The official attitude of German diplomacy, as well as that of the general public towards internal problems affecting the Austrian nationalities was not merely stupid, it was insane. On the alliance, as on a solid foundation, they grounded the security and future existence of a nation of seventy millions, while at the same time they allowed their partner to continue his policy of undermining the sole foundation of that alliance methodically and resolutely, from year to year. A day must come when nothing but a formal contract with Viennese diplomats would be left. The alliance itself, as an effective support, would be lost to Germany.

As far as concerned Italy, such had been the case from the outset.

If people in Germany had studied history and the psychology of nations a little more carefully not one of them could have believed for a single hour that the Quirinal and the Viennese Hofburg could ever stand shoulder to shoulder on a common battle front. Italy would have exploded like a volcano if any Italian government had dared to send a single Italian soldier to fight for the Habsburg State. So fanatically hated was this State that the Italians could stand in no other relation to it on a battle front except as enemies. More than once in Vienna I have witnessed explosions of the contempt and profound hatred which ‘allied’ the Italian to the Austrian State. The crimes which the House of Habsburg committed against Italian freedom and independence during several centuries were too grave to be forgiven, even with the best of goodwill. But this goodwill did not exist, either among the rank and file of the population or in the government. Therefore for Italy there were only two ways of co-existing with Austria - alliance or war. By choosing the first it was possible to prepare leisurely for the second.

Especially since relations between Russia and Austria tended more and more towards the arbitrament of war, the German policy of alliances was as senseless as it was dangerous. Here was a classical instance which demonstrated the lack of any broad or logical lines of thought.

But what was the reason for forming the alliance at all? It could not have been other than the wish to secure the future of the Reich better than if it were to depend exclusively on its own resources. But the future of the Reich could not have meant anything else than the problem of securing the means of existence for the German people.

The only questions therefore were the following: What form shall the life of the nation assume in the near future - that is to say within such a period as we can forecast? And by what means can the necessary foundation and security be guaranteed for this development within the framework of the general distribution of power among the European nations? A clear analysis of the principles on which the foreign policy of German statecraft were to be based should have led to the following conclusions:

The annual increase of population in Germany amounts to almost 900,000 souls.

The difficulties of providing for this army of new citizens must grow from year to year and must finally lead to a catastrophe, unless ways and means are found which will forestall the danger of misery and hunger. There were four ways of providing against this terrible calamity:

(1) It was possible to adopt the French example and artificially restrict the number of births, thus avoiding an excess of population.

Under certain circumstances, in periods of distress or under bad climatic condition, or if the soil yields too poor a return, Nature herself tends to check the increase of population in some countries and among some races, but by a method which is quite as ruthless as it is wise. It does not impede the procreative faculty as such; but it does impede the further existence of the offspring by submitting it to such tests and privations that everything which is less strong or less healthy is forced to retreat into the bosom of tile unknown. Whatever survives these hardships of existence has been tested and tried a thousandfold, hardened and renders fit to continue the process of procreation; so that the same thorough selection will begin all over again. By thus dealing brutally with the individual and recalling him the very moment he shows that he is not fitted for the trials of life, Nature preserves the strength of the race and the species and raises it to the highest degree of efficiency.

The decrease in numbers therefore implies an increase of strength, as far as the individual is concerned, and this finally means the invigoration of the species.

But the case is different when man himself starts the process of numerical restriction. Man is not carved from Nature’s wood. He is made of ‘human’ material. He knows more than the ruthless Queen of Wisdom. He does not impede the preservation of the individual but prevents procreation itself. To the individual, who always sees only himself and not the race, this line of action seems more humane and just than the opposite way. But, unfortunately, the consequences are also the opposite.

By leaving the process of procreation unchecked and by submitting the individual to the hardest preparatory tests in life, Nature selects the best from an abundance of single elements and stamps them as fit to live and carry on the conservation of the species. But man restricts the procreative faculty and strives obstinately to keep alive at any cost whatever has once been born. This correction of the Divine Will seems to him to be wise and humane, and he rejoices at having trumped Nature’s card in one game at least and thus proved that she is not entirely reliable. The dear little ape of an all-mighty father is delighted to see and hear that he has succeeded in effecting a numerical restriction; but he would be very displeased if told that this, his system, brings about a degeneration in personal quality.

For as soon as the procreative faculty is thwarted and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which allows only healthy and strong individuals to survive is replaced by a sheer craze to ‘save’ feeble and even diseased creatures at any cost. And thus the seeds are sown for a human progeny which will become more and more miserable from one generation to another, as long as Nature’s will is scorned.

But if that policy be carried out the final results must be that such a nation will eventually terminate its own existence on this earth; for though man may defy the eternal laws of procreation during a certain period, vengeance will follow sooner or later. A stronger race will oust that which has grown weak; for the vital urge, in its ultimate form, will burst asunder all the absurd chains of this so-called humane consideration for the individual and will replace it with the humanity of Nature, which wipes out what is weak in order to give place to the strong.

Any policy which aims at securing the existence of a nation by restricting the birth-rate robs that nation of its future.

(2) A second solution is that of internal colonization. This is a proposal which is frequently made in our own time and one hears it lauded a good deal. It is a suggestion that is well-meant but it is misunderstood by most people, so that it is the source of more mischief than can be imagined.

It is certainly true that the productivity of the soil can be increased within certain limits; but only within defined limits and not indefinitely. By increasing the productive powers of the soil it will be possible to balance the effect of a surplus birth-rate in Germany for a certain period of time, without running any danger of hunger. But we have to face the fact that the general standard of living is rising more quickly than even the birth rate. The requirements of food and clothing are becoming greater from year to year and are out of proportion to those of our ancestors of, let us say, a hundred years ago. It would, therefore, be a mistaken view that every increase in the productive powers of the soil will supply the requisite conditions for an increase in the population. No. That is true up to a certain point only, for at least a portion of the increased produce of the soil will be consumed by the margin of increased demands caused by the steady rise in the standard of living. But even if these demands were to be curtailed to the narrowest limits possible and if at the same time we were to use all our available energies in the intenser cultivation, we should here reach a definite limit which is conditioned by the inherent nature of the soil itself. No matter how industriously we may labour we cannot increase agricultural production beyond this limit. Therefore, though we may postpone the evil hour of distress for a certain time, it will arrive at last. The first phenomenon will be the recurrence of famine periods from time to time, after bad harvests, etc. The intervals between these famines will become shorter and shorter the more the population increases; and, finally, the famine times will disappear only in those rare years of plenty when the granaries are full. And a time will ultimately come when even in those years of plenty there will not be enough to go round; so that hunger will dog the footsteps of the nation. Nature must now step in once more and select those who are to survive, or else man will help himself by artificially preventing his own increase, with all the fatal consequences for the race and the species which have been already mentioned.

