the individual and
replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle
of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature,
though it must be said that this view is not necessarily embodied in the
present-day decadence of our upper ten thousand.
The devastation caused by this institution of modern
parliamentary rule is hard for the reader of Jewish newspapers to imagine,
unless he has learned to think and examine independently. It is, first and
foremost, the cause of the incredible inundation of all political life with the
most inferior, and I mean the most inferior, characters of our time. Just as
the true leader will withdraw from all political activity which does not
consist primarily in creative achievement and work, but in bargaining and
haggling for the favor of the majority, in the same measure this activity will
suit the small mind and consequently attract it.
The more dwarfish one of these present-day
leathermerchants is in spirit and ability, the more clearly his own insight
makes him aware of the lamentable figure he actually cuts-that much more will
he sing the praises of a system which does not demand of him the power and
genius of a giant, but is satisfied with the craftiness of a village mayor,
preferring in fact this kind of wisdom to that of a Pericles. And this kind
doesn't have to torment himself with responsibility for his actions. He is
entirely removed from such worry, for he well knows that, regardless what the
result of his 'statesmanlike' bungling may be, his end has long been written in
the stars: one day he will have to cede his place to another equally great
mind, for it is one of the characteristics of this decadent system that the
number of great statesmen increases in proportion as the stature of the
individual decreases With increasing dependence on parliamentary majorities it
will inevitably continue to shrink, since on the one hand great minds will
refuse to be the stooges of idiotic incompetents and bigmouths, and on the
other, conversely, the representatives of the majority, hence of stupidity,
hate nothing more passionately than a superior mind.
For such an assembly of wise men of Gotham, it is always
a consolation to know that they are headed by a leader whose intelligence is at
the level of those present: this will give each one the pleasure of shining
from time to time-and, above all, if Tom can be master, what is to prevent Dick
and Harry from having their turn too?
This invention of democracy is most intimately related to
a quality which in recent times has grown to be a real disgrace, to wit, the
cowardice of a great part of our so-called 'leadership. What luck to be able to
hide behind the skirts of a so-called majority in all decisions of any real
importance!
Take a look at one of these political bandits. How
anxiously he begs the approval of the majority for every measure, to assure
himself of the necessary accomplices, so he can unload the responsibility at
any time. And this is one of the main reasons why this type of political
activity is always repulsive and hateful to any man who is decent at heart and
hence courageous, while it attracts all low characters-and anyone who is
unwilling to take personal responsibility for his acts, but seeks a shield, is
a cowardly scoundrel. When the leaders of a nation consist of such vile
creatures, the results will soon be deplorable. Such a nation will be unable to
muster the courage for any determined act; it will prefer to accept any
dishonor, even the most shameful, rather than rise to a decision; for there is
no one who is prepared of his own accord to pledge his person and his head for
the execution of a dauntless resolve.
For there is one thing which we must never forget: in
this, too, the majority can never replace the man. It is not only a
representative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well. And no more than a
hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a
hundred cowards.
The less the responsibility of the individual leader, the
more numerous will be those who, despite their most insignificant stature, feel
called upon to put their immortal forces in the service of the nation. Indeed,
they will be unable to await their turn; they stand in a long line, and with
pain and regret count the number of those waiting ahead of them, calculating
almost the precise hour at which, in all probability, their turn will come.
Consequently, they long for any change in the office hovering before their
eyes, and are thankful for any scandal which thins out the ranks ahead of them.
And if some man is unwilling to move from the post he holds, this in their eyes
is practically a breach of a holy pact of solidarity. They grow vindictive, and
they do not rest until the impudent fellow is at last overthrown, thus turning
his warm place back to the public. And, rest assured, he won't recover the
position so easily. For as soon as one of these creatures is forced to give up
a position, he will try at once to wedge his way into the 'waiting-line' unless
the hue and cry raised by the others prevents him.
The consequence of all this is a terrifying turn-over in
the most important offices and positions of such a state, a result which is
always harmful, but sometimes positively catastrophic. For it is not only the
simpleton and incompetent who will fall victim to thus custom, but to an even
greater extent the real leader, if Fate somehow manages to put one in this
place. As soon as this fact has been recognized, a solid front will form
against him, especially if such a mind has not arisen from their own ranks, but
none the less dares to enter into this exalted society. For on principle these
gentry like to be among themselves and they hate as a common enemy any brain
which stands even slightly above the zeros. And in this respect their instinct
is as much sharper as it is deficient in everything else.
The result will be a steadily expanding intellectual
impoverishment of the leading circles. The result for the nation and the state,
everyone can judge for himself, excepting in so far as he himself is one of
these kind of 'leaders.'
Old Austria possessed the parliamentary regime in its
purest form.
To be sure, the prime ministers were always appointed by
the Emperor and King, but this very appointment was nothing halt the execution
of the parliamentary will. The haggling and bargaining for the individual
portfolios represented Western democracy of the first water. And the results
corresponded to the principles applied. Particularly the change of individual
personalities occurred in shorter and shorter terms, ultimately becoming a
veritable chase. In the same measure, the stature of the ' statesmen ' steadily
diminished until finally no one remained but that type of parliamentary
gangster whose statesmanship could only be measured and recognized by their
ability in pasting together the coalitions of the moment; in other words,
concluding those pettiest of political bargains which alone demonstrate the
fitness of these representatives of the people for practical work.
Thus the
Viennese school transmitted the best impressions in this field.
But what attracted me no less was to compare the ability
and knowledge of these representatives of the people and the tasks which
awaited them. In this case, whether I liked it or not, I was impelled to
examine more closely the intellectual horizon of these elect of the nations
themselves, and in so doing, I could not avoid giving the necessary attention
to the processes which lead to the discovery of these ornaments of our public
life.
The way in which the real ability of these gentlemen was applied and
placed in the service of the fatherland-in other words, the technical process
of their activity-was also worthy of thorough study and investigation.
The more determined I was to penetrate these inner conditions, to
study the personalities and material foundations with dauntless and penetrating
objectivity, the more deplorable became my total picture of parliamentary life.
Indeed, this is an advisable procedure in dealing with an institution which, in
the person of its representatives, feels obliged to bring up ' objectivity ' in
every second sentence as the only proper basis for every investigation and
opinion. Investigate these gentlemen themselves and the laws of their sordid
existence, and you will be amazed at the result.
There is no principle which, objectively considered, is as
false a,s that of parliamentarianism.
Here we may totally disregard the manner in which our
fine representatives of the people are chosen, how they arrive at their office
and their new dignity. That only the tiniest fraction of them rise in
fulfillment of a general desire, let alone a need, will at once be apparent to
anyone who realizes that the political understanding of the broad masses is far
from being highly enough developed to arrive at definite general political
views of their own accord and seek out the suitable personalities.
The thing we designate by the word 'public opinion' rests
only in the smallest part on experience or knowledge which the individual has
acquired by hirnself, but rather on an idea which is inspired by so-called
'enlightenment,' often of a highly persistent and obtrusive type.
Just as a man's denominational orientation is the result
of upbringing, and only the religious need as such slumbers in his soul, the
political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an
incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.
By
far the greatest share in their political 'education,' which in this case is
most aptly designated by the word 'propaganda,' falls to the account of the
press. It is foremost in performing this 'work of enlightenment' and thus
represents a sort of school for grown-ups. This instruction, however, is not in
the hands of the state, but in the claws of forces which are in part very
inferior. In Vienna as a very young man I had the best opportunity to become
acquainted with the owners and spiritual manufacturers of this machine for
educating the masses. At first I could not help but be amazed at how short a
time it took this great evil power within the state to create a certain opinion
even where it meant totally falsifying profound desires and views which surely
existed among the public. In a few days a ridiculous episode had become a
significant state action, while, conversely, at the same time, vital problems
fell a prey to public oblivion, or rather were simply filched from the memory
and consciousness of the masses.
Thus, in the course of a few weeks it was possible to
conjure up names out of the void, to associate them with incredible hopes on
the part of the broad public, even to give them a popularity which the really
great man often does not obtain his whole life long; names which a month before
no one had even seen or heard of, while at the same time old and proved figures
of political or other public life, though in the best of health, simply died as
far as their fellow men were concemed, or were heaped with such vile insults
that their names soon threatened to become the symbol of some definite act of
infamy or villainy. We must study this vile Jewish technique of emptying
garbage pails full of the vilest slanders and defamations from hundreds and
hundreds of sources at once, suddenly and as if by magic, on the clean garments
of honorable men, if we are fully to appreciate the entire menace represented
by these scoundrels of the press.
There is absolutely nothing one of these spiritual
robberbarons will not do to achieve his savory aims.
He will poke into the most secret family affairs and not
rest until his trufRe-searching instinct digs up some miserable incident which
is calculated to finish off the unfortunate victim. But if, after the most
careful sniffing, absolutely nothing is found, either in the man's public or
private life, one of these scoundrels simply seizes on slander, in the firm
conviction that despite a thousand refutations something always sticks and,
moreover, through the immediate and hundredfold repetition of his defamations
by all his accomplices, any resistance on the part of the victim is in most
cases utterly impossible; and it must be borne in mind that this rabble never
acts out of motives which might seem credible or even understandable to the
rest of humanity. God forbid! While one of these scum is attacking his beloved
fellow men in the most contemptible fashion, the octopus covers himself with a
veritable cloud of respectability and unctuous phrases, prates about '
journalistic duty ' and suchlike lies, and even goes so far as to shoot off his
mouth at committee meetings and congresses- that is, occasions where these
pests are present in large numbers -about a very special variety of 'honor,' to
wit, the journalistic variety, which the assembled rabble gravely and mutually
confirm.
These scum manufacture more than three quarters of the so-called
'public opinion,' from whose foam the parliamentarian Aphrodite arises. To give
an accurate description of this process and depict it in all its falsehood and
improbability, one would have to write volumes. But even if we disregard all
this and examine only the given product along with its activity, this seems to
me enough to make the objective lunacy of this institution dawn on even the
naivest mind.
This human error, as senseless as it is dangerous, will
most readily be understood as soon as we compare democratic parliamentarianism
with a truly Germanic democracy.
The distinguishing feature of the former is that a body
of, let us say five hundred men, or in recent times even women, is chosen and
entrusted with making the ultimate decision in any and all matters. And so for
practical purposes they alone are the government; for even if they do choose a
cabinet which undertakes the external direction of the affairs of state, this
is a mere sham. In reality this so-called government cannot take a step without
first obtaining the approval of the general assembly. Consequently, it cannot
be made responsible for anything, since the ultimate decision never lies with
it, but with the majority of parliament. In every case it does nothing but
carry out the momentary will of the majority. Its political ability can only be
judged according to the skill with which it understands how either to adapt
itself to the will of the majority or to pull the majority over to its side.
Thereby it sinks from the heights of real government to the level of a beggar
confronting the momentary majority. Indeed, its most urgent task becomes
nothing more than either to secure the favor of the existing majority, as the
need arises, or to form a majority with more friendly inclinations. If this
succeeds, it may 'govern' a little while longer; if it doesn't succeed, it can
resign. The soundness of its purposes as such is beside the point.
For practical purposes, this excludes all
responsibility
To what consequences this leads can be seen from a few
simple considerations:
The internal composition of the five hundred chosen
representatives of the people, with regard to profession or even individual
abilities, gives a picture as incoherent as it is usually deplorable. For no
one can believe that these men elected by the nation are elect of spirit or
even of intelligence ! It is to be hoped that no one will suppose that the
ballots of an electorate which is anything else than brilliant will give rise
to statesmen by the hundreds. Altogether we cannot be too sharp in condemning
the absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections. In the
first place, a nation only produces a real statesman once in a blue moon and
not a hundred or more at once; and in the second place, the revulsion of the
masses for every outstanding genius is positively instinctive. Sooner will a
camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be ' discovered' by an
election.
In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the
broad average usually announces himself personally.
As it is, however, five hundred men, whose stature is to
say the least modest, vote on the most important affairs of the nation, appoint
governments which in every single case and in every special question have to
get the approval of the exalted assembly, so that policy is really made by five
hundred.
And that is just what it usually looks like.
But even leaving the genius of these representatives of
the people aside, bear in mind how varied are the problems awaiting attention,
in what widely removed fields solutions and decisions must be made, and you
will realize how inadequate a governing institution must be which transfers the
ultimate right of decision to a mass assembly of people, only a tiny fraction
of which possess knowledge and experience of the matter to be treated. The most
important economic measures are thus submitted to a forum, only a tenth of
whose members have any economic education to show. This is nothing more nor
less than placing the ultimate decision in a matter in the hands of men totally
lacking in every prerequisite for the task.
The same is true of every other question. The decision is
always made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the
composition of this institution remains unchanged while the problems under
treatment extend to nearly every province of public life and would thereby
presuppose a constant turn-over in the deputies who are to judge and decide on
them, since it is impossible to let the same persons decide matters of
transportation as, let us say, a question of high for eign policy. Otherwise
these men would all have to be universal geniuses such as we actually seldom
encounter once in centuries. Unfortunately we are here confronted, for the most
part, not with 'thinkers,' but with dilettantes as limited as they are
conceited and infiated, intellectual demimonde of the worst sort. And this is
the source of the often incomprehensible frivolity with which these gentry
speak and decide on things which would require careful meditation even in the
greatest minds. Measures of the gravest significance for the future of a whole
state, yes, of a nation, are passed as though a game of schafDopf or tarock,l
which would certainly be better suited to their abilities, lay on the table
before them and not the fate of a race.
Yet it would surely be unjust to believe that all of the
deputies in such a parliament were personally endowed with so little sense of
responsibility.
No, by no means.
But by forcing the individual to take a position on such
questions completely ill-suited to him, this system gradually ruins hus
character. No one will summon up the courage to declare: Gentlemen, I believe
we understand nothing about this matter I personally certainly do not.'