It may be objected here that, in one form or another, this future is in store for all mankind and that the individual nation or race cannot escape the general fate.

At first glance, that objection seems logical enough; but we have to take the following into account:

The day will certainly come when the whole of mankind will be forced to check the augmentation of the human species, because there will be no further possibility of adjusting the productivity of the soil to the perpetual increase in the population. Nature must then be allowed to use her own methods or man may possibly take the task of regulation into his own hands and establish the necessary equilibrium by the application of better means than we have at our disposal to-day. But then it will be a problem for mankind as a whole, whereas now only those races have to suffer from want which no longer have the strength and daring to acquire sufficient soil to fulfil their needs. For, as things stand to-day, vast spaces still lie uncultivated all over the surface of the globe. Those spaces are only waiting for the ploughshare. And it is quite certain that Nature did not set those territories apart as the exclusive pastures of any one nation or race to be held unutilized in reserve for the future. Such land awaits the people who have the strength to acquire it and the diligence to cultivate it.

Nature knows no political frontiers. She begins by establishing life on this globe and then watches the free play of forces. Those who show the greatest courage and industry are the children nearest to her heart and they will be granted the sovereign right of existence.

If a nation confines itself to ‘internal colonization’ while other races are perpetually increasing their territorial annexations all over the globe, that nation will be forced to restrict the numerical growth of its population at a time when the other nations are increasing theirs. This situation must eventually arrive. It will arrive soon if the territory which the nation has at its disposal be small. Now it is unfortunately true that only too often the best nations - or, to speak more exactly, the only really cultured nations, who at the same time are the chief bearers of human progress - have decided, in their blind pacifism, to refrain from the acquisition of new territory and to be content with ‘internal colonization.’ But at the same time nations of inferior quality succeed in getting hold of large spaces for colonization all over the globe. The state of affairs which must result from this contrast is the following:

Races which are culturally superior but less ruthless would be forced to restrict their increase, because of insufficient territory to support the population, while less civilized races could increase indefinitely, owing to the vast territories at their disposal. In other words: should that state of affairs continue, then the world will one day be possessed by that portion of mankind which is culturally inferior but more active and energetic.

A time will come, even though in the distant future, when there can be only two alternatives: Either the world will be ruled according to our modern concept of democracy, and then every decision will be in favour of the numerically stronger races; or the world will be governed by the law of natural distribution of power, and then those nations will be victorious who are of more brutal will and are not the nations who have practised self-denial.

Nobody can doubt that this world will one day be the scene of dreadful struggles for existence on the part of mankind. In the end the instinct of self-preservation alone will triumph. Before its consuming fire this so-called humanitarianism, which connotes only a mixture of fatuous timidity and self-conceit, will melt away as under the March sunshine. Man has become great through perpetual struggle. In perpetual peace his greatness must decline.

For us Germans, the slogan of ‘internal colonization’ is fatal, because it encourages the belief that we have discovered a means which is in accordance with our innate pacifism and which will enable us to work for our livelihood in a half slumbering existence. Such a teaching, once it were taken seriously by our people, would mean the end of all effort to acquire for ourselves that place in the world which we deserve. If. the average German were once convinced that by this measure he has the chance of ensuring his livelihood and guaranteeing his future, any attempt to take an active and profitable part in sustaining the vital demands of his country would be out of the question. Should the nation agree to such an attitude then any really useful foreign policy might be looked upon as dead and buried, together with all hope for the future of the German people.

Once we know what the consequences of this ‘internal colonization’ theory would be we can no longer consider as a mere accident the fact that among those who inculcate this quite pernicious mentality among our people the Jew is always in the first line. He knows his softies only too well not to know that they are ready to be the grateful victims of every swindle which promises them a gold-block in the shape of a discovery that will enable them to outwit Nature and thus render superfluous the hard and inexorable struggle for existence; so that finally they may become lords of the planet partly by sheer dolce far niente and partly by working when a pleasing opportunity arises.

It cannot be too strongly emphasised that any German ‘internal colonization’ must first of all be considered as suited only for the relief of social grievances.

To carry out a system of internal colonization, the most important preliminary measure would be to free the soil from the grip of the speculator and assure that freedom. But such a system could never suffice to assure the future of the nation without the acquisition of new territory.

If we adopt a different plan we shall soon reach a point beyond which the resources of our soil can no longer be exploited, and at the same time we shall reach a point beyond which our man-power cannot develop.

In conclusion, the following must be said:

The fact that only up to a limited extent can internal colonization be practised in a national territory which is of definitely small area and the restriction of the procreative faculty which follows as a result of such conditions - these two factors have a very unfavourable effect on the military and political standing of a nation.

The extent of the national territory is a determining factor in the external security of the nation. The larger the territory which a people has at its disposal the stronger are the national defences of that people. Military decisions are more quickly, more easily, more completely and more effectively gained against a people occupying a national territory which is restricted in area, than against States which have extensive territories. Moreover, the magnitude of a national territory is in itself a certain assurance that an outside Power will not hastily risk the adventure of an invasion; for in that case the struggle would have to be long and exhausting before victory could be hoped for. The risk being so great. there would have to be extraordinary reasons for such an aggressive adventure. Hence it is that the territorial magnitude of a State furnishes a basis whereon national liberty and independence can be maintained with relative ease; while, on the contrary, a State whose territory is small offers a natural temptation to the invader.

As a matter of fact, so-called national circles in the German Reich rejected those first two possibilities of establishing a balance between the constant numerical increase in the population and a national territory which could not expand proportionately. But the reasons given for that rejection were different from those which I have just expounded. It was mainly on the basis of certain moral sentiments that restriction of the birth-rate was objected to. Proposals for internal colonization were rejected indignantly because it was suspected that such a policy might mean an attack on the big landowners, and that this attack might be the forerunner of a general assault against the principle of private property as a whole. The form in which the latter solution - internal colonization - was recommended justified the misgivings of the big landowners.

But the form in which the colonization proposal was rejected was not very clever, as regards the impression which such rejection might be calculated to make on the mass of the people, and anyhow it did not go to the root of the problem at all.

Only two further ways were left open in which work and bread could be secured for the increasing population.

(3) It was possible to think of acquiring new territory on which a certain portion of’ the increasing population could be settled each year; or else (4) Our industry and commerce had to be organized in such a manner as to secure an increase in the exports and thus be able to support our people by the increased purchasing power accruing from the profits made on foreign markets.

Therefore the problem was: A policy of territorial expansion or a colonial and commercial policy. Both policies were taken into consideration, examined, recommended and rejected, from various standpoints, with the result that the second alternative was finally adopted. The sounder alternative, however, was undoubtedly the first.

The principle of acquiring new territory, on which the surplus population could be settled, has many advantages to recommend it, especially if we take the future as well as the present into account.

In the first place, too much importance cannot be placed on the necessity for adopting a policy which will make it possible to maintain a healthy peasant class as the basis of the national community. Many of our present evils have their origin exclusively in the disproportion between the urban and rural portions of the population. A solid stock of small and medium farmers has at all times been the best protection which a nation could have against the social diseases that are prevalent to-day. Moreover, that is the only solution which guarantees the daily bread of a nation within the framework of its domestic national economy. With this condition once guaranteed, industry and commerce would retire from the unhealthy position of foremost importance which they hold to-day and would take their due place within the general scheme of national economy, adjusting the balance between demand and supply. Thus industry and commerce would no longer constitute the basis of the national subsistence, but would be auxiliary institutions. By fulfilling their proper function, which is to adjust the balance between national production and national consumption, they render the national subsistence more or less independent of foreign countries and thus assure the freedom and independence of the nation, especially at critical junctures in its history.

Such a territorial policy, however, cannot find its fulfilment in the Cameroons but almost exclusively here in Europe. One must calmly and squarely face the truth that it certainly cannot be part of the dispensation of Divine Providence to give a fifty times larger share of the soil of this world to one nation than to another. In considering this state of affairs to-day, one must not allow existing political frontiers to distract attention from what ought to exist on principles of strict justice. If this earth has sufficient room for all, then we ought to have that share of the soil which is absolutely necessary for our existence.

Of course people will not voluntarily make that accommodation. At this point the right of self-preservation comes into effect. And when attempts to settle the difficulty in an amicable way are rejected the clenched hand must take by force that which was refused to the open hand of friendship. If in the past our ancestors had based their political decisions on similar pacifist nonsense as our present generation does, we should not possess more than one-third of the national territory that we possess to-day and probably there would be no German nation to worry about its future in Europe. No. We owe the two Eastern Marks 8) of the Empire to the natural determination of our forefathers in their struggle for existence, and thus it is to the same determined policy that we owe the inner strength which is based on the extent of our political and racial territories and which alone has made it possible for us to exist up to now.

And there is still another reason why that solution would have been the correct one: Many contemporary European States are like pyramids standing on their apexes.

The European territory which these States possess is ridiculously small when compared with the enormous overhead weight of their colonies, foreign trade, etc. It may be said that they have the apex in Europe and the base of the pyramid all over the world; quite different from the United States of America, which has its base on the American Continent and is in contact with the rest of the world only through its apex. Out of that situation arises the incomparable inner strength of the U.S.A. and the contrary situation is responsible for the weakness of most of the colonial European Powers.

England cannot be suggested as an argument against this assertion, though in glancing casually over the map of the British Empire one is inclined easily to overlook the existence of a whole Anglo-Saxon world. England’s position cannot be compared with that of any other State in Europe, since it forms a vast community of language and culture together with the U.S.A.

Therefore the only possibility which Germany had of carrying a sound territorial policy into effect was that of acquiring new territory in Europe itself. Colonies cannot serve this purpose as long as they are not suited for settlement by Europeans on a large scale. In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle.

Consequently it would have been more practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory in Europe rather than to wage war for the acquisition of possessions abroad.

Such a decision naturally demanded that the nation’s undivided energies should be devoted to it. A policy of that kind which requires for its fulfilment every ounce of available energy on the part of everybody concerned, cannot be carried into effect by half-measures or in a hesitating manner. The political leadership of the German Empire should then have been directed exclusively to this goal.

No political step should have been taken in response to other considerations than this task and the means of accomplishing it. Germany should have been alive to the fact that such a goal could have been reached only by war, and the prospect of war should have been faced with calm and collected determination.

The whole system of alliances should have been envisaged and valued from that standpoint. If new territory were to be acquired in Europe it must have been mainly at Russia’s cost, and once again the new German Empire should have set out on its march along the same road as was formerly trodden by the Teutonic Knights, this time to acquire soil for the German plough by means of the German sword and thus provide the nation with its daily bread.

For such a policy, however, there was only one possible ally in Europe. That was England.

Only by alliance with England was it possible to safeguard the rear of the new German crusade. The justification for undertaking such an expedition was stronger than the justification which our forefathers had for setting out on theirs.

Not one of our pacifists refuses to eat the bread made from the grain grown in the East; and yet the first plough here was that called the ‘Sword’.

No sacrifice should have been considered too great if it was a necessary means of gaining England’s friendship. Colonial and naval ambitions should have been abandoned and attempts should not have been made to compete against British industries.

Only a clear and definite policy could lead to such an achievement. Such a policy would have demanded a renunciation of the endeavour to conquer the world’s markets, also a renunciation of colonial intentions and naval power. All the means of power at the disposal of the State should have been concentrated in the military forces on land. This policy would have involved a period of temporary self-denial, for the sake of a great and powerful future.

There was a time when England might have entered into negotiations with us, on the grounds of that proposal. For England would have well understood that the problems arising from the steady increase in population were forcing Germany to look for a solution either in Europe with the help of England or, without England, in some other part of the world.

This outlook was probably the chief reason why London tried to draw nearer to Germany about the turn of the century. For the first time in Germany an attitude was then manifested which afterwards displayed itself in a most tragic way.