(Besides, this would change mat ters little, for surely this kind of honesty
would remain totally unappreciated, and what is more, our friends would
scarcely allow one honorable jackass to spoil their whole game.) Anyone with a
knowledge of people will realize that in such an illustrious company no one is
eager to be the stupidest, and in certain circles honesty is almost synonymous
with stupidity
Thus, even the representative who at first was honest is
thrown
end page 89
Page 90
into this track of general
falsehood and deceit. The very conviction that the non-participation of an
individual in the business would in itself change nothing kills every honorable
impulse which may rise up in this or that deputy. And finally, moreover, he may
tell himself that he personally is far from being the worst among the others,
and that the sole effect of his collaboration is perhaps to prevent worse
things from happening.
It will be objected, to be sure, that. though the
individual deputy possesses no special understanding in this or that matter,
his position has been discussed by the fraction which directs the policy of the
gentleman in question, and that the fraction has its special committees which
are more than adequately enlightened by experts anyway.
At first glance this seems to be true. But then the
question arises: Why are five hundred chosen when only a few possess the
necessary wisdom to take a position in the most important matters?
And this is the worm in the apple!
It is not the aim of our present-day parliamentarianism
to constitute an assembly of wise men, but rather to compose a band of mentally
dependent nonentities who are the more easily led in certain directions, the
greater is the personal limitation of the individual. That is the only way of
carrying on party politics in the malodorous present-day sense. And only in
this way is it possible for the real wirepuller to remain carefully in the
background and never personally be called to responsibility. For then every
decision, regardless how harmful to the nation, will not be set to the account
of a scoundrel visible to all, but will be unloaded on the shoulders of a whole
fraction.
And thereby every practical responsibility vanishes. For
responsibility can lie only in the obligation of an individual and not in a
parliamentary bull session.
Such an institution can only please the biggest liars and
sneaks of the sort that shun the light of day, because it is inevitably hateful
to an honorable, straightforward man who welcomes personal
responsibility.
And that is why this type of democracy has become the
instrument of that race which in its inner goals must shun the light of day,
now and in all ages of the future. Only the Jew can praise an institution which
is as dirty and false as he himself.
Juxtaposed to this is the truly Germanic democracy
characterized by the free election of a leader and his obligation fully to
assume all responsibility for his actions and omissions. In it there is no
majority vote on individual questions, but only the decision of an individual
who must answer with his fortune and his life for his choice.
If it be objected that under such conditions scarcely
anyone would be prepared to dedicate his person to so risky a task, there is
but one possible answer:
Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that
any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his
national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be
assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened off.
But if, nevertheless, one of these scoundrels should
attempt to sneak in, we can find him more easily, and mercilessly challenge
him: Out, cowardly scoundrel! Remove your foot, you are besmirching the steps;
the front steps of the Pantheon of history are not for sneak-thieves, but for
heroes!
I had fought my way to this conclusion after two years
attendance at the Vienna parliament.
After that I never went back.
The parliamentary regime shared the chief blame for the
weakness, constantly increasing in the past few years, of the Habsburg state.
The more its activities broke the predominance of the Germans, the more the
country succumbed to a system of playing off the nationalities against one
another. In the Reichsrat itself this was always done at the expense of the
Germans and thereby, in the last analysis, at the expense of the Empire; for by
the turn of the century it must have been apparent even to the simplest that
the monarchy's force of attraction would no longer be able to withstand the
separatist tendencies of the provinces.
On the contrary.
The more pathetic became the means which the state had to
employ for its preservation, the more the general contempt for it increased.
Not only in Hungary, but also in the separate Slavic provinces, people began to
identify themselves so little with the common monarchy that they did not regard
its weakness as their own disgrace. On the contrary, they rejoiced at such
symptoms of old age; for they hoped more for the Empire's death than for its
recovery.
In parliament, for the moment, total collapse was averted
by undignified submissiveness and acquiescence at every extortion, for which
the German had to pay in the end; and in the country, by most skillfully
playing off the different peoples against each other. But the general line of
development was nevertheless directed against the Germans. Especially since
Archduke Francis Ferdinand became heir apparent and began to enjoy a certain
influence, there began to be some plan and order in the policy of Czechization
from above. With all possible means, this future ruler of the dual monarchy
tried to encourage a policy of deGermanization, to advance it himself or at
least to sanction it. Purely German towns, indirectly through government
official dom, were slowly but steadily pushed into the mixed-language danger
zones. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make increasingly rapid
progress, and many Czechs considered Vienna their largest city.
The central idea of this new Habsburg, whose family had
ceased to speak anything but Czech (the Archduke's wife, a former Czech
countess, had been morganatically married to the Prince-she came from circles
whose anti-German attitude was traditional), was gradually to establish a
Slavic state in Central Europe which for defense against Orthodox Russia should
be placed on a strictly Catholic basis. Thus, as the Habsburgs had so often
done before, religion was once again put into the service of a purely political
idea, and what was worse-at least from the German viewpoint-of a catastrophic
idea.
The result was more than dismal in many respects. Neither the House
of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church received the expected reward.
Habsburg lost the throne, Rome a great state.
For by employing religious forces in the service of its
political considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at the outset it had
not considered possible.
In answer to the attempt to exterminate the Germans in
the old monarchy by every possible means, there arose the PanGerman movement in
Austria.
By the eighties the basic Jewish tendency of Manchester liberalism
had reached, if not passed, its high point in the monarchy. The reaction to it,
however, as with everything in old Austria, arose primarily from a social, not
from a national standpoint. The instinct of self-preservation forced the
Germans to adopt the sharpest measures of defense. Only secondarily did
economic considerations begin to assume a decisive influence. And so, two party
formations grew out of the general political confusion, the one with the more
national, the other with the more social, attitude, but both highly interesting
and instructive for the future.
After the depressing end of the War of 1866, the House of
Habsburg harbored the idea of revenge on the battlefield. Only the death of
Emperor Max of Mexico, whose unfortunate expedition was blamed primarily on
Napoleon III and whose abandonment by the French aroused general indignation,
prevented a closer collaboration with France. Habsburg nevertheless lurked in
wait. If the War of 1870-71 had not been so unique a triumph, the Vienna Court
would probably have risked a bloody venture to avenge Sadowa. But when the
first amazing and scarcely credible, but none the less true, tales of heroism
arrived from the battlefields, the 'wisest' of all monarchs recognized that the
hour was not propitious and put the best possible face on a bad
business.
But the heroic struggle of these years had accomplished an even
mightier miracle; for with the Habsburgs a change of position never arose from
the urge of the innermost heart, but from the compulsion of circumstances.
However, the German people of the old Ostmark were swept along by the Reich's
frenzy of victory, and looked on with deep emotion as the dream of their
fathers was resurrected to glorious reality.
For make no mistake: the truly German-minded Austrian
had, even at Koniggratz, and from this time on, recognized the tragic but
necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of a Reich which would no longer
be-and actually was not-afflicted with the foul morass of the old Union. Above
all, he had come to understand thoroughly, by his own suffering, that the House
of Habsburg had at last concluded its historical mission and that the new Reich
could choose as Emperor only him whose heroic convictions made him worthy to
bear the 'Crown of the Rhine.' But how much more was Fate to be praised for
accomplishing this investiture in the scion of a house which in Frederick the
Great had given the nation a gleaming and eternal symbol of its
resurrection.
But when after the great war the House of Habsburg began
with desperate determination slowly but inexorably to exterminate the dangerous
German element in the dual monarchy (the inner convictions of this element
could not be held in doubt), for such would be the inevitable result of the
Slavization policy- the doomed people rose to a resistance such as modern
German history had never seen.
For the first time, men of national and patriotic mind
became rebels.
Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state
as such, but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction
would inevitably lead to the destruction of their own nationality.
For the first time in modern German history, traditional
dynastic patriotism parted ways with the national love of fatherland and
people.
The Pan-German movement in German-Austria in the nineties is to be
praised for demonstrating in clear, unmistakable terms that a state authority
is entitled to demand respect and protection only when it meets the interests
of a people, or at least does not harm them.
There can be no such thing as state authority as an end in
itself, for, if there were, every tyranny in this world would be unassailable
and sacred.
If, by the instrument of governmental power, a
nationality is led toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right
of every member of such a people-it is his duty.
And the question-when is this the case?-is decided not by
theoretical dissertations, but by force and-results.
Since, as a matter of course, all governmental power
claims the duty of preserving state authority-regardless how vicious it is,
betraying the interests of a people a thousandfold-the national instinct of
self-preservation, in overthrowing such a power and achieving freedom or
independence, will have to employ the same weapons by means of which the enemy
tries to maintain his power. Consequently, the struggle will be carried on with
'legal' means as long as the power to be overthrown employs such means; but it
will not shun illegal means if the oppressor uses them.
In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim
of human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a government,
but the preservation of the species.
And if the species itself is in danger of being oppressed
or utterly eliminated, the question of legality is reduced to a subordinate
role. Then, even if the methods of the ruling power are alleged to be legal a
thousand times over, nonetheless the oppressed people's instinct of
self-preservation remains the loftiest justification of their struggle with
every weapon.
Only through recognition of this principle have wars of
liberation against internal and external enslavement of nations on this earth
come down to us in such majestic historical examples.
Human law cancels out state law.
And if a people is defeated in its struggle for human
rights, this merely means that it has been found too light in the scale of
destiny for the happiness of survival on this earth. For when a people is not
willing or able to fight for its existence- Providence in its eternal justice
has decreed that people's end.
The world is not for cowardly peoples.
How easy it is for a tyranny to cover itself with the
cloak of so-called 'legality' is shown most clearly and penetratingly by the
example of Austria.
The legal state power in those days was rooted in the
antiGerman soil of parliament with its non-German majorities- and in the
equally anti-German ruling house. In these two factors the entire state
authority was embodied. Any attempt to change the destinies of the
German-Austrian people from this position was absurd. Hence, in the opinions of
our friends the worshipers of state authority as such and of the 'legal' way,
all resistance would have had to be shunned, as incompatible with legal
methods. But this, with compelling necessity, would have meant the end of the
German people in the monarchy-and in a very short time. And, as a matter of
fact, the Germans were saved from this fate only by the collapse of this
state.
The bespectacled theoretician, it is true, would still prefer to die
for his doctrine than for his people.
Since it is men who make the laws, he believes that they
live for the sake of these laws.
The Pan-German movement in Austria had the merit of
completely doing away with this nonsense, to the horror of all theoretical
pedants and other fetish-worshiping isolationists in the government.
Since the Habsburgs attempted to attack Germanism with all possible
means, this party attacked the 'exalted' ruling house itself, and without
mercy. For the first time it probed into this rotten state and opened the eyes
of hundreds of thousands. To its credit be it said that it released the
glorious concept of love of fatherland from the embrace of this sorry
dynasty.
In the early days of its appearance, its following was extremely
great, threatening to become a veritable avalanche. But the success did not
last. When I came to Vienna, the movement had long been overshadowed by the
Christian Social Party which had meanwhile attained power-and had indeed been
reduced to almost complete insignificance.
This whole process of the growth and passing of the
Pan-German movement on the one hand, and the unprecedented rise of the
Christian Social Party on the other, was to assume the deepest significance for
me as a classical object of study.
When I came to Vienna, my sympathies were fully and
wholly on the side of the Pan-German tendency.
That they mustered the courage to cry 'Loch Hohenzollern'
impressed me as much as it pleased me; that they still regarded themselves as
an only temporarily severed part of the German Reich, and never let a moment
pass without openly attesting this fact, inspired me with joyful confidence;
that in all questions regarding Germanism they showed their colors without
reserve, and never descended to compromises, seemed to me the one still
passable road to the salvation of our people; and I could not understand how
after its so magnificent rise the movement should have taken such a sharp
decline. Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this
same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached
the apogee of its glory.
As I set about comparing these movements, Fate,
accelerated by my otherwise sad situation, gave me the best instruction for an
understanding of the causes of this riddle.
I shall begin my comparisons with the two men who may be
regarded as the leaders and founders of the two parties: Georg von Schonerer
and Dr. Karl Lueger.
From a purely human standpoint they both tower far above
the scope and stature of so-called parliamentary figures. Amid the morass of
general political corruption their whole life remained pure and unassailable.
Nevertheless my personal sympathy lay at first on the side of the Pan-German
Schonerer, and turned only little by little toward the Christian Social leader
as well.
Compared as to abilities, Schonerer seemed to me even then the
better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He foresaw the
inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and correctly than anyone
else. If, especially in the Reich, people had paid more attention to his
warnings
against the Habsburg monarchy, the calamity of Germany's World War
against all Europe would never have occurred.
But if Schonerer recognized the problems in their
innermost essence, he erred when it came to men.
Here, on the other hand, lay Dr. Lueger's
strength.
He had a rare knowledge of men and in particular took good care not
to consider people better than they are. Consequently, he reckoned more with
the real possibilities of life while Schonerer had but little understanding for
them. Theoretically speaking, all the Pan-German's thoughts were correct, but
since he lacked the force and astuteness to transmit his theoretical knowledge
to the masses-that is, to put it in a form suited to the receptivity of the
broad masses, which is and remains exceedingly limited-all his knowledge was
visionary wisdom, and could never become practical reality.
And this lack of actual knowledge of men led in the
course of time to an error in estimating the strength of whole movements as
well as age-old institutions.
Finally, Schonerer realized, to be sure, that questions
of basic philosophy were involved, but he did not understand that only the
broad masses of a people are primarily able to uphold such well-nigh religious
convictions.
Unfortunately, he saw only to a limited extent the
extra-ordinary limitation of the will to fight in so-called 'bourgeois'
circles, due, if nothing else, to their economic position which makes the
individual fear to lose too much and thereby holds him in check.
And yet, on the whole, a philosophy can hope for victory
only if the broad masses adhere to the new doctrine and declare their readiness
to undertake the necessary struggle.
From this deficient understanding of the importance of the
lower strata of the people arose a completely inadequate con-ception of the
social question.
In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of
Schonerer.
His thorough knowledge of men enabled him to judge the
possible forces correctly, at the same time preserving him from underestimating
existing institutions, and perhaps for this very reason taught him to make use
of these institutions as instruments for the achievement of his purposes.