People then gave expression to an unpleasant feeling that we might thus find ourselves obliged to pull England’s chestnuts out of the fire. As if an alliance could be based on anything else than mutual give-and-take! And England would have become a party to such a mutual bargain. British diplomats were still wise enough to know that an equivalent must be forthcoming as a consideration for any services rendered.

Let us suppose that in 1904 our German foreign policy was managed astutely enough to enable us to take the part which Japan played. It is not easy to measure the greatness of the results that might have accrued to Germany from such a policy.

There would have been no world war. The blood which would have been shed in 1904 would not have been a tenth of that shed from 1914 to 1918. And what a position Germany would hold in the world to-day? In any case the alliance with Austria was then an absurdity.

For this mummy of a State did not attach itself to Germany for the purpose of carrying through a war, but rather to maintain a perpetual state of peace which was meant to be exploited for the purpose of slowly but persistently exterminating the German element in the Dual Monarchy.

Another reason for the impossible character of this alliance was that nobody could expect such a State to take an active part in defending German national interests, seeing that it did not have sufficient strength and determination to put an end to the policy of de-Germanization within its own frontiers. If Germany herself was not moved by a sufficiently powerful national sentiment and was not sufficiently ruthless to take away from that absurd Habsburg State the right to decide the destinies of ten million inhabitants who were of the same nationality as the Germans themselves, surely it was out of the question to expect the Habsburg State to be a collaborating party in any great and courageous German undertaking. The attitude of the old Reich towards the Austrian question might have been taken as a test of its stamina for the struggle where the destinies of the whole nation were at stake.

In any case, the policy of oppression against the German population in Austria should not have been allowed to be carried on and to grow stronger from year to year; for the value of Austria as an ally could be assured only by upholding the German element there. But that course was not followed.

Nothing was dreaded so much as the possibility of an armed conflict; but finally, and at a most unfavourable moment, the conflict had to be faced and accepted.

They thought to cut loose from the cords of destiny, but destiny held them fast.

They dreamt of maintaining a world peace and woke up to find themselves in a world war.

And that dream of peace was a most significant reason why the above-mentioned third alternative for the future development of Germany was not even taken into consideration. The fact was recognized that new territory could be gained only in the East; but this meant that there would be fighting ahead, whereas they wanted peace at any cost. The slogan of German foreign policy at one time used to be: The use of all possible means for the maintenance of the German nation. Now it was changed to: Maintenance of world peace by all possible means. We know what the result was. I shall resume the discussion of this point in detail later on.

There remained still another alternative, which we may call the fourth. This was: Industry and world trade, naval power and colonies.

Such a development might certainly have been attained more easily and more rapidly. To colonize a territory is a slow process, often extending over centuries.

Yet this fact is the source of its inner strength, for it is not through a sudden burst of enthusiasm that it can be put into effect, but rather through a gradual and enduring process of growth quite different from industrial progress, which can be urged on by advertisement within a few years. The result thus achieved, however, is not of lasting quality but something frail, like a soap-bubble. It is much easier to build quickly than to carry through the tough task of settling a territory with farmers and establishing farmsteads. But the former is more quickly destroyed than the latter.

In adopting such a course Germany must have known that to follow it out would necessarily mean war sooner or later. Only children could believe that sweet and unctuous expressions of goodness and persistent avowals of peaceful intentions could get them their bananas through this ‘friendly competition between the nations’, with the prospect of never having to fight for them.

No. Once we had taken this road, England was bound to be our enemy at some time or other to come. Of course it fitted in nicely with our innocent assumptions, but still it was absurd to grow indignant at the fact that a day came when the English took the liberty of opposing our peaceful penetration with the brutality of violent egoists.

Naturally, we on our side would never have done such a thing.

If a European territorial policy against Russia could have been put into practice only in case we had England as our ally, on the other hand a colonial and world-trade policy could have been carried into effect only against English interests and with the support of Russia. But then this policy should have been adopted in full consciousness of all the consequences it involved and, above all things, Austria should have been discarded as quickly as possible.

At the turn of the century the alliance with Austria had become a veritable absurdity from all points of view.

But nobody thought of forming an alliance with Russia against England, just as nobody thought of making England an ally against Russia; for in either case the final result would inevitably have meant war. And to avoid war was the very reason why a commercial and industrial policy was decided upon. It was believed that the peaceful conquest of the world by commercial means provided a method which would permanently supplant the policy of force. Occasionally, however, there were doubts about the efficiency of this principle, especially when some quite incomprehensible warnings came from England now and again. That was the reason why the fleet was built. It was not for the purpose of attacking or annihilating England but merely to defend the concept of world-peace, mentioned above, and also to protect the principle of conquering the world by ‘peaceful’ means. Therefore this fleet was kept within modest limits, not only as regards the number and tonnage of the vessels but also in regard to their armament, the idea being to furnish new proofs of peaceful intentions.

The chatter about the peaceful conquest of the world by commercial means was probably the most completely nonsensical stuff ever raised to the dignity of a guiding principle in the policy of a State, This nonsense became even more foolish when England was pointed out as a typical example to prove how the thing could be put into practice. Our doctrinal way of regarding history and our professorial ideas in that domain have done irreparable harm and offer a striking ‘proof’ of how people ‘learn’ history without understanding anything of it. As a matter of fact, England ought to have been looked upon as a convincing argument against the theory of the pacific conquest of the world by commercial means. No nation prepared the way for its commercial conquests more brutally than England did by means of the sword, and no other nation has defended such conquests more ruthlessly. Is it not a characteristic quality of British statecraft that it knows how to use political power in order to gain economic advantages and, inversely, to turn economic conquests into political power? What an astounding error it was to believe that England would not have the courage to give its own blood for the purposes of its own economic expansion! The fact that England did not possess a national army proved nothing; for it is not the actual military structure of the moment that matters but rather the will and determination to use whatever military strength is available. England has always had the armament which she needed. She always fought with those weapons which were necessary for success. She sent mercenary troops, to fight as long as mercenaries sufficed; but she never hesitated to draw heavily and deeply from the best blood of the whole nation when victory could be obtained only by such a sacrifice. And in every case the fighting spirit, dogged determination, and use of brutal means in conducting military operations have always remained the same.