He
understood only too well that the political fighting power of the upper
bourgeoisie at the present time was but slight and inadequate for achieving the
victory of a great movement. He therefore laid the greatest stress in his
political activity on winning over the classes whose existence was threatened
and therefore tended to spur rather than paralyze the will to fight. Likewise
he was inclined to make use of all existing implements of power, to incline
mighty existing institutions in his favor, drawing from these old sources of
power the greatest possible profit for his own movement.
Thus he adjusted his new party primarily to the middle
class menaced with destruction, and thereby assured himself of a following that
was difficult to shake, whose spirit of sacrifice was as great as its fighting
power. His policy toward the Catholic Church, fashioned with infinite
shrewdness, in a short time won over the younger clergy to such an extent that
the old Clerical Party was forced either to abandon the field, or, more wisely,
to join the new party, in order slowly to recover position after
position.
To take this alone as the characteristic essence of the man would be
to do him a grave injustice. For in addition to being an astute tactician, he
had the qualities of a truly great and brilliant reformer: though here, too, he
observed the limits set by a precise knowledge of the existing possibilities as
well as his own personal abilities.
It was an infinitely practical goal that this truly
significant man had set himself. He wanted to conquer Vienna. Vienna was the
heart of the monarchy; from this city the last flush of life flowed out into
the sickly, old body of the crumbling empire. The healthier the heart became,
the more the rest of the body was bound to revive: an idea, correct in
principle, but which could be applied only for a certain limited time.
And herein lay this man's weakness.
What he had done as mayor of Vienna is immortal in the
best sense of the word; but he could no longer save the monarchy, it was too
late.
His opponent, Schonerer, had seen this more clearly
All Dr. Lueger's practical efforts were amazingly
successfulthe hopes he based on them were not realized.
Schonerer's efforts were not successful, but his most
terrible fears came true.
Thus neither man realized his ultimate goal. Lueger could
no longer save Austria, and Schonerer could no longer save the German people
from ruin.
It is infinitely instructive for our present day to study
the causes for the failure of both parties. This is particularly useful for my
friends, since in many points conditions today are similar to then and errors
can thereby be avoided which at that time caused the end of the one movement
and the sterility of the other.
To my mind, there were three causes for the collapse of
the Pan-German movement in Austria.
In the first place, its unclear conception of the
significance of the social problem, especially for a new and essentially
revolutionary party.
Since Schonerer and his followers addressed themselves
principally to bourgeois circles, the result was bound to be very feeble and
tame.
Though some people fail to suspect it, the German bourgeoisie,
especially in its upper circles, is pacifistic to the point of positive
self-abnegation, where internal affairs of the nation or state are concerned.
In good times that is, in this case, in times of good government such an
attitude makes these classes extremely valuable to the state; but in times of
an inferior regime it is positively ruinous. To make possible the waging of any
really serious struggle, the Pan-German movement should above all have
dedicated itself to winning the masses. That it failed to do so deprived it in
advance of the elemental impetus which a wave of its kind simply must have if
it is not in a short time to ebb away.
Unless this principle is borne in mind and carried out
from the very start, the new party loses all possibility of later making up for
what has been lost. For, by the admission of numerous moderate bourgeois
elements, the basic attitude of the movement will always be governed by them
and thus lose any further prospect of winning appreciable forces from the broad
masses. As a result, such a movement will not rise above mere grumbling and
criticizing. The faith bordering more or less on religion, combined with a
similar spirit of sacrifice, will cease to exist; in its place will arise an
effort gradually to grind off the edges of struggle by means of 'positive'
collaboration; that is, in this case, by acceptance of the existing order, thus
ultimately leading to a putrid peace.
And this is what happened to the Pan-German movement
because it had not from the outset laid its chief stress on winning supporters
from the circles of the great masses. It achieved 'bourgeois respectability and
a muffled radicalism.'
From this error arose the second cause of its rapid
decline.
At the time of the emergence of the Pan-German movement the
situation of the Germans in Austria was already desperate. From year to year
the parliament had increasingly become an institution for the slow destruction
of the German people. Any attempt at salvation in the eleventh hour could offer
even the slightest hope of success only if this institution were
eliminated.
Thus the movement was faced with a question of basic
importance:
Should its members, to destroy parliament, go into
parliament, in order, as people used to say, 'to bore from within,' or should
they carry on the struggle from outside by an attack on this institution as
such?
They went in and they came out defeated.
To be sure, they couldn't help but go in.
To carry on the struggle against such a power from
outside means to arm with unflinching courage and to be prepared for endless
sacrifices. You seize the bull by the horns, you suffer many heavy blows, you
are sometimes thrown to the earth, sometimes you get up with broken limbs, and
only after the hardest contest does victory reward the bold assailant. Only the
greatness of the sacrifices will win new fighters for the cause, until at last
tenacity is rewarded by success.
But for this the sons of the broad masses are
required.
They alone are determined and tough enough to carry
through the fight to its bloody end.
And the Pan-German movement did not possess these broad
masses; thus no course remained open but to go into parliament
It would be a mistake to believe that this decision was
the result of long soul torments, or even meditations; no, no other idea
entered their heads. Participation in this absurdity was only the
sediment
resulting from general, unclear conceptions regarding the significance and
effect of such a participation in an institution which had in principle been
recognized as false. In general, the
party hoped that this would facilitate
the enlightenment of the broad masses, since it would now have an opportunity
to speak before the 'forum of the whole nation.' Besides, it seemed plausible
that attacking the root of the evil was bound to be more successful than
storming it from outside. They thought the security of the individual fighter
was increased by the protection of parliamentary immunity, and that this could
only enhance the force of the attack.
In reality, it must be said, things turned out very
differently.
The forum before which the Pan-German deputies spoke had
not become greater but smaller; for each man speaks only to the circle which
can hear him, or which obtains an account of his words in the
newspapers.
And, not the halls of parliament, but the great public
meeting, represents the largest direct forum of listeners.
For, in the latter, there are thousands of people who
have come only to hear what the speaker has to say to them, while in the halls
of parliament there are only a few hundreds, and most of these are present only
to collect their attendance fees, and cer-tainly not to be illuminated by the
wisdom of this or that fellow 'representative of the people.'
And above all:
This is always the same public, which will never learn
anything new, since, aside from the intelligence, it is lacking in the very
rudiments of will.
Never will one of these representatives of the people
honor a superior truth of his own accord, and place himself in its
service.
No, this is something that not a single one of them will do unless
he has reason to hope that by such a shift he may save his mandate for one more
session. Only when it is in the air that the party in power will come off badly
in a coming election, will these ornaments of virility shift to a party or
tendency which they presume will come out better, though you may be confident
that this change of position usually occurs amidst a cloudburst of moral
justifications. Consequently, when an existing party appears to be falling
beneath the disfavor of the people to such an extent that the probability of an
annihilating defeat threatens, such a great shift will always begin: then the
parliamentary rats leave the party ship.
All this has nothing to do with better knowledge or
intentions, but only with that prophetic gift which warns these parliamentary
bedbugs at the right moment and causes them to drop, again and again, into
another warm party bed.
But to speak to such a 'forum' is really to cast pearls
before the well-known domestic beasts. It is truly not worth while. The result
can be nothing but zero.
And that is just what it was.
The Pan-German deputies could talk their throats hoarse:
the effect was practically nil.
The press either killed them with silence or mutilated
their speeches in such a way that any coherence, and often even the sense, was
twisted or entirely lost, and public opinion received a very poor picture of
the aims of the new movement. What the various gentlemen said was quite
unimportant; the important thing was what people read about them. And this was
an extract from their speeches, so disjointed that it could-as intended- only
seem absurd. The only forum to which they really spoke consisted of five
hundred parliamentarians, and that is enough said.
But the worst was the following:
The Pan-German movement could count on success only if it
realized from the very first day that what was required was not a new party,
but a new philosophy. Only the latter could produce the inward power to fight
this gigantic struggle to its end. And for this, only the very best and
courageous minds can serve as leaders.
If the struggle for a philosophy is not lead by heroes
prepared to make sacrifices, there will, in a short time, cease to be any
warriors willing to die. The man who is fighting for his own existence cannot
have much left over for the community.
In order to maintain this requirement, every man must
know that the new movement can offer the present nothing but honor and fame in
posterity. The more easily attainable posts and offices a movement has to hand
out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end these political
hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter
of former days no longer recognizes the old movement and the new arrivals
definitely reject him as an unwelcome intruder. When this happens, the
'mission' of such a movement is done for.
As soon as the Pan-German movement sold its soul to
parlia-ment, it attracted 'parliamentarians' instead of leaders and
fighters.
Thus it sank to the level of the ordinary political
parties of the day and lost the strength to oppose a catastrophic destiny with
the defiance of martyrdom. Instead of fighting, it now learned to
make
speeches and 'negotiate.' And in a short time the new parliamentarian found it
a more attractive, because less dangerous, duty to fight for the new philosophy
with the 'spiritual' weapons of parliamentary eloquence, than to risk his own
life, if necessary, by throwing himself into a struggle whose issue was
uncertain and which in any case could bring him no profit.
Once they had members in parliament, the supporters
outside began to hope and wait for miracles which, of course, did not occur and
could not occur. For this reason they soon became impatient, for even what they
heard from their own deputies was by no means up to the expectations of the
voters. This was perfectly natural, since the hostile press took good care not
to give the people any faithful picture of the work of the Pan-German
deputies.
The more the new representatives of the people developed a taste for
the somewhat gentler variety of 'revolutionary' struggle in parliament and the
provincial diets, the less prepared they were to return to the more dangerous
work of enlightening the broad masses of the people. The mass meeting, the only
way to exert a truly effective, because personal, influence on large sections
of the people and thus possibly to win them, was thrust more and more into the
background.
Once the platform of parliament was definitely
substituted for the beer table of the meeting hall, and from this forum
speeches were poured, not into the people, but on the heads of their so called
'elect,' the Pan-German movement ceased to be a movement of the people and in a
short time dwindled into an academic discussion club to be taken more or less
seriously.
Consequently, the bad impression transmitted by the press
was in no way corrected by personal agitation at meetings by the individual
gentlemen, with the result that finally the word 'PanGerman' began to have a
very bad sound in the ears of the broad masses.
For let it be said to all our present-day fops and
knights of the pen: the greatest revolutions in this world have never been
directed by a goose-quill!
No, to the pen it has always been reserved to provide
their theoretical foundations.
But the power which has always started the greatest
religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial
been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone.
Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved
only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements,
volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either
by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among
the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes
and drawingroom heroes.
Only a storm of hot passion can turn the destinies of
peoples, and he alone can arouse passion who bears it within himself.
It
alone gives its chosen one the words which like hammer blows can open the gates
to the heart of a people.
But the man whom passion fails and whose lips are sealed-
he has not been chosen by Heaven to proclaim its will.
Therefore, let the writer remain by his ink-well,
engaging in 'theoretical' activity, if his intelligence and ability are equal
to it; for leadership he is neither born nor chosen.
A movement with great aims must therefore be anxiously on
its guard not to lose contact with the broad masses.
It must examine every question primarily from this
standpoint and make its decisions accordingly.
It must, furthermore, avoid everything which might
diminish or even weaken its ability to move the masses, not for 'demagogic'
reasons, but in the simple knowledge that without the mighty force of the mass
of a people, no great idea, however lofty and noble it may seem, can be
realized.
Hard reality alone must determine the road to the goal;
unwillingness to travel unpleasant roads only too often in this world means to
renounce the goal; which may or may not be what you want.
As soon as the Pan-German movement by its parliamentary
attitude had shifted the weight of its activity to parliament instead of the
people, it lost the future and instead won cheap successes of the
moment.
It chose the easier struggle and thereby became unworthy of ultimate
victory.
Even in Vienna I pondered this very question with the greatest care,
and in the failure to recognize it saw one of the main causes of the collapse
of the movement which in those days, in my opinion, was predestined to
undertake the leadership of the German element.
The first two mistakes which caused the Pan-German
movement to founder were related to each other. Insufficient knowledge of the
inner driving forces of great revolutions led to an insufficient estimation of
the importance of the broad masses of the people; from this resulted its
insufficient interest in the social question, its deficient and inadequate
efforts to win the soul of the lower classes of the nation, as well as its
over-favorable attitude toward parliament.
If they had recognized the tremendous power which at all
times must be attributed to the masses as the repository of revolutionary
resistance, they would have worked differently in social and propagandist
matters. Then the movement's center of gravity would not have been shifted to
parliament, but to the workshop and the street.
Likewise the third error finds its ultimate germ in
failure to recognize the value of the masses, which, it is true, need superior
minds to set them in motion in a given direction, but which then, like a
flywheel, lend the force of the attack momentum and uniform
persistence.
The hard struggle which the Pan-germans fought with the
Catholic Church can be accounted for only by their insufficient understanding
of the spiritual nature of the people.
The causes for the new party's violent attack on Rome
were as follows:
As soon as the House of Habsburg had definitely made up
its mind to reshape Austria into a Slavic state, it seized upon every means
which seemed in any way suited to this tendency. Even religious institutions
were, without the
slightest qualms, harnessed to the service of the new '
state idea ' by
this unscrupulous ruling house.
The use of Czech pastorates and their spiritual shepherds
was but one of the many means of attaining this goal, a general Slavization of
Austria.
The process took approximately the following form:
Czech pastors were appointed to German communities;
slowly but surely they began to set the interests of the Czech people above the
interests of the churches, becoming germ-cells of the de-Germanization process.
The German clergy did practically nothing to counter these methods.
Not only were they completely useless for carrying on this struggle in a
positive German sense; they were even unable to oppose the necessary resistance
to the attacks of the adversary. Indirectly, by the misuse of religion on the
one hand, and owing to insufficient defense on the other, Germanism was slowly
but steadily forced back.
If in small matters the situation was as described, in
big things, unfortunately, it was not far different.
Here, too, the anti-German efforts of the Habsburgs did
not encounter the resistance they should have, especially on the part of the
high clergy, while the defense of German interests sank completely into the
background.