But in Germany, through the medium of the schools, the Press and the comic papers, an idea of the Englishman was gradually formed which was bound eventually to lead to the worst kind of self-deception. This absurdity slowly but persistently spread into every quarter of German life. The result was an undervaluation for which we have had to pay a heavy penalty. The delusion was so profound that the Englishman was looked upon as a shrewd business man, but personally a coward even to an incredible degree. Unfortunately our lofty teachers of professorial history did not bring home to the minds of their pupils the truth that it is not possible to build up such a mighty organization as the British Empire by mere swindle and fraud. The few who called attention to that truth were either ignored or silenced. I can vividly recall to mind the astonished looks of my comrades when they found themselves personally face to face for the first time with the Tommies in Flanders. After a few days of fighting the consciousness slowly dawned on our soldiers that those Scotsmen were not like the ones we had seen described and caricatured in the comic papers and mentioned in the communiqués.

It was then that I formed my first ideas of the efficiency of various forms of propaganda.

Such a falsification, however, served the purpose of those who had fabricated it.

This caricature of the Englishman, though false, could be used to prove the possibility of conquering the world peacefully by commercial means. Where the Englishman succeeded we should also succeed. Our far greater honesty and our freedom from that specifically English ‘perfidy’ would be assets on our side.

Thereby it was hoped that the sympathy of the smaller nations and the confidence of the greater nations could be gained more easily.

We did not realize that our honesty was an object of profound aversion for other people because we ourselves believed in it. The rest of the world looked on our behaviour as the manifestation of a shrewd deceitfulness; but when the revolution came, then they were amazed at the deeper insight it gave them into our mentality, sincere even beyond the limits of stupidity.

Once we understand the part played by that absurd notion of conquering the world by peaceful commercial means we can clearly understand how that other absurdity, the Triple Alliance, came to exist. With what State then could an alliance have been made? In alliance with Austria we could not acquire new territory by military means, even in Europe. And this very fact was the real reason for the inner weakness of the Triple Alliance. A Bismarck could permit himself such a makeshift for the necessities of the moment, but certainly not any of his bungling successors, and least of all when the foundations no longer existed on which Bismarck had formed the Triple Alliance. In Bismarck’s time Austria could still be looked upon as a German State; but the gradual introduction of universal suffrage turned the country into a parliamentary Babel, in which the German voice was scarcely audible.

From the viewpoint of racial policy, this alliance with Austria was simply disastrous. A new Slavic Great Power was allowed to grow up close to the frontiers of the German Empire. Later on this Power was bound to adopt towards Germany an attitude different from that of Russia, for example. The Alliance was thus bound to become more empty and more feeble, because the only supporters of it were losing their influence and were being systematically pushed out of the more important public offices.

About the year 1900 the Alliance with Austria had already entered the same phase as the Alliance between Austria and Italy.

Here also only one alternative was possible: Either to take the side of the Habsburg Monarchy or to raise a protest against the oppression of the German element in Austria. But, generally speaking, when one takes such a course it is bound eventually to lead to open conflict.

From the psychological point of view also, the Triple decreases according as such an alliance limits its object to the defence of the status quo. But, on the other hand, an alliance will increase its cohesive strength the more the parties concerned in it may hope to use it as a means of reaching some practical goal of expansion. Here, as everywhere else, strength does not lie in defence but in attack.

This truth was recognized in various quarters but, unfortunately, not by the so-called elected representatives of the people. As early as 1912 Ludendorff, who was then Colonel and an Officer of the General Staff, pointed out these weak features of the Alliance in a memorandum which he then drew up. But of course the ‘statesmen’ did not attach any importance or value to that document. In general it would seem as if reason were a faculty that is active only in the case of ordinary mortals but that it is entirely absent when we come to deal with that branch of the species known as ‘diplomats’.

It was lucky for Germany that the war of 1914 broke out with Austria as its direct cause, for thus the Habsburgs were compelled to participate. Had the origin of the War been otherwise, Germany would have been left to her own resources. The Habsburg State would never have been ready or willing to take part in a war for the origin of which Germany was responsible. What was the object of so much obloquy later in the case of Italy’s decision would have taken place, only earlier, in the case of Austria. In other words, if Germany had been forced to go to war for some reason of its own, Austria would have remained ‘neutral’ in order to safeguard the State against a revolution which might begin immediately after the war had started. The Slav element would have preferred to smash up the Dual Monarchy in 1914 rather than permit it to come to the assistance of Germany. But at that time there were only a few who understood all the dangers and aggravations which resulted from the alliance with the Danubian Monarchy.

In the first place, Austria had too many enemies who were eagerly looking forward to obtain the heritage of that decrepit State, so that these people gradually developed a certain animosity against Germany, because Germany was an obstacle to their desires inasmuch as it kept the Dual Monarchy from falling to pieces, a consummation that was hoped for and yearned for on all sides. The conviction developed that Vienna could be reached only by passing through Berlin.

In the second place, by adopting this policy Germany lost its best and most promising chances of other alliances. In place of these possibilities one now observed a growing tension in the relations with Russia and even with Italy. And this in spite of the fact that the general attitude in Rome was just as favourable to Germany as it was hostile to Austria, a hostility which lay dormant in the individual Italian and broke out violently on occasion.

Since a commercial and industrial policy had been adopted, no motive was left for waging war against Russia. Only the enemies of the two countries, Germany and Russia, could have an active interest in such a war under these circumstances. As a matter of fact, it was only the Jews and the Marxists who tried to stir up bad blood between the two States.

In the third place, the Alliance constituted a permanent danger to German security; for any great Power that was hostile to Bismarck’s Empire could mobilize a whole lot of other States in a war against Germany by promising them tempting spoils at the expense of the Austrian ally.

It was possible to arouse the whole of Eastern Europe against Austria, especially Russia, and Italy also. The world coalition which had developed under the leadership of King Edward could never have become a reality if Germany’s ally, Austria, had not offered such an alluring prospect of booty. It was this fact alone which made it possible to combine so many heterogeneous States with divergent interests into one common phalanx of attack. Every member could hope to enrich himself at the expense of Austria if he joined in the general attack against Germany. The fact that Turkey was also a tacit party to the unfortunate alliance with Austria augmented Germany’s peril to an extraordinary degree.

Jewish international finance needed this bait of the Austrian heritage in order to carry out its plans of ruining Germany; for Germany had not yet surrendered to the general control which the international captains of finance and trade exercised over the other States. Thus it was possible to consolidate that coalition and make it strong enough and brave enough, through the sheer weight of numbers, to join in bodily conflict with the ‘horned’ Siegfried.9) The alliance with the Habsburg Monarchy, which I loathed while still in Austria, was the subject of grave concern on my part and caused me to meditate on it so persistently that finally I came to the conclusions which I have mentioned above.

In the small circles which I frequented at that time I did not conceal my conviction that this sinister agreement with a State doomed to collapse would also bring catastrophe to Germany if she did not free herself from it in time. I never for a moment wavered in that firm conviction, even when the tempest of the World War seemed to have made shipwreck of the reasoning faculty itself and had put blind enthusiasm in its place, even among those circles where the coolest and hardest objective thinking ought to have held sway. In the trenches I voiced and upheld my own opinion whenever these problems came under discussion. I held that to abandon the Habsburg Monarchy would involve no sacrifice if Germany could thereby reduce the number of her own enemies; for the millions of Germans who had donned the steel helmet had done so not to fight for the maintenance of a corrupt dynasty but rather for the salvation of the German people.

Before the War there were occasions on which it seemed that at least one section of the German public had some slight misgivings about the political wisdom of the alliance with Austria. From time to time German conservative circles issued warnings against being over-confident about the worth of that alliance; but, like every other reasonable suggestion made at that time, it was thrown to the winds.

The general conviction was that the right measures had been adopted to ‘conquer’ the world, that the success of these measures would be enormous and the sacrifices negligible.

Once again the ‘uninitiated’ layman could do nothing but observe how the ‘elect’ were marching straight ahead towards disaster and enticing their beloved people to follow them, as the rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

If we would look for the deeper grounds which made it possible to foist on the people this absurd notion of peacefully conquering the world through commercial penetration, and how it was possible to put forward the maintenance of world-peace as a national aim, we shall find that these grounds lay in a general morbid condition that had pervaded the whole body of German political thought.

The triumphant progress of technical science in Germany and the marvellous development of German industries and commerce led us to forget that a powerful State had been the necessary pre-requisite of that success. On the contrary, certain circles went even so far as to give vent to the theory that the State owed its very existence to these phenomena; that it was, above all, an economic institution and should be constituted in accordance with economic interests. Therefore, it was held, the State was dependent on the economic structure. This condition of things was looked upon and glorified as the soundest and most normal arrangement.

Now, the truth is that the State in itself has nothing whatsoever to do with any definite economic concept or a definite economic development. It does not arise from a compact made between contracting parties, within a certain delimited territory, for the purpose of serving economic ends. The State is a community of living beings who have kindred physical and spiritual natures, organized for the purpose of assuring the conservation of their own kind and to help towards fulfilling those ends which Providence has assigned to that particular race or racial branch. Therein, and therein alone, lie the purpose and meaning of a State.

Economic activity is one of the many auxiliary means which are necessary for the attainment of those aims. But economic activity is never the origin or purpose of a State, except where a State has been originally founded on a false and unnatural basis. And this alone explains why a State as such does not necessarily need a certain delimited territory as a condition of its establishment.

This condition becomes a necessary pre-requisite only among those people who would provide and assure subsistence for their kinsfolk through their own industry, which means that they are ready to carry on the struggle for existence by means of their own work. People who can sneak their way, like parasites, into the human body politic and make others work for them under various pretences can form a State without possessing any definite delimited territory.

This is chiefly applicable to that parasitic nation which, particularly at the present time preys upon the honest portion of mankind; I mean the Jews.

The Jewish State has never been delimited in space. It has been spread all over the world, without any frontiers whatsoever, and has always been constituted from the membership of one race exclusively. That is why the Jews have always formed a State within the State. One of the most ingenious tricks ever devised has been that of sailing the Jewish ship-of-state under the flag of Religion and thus securing that tolerance which Aryans are always ready to grant to different religious faiths. But the Mosaic Law is really nothing else than the doctrine of the preservation of the Jewish race. Therefore this Law takes in all spheres of sociological, political and economic science which have a bearing on the main end in view.

The instinct for the preservation of one’s own species is the primary cause that leads to the formation of human communities. Hence the State is a racial organism, and not an economic organization. The difference between the two is so great as to be incomprehensible to our contemporary so-called ‘statesmen’.

That is why they like to believe that the State may be constituted as an economic structure, whereas the truth is that it has always resulted from the exercise of those qualities which are part of the will to preserve the species and the race. But these qualities always exist and operate through the heroic virtues and have nothing to do with commercial egoism; for the conservation of the species always presupposes that the individual is ready to sacrifice himself. Such is the meaning of the poet’s lines:

Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,

Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein.

(And if you do not stake your life,

You will never win life for yourself.)

The sacrifice of the individual existence is necessary in order to assure the conservation of the race. Hence it is that the most essential condition for the establishment and maintenance of a State is a certain feeling of solidarity,

wounded in an identity of character and race and in a resolute readiness to defend these at all costs. With people who live on their own territory this will result in a development of the heroic virtues; with a parasitic people it will develop the arts of subterfuge and gross perfidy unless we admit that these characteristics are innate and that the varying political forms through which the parasitic race expresses itself are only the outward manifestations of innate characteristics. At least in the beginning, the formation of a State can result only from a manifestation of the heroic qualities I have spoken of. And the people who fail in the struggle for existence, that is to say those, who become vassals and are thereby condemned to disappear entirely sooner or later, are those who do not display the heroic virtues in the struggle, or those who fall victims to the perfidy of the parasites. And even in this latter case the failure is not so much due to lack of intellectual powers, but rather to a lack of courage and determination. An attempt is made to conceal the real nature of this failing by saying that it is the humane feeling.

The qualities which are employed for the foundation and preservation of a State have accordingly little or nothing to do with the economic situation. And this is conspicuously demonstrated by the fact that the inner strength of a State only very rarely coincides with what is called its economic expansion. On the contrary, there are numerous examples to show that a period of economic prosperity indicates the approaching decline of a State. If it were correct to attribute the foundation of human communities to economic forces, then the power of the State as such would be at its highest pitch during periods of economic prosperity, and not vice versa.