The general impression could only be that the Catholic
clergy as such was grossly infringing on German rights.
Thus the Church did not seem to feel with the German
people, but to side unjustly with the enemy. The root of the whole evil lay,
particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the di-recting body of
the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it
was hostile to the interests of our nationality.
The so-called cultural problems, in this as in virtually
every other connection in Austria at that time, were relegated almost entirely
to the background. The attitude of the Pan-German movement toward the Catholic
Church was determined far less by its position on science, etc., than by its
inadequacy in the championing of German rights and, conversely, its continued
aid and comfort to Slavic arrogance and greed.
Georg Schonerer was not the man to do things by halves.
He took up the struggle toward the Church in the conviction that by it alone he
could save the German people. The 'AwayfromRome' movement seemed the most
powerful, though, to be sure, the most difficult, mode of attack, which would
inevitably shatter the hostile citadel. If it was successful, the tragic church
schism in Germany would be healed, and it was possible that the inner strength
of the Empire and the German nation would gain enormously by such a
victory.
But neither the premise nor the inference of this struggle was
correct.
Without doubt the national force of resistance of the Catholic
clergy of German nationality, in all questions connected with Germanism, was
less than that of their non-German, particularly Czech, brethren.
Likewise only an ignoramus could fail to see that an
offensive in favor of German interests was something that practically never
occurred to the German clergyman.
And anyone who was not blind was forced equally to admit
that this was due primarily to a circumstance under which all of us Germans
have to suffer severely: that is, the objectivity of our attitude toward our
nationality as well as everything else.
While the Czech clergyman was
subjective in his attitude toward his people and objective only toward the
Church, the German pastor was subjectively devoted to the Church and remained
objective toward the nation. A phenomenon which, to our misfortune, we can
observe equally well in thousands of other cases.
This is by no means a
special legacy of Catholicism, but with us it quickly corrodes almost every
institution, whether it be governmental or ideal.
Just compare the position which our civil servants, for
example, take toward the attempts at a national awakening with the position
which in such a case the civil servants of another people would take. Or does
anyone believe that an officers' corps anywhere else in the world would
subordinate the interests of the nation amid mouthings about 'state authority,'
in the way that has been taken for granted in our country for the last five
years, in fact, has been viewed as especially meritorious? In the Jewish
question, for example, do not both denominations today take a standpoint which
corresponds neither to the requirements of the nation nor to the real needs of
religion? Compare the attitude of a Jewish rabbi in all questions of even the
slightest importance for the Jews as a race with the attitude of by far the
greatest part of our clergy-of both denominations, if you please!
We always find this phenomenon when it is a question of
defending an abstract idea as such.
'State authority,' 'democracy,' 'pacifism,'
'international solidarity,' etc., are all concepts which with us nearly always
become so rigid and purely doctrinaire that subsequently all purely national
vital necessities are judged exclusively from their standpoint.
This catastrophic way of considering all matters from the
angle of a preconceived opinion kills every possibility of thinking oneself
subjectively into a matter which is objectively opposed to one's own doctrine,
and finally leads to a total reversal of means and ends. People will reject any
attempt at a national uprising if it can take place only after the elimination
of a bad, ruinous regime, since this would be an offense against 'state
authority,' and ' state authority ' is not a means to an end, but in the eyes
of such a fanatical objectivist rather represents the aim itself, which is
sufficient to fill out his whole lamentable life. Thus, for example, they would
indignantly oppose any attempt at a dictatorship, even if it was represented by
a Frederick the Great and the momentary political comedians of a parliamentary
majority were incapable dwarfs or really inferior characters, just because the
law
of democracy seems holier to such a principle-monger than the welfare of
a nation. The one will therefore defend the worst tyranny, a tyranny which is
ruining the people, since at the moment it embodies 'state authority,' while
the other rejects even the most beneficial government as soon as it fails to
satisfy his conception of 'democracy.'
In exactly the same way, our German pacifist will accept
in silence the bloodiest rape of our nation at-the hands of the most vicious
military powers if a change in this state of affairs can be achieved only by
resistance-that is, force-for this would be contrary to the spirit of his peace
society. Let the international German Socialist be plundered in solidarity by
the rest of the world, he will accept it with brotherly affection and no
thought of retribution or even defense, just because he is-a German.
This may be a sad state of affairs, but to change a thing means to
recognize it first.
The same is true of the weak defense of German interests
by a part of the clergy.
It is neither malicious ill will in itself, nor is it
caused, let us say, by commands from 'above'; no, in such a lack of national
determination we see merely the result of an inadequate education in Germanism
from childhood up and, on the other hand, an unlimited submission to an idea
which has become an idol.
Education in democracy, in socialism of the international
variety, in pacifism, etc., is a thing so rigid and exclusive, so purely
subjective from these points of view, that the general picture of the remaining
world is colored by this dogmatic conception, while the attitude toward
Germanism has remained exceedingly objective from early youth. Thus, the
pacifist, by giving himself subjectively and entirely to his idea, will, in the
presence of any menace to his people, be it ever so grave and unjust, always
(in so far as he is a German) seek after the objective right and never from
pure instinct of self-preservation join the ranks of his herd and fight with
them.
To what extent this is also true of the different religions is shown
by the following:
Protestantism as such is a better defender of the
interests of Germanism, in so far as this is grounded in its genesis and later
tradition: it fails, however, in the moment when this defense of national
interests must take place in a province which is either absent from the general
line of its ideological world and traditional development, or is for some
reason rejected.
Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the
advancement of all Germanism as such, as long as matters of inner purity or
national deepening as well as German freedom are involved since all these
things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the
greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its
most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more
or less dogmatically established. Yet here we are facing the question without
whose solution all other attempts at a German reawakening or resurrection are
and remain absolutely senseless and impossible.
In my Vienna period I had leisure and opportunity enough
for an unprejudiced examination of this question too, and in my daily contacts
was able to establish the correctness of this view a thousand times
over.
In this focus of the most varied nationalities, it immediately
becomes clearly apparent that the German pacifist is alone in always attempting
to view the interests of his own nation objectively, but that the Jew will
never regard those of the Jewish people in this way; that only the German
Socialist is linternaticnal' in a sense which forbids him to beg justice for
his own people except by whimpering and whining in the midst of his
international comrades, but never a Czech or a Pole, etc.; in short, I
recognized even then that the misfortune lies only partly in these doctrines,
and partly in our totally inadequate education in national sentiment and a
resultant lack of devotion to our nation.
Thus, the first theoretical foundation for a struggle of
the PanGerman movement against Catholicism as such was lacking.
Let the German people be raised from childhood up with
that exclusive recognition of the rights of their own nationality, and let not
the hearts of children be contaminated with the curse of our 'objectivity,'
even in matters regarding the preservation of their own ego. Then in a short
time it will be seen that (presupposing, of course, a radically national
government) in Germany, as in Ireland, Poland, or France, the Catholic will
always be a German.
The mightiest proof of this was provided by that epoch
which for the last time led our nation into a life-and-death struggle before
the judgment seat of history in defense of its own existence.
As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the
people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant
pastor or Catholic priest, both together contributed infinitely in maintaining
for so long our power to resist, not only at the front but also at home. In
these years and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both
camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man
turned to his own heaven.
The Pan-German movement in Austria should have asked
itself one question:
Is the preservation of German-Austrianism possible
under a Catholic faith, or is it not? If yes, the political party had no right
to concern itself with religious or denominational matters; if not, then what
was needed was a religious reformation and never a political party.
Anyone who thinks he can arrive at a religious reformation by the
detour of a political organization only shows that he has no glimmer of
knowledge of the development of religious ideas or dogmas and their
ecclesiastical consequences.
Verily a man cannot serve two masters. And I consider the
foundation or destruction of a religion far greater than the foundation or
destruction of a state, let alone a party.
And let it not be said that this is only a defense
against the attacks from the other side!
It is certain that at all times unscrupulous scoundrels
have not shunned to make even religion the instrument of their political
bargains (for that is what such rabble almost always and exclusively deal in):
but just as certainly it is wrong to make a religious denomination responsible
for a
number of tramps who abuse it in exactly the same way as they would
probably make anything else serve their low instincts.
Nothing can better suit one of these parliamentarian
good-for-nothings and lounge-lizards than when an opportunity is offered to
justify his political swindling, even after the fact.
For as soon as religion or even denomination is made
responsible for his personal vices and attacked on that ground, this shameless
liar sets up a great outcry and calls the whole world to witness that his
behavior has been completely justified and that he alone and his eloquence are
to be thanked for saving religion of the Church. The public, as stupid as it is
forgetful, is, as a rule, prevented by the very outcry from recognizing the
real instigator of the struggle or else has forgotten him, and the scoundrel
has to all intents and purposes achieved his goal.
The sly fox knows perfectly well that this has nothing to
do with religion; and he will silently laugh up his sleeve while his honest but
clumsy opponent loses the game and one day, despairing of the loyalty and faith
of humanity, withdraws from it all.
And in another sense it would be unjust to make religion
as such or even the Church responsible for the failings of individuals. Compare
the greatness of the visible organization before our eyes with the average
fallibility of man in general, and you will have to admit that in it the
relation of good and evil is better than anywhere else. To be sure, even among
the priests themselves there are those to whom their holy office is only a
means of satisfying their political ambition, yes, who in political struggle
forget, in a fashion which is often more than deplorable that they are supposed
to be the guardians of a higher truth and not the representatives of lies and
slander-but for one such unworthy priest there are a thousand and more
honorable ones, shepherds most loyally devoted to their mission, who, in our
present false and decadent period, stand out of the general morass like little
islands.
No more than I condemn, or would be justified in condemning, the
Church as such when a degenerate individual in a cassock obscenely transgresses
against morality, do I condemn it when one of the many others besmirches and
betrays his nationality at a time when this is a daily occurrence anyway.
Particularly today, we must not forget that for one such Ephialtes there are
thousands who with bleeding heart feel the misfortune of their people and like
the best of our nation long for the hour in which Heaven will smile on us
again.
And if anyone replies that here we are not concerned with such
everyday problems, but with questions of principle and truth or dogmatic
content, we can aptly counter with another question:
If you believe that you have been chosen by Fate to
reveal the truth in this matter, do so; but then have the courage to do so, not
indirectly through a political party-for this is a swindle; but for today's
evil substitute your future good.
But if you lack courage, or if your good is not quite
clear even to yourself, then keep your fingers out of the matter; in any case,
do not attempt by roundabout sneaking through a political movement to do what
you dare not do with an open vizor.
Political parties have nothing to do with religious
problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals
and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the
scheming of political parties.
When Church dignitaries make use of religious
institutions or doctrines to injure their nation, we must never follow them on
this path and fight with the same methods.
For the political leader the religious doctrines and
institutions of his people trust always remain inviolable; or else he has no
right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it
takes!
Especially in Germany any other attitude would lead to a
catastrophe.
In my study of the Pan-German movement and its struggle
against Rome, I then, and even more in the years to come, arrived at the
following conviction: This movement's inadequate appreciation of the importance
of the social problem cost it the truly militant mass of the people; its entry
into parliament took away its mighty impetus and burdened it with all the
weaknesses peculiar to this institution; the struggle against the Catholic
Church made it impossible in numerous small and middle circles, and thus robbed
it of countless of the best elements that the nation can call its own.
The practical result of the Austrian Kulturkampf At was next
to
To be sure, it succeeded in tearing some hundred thousand members
away from the Church, yet without causing it any particular damage. In this
case the Church really had no need to shed tears over the lost 'lambs'; for it
lost only those who had long ceased to belong to it. The difference between the
new reformation and the old one was that in the old days many of the best
people in the Church turned away from it through profound religious conviction,
while now only those who were lukewarm to begin with departed, and this from
'considerations' of a political nature.
And precisely from the political standpoint the result
was just as laughable as it was sad.
Once again a promising political movement for the
salvation of the German nation had gone to the dogs because it had not been led
with the necessary cold ruthlessness, but had lost itself in fields which could
only lead to disintegration.
For one thing is assuredly true:
The Pan-German movement would never have made this
mistake but for its insufficient understanding of the psyche of the broad
masses. If its leaders had known that to achieve any success one should, on
purely psychological grounds, never show the masses two or more opponents,
since this leads to a total disintegration of their fighting power, for this
reason alone the thrust of the Pan-German movement would have been directed at
a single adversary. Nothing is more dangerous for a political party than to be
led by those jacks-of-all-trades who want everything but can never really
achieve anything.
Regardless how much room for criticism there was in any
religious denomination a political party must never for a moment lose sight of
the fact that in all previous historical experience a purely political party in
such situations had never succeeded in producing a religious reformation. And
the aim of studying history is not to forget its lessons when occasion arises
for its practical application, or to decide that the present situation is
different after all, and that therefore its old eternal truths are no longer
applicable; no, the purpose of studying history is precisely its lesson for the
present. The man who cannot do this must not conceive of himself as a political
leader; in reality he is a shallow, though usually very conceited, fool, and no
amount of good will can excuse his practical incapacity.
In general the art of all truly great national leaders at
all times consists among other things primarily in not dividing the attention
of a people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe. The more unified the
application of a people's will to fight, the greater will be the magnetic
attraction of a movement and the mightier will be the impetus of the thrust. It
belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed
from one another seem to belong to a single category, because in weak and
uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too
readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right.
Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against
too many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing open the
question whether all others are really wrong and only their own people or their
own movement are in the right.
And this brings about the first paralysis of their own
power. Hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be
combined
so that in the eyes of the masses of one's own supporters the struggle is
directed against only one enemy. This strengthens their faith in their own
right and enhances their bitterness against those who attack it.
That the old Pan-German movement failed to understand
this deprived it of success.
Its goal had been correct, its will pure, but the road it
chose was wrong. It was like a mountain climber who keeps the peak to be
climbed in view and who sets out with the greatest determination and energy,
but pays no attention to the trail, for his eyes are always on his goal, so
that he neither sees nor feels out the character of the ascent and thus comes
to grief in the end.
The opposite state of affairs seemed to prevail with its
great competitor, the Christian Social Party.
The road it chose was correct and well-chosen, but it
lacked clear knowledge of its goal.
In nearly all the matters in which the Pan-German
movement was wanting, the attitude of the Christian Social Party was correct
and well-planned.
It possessed the necessary understanding for the
importance of the masses and from the very first day assured itself of at least
a part of them by open emphasis on its social character. By aiming essentially
at winning the small and lower middle classes and artisans, it obtained a
following as enduring as it was self-sacrificing. It avoided any struggle
against a religious institution and thus secured the support of that mighty
organization which the Church represents. Consequently, it possessed only a
single truly great central opponent. It recognized the value of large-scale
propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the
broad masses of its adherents.
If nevertheless it was unable to achieve its goal and
dream of saving Austria, this was due to two deficiencies in its method and to
its lack of clarity concerning the aim itself.
The anti-Semitism of the new movement was based on
religious ideas instead of racial knowledge. The reason for the intrusion of
this mistake was the same which brought about the second fallacy
If the Christian Social Party wanted to save Austria,
then is; the opinion of its founders it must not operate from the standpoint of
the racial principle, for if it did a dissolution of the state would, in a
short time, inevitably occur. Particularly the situation in Vienna itself, in
the opinion of the party leaders, demanded that all points which would divide
their following should be set aside as much as possible, and that all unifying
conceptions be emphasized in their stead.
At that time Vienna was so strongly permeated especially
with Czech elements that only the greatest tolerance with regard to all racial
questions could keep them in a party which was not anti-German to begin with.
If Austria were to be saved, this was indispensable. And so they attempted to
win over small Czech artisans who were especially numerous in Vienna, by a
struggle against liberal Manchesterism, and in the struggle against the Jews on
a religious basis they thought they had discovered a slogan transcending all of
old Austria's national differences.
It is obvious that combating Jewry on such a basis could
provide the Jews with small cause for concern. If the worst came to the worst,
a splash of baptismal water could always save the business and the Jew at the
same time. With such a superficial motivation, a serious scientific treatment
of the whole problem was never achieved, and as a result far too many people,
to whom this type of anti-Semitism was bound to be incomprehensible, were
repelled. The recruiting power of the idea was limited almost exclusively to
intellectually limited circles, unless true knowledge were substituted for
purely emotional feeling. The intelligentsia remained aloof as a matter of
principle. Thus the whole movement came to look more and more like an attempt
at a new conversion of the Jews, or perhaps even an expression of a certain
competitive envy. And hence the struggle lost the character of an inner and
higher consecration; to many, and not necessarily the worst people, it came to
seem immoral and reprehensible. Lacking was the conviction that this was a
vital question for all humanity, with the fate of all non-Jewish peoples
depending on its solution.
Through this halfheartedness the anti-Semitic line of the
Christian Social Party lost its value.
It was a sham anti-Semitism which was almost worse than
none at all; for it lulled people into security; they thought they had the foe
by the ears, while in reality they themselves were being led by the nose.
In
a short time the Jew had become so accustomed to this type of anti-Semitism
that he would have missed its disappearance more than its presence
inconvenienced him.
If in this the Christian Social Party had to make a heavy
sacrifice to the state of nationalities, they had to make an even greater one
when it came to championing Germanism as such.
They could not be 'nationalistic' unless they wanted to
lose the ground from beneath their feet in Vienna. They hoped that by a
pussy-footing evasion of this question they could still save the Habsburg
state, and by that very thing they encompassed its ruin. And the movement lost
the mighty source of power which alone can fill a political party with inner
strength for any length of time.
Through this alone the Christian Social Party became a
party like any other.
In those days I followed both movements most attentively
One, by feeling the beat of its innermost heart, the other, carried away by
admiration for the unusual man who even then seemed to me a bitter symbol of
all Austrian Germanism.
When the mighty funeral procession bore the dead mayor
from the City Hall toward the Ring, I was among the many hundred thousands
looking on at the tragic spectacle. I was profoundly moved and my feelings told
me that the work, even of this man, was bound to be in vain, owing to the fatal
destiny which would inevitably lead this state to destruction. If Dr. Karl
Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of
our people; that he lived and worked in this impossible state was the
misfortune of his work and of himself.
When he died, the little flames in the Balkans were
beginning to leap up more greedily from month to month, and it was a gracious
fate which spared him from witnessing what he still thought he could
prevent.
Out of the failure of the one movement and the miscarriage of the
other, I for my part sought to find the causes, and came to the certain
conviction that, quite aside from the impossibility of bolstering up the state
in old Austria, the errors of the two parties were as follows:
The Pan-German movement was right in its theoretical view
about the aim of a German renascence, but unfortunate in its choice of methods.
It was nationalistic, but unhappily not socialistic enough to win the masses.
But its anti-Semitism was based on a correct understanding of the importance of
the racial problem, and not on religious ideas. Its struggle against a definite
denomination, however, was actually and tactically false.
The Christian Social movement had an unclear conception
of the aim of a German reawakening, but had intelligence and luck in seeking
its methods as a party. It understood the importance of the social question,
erred in its struggle against the Jews, and had no notion of the power of the
national idea.
If, in addition to its enlightened knowledge of the broad
masses, the Christian Social Party had had a correct idea of the importance of
the racial question, such as the Pan-German movement had achieved; and if,
finally, it had itself been nationalistic, or if the Pan-German movement, in
addition to its correct knowledge of the aim of the Jewish question, had
adopted the practical shrewdness of the Christian Social Party, especially in
its attitude toward socialism, there would have resulted a movement which even
then in my opinion might have successfully intervened in German
destiny.
If this did not come about, it was overwhelmingly due to the nature
of the Austrian state.
Since I saw my conviction realized in no other party, I
could in the period that followed not make up my mind to enter, let alone fight
with, any of the existing organizations. Even then I regarded all political
movements as unsuccessful and unable to carry out a national reawakening of the
German people on a larger and not purely external scale.
But in this period my inner revulsion toward the Habsburg
state steadily grew.
The more particularly I concerned myself with questions of
foreign policy, the more my conviction rose and took root that this political
formation could result in nothing but the misfortune of Germanism. More and
more clearly I saw at last that the fate of the German nation would no longer
be decided here, but in the Reich itself. This was true, not only of political
questions, but no less for all manifestations of cultural life in
general.
Also in the field of cultural or artistic affairs, the Austrian
state showed all symptoms of degeneration, or at least of unimportance for the
German nation. This was most true in the field of architecture. The new
architecture could achieve no special successes in Austria, if for no other
reason because since the completion of the Ring its tasks, in Vienna at least,
had become insignificant in comparison with the plans arising in
Germany.
Thus more and more I began to lead a double life; reason and reality
told me to complete a school as bitter as it was beneficial in Austria, but my
heart dwelt elsewhere.
An oppressive discontent had seized possession of me, the
more I recognized the inner hollowness of this state and the impossibility of
saving it, and felt that in all things it could be nothing but the misfortune
of the German people.
I was convinced that this state inevitably oppressed and
handicapped any really great German as, conversely, it would help every
un-German figure.
I was repelled by the conglomeration of races which the
capital showed me, repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians,
Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere, the eternal mushroom of
humanity-Jews and more Jews.
To me the giant city seemed the embodiment of racial
desecration.
The German of my youth was the dialect of Lower Bavaria,
I could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon. The longer I lived in
this city, the more my hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples which had
begun to corrode this old site of German culture.
The idea that this state could be maintained much longer
seemed to me positively ridiculous.
Austria was then like an old mosaic; the cement, binding
the various little stones together, had grown old and begun to crumble; as long
as the work of art is not touched, it can continue to give a show of existence,
but as soon as it receives a blow, it breaks into a thousand fragments. The
question was only when the blow would come.
Since my heart had never beaten for an Austrian monarchy,
but only for a German Reich, the hour of this state's downfall could only seem
to me the beginning of the redemption of the German nation.
For all these reasons a longing rose stronger and
stronger in me, to go at last whither since my childhood secret desires and
secret love had drawn me.
I hoped some day to make a name for myself as an
architect and thus, on the large or small scale which Fate would allot me, to
dedicate my sincere services to the nation.
But finally I wanted to enjoy the happiness of living and
working in the place which some day would inevitably bring about the
fulfillment of my most ardent and heartfelt wish: the union of my beloved
homeland with the common fatherland, the German Reich.
Even today many would be unable to comprehend the
greatness of such a longing, but I address myself to those to whom Fate has
either hitherto denied this, or from whom in harsh cruelty it has taken it
away; I address myself to all those who, detached from their mother country,
have to fight even for the holy treasure of their language, who are persecuted
and tortured for their loyalty to the fatherland, and who now, with poignant
emotion, long for the hour which will permit them to return to the heart of
their faithful mother; I address myself to all these, and I know that they will
understand me !
Only he who has felt in his own skin what it means to be a
German, deprived of the right to belong to his cherished fatherland, can
measure the deep longing which burns at all times in the hearts of children
separated from their mother country. It torments those whom it fills and denies
them contentment and happiness until the gates of their father's house open,
and in the common Reich, common blood gains peace and tranquillity.
Yet Vienna was and remained for me the hardest, though most
thorough, school of my life. I had set foot in this town while still half a boy
and I left it a man, grown quiet and grave. In it I obtained the foundations
for a philosophy in general and a political view in particular which later I
only needed to supplement in detail, but which never left me. But not until
today have I been able to estimate at their full value those years of
study.
That is why I have dealt with this period at some length, because it
gave me my first visual instruction in precisely those questions which belonged
to the foundations of a party which, arising from smallest beginnings, after
scarcely five years is beginning to develop into a great mass movement. I do
not know what my attitude toward the Jews, Social Democracy, or rather Marxism
as a whole, the social question, etc., would be today if at such an early time
the pressure of destiny-and my own study -had not built up a basic stock of
personal opinions within me.
For if the misery of the fatherland can stimulate
thousands and thousands of men to thought on the inner reasons for this
collapse, this can never lead to that thoroughness and deep insight which are
disclosed to the man who has himself mastered Fate only after years of
struggle.
Chapter IV: Munich
IN THE SPRING of 1912 I came at last to Munich.
The city itself was as familiar to me as if I had lived
for years within its walls. This is accounted for by my study which at every
step had led me to this metropolis of German art. Not only has one not seen
Germany if one does not know Munich-no, above all, one does not know German art
if one has not seen Munich.
In any case, this period before the War was the happiest
and by far the most contented of my life. Even if my earnings were still
extremely meager, I did not live to be able to paint, but painted only to be
able to secure my livelihood or rather to enable myself to go on studying. I
possessed the conviction that I should some day, in spite of all obstacles,
achieve the goal I had set myself. And this alone enabled me to bear all other
petty cares of daily existence lightly and without anxiety.
In addition to
this, there was the heartfelt love which seized me for this city more than for
any other place that I knew, almost from the first hour of my sojourn there. A
German city! What a difference from Vienna! I grew sick to my stomach when I
even thought back on this Babylon of races. In addition, the dialect, much
closer to me, which particularly in my contacts with Lower Bavarians, reminded
me of my former childhood. There were a thousand and more things which were or
became inwardly dear and precious to me. But most of all I was attracted by
this wonderful marriage of primordial power and fine artistic mood, this single
line from the Hofbrauhaus to the Odeon, from the October Festival to the
Pinakothek, etc. If today I am more attached to this city than to any other
spot of earth in this world, it is partly due to the fact that it is and
remains inseparably bound up with the development of my own life; if even then
I achieved the happiness of a truly inward contentment, it can be attributed
only to the magic which the miraculous residence of the Wittelsbachs exerts on
every man who is blessed, not only with a calculating mind but with a feeling
soul.
What attracted me most aside from my professional work was, here
again, the study of the political events of the day, among them particularly
the occurrences in the field of foreign affairs. I came to these latter
indirectly through the German alliance policy which from my Austrian days I
considered absolutely mistaken. However, the full extent of this self-deception
on the part of the Reich had not been clear to me in Vienna. In those days I
was inclined to assume-or perhaps I merely talked myself into it as an
excuse-that Berlin perhaps knew how weak and unreliable the ally would be in
reality, yet, for more or less mysterious reasons, held back this knowledge in
order to bolster up an alliance policy which after all Bismarck himself had
founded and the sudden cessation of which could not be desirable, if for no
other reason lest the lurking foreigner be alarmed in any way, or the
shopkeeper at home be worried.
To be sure, my associations, particularly among the
people itself, soon made me see to my horror that this belief was false. To my
amazement I could not help seeing everywhere that even in otherwise
well-informed circles there was not the slightest glimmer of knowledge
concerning the nature of the Habsburg monarchy. Particularly the common people
were caught in the mad idea that the ally could be regarded as a serious power
which in the hour of need would surely rise to the situation. Among the masses
the monarchy was still regarded as a ' German' state on which we could count.
They were of the opinion that there, too, the power could be measured by the
millions as in Germany itself, and completely forgot that, in the first place:
Austria had long ceased to be a German state; and in the second place: the
internal conditions of this Empire were from hour to hour moving closer to
disintegration.
I had come to know this state formation better than the
so-called official 'diplomats,' who blindly, as almost always, rushed headlong
toward catastrophe; for the mood of the people was always a mere discharge of
what was funneled into public opinion from above. But the people on top made a
cult of the 'ally,' as if it were the Golden Calf. They hoped to replace by
cordiality what was lacking in honesty. And words were always taken for coin of
the realm.
Even in Vienna I had been seized with anger when I reflected on
the disparity appearing from time to time between the speeches of the official
statesmen and the content of the Viennese press. And yet Vienna, in appearance
at least, was still a German city. How different it was if you left Vienna, or
rather German-Austria, and went to the Slavic provinces of the Empire ! You had
only to take up the Prague newspapers to find out what they thought of the
whole exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance. There there was nothing but
bitter scorn and mockery for this 'masterpiece of statecraft.' In the midst of
peace, with both emperors pressing kisses of friendship on each other's
foreheads, the Czechs made no secret of the fact that this alliance would be
done for on the day when an attempt should be made to translate it from the
moonbeams of the Nibelungen ideal into practical reality.