It is specially difficult to understand how the belief that the State is brought into being and preserved by economic forces could gain currency in a country which has given proof of the opposite in every phase of its history. The history of Prussia shows in a manner particularly clear and distinct, that it is out of the moral virtues of the people and not from their economic circumstances that a State is formed. It is only under the protection of those virtues that economic activities can be developed and the latter will continue to flourish until a time comes when the creative political capacity declines. Therewith the economic structure will also break down, a phenomenon which is now happening in an alarming manner before our eyes. The material interest of mankind can prosper only in the shade of the heroic virtues. The moment they become the primary considerations of life they wreck the basis of their own existence.

Whenever the political power of Germany was specially strong the economic situation also improved. But whenever economic interests alone occupied the foremost place in the life of the people, and thrust transcendent ideals into the back.-ground, the State collapsed and economic ruin followed readily.

If we consider the question of what those forces actually are which are necessary to the creation and preservation of a State, we shall find that they are: The capacity and readiness to sacrifice the individual to the common welfare. That these qualities have nothing at all to do with economics can be proved by referring to the simple fact that man does not sacrifice himself for material interests. In other words, he will die for an ideal but not for a business. The marvellous gift for public psychology which the English have was never shown better than the way in which they presented their case in the World War. We were fighting for our bread; but the English declared that they were fighting for ‘freedom’, and not at all for their own freedom. Oh, no, but for the freedom of the small nations. German people laughed at that effrontery and were angered by it; but in doing so they showed how political thought had declined among our so-called diplomats in Germany even before the War. These diplomatists did not have the slightest notion of what that force was which brought men to face death of their own free will and determination.

As long as the German people, in the War of 1914, continued to believe that they were fighting for ideals they stood firm. As soon as they were told that they were fighting only for their daily bread they began to give up the struggle.

Our clever ‘statesmen’ were greatly amazed at this change of feeling. They never understood that as soon as man is called upon to struggle for purely material causes he will avoid death as best he can; for death and the enjoyment of the material fruits of a victory are quite incompatible concepts. The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.

The following may be proclaimed as a truth that always holds good: A State has never arisen from commercial causes for the purpose of peacefully serving commercial ends; but States have always arisen from the instinct to maintain the racial group, whether this instinct manifest itself in the heroic sphere or in the sphere of cunning and chicanery. In the first case we have the Aryan States, based on the principles of work and cultural development. In the second case we have the Jewish parasitic colonies. But as soon as economic interests begin to predominate over the racial and cultural instincts in a people or a State, these economic interests unloose the causes that lead to subjugation and oppression.

The belief, which prevailed in Germany before the War, that the world could be opened up and even conquered for Germany through a system of peaceful commercial penetration and a colonial policy was a typical symptom which indicated the decline of those real qualities whereby States are created and preserved, and indicated also the decline of that insight, will-power and practical determination which belong to those qualities. The World War with its consequences, was the natural liquidation of that decline.

To anyone who had not thought over the matter deeply, this attitude of the German people - which was quite general - must have seemed an insoluble enigma. After all, Germany herself was a magnificent example of an empire that had been built up purely by a policy of power. Prussia, which was the generative cell of the German Empire, had been created by brilliant heroic deeds and not by a financial or commercial compact. And the Empire itself was but the magnificent recompense for a leadership that had been conducted on a policy of power and military valour.

How then did it happen that the political instincts of this very same German people became so degenerate? For it was not merely one isolated phenomenon which pointed to this decadence, but morbid symptoms which appeared in alarming numbers, now all over the body politic, or eating into the body of the nation like a gangrenous ulcer. It seemed as if some all-pervading poisonous fluid had been injected by some mysterious hand into the bloodstream of this once heroic body, bringing about a creeping paralysis that affected the reason and the elementary instinct of self-preservation.

During the years 1912-1914 I used to ponder perpetually on those problems which related to the policy of the Triple Alliance and the economic policy then being pursued by the German Empire. Once again I came to the conclusion that the only explanation of this enigma lay in the operation of that force which I had already become acquainted with in Vienna, though from a different angle of vision. The force to which I refer was the Marxist teaching and Weltanschhauung and its organized action throughout the nation.

For the second time in my life I plunged deep into the study of that destructive teaching. This time, however, I was not urged by the study of the question by the impressions and influences of my daily environment, but directed rather by the observation of general phenomena in the political life of Germany. In delving again into the theoretical literature of this new world and endeavouring to get a clear view of the possible consequences of its teaching, I compared the theoretical principles of Marxism with the phenomena and happenings brought about by its activities in the political, cultural, and economic spheres.

For the first time in my life I now turned my attention to the efforts that were being made to subdue this universal pest.

I studied Bismarck’s exceptional legislation in its original concept, its operation and its results. Gradually I formed a basis for my own opinions, which has proved as solid as a rock, so that never since have I had to change my attitude towards the general problem. I also made a further and more thorough analysis of the relations between Marxism and Jewry.

During my sojourn in Vienna I used to look upon Germany as an imperturbable colossus; but even then serious doubts and misgivings would often disturb me.

In my own mind and in my conversation with my small circle of acquaintances I used to criticize Germany’s foreign policy and the incredibly superficial way, according to my thinking, in which Marxism was dealt with, though it was then the most important problem in Germany. I could not understand how they could stumble blindfolded into the midst of this peril, the effects of which would be momentous if the openly declared aims of Marxism could be put into practice.

Even as early as that time I warned people around me, just as I am warning a wider audience now, against that soothing slogan of all indolent and feckless nature: Nothing can happen to us. A similar mental contagion had already destroyed a mighty empire. Can Germany escape the operation of those laws to which all other human communities are subject? In the years 1913 and 1914 I expressed my opinion for the first time in various circles, some of which are now members of the National Socialist Movement, that the problem of how the future of the German nation can be secured is the problem of how Marxism can be exterminated.

I considered the disastrous policy of the Triple Alliance as one of the consequences resulting from the disintegrating effects of the Marxist teaching; for the alarming feature was that this teaching was invisibly corrupting the foundations of a healthy political and economic outlook. Those who had been themselves contaminated frequently did not realise that their aims and actions sprang from this Weltanschhauung, which they otherwise openly repudiated.