What excitement seized these same people several years
later when the time finally came for the alliances to show their worth and
Italy leapt out of the triple pact, leaving her two comrades in the lurch, and
in the end even becoming their enemy ! That anyone even for a moment should
have dared to believe in the possibility of such a miracle-to wit, the mirade
that Italy would fight side by side with Austria-could be nothing but
incomprehensible to anyone who was not stricken with diplomatic blindness. But
in Austria things were not a hair's-breadth different.
In Austria the only exponents of the alliance idea were
the Habsburgs and the Germans. The Habsburgs, out of calculation and
compulsion; the Germans, from good faith and political-stupidity. From good
faith, for they thought that by the Triple Alliance they were performing a
great service for the German Reich itself, helping to strengthen and secure it;
from political stupidity, because neither did the first-mentioned occur, but on
the contrary, they thereby helped to chain the Reich to the corpse of a state
which would inevitably drag them both into the abyss, and above all because
they themselves, solely by virtue of this alliance, fell more and more a prey
to de-Germanization. For by the alliance with the Reich, the Habsburgs thought
they could be secure against any interference from this side, which
unfortunately was the case, and thus they were able far more easily and safely
to carry through their internal policy of slowly eliminating Germanism. Not
only that in view of our well-known ' objectivity' they had no need to fear any
intervention on the part of the Reich government, but, by pointing to the
alliance, they could also silence any embarrassing voice among the
Austrian-Germans which might rise in German quarters against Slavization of an
excessively disgraceful character.
For what was the German in Austria to do if the Germans
of the Reich recognized and expressed confidence in the Habsburg government?
Should he offer resistance and be branded by the entire German public as a
traitor to his own nationality? When for decades he had been making the most
enormous sacrifices precisely for his nationality!
But what value did this alliance have, once Germanism had
been exterminated in the Habsburg monarchy? Wasn't the value of the Triple
Alliance for Germany positively dependent on the preservation of German
predominance in Austria? Or did they really believe that they could live in an
alliance with a SlavicHabsburg Empire?
The attitude of official German diplomacy and of all
public opinion toward the internal Austrian problem of nationalities was beyond
stupidity, it was positively insane ! They banked on an alliance, made the
future and security of a people of seventy millions dependent on it-and looked
on while the sole basis for this alliance was from year to year, inexorably and
by plan, being destroyed in the partner-nation. The day was bound to come when
a ' treaty ' with Viennese diplomacy would remain, but the aid of an allied
empire would be lost.
With Italy this was the case from the very
beginning.
If people in Germany had only studied history a little
more clearly, and gone into the psycholog of nations, they would not have been
able to suppose even for an hour that the Quirinal and the Vienna Hofburg would
ever stand together n a common fighting front. Sooner would Italy have turned
into a volcano than a government have dared to send even a single Italian to
the battlefield for the fanatically hated Habsburg state, except as an enemy.
More than once in Vienna I saw outbursts of the passionate contempt and
bottomless hatred with which the Italian was ' devoted ' to the Austrian state.
The sins of the House of Habsburg against Italian freedom and independence in
the course of the centuries was too great to be forgotten, even if the will to
forget them had been present. And it was not present; neither in the people nor
in the Italian government. For Italy there were therefore two possibilities for
relations with Austna: either alliance or war.
By choosing the first, the Italians were able to prepare,
undisturbed, for the second.
Especially since the relation of Austria to Russia had
begun to drive closer and closer to a military clash, the German alliance
policy was as senseless as it was dangerous.
This was a classic case, bearing witness to the absence
of any broad and correct line of thinking.
Why, then, was an alliance concluded? Only in order
better to guard the future of the Reich than, reduced to her own resources, she
would have been in a position to do. And this future of the Reich was nothing
other than the question of preserving the German people's possibility of
existence.
Therefore the question could be formulated only as
follows:
What form must the life of the German nation assume in the tangible
future, and how can this development be provided with the necessary foundations
and the required security within the framework of general European relation of
forces?
A clear examination of the premises for foreign activity on the part
of German statecraft inevitably led to the following conviction:
Germany has an annual increase in population of nearly
nine hundred thousand souls. The difficulty of feeding this army of new
citizens must grow greater from year to year and ultimately end in catastrophe,
unless ways and means are found to forestall the danger of starvation and
misery in time.
There were four ways of avoiding so terrible a
development for the future:
1. Following the French example, the increase of births
could be artificially restricted, thus meeting the problem of
overpopulation
Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climactic
conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of
population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise
as it is ruthless. She diminishes, not the power of procreation as such, but
the conservation of the procreated, by exposing them to hard trials and
deprivations with the result that all those who are less strong and less
healthy are forced back into the womb of the eternal unknown. Those whom she
permits to survive the inclemency of existence are a thousandfold tested
hardened, and well adapted to procreate-in turn, in order that the process of
thoroughgoing selection may begin again from the beginning. By thus brutally
proceeding against the individual and immediately calling him back to herself
as soon as he shows himself unequal to the storm of life, she keeps the race
and species strong, in fact, raises them to the highest
accomplishments.
At the same time the diminution of number strengthens the
individual and thus in the last analysis fortifies the species.
It is different, however, when man undertakes the
limitation of his number. He is not carved of the same wood, he is ' humane.'
He knows better than the cruel queen of wisdom. He limits not the conservation
of the individual, but procreation itself. This seems to him, who always sees
himself and never the race, more human and more justified than the opposite
way. Unfortunately, however, the consequences are the reverse:
While Nature, by making procreation free, yet submitting
survival to a hard trial, chooses from an excess number of individuals the best
as worthy of living, thus preserving them alone and in them conserving their
species, man limits procreation, but is hysterically concerned that once a
being is born it should be preserved at any price. This correction of the
divine will seems to him as wise as it is humane, and he takes delight in
having once again gotten the best of Nature and even having proved her
inadequacy. The number, to be sure, has really been limited, but at the same
time the value of the individual has dirninished; this, however, is something
the dear little ape of the Almighty does not want to see or hear about.
For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of
births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the
strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to '
save ' even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed
of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the
longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues.
And the end will be that such a people will some day be
deprived of its existence on this earth; for man can defy the eternal laws of
the will to conservation for a certain time, but sooner or later vengeance
comes. A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its
ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd fetters of the
so-called humanity of individuals, in order to replace it by the humanity of
Nature which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong.
Therefore, anyone who wants to secure the existence of
the German people by a self-limitation of its reproduction is robbing it of its
future.
2. A second way would be one which today we, time and time again,
see proposed and recommended: internal colonization. This is a proposal which
is well meant by just as many as by most people it is misunderstood, thus doing
the greatest conceivable damage that anyone can imagined
Without doubt the productivity of the soil can be
increased up to a certain limit. But only up to a certain limit, and not
continuously without end. For a certain time it will be possible to compensate
for the increase of the German people without having to think of hunger, by
increasing the productivity of our soil. But beside this, we must face the fact
that our demands on life ordinarily nse even more rapidly than the number of
the population Man's requirements with regard to food and clothing increase
from year to year, and even now, for example, stand in no relation to the
requirements of our ancestors, say a hundred years ago. It IS, therefore,
insane to believe that every rise in production provides the basis for an
increase in population: no; this is true only up to a certain degree, since at
least a part of the increased production of the soil is spent in satisfying the
increased needs of men. But even with the greatest limitation on the one hand
and the utmost industry on the other, here again a limit will one day be
reached, created by the soil itself. With the utmost toil it will not be
possible to obtain any more from its and then, though postponed for a certain
time, catastrophe again manifests itself. First, there will be hunger from time
to time, when there is famine, etc. As the population increases, this will
happen more and more often, so that finally it will only be absent when rare
years of great abundance fill the granaries. But at length the time approaches
when even then it will not be possible to satisfy men's needs, and hunger has
become the eternal companion of such a people. Then Nature must help again and
make a choice among those whom she has chosen for life; but again man helps
himself; that is, he turns to artificial restriction of his increase with all
the above-indicated dire consequences for race and species.
The objection may still be raised that this future will
face the whole of humanity in any case and that consequently the individual
nation can naturally not avoid this fate.
At first glance this seems perfectly correct. Yet here
the following must be borne in mind:
Assuredly at a certain time the whole of humanity will be
compelled, in consequence of the impossibility of making the fertility of the
soil keep pace with the continuous increase in population, to halt the increase
of the human race and either let Nature again decide or, by self-help if
possible, create the necessary balance, though, to be sure, in a more correct
way than is done today. But then this will strike all peoples, while today only
those races are stricken with such suffering which no longer possess the force
and strength to secure for themselves the necessary territories in this world.
For as matters stand there are at the present time on this earth immense areas
of unusued soil, only waiting for the men to till them. But it is equally true
that Nature as such has not reserved this soil for the future possession of any
particular nation or race; on the contrary, this soil exists for the people
which possesses the force to take it and the industry to cultivate it.
Nature knows no political boundaries. First, she puts living
creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers
the master's right on her favorite child, the strongest in courage and
industry.
When a people limits itself to internal colonization because other
races are clinging fast to greater and greater surfaces of this earth, it will
be forced to have recourse to self-limitation at a time when the other peoples
are still continuing to increase. Some day this situation will arise, and the
smaller the living space at the disposal of the people, the sooner it will
happen. Since in general, unfortunately, the best nations, or, even more
correctly, the only truly cultured races, the standard-bearers of all human
progress, all too frequently resolve in their pacifistic blindness to renounce
new acquisitions of soil and content themselves with 'internal' colonization,
while the inferior races know how to secure immense living areas in this world
for themselves-this would lead to the following final result:
The culturally superior, but less ruthless races, would
in consequence of their limited soil, have to limit their increase at a time
when the culturally inferior but more brutal and more natural t peoples, in
consequence of their greater living areas, would still be in a position to
increase without limit. In other words: some day the world will thus come into
possession of the culturally inferior but more active men.
Then, though in a perhaps very distant future, there will
be but two possibilities either the world will be governed according to the
ideas of our modern democracy, and then the weight of any decision will result
in favor of the numerically stronger races, or the world will be dominated in
accordance with the laws of the natural order of force, and then it is the
peoples of brutal will who will conquer, and consequently once again not the
nation of selfrestriction.
No one can doubt that this world will some day be exposed
to the severest struggles for the existence of mankind. In the end, only the
urge for self-preservation can conquer. Beneath it socalled humanity, the
expression of a mixture of stupidity, cowardice, and know-it-all conceit, will
melt like snow in the March sun. Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle,
and only in eternal peace does it perish.
For us Germans the slogan of 'inner colonization' is
catastrophic, if for no other reason because it automatically reinforces us in
the opinion that we have found a means which, in accordance with the pacifistic
tendency, allows us ' to earn ' our right to exist by labor in a life of sweet
slumbers. Once this doctrine were taken seriously in our country, it would mean
the end of every exertion to preserve for ourselves the place which is our due.
Once the average German became convinced that he could secure his life and
future in this way, all attempts at an active, and hence alone fertile, defense
of German vital necessities would be doomed to failure. In the face of such an
attitude on the part of the nation any really beneficial foreign policy could
be regarded as buried, and with it the future of the German people as a
whole.
Taking these consequences into account, it is no accident that it is
always primarily the Jew who tries and succeeds in planting such mortally
dangerous modes of thought in our people. He knows his customers too well not
to realize that they gratefully let themselves be swindled by any gold-brick
salesman who can make them think he has found a way to play a little trick on
Nature, to make the hard, inexorable struggle for existence superfluous, and
instead, sometimes by work, but sometimes by plain doing nothing, depending on
how things 'come out,' to become the lord of the planet.
It cannot be emphasized sharply enough that any German
internal colonization must serve to eliminate social abuses particularly to
withdraw the soil from widespread speculation, best can never suffice to secure
the future of the nation without the acquisition of new soil.
If we do not do this, we shall in a short time have
arrived, not only at the end of our soil, but also at the end of our
strength.
Finally, the following must be stated:
The limitation to a definite small area of soil, inherent
in internal colonization, like the same final effect obtained by restriction of
procreation, leads to an exceedingly unfavorable politicomilitary situation in
the nation in question.
The size of the area inhabited by a people constitutes in
itself an essential factor for determining its outward security. The greater
the quantity of space at the disposal of a people, the greater its natural
protection; for military decisions against peoples living in a small restricted
area have always been obtained more quickly and hence more easily, and in
particular more effectively and completely than can, conversely, be possible
against territorially extensive states. In the size of a state's territory
there always lies a certain protection against frivolous attacks, since success
can be achieved only after hard struggles, and therefore the risk of a rash
assault will seem too great unless there are quite exceptional grounds for it.
Hence the very size of a state offers in itself a basis for more easily
preserving the freedom and independence of a people, while, conversely, the
smallness of such a formation is a positive invitation to seizure.
Actually the two first possibilities for creating a
balance between the rising population and the stationary amount of soil were
rejected in the so-called national circles of the Reich. The reasons for this
position were, to be sure, different from those above mentioned: government
circles adopted a negative attitude toward the limitation of births out of a
certain moral feeling; they indignantly rejected internal colonization because
in it they scented an attack against large landholdings and therein the
beginning of a wider struggle against private property in general. In view of
the form in which particularly the latter panacea was put forward, they may
very well have been right in this assumption.
On the whole, the defense against the broad masses was not
very skillful and by no means struck at the heart of the problem.
Thus there
remained but two ways of securing work and bread for the rising
population.
3. Either new soil could be acquired and the superfluous
millions sent off each year, thus keeping the nation on a selfsustaining basis;
or we could
4. Produce for foreign needs through industry and
commerce, and defray the cost of living from the proceeds.
In other words: either a territorial policy, or a
colonial and commercial policy.
Both ways were contemplated, examined, recommended, and
combated by different political tendencies, and the last was finally
taken.
The healthier way of the two would, to be sure, have been the
first.
The acquisition of new soil for the settlement of the excess
population possesses an infinite number of advantages, particularly if wee turn
from the present to the future.
For once thing, the possibility of preserving a healthy
peasant class as a foundation for a whole nation can never be valued highly
enough. Many of our present-day sufferings are only the consequence of the
unhealthy relationship between rural and city population A solid stock of small
and middle peasants has at all times been the best defense against social ills
such as we possess today. And, moreover this is the only solution which enables
a nation to earn its daily bread within the inner circuit of its economy.
Industry and commerce recede from their unhealthy leading position and adjust
themselves to the general framework of a national economy of balanced supply
and demand. Both thus cease to be the basis of the nation's sustenance and
become a mere instrument to that end. Since they now have only a balance '
Aberdeen domestic production and demand in all fields, they make the
Subsistence of the people as a whole more or less independent foreign
countries, and thus help to secure the freedom of the stite and the
independence of the nation, particularly in difficult Periods.
It must be
said that such a territorial policy cannot be fulfilled in the Cameroons, but
today almost exclusively in Europe. We must, therefore, coolly and objectively
adopt the standpoint that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to
give one people fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another. In
this case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of
eternal justice. If this earth really has room for all to live in, let us be
given the soil we need for our livelihood.
True, they will no t willingly do this. But then the law
of selfpreservaion goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods,
it is up to the fist to take. If our forefathers had let their decisions depend
on the same pacifistic nonsense as our contemporaries, we should possess only a
third of our present territory; but in that case there would scarcely be any
German people for us to worry about in Europe today. No-it is to our natural
determination to fight for our own existence that we owe the two Ostmarks of
the Reich and hence that inner strength arising from the greatness of our state
and national territory which alone has enabled us to exist up to the
present.
And for another reason this would have been the correct
solution
Today many European states are like pyramids stood on their heads.
Their European area is absurdly small in comparison to their weight of
colonies, foreign trade, etc. We may say: summit in Europe, base in the whole
world; contrasting with the American Union which possesses its base in its own
continent and touches the rest of the earth only with its summit. And from this
comes the immense inner strength of this state and the weakness of most
European colonial powers.
Nor is England any proof to the contrary, since in
consideration of the British Empire we too easily forget the Anglo-Saxon world
as such. The position of England, if only because of her linguistic and
cultural bond with the American Union, can be compared to no other state in
Europe.
For Germany, consequently, the only possibility for carrying out a
healthy territorial policy lay in the acquisition of new land in Europe itself.
Colonies cannot serve this purpose unless they seem in large part suited for
settlement by Europeans. But in the nineteenth century such colonial
territories were no longer obtainable by peaceful means. Consequently, such a
colonial policy could only have been carried out by means of a hard struggle
which, however, would have been carried on to much better purpose, not for
territories outside of Europe, but for land on the home continent
itself.
Such a decision, it is true, demands undivided devotion.
It is not permissible to approach with half measures or even with hesitation a
task whose execution seems possible only by the harnessing of the very last
possible ounce of energy. This means that the entire political leadership of
the Reich should have devoted itself to this exclusive aim; never should any
step have been taken, guided by other considerations than the recognition of
this task and its requirements. It was indispensable to see dearly that this
aim could be achieved only by struggle, and consequently to face the contest of
arms with calm and composure.
All alliances, therefore, should have been viewed
exclusively from this standpoint and judged according to their possible
utilization. If land was desired in Europe, it could be obtained by and large
only at the expense of Russia, and this meant that the new Reich must again set
itself on the march along the road of the Teutonic Knights of old, to obtain by
the German sword sod for the German plow and daily bread for the
nation.
For such a policy there was but one ally in Europe: England.
With England alone was it possible, our rear protected, to begin the
new Germanic march. Our right to do this would have been no less than the right
of our forefathers. None of our pacifists refuses to eat the bread of the East,
although the first plowshare in its day bore the name of 'sword' !
Consequently, no sacrifice should have been too great for
winning England's willingness. We should have renounced colonies and sea power,
and spared English industry our competition.
Only an absolutely clear orientation could lead to such a
goal: renunciation of world trade and colonies; renunciation of a German war
fleet; concentration of all the state's instruments of power on the land
army.
The result, to be sure, would have been a momentary limitation but a
great and mighty future.
There was a time when England would have listened to
reason on this point, since she was well aware that Germany as a result of her
increased population had to seek some way out and either find it with England
in Europe or without England in the world.
And it can primarily be attributed to this realization if
at the turn of the century London itself attempted to approach Germany. For the
first time a thing became evident which in the last years we have had occasion
to observe in a truly terrifying fashion. People were unpleasantly affected by
the thought of having to pull Fngland's chestnuts out of the fire; as though
there ever could be an alliance on any other basis than a mutual business deal.
And with England such a deal could very well have been made. British diplomacy
was still clever enough to realize that no service can be expected without a
return.
Just suppose that an astute German foreign policy had taken over the
role of Japan in 1904, and we can scarcely measure the consequences this would
have had for Germany.
There would never have been any 'World War.'
The bloodshed in the year 1904 would have saved ten times
as much in the years 1914 to 1918.
And what a position Germany would occupy in the world
today!
In that light, to be sure, the alliance with Austria was an
absurdity.
For this mummy of a state allied itself with Germany, not
in order to fight a war to its end, but for the preservation of an eternal
peace which could astutely be used for the slow but certain extermination of
Germanism in the monarchy.
This alliance was an impossibility for another reason:
because we could not expect a state to take the offensive in championing
national German interests as long as this state did not possess the power and
determination to put an end to the process of de-Germanization on its own
immediate borders. If Germany did not possess enough national awareness and
ruthless determination to snatch power over the destinies of ten million
national comrades from the hands of the impossible Habsburg state, then truly
we had no right to expect that she would ever lend her hand to such farseeing
and bold plans. The attitude of the old Reich on the Austrian question was the
touchstone of its conduct in the struggle for the destiny of the whole
nation.
In any case we were not justified in looking on, as year after year
Germanism was increasingly repressed, since the value of Aushia's fitness for
alliance was determined exclusively by the preservation of the German
element.
This road, however, was not taken at all.
These people feared nothing so much as struggle, yet they
were finally forced into it at the most unfavorable hour.
They wanted to run away from destiny, and it caught up
with them. They dreamed of preserving world peace, and landed in the World
War.
And this was the most significant reason why this third way of
molding the German future was not even considered. They knew that the
acquisition of new soil was possible only in the East, they saw the struggle
that would be necessary and yet wanted peace at any price; for the watchword of
German foreign policy had long ceased to be: preservation of the German nation
by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means. With what
success, everyone knows.
I shall return to this point in particular.
Thus there remained the fourth possibility
Industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.
Such a development, to be sure, was at first easier and also more
quickly attainable. The settlement of land is a slow process, often lasting
centuries; in fact, its inner strength is to be sought precisely in the fact
that it is not a sudden blaze, but a gradual yet solid and continuous growth,
contrasting with an industrial development which can be blown up in the course
of a few years, but in that case is more like a soapbubble than solid strength.
A fieet, to be sure, can be built more quickly than farms can be established in
stubborn struggle and settled with peasants, but it is also more rapidly
destroyed than the latter.
If, nevertheless, Germany took this road, she should at
least have clearly recognized that this development would some day likewise end
in struggle. Only children could have thought that they could get their bananas
in the 'peaceful contest of nations,' by friendly and moral conduct and
constant emphasis on their peaceful intentions, as they so high-soundingly and
unctuously babbled; in other words, without ever having to take up arms. No: if
we chose this road, England would some day inevitably become our enemy. It was
more than senseless-but quite in keeping with our own innocence-to wax
indignant over the fact that England should one day take the liberty to oppose
our peaceful activity with the brutality of a violent egoist.
It is true that we, I am sorry to say, would never have
done such a thing.
If a European territorial policy was only possible against
Russia in alliance with England, conversely, a policy of colonies and world
trade was conceivable only against England and with Russia. But then we had
dauntlessly to draw the consequences- and, above all, abandon Austria in all
haste.
Viewed from all angles, this alliance with Austria was real madness
by the turn of the century.
But we did not think of concluding an alliance with Russia
against England, any more than with England against Russia, for in both cases
the end would have been war, and to prevent this we decided in favor of a
policy of commerce and industry. In the 'peaceful economic ' conquest of the
world we possessed a recipe which was expected to break the neck of the former
policy of violence once and for all.l Occasionally, perhaps, we were not quite
sure of ourselves, particularly when from time to time incomprehensible threats
came over from England; therefore, we decided to build a fleet, though not to
attack and destroy England, but for the 'defense' of our old friend 'world
peace' and 'peaceful ' conquest of the world. Consequently, it was kept on a
somewhat more modest scale in all respects, not only in number but also in the
tonnage of the individual ships as well as in armament, so as in the final
analysis to let our 'peaceful' intentions shine through after all.
The talk about the 'peaceful economic' conquest of the
world was possibly the greatest nonsense which has ever been exalted to be a
guiding principle of state policy. What made this nonsense even worse was that
its proponents did not hesitate to call upon England as a crown witness for the
possibility of such an achievement. The crimes of our academic doctrine and
conception of history in this connection can scarcely be made good and are only
a striking proof of how many people there are who 'learn' history without
understanding or even comprehending it. England, in particular, should have
been recognized as the striking refutation of this theory; for no people has
ever with greater brutality better prepared its economic conquests with the
sword, and later ruthlessly defended theme than the English nation. Is it not
positively the distinguishing feature of British statesmanship to draw economic
acquisitions from political strength, and at once to recast every gain in
economic strength into political power? And what an error to believe that
England is personally too much of a coward to stake her own blood for her
economic policy! The fact that the English people possessed no 'people's army'
in no way proved the contrary; for what matters is not the momentary military
form of the fighting forces, but rather the will and determination to risk
those which do exist. England has always possessed whatever armament she
happened to need. She always fought with the weapons which success demanded.
She fought with mercenaries as long as mercenaries sufficed; but she reached
down into the precious blood of the whole nation when only such a sacrifice
could bring victory; but the determination for victory, the tenacity and
ruthless pursuit of this struggle, remained unchanged.
In Germany, however, the school, the press, and comic
magazines cultivated a conception of the Englishman's character, and almost
more so of his empire, which inevitably led to one of the most insidious
delusions; for gradually everyone was infected by this nonsense, and the
consequence was an underestimation for which we would have to pay most
bitterly. This falsification went so deep that people became convinced that in
the Englishman they faced a business man as shrewd as personally he was
unbelievably cowardly. The fact that a world empire the size of the British
could not be put together by mere subterfuge and swindling was unfortunately
something that never even occurred to our exalted professors of academic
science. The few who raised a voice of warning were ignored or killed by
silence. I remember well my comrades' looks of astonishment when we faced the
Tommies in person in Flanders. After the very first days of battle the
conviction dawned on each and every one of them that these Scotsmen did not
exactly jibe with the pictures they had seen fit to give us in the comic
magazines and press dispatches.
It was then that I began my first reflections about the
importance of the form of propaganda.
This falsification, however, did have
one good side for those who spread it: by this example, even though it was
incorrect, they were able to demonstrate the correctness of the economic
conquest of the world. If the Englishman had succeeded, we too were bound to
succeed, and our definitely greater honesty, the absence in us of that
specifically English 'perfidy,' was regarded as a very special plus. For it was
hoped that this would enable us to win the affection, particularly of the
smaller nations, and the confidence of the large ones the more easily.
It
did not occur to us that our honesty was a profound horror to the others, if
for no other reason because we ourselves believed all these things seriously
while the rest of the world regarded such behavior as the expression of a
special slyness and disingenuousness, until, to their great, infinite
amazement, the revolution gave them a deeper insight into the boundless
stupidity of our honest convictions.
However, the absurdity of this 'economic conquest' at once
made the absurdity of the Triple Alliance clear and comprehensible. For with
what other state could we ally ourselves? In alliance with Austria, to be sure,
we could not undertake any military conquest, even in Europe alone. Precisely
therein consisted the inner weakness of the alliance from the very first day. A
Bismarck could permit himself this makeshift, but not by a long shot every
bungling successor, least of all at a time when certain essential premises of
Bismarck's alliance had long ceased to exist; for Bismarck still believed that
in Austria he had to do with a German state. But with the gradual introduction
of universal suffrage, this country had sunk to the status of an unGerman
hodgepodge with a parliamentary government.
Also from the standpoint of racial policy, the alliance
with Austria was simply ruinous. It meant tolerating the growth of a new Slavic
power on the borders of the Reich, a power which sooner or later would have to
take an entirely different attitude toward Germany than, for example, Russia.
And from year to year the alliance itself was bound to grow inwardly hollower
and weaker in proportion as the sole supporters of this idea in the monarchy
lost influence and were shoved out of the most decisive positions.
By the turn of the century the alliance with Austria had
entered the very same stage as Austria's pact with Italy.
Here again there were only two possibilities: either we
were in a pact with the Habsburg monarchy or we had to lodge protest against
the repression of Germanism. But once a power embarks on this kind of
undertaking, it usually ends in open struggle.
Even psychologically the value of the Triple Alliance was
small, since the stability of an alliance increases in proportion as the
individual contracting parties can hope to achieve definite and tangible
expansive aims. And, conversely, it will be the weaker the more it limits
itself to the preservation of an existing condition. Here, as everywhere else,
strength lies not in defense but in attack.
Even then this was recognized in various quarters,
unfortunately not by the so-called 'authorities.' Particularly Ludendorff, then
a colonel and officer in the great general staff, pointed to these weaknesses
in a memorial written in 1912. Of course, none of the 'statesmen' attached any
value or significance to the matter; for clear common sense is expected to
manifest itself expediently only in common mortals, but may on principle remain
absent where 'diplomats' are concenned.