Long before then the spiritual and moral decline of the German people had set in, though those who were affected by the morbid decadence were frequently unaware - as often happens - of the forces which were breaking up their very existence. Sometimes they tried to cure the disease by doctoring the symptoms, which were taken as the cause. But since nobody recognized, or wanted to recognize, the real cause of the disease this way of combating Marxism was no more effective than the application of some quack’s ointment.


CHAPTER V: THE WORLD WAR

During the boisterous years of my youth nothing used to damp my wild spirits so much as to think that I was born at a time when the world had manifestly decided not to erect any more temples of fame except in honour of business people and State officials. The tempest of historical achievements seemed to have permanently subsided, so much so that the future appeared to be irrevocably delivered over to what was called peaceful competition between the nations. This simply meant a system of mutual exploitation by fraudulent means, the principle of resorting to the use of force in self-defence being formally excluded. Individual countries increasingly assumed the appearance of commercial undertakings, grabbing territory and clients and concessions from each other under any and every kind of pretext. And it was all staged to an accompaniment of loud but innocuous shouting. This trend of affairs seemed destined to develop steadily and permanently. Having the support of public approbation, it seemed bound eventually to transform the world into a mammoth department store. In the vestibule of this emporium there would be rows of monumental busts which would confer immortality on those profiteers who had proved themselves the shrewdest at their trade and those administrative officials who had shown themselves the most innocuous. The salesmen could be represented by the English and the administrative functionaries by the Germans; whereas the Jews would be sacrificed to the unprofitable calling of proprietorship, for they are constantly avowing that they make no profits and are always being called upon to ‘pay out’. Moreover they have the advantage of being versed in the foreign languages.

Why could I not have been born a hundred years ago? I used to ask myself.

Somewhere about the time of the Wars of Liberation, when a man was still of some value even though he had no ‘business’.

Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that I had arrived too late on this terrestrial globe, and I felt chagrined at the idea that my life would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly lines. As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so turned out futile.

Then the Boer War came, like a glow of lightning on the far horizon. Day after day I used to gaze intently at the newspapers and I almost ‘devoured’ the telegrams and communiques, overjoyed to think that I could witness that heroic struggle, even though from so great a distance.

When the Russo-Japanese War came I was older and better able to judge for myself. For national reasons I then took the side of the Japanese in our discussions. I looked upon the defeat of the Russians as a blow to Austrian Slavism.

Many years had passed between that time and my arrival in Munich. I now realized that what I formerly believed to be a morbid decadence was only the lull before the storm. During my Vienna days the Balkans were already in the grip of that sultry pause which presages the violent storm. Here and there a flash of lightning could be occasionally seen; but it rapidly disappeared in sinister gloom. Then the Balkan War broke out; and therewith the first gusts of the forthcoming tornado swept across a highly-strung Europe. In the supervening calm men felt the atmosphere oppressive and foreboding, so much so that the sense of an impending catastrophe became transformed into a feeling of impatient expectance. They wished that Heaven would give free rein to the fate which could now no longer be curbed. Then the first great bolt of lightning struck the earth. The storm broke and the thunder of the heavens intermingled with the roar of the cannons in the World War.

When the news came to Munich that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been murdered, I had been at home all day and did not get the particulars of how it happened. At first I feared that the shots may have been fired by some German-Austrian students who had been aroused to a state of furious indignation by the persistent pro-Slav activities of the Heir to the Habsburg Throne and therefore wished to liberate the German population from this internal enemy. It was quite easy to imagine what the result of such a mistake would have been. It would have brought on a new wave of persecution, the motives of which would have been ‘justified’ before the whole world. But soon afterwards I heard the names of the presumed assassins and also that they were known to be Serbs. I felt somewhat dumbfounded in face of the inexorable vengeance which Destiny had wrought. The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen a victim to the bullets of Slav patriots.

It is unjust to the Vienna government of that time to blame it now for the form and tenor of the ultimatum which was then presented. In a similar position and under similar circumstances, no other Power in the world would have acted otherwise. On her southern frontiers Austria had a relentless mortal foe who indulged in acts of provocation against the Dual Monarchy at intervals which were becoming more and more frequent. This persistent line of conduct would not have been relaxed until the arrival of the opportune moment for the destruction of the Empire. In Austria there was good reason to fear that, at the latest, this moment would come with the death of the old Emperor. Once that had taken place, it was quite possible that the Monarchy would not be able to offer any serious resistance. For some years past the State had been so completely identified with the personality of Francis Joseph that, in the eyes of the great mass of the people, the death of this venerable personification of the Empire would be tantamount to the death of the Empire itself. Indeed it was one of the clever artifices of Slav policy to foster the impression that the Austrian State owed its very existence exclusively to the prodigies and rare talents of that monarch. This kind of flattery was particularly welcomed at the Hofburg, all the more because it had no relation whatsoever to the services actually rendered by the Emperor. No effort whatsoever was made to locate the carefully prepared sting which lay hidden in this glorifying praise. One fact which was entirely overlooked, perhaps intentionally, was that the more the Empire remained dependent on the so-called administrative talents of ‘the wisest Monarch of all times’, the more catastrophic would be the situation when Fate came to knock at the door and demand its tribute.

Was it possible even to imagine the Austrian Empire without its venerable ruler? Would not the tragedy which befell Maria Theresa be repeated at once? It is really unjust to the Vienna governmental circles to reproach them with having instigated a war which might have been prevented. The war was bound to come. Perhaps it might have been postponed for a year or two at the most. But it had always been the misfortune of German, as well as Austrian, diplomats that they endeavoured to put off the inevitable day of reckoning, with the result that they were finally compelled to deliver their blow at a most inopportune moment.

No. Those who did not wish this war ought to have had the courage to take the consequences of the refusal upon themselves. Those consequences must necessarily have meant the sacrifice of Austria. And even then war would have come, not as a war in which all the nations would have been banded against us but in the form of a dismemberment of the Habsburg Monarchy. In that case we should have had to decide whether we should come to the assistance of the Habsburg or stand aside as spectators, with our arms folded, and thus allow Fate to run its course.

Just those who are loudest in their imprecations to-day and make a great parade of wisdom in judging the causes of the war are the very same people whose collaboration was the most fatal factor in steering towards the war.

For several decades previously the German Social-Democrats