For Germany it was sheer good fortune that in 1914 the
war broke out indirectly through Austria, so that the Habsburgs were forced to
take part; for if it had happened the other way around Germany would have been
alone. Never would the Habsburg state have been able, let alone willing, to
take part in a confiict which would have arisen through Germany. What we later
so condemned in Italy would then have happened even earlier with Austria: they
would have remained 'neutral' in order at least to save the state from a
revolution at the very start. Austrian Slavdom would rather have shattered the
monarchy even in 1914 than permit aid to Germany.
How great were the dangers and difficulties entailed by
the alliance with the Danubian monarchy, only very few realized a' that
time.
In the first place, Austria possessed too many enemies who were
planning to grab what they could from the rotten state to prevent a certain
hatred from arising in the course of time against Germany, in whom they saw the
cause of preventing the generally hoped and longed-for collapse of the
monarchy. They came to the conviction that Vienna could finally be reached only
by a detour through Berlin.
In the second place, Germany thus lost her best and most
hopeful possibilities of alliance. They were replaced by an evermounting
tension with Russia and even Italy. For in Rome the general mood was just as
pro-German as it was antiAustrian, slumbering in the heart of the very last
Italian and often brightly flanng up.
Now, since we had thrown ourselves into a policy of
commerce and industry, there was no longer the slightest ground for war against
Russia either. Only the enemies of both nations could still have an active
interest in it. And actually these were primarily the Jews and the Marxists,
who, with every means, incited and agitated for war between the two
states.
Thirdly and lastly, this alliance inevitably involved an infinite
peril for Germany, because a great power actually hostile to Bismarck's Reich
could at any time easily succeed in mobilizing a whole series of states against
Germany, since it was in a position to promise each of them enrichment at the
expense of our Austrian ally.
The whole East of Europe could be stirred up against the
Danubian monarchy-particularly Russia and Italy. Never would the world
coalition which had been forming since the initiating efforts of King Edward
have come into existence if Austria as Germany's ally had not represented too
tempting a legacy. This alone made it possible to bring states with otherwise
so heterogeneous desires and aims into a single offensive front. Each one could
hope that in case of a general action against Germany it, too, would achieve
enrichment at Austria's expense. The danger was enormously increased by the
fact that Turkey seemed to be a silent partner in this unfortunate
alliance.
International Jewish world finance needed these lures to
enable it to carry out its long-desired plan for destroying the Germany which
thus far did not submit to its widespread superst3te control of finance and
economics. Only in this way could they forge a coalition made strong and
courageous by the sheer numbers of the gigantic armies now on the march and
prepared to attack the horny Siegfried at last.
The alliance with the Habsburg monarchy, which even in
Austria had filled me with dissatisfaction, now became the source of long inner
trials which in the time to come reinforced me even more in the opinion I had
already conceived.
Even then, among those few people whom I frequented I
made no secret of my conviction that our catastrophic alliance with a state on
the brink of ruin would also lead to a fatal collapse of Germany unless we knew
enough to release ourselves from it on time. This conviction of mine was firm
as a rock, and I did not falter ill it for one moment when at last the storm of
the World War seemed to have excluded all reasonable thought and a frenzy of
enthusiasm had seized even those quarters for which there should have been only
the coldest consideration of reality. And while I myself was at the front, I
put forwards whenever these problems were discussed, my opinion that the
alliance had to be broken off, the quicker the better for the German nation,
and that the sacrifice of the Habsburg monarchy would be no sacrifice at all to
make if Germany thereby could achieve a restriction of her adversaries; for it
was not for the preservation of a debauched dynasty that the millions had
donned the steel helmet, but for the salvation of the German
nation.
On a few occasions before the War it seemed as though, in
one camp at least, a gentle doubt was arising as to the correctness of the
alliance policy that had been chosen. German conservative circles began from
time to time to warn against excessive confidence, but, like everything else
that was sensible, this was thrown to the winds. They were convinced that they
were on the path to a world ' conquest,' whose success would be tremendous and
which would entail practically no sacrifices.
There was nothing for those not in authority to do but to
watch in silence why and how the ' authorities' marched straight to
destruction, drawing the dear people behind them like the Pied Piper of
Hamelin.
The deeper cause that made it possible to represent the
absurdity of an ' economic conquest ' as a practical political method, and the
preservation of 'world peace' as a political goal for a whole people, and even
to make these things intelligible, lay in the general sickening of our whole
political thinking.
With the victorious march of German technology and
industry, the rising successes of German commerce, the realization was
increasingly lost that all this was only possible on the basis of a strong
state. On the contrary, many circles went so far as to put forward the
conviction that the state owed its very existence to these phenomena, that the
state itself Drimarilv represented an economic institution, that it could be
governed according to economic requirements, and that its very existence
depended on economics, a state of affairs which was regarded and glorified as
by far the healthiest and most natural.
But the state has nothing at all to do with any definite
economic conception or development.
It is not a collection of economic contracting parties in
a definite delimited living space for the fulfillment of economic tasks, but
the organization of a community of physically and psychologically similar
living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their species
and the achievement of the aim which has been allotted to this species by
Providence. This and nothing else is the aim and meaning of a state. Economics
is only one of the many instruments required for the achievement of this aim.
It is never the cause or the aim of a state unless this state is based on a
false, because unnatural, foundation to begin with. Only in this way can it be
explained that the state as such does not necessarily presuppose territorial
limitation. This will be necessary only among the peoples who want to secure
the maintenance of their national comrades by their own resources; in other
words, are prepared to fight the struggle for existence by their own labor.
Peoples who can sneak their way into the rest of mankind like drones, to make
other men work for them under all sorts of pretexts, can form states even
without any definitely delimited living space of their own. This applies first
and foremost to a people under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is
suffering, today more than ever: the Jews.
The Jewish state was never spatially limited in itself,
but universally unlimited as to space, though restricted in the sense of
embracing but one race. Consequently, this people has always formed a state
within states. It is one of the most ingenious tricks that was ever devised, to
make this state sail under the fiag of 'religion,' thus assuring it of the
tolerance which the Aryan is always ready to accord a religious creed. For
actually the Mosaic religion is nothing other than a doctrine for the
preservation of the Jewish race. It therefore embraces almost all sociological,
political, and economic fields of knowledge which can have any bearing on this
function.
The urge to preserve the species is the first cause for
the formation of human communities; thus the state is a national organism and
not an economic organization. A difference which is just as large as it is
incomprehensible, particularly to our so-called ' statesmen ' of today. That is
why they think they can build up the state through economics while in reality
it results and always will result solely from the action of those qualities
which lie in line with the will to preserve the species and race. And these are
always heroic virtues and never the egoism of shopkeepers, since the
preservation of the existence of a species presupposes a spirit of sacrifice in
the individual. The sense of the poet's words, 'If you will not stake your
life, you will win no life,' is that the sacrifice of personal existence is
necessary to secure the preservation of the species. Thus, the most sensible
prerequisite for the formation and preservation of a state is the presence of a
certain feeling of cohesion based on similarity of nature and species, and a
willingness to stake everything on it with all possible means, something which
in peoples with soil of their own will create heroic virtues, but in parasites
will create lying hypocrisy and malignant cruelty, or else these qualities must
already be present as the necessary and demonstrable basis for their existence
as a state so different in form. The formation of a state, originally at least,
will occur through the exercise of these qualities, and in the subsequent
struggle for self-preservation those nations will be defeated- that is, will
fall a prey to subjugation and thus sooner or later die out which in the mutual
struggle possess the smallest share of heroic virtues, or are not equal to the
lies and trickery of the hostile parasite. But in this case, too, this must
almost always be attributed less to a lack of astuteness than to a lack of
determination and courage, which only tries to conceal itself beneath a cloak
of humane convictions.
How little the state-forming and state-preserving
qualities are connected with economics is most clearly shown by the fact that
the inner strength of a state only in the rarest cases coincides with so-called
economic prosperity, but that the latter, in innumerable cases, seems to
indicate the state's approaching decline. If the formation of human societies
were primarily attributable to economic forces or even impulses, the highest
economic development would have to mean the greatest strength of the state and
not the opposite.
Belief in the state-forming and state-preserving power of
economics seems especially incomprehensible when it obtains in a country which
in all things clearly and penetratingly shows the historic reverse. Prussia, in
particular, demonstrates with marvelous sharpness that not material qualities
but ideal virtues alone make possible the formation of a state. Only under
their protection can economic life flourish, until with the collapse of the
pure state-forming faculties the economy collapses too; a process which we can
observe in so terrible and tragic a form right now. The material interests of
man can always thrive best as long as they remain in the shadow of heroic
virtues; but as soon as they attempt to enter the primary sphere of existence,
they destroy the basis for their own existence.
Always when in Germany there
was an upsurge of political power, the economic conditions began to improve;
but always when economics became the sole content of our people's life,
stifling the ideal virtues, the state collapsed and in a short time drew
economic life along with it.
If, however, we consider the question, what, in reality,
are the state-forming or even state-preserving forces, we can sum them up under
one single head: the ability and will of the individual to sacrifice himself
for the totality. That these virtues have nothing at all to do with economics
can be seen from the simple realization that man never sacrifices himself for
the latter, or, in other words: a man does not die for business, but only for
ideals. Nothing proved the Englishman's superior psychological knowledge of the
popular soul better than the motivation which he gave to his struggle. While we
fought for bread, England fought for 'freedom'; and not even for her own, no,
for that of the small nations. In our country we laughed at this effrontery, or
were enraged at it, and thus only demonstrated how emptyheaded and stupid the
so-called statesmen of Germany had becorne even before the War. We no longer
had the slightest idea concerning the essence of the force which can lead men
to their death of their own free will and decision.
In 1914 as long as the German people thought they were
fighting for ideals, they stood firm; but as soon as they were told to fight
for their daily bread, they preferred to give up the game.
And our brilliant 'statesmen' were astonished at this
change in attitude. It never became clear to them that from the moment when a
man begins to fight for an economic interest, he avoids death as much as
possible, since death wo lid forever deprive him of his reward for fighting.
Anxiety for the rescue of her own child makes a heroine of even the feeblest
mother, and only the struggle for the preservation of the species and the
hearth, or the state that protects it, has at all times driven men against the
spears of their enemies.
The following theorem may be established as an eternally
valid truth:
Never yet has a state been founded by peaceful economic
means, but always and exclusively by the instincts of preservation of the
species regardless whether these are found in the province of heroic virtue or
of cunning craftiness; the one results in Aryan states based on work and
culture, the other in Jewish colonies of parasites. As soon as economics as
such begins to choke out these Instincts in a people or in a state, it becomes
the seductive cause of subjugation and oppression.
The belief of pre-war days that the world could be
peacefully opened up to, let alone conquered for, the German people by a
commercial and colonial policy was a classic sign of the loss of real
state-forming and state-preserving virtues and of all the insight, will power,
and active determination which follow from them; the penalty for this,
inevitable as the law of nature, was the World War with its
consequences.
For those who do not look more deeply into the matter,
this attitude of the German nation-for it was really as good as general-could
only represent an insoluble riddle: for was not Germany above all other
countries a marvelous example of an empire which had risen from foundations of
pure political power? Prussia, the germ-cell of the Empire, came into being
through resplendent heroism and not through financial operations or commercial
deals, and the Reich itself in turn was only the glorious reward of aggressive
political leadership and the death defying courage of its soldiers. How could
this very German people have succumbed to such a sickening of its political
instinct? For here we face, not an isolated phenomenon, but forces of decay
which in truly terrifying number soon began to flare up like will-o'-the-wisps,
brushing up and down the body politic, or eating like poisonous abscesses into
the nation, now here and now there. It seemed as though a continuous stream of
poison was being driven into the outermost blood-vessels of this once heroic
body by a mysterious power, and was inducing progressively greater paralysis of
sound reason and the simple instinct of selfpreservation .
As innumerable times I passed in review all these
questions, arising through my position on the German alliance policy and the
economic policy of the Reich in the years 1912 to 1914-the only remaining
solution to the riddle became to an ever-increasing degree that power which,
from an entirely different viewpoint, I had come to know earlier in Vienna: the
Marxist doctrine and philosophy, and their organizational results.
For the second time I dug into this doctrine of
destruction- this time no longer led by the impressions and effects of my daily
associations, but directed by the observation of general processes of political
life. I again immersed myself in the theoretical literature of this new world,
attempting to achieve clarity concerning its possible effects, and then
compared it with the actual phenomena and events it brings about in political,
cultural, and economic life.
Now for the first time I turned my attention to the
attempts to master this world plague.
I studied Bismarck's Socialist legislation 1 in its
intention struggle, and success. Gradually I obtained a positively granite
foundation for my own conviction, so that since that time I have never been
forced to undertake a shift in my own inner view on this question. Likewise the
relation of Marxism to the Jews was submitted to further thorough
examination.
Though previously in Vienna, Germany above all had seemed
to me an unshakable colossus, now anxious misgivings sometimes entered my mind.
In silent solitude and in the small circles of my acquaintance, I was filled
with wrath at German foreign policy and likewise with what seemed to me the
incredibly frivolous way in which the most important problem then existing for
Germany, Marxism, was treated. It was really beyond me how people could rush so
blindly into a danger whose effects, pursuant to the Marxists' own intention,
were bound some day to be monstrous. Even then, among my acquaintance, just as
today on a large scale, I warned against the phrase with which all wretched
cowards comfort themselves: 'Nothing can happen to us!' This pestilential
attitude had once been the downfall of a gigantic empire. Could anyone believe
that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human
organisms?
In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in
various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist
movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the
German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.
In the catastrophic German alliance policy I saw only one
of the consequences called forth by the disruptive work of this doctrine; for
the terrible part of it was that this poison almost invisibly destroyed all the
foundations of a healthy conception of economy and state, and that often those
affected by it did not themselves realize to what an extent their activities
and desires emanated from this philosophy srhich they otherwise sharply
ejected.
The internal decline of the German nation had long since begun, yet,
as so often in life, people had not achieved clarity concerning the force that
was destroying their existence. Sometimes they tinkered around with the
disease, but confused the forms of the phenomenon with the virus that had
caused it. Since they did not know or want to know the cause, the struggle
against Malsisrs was no better than bungling quackery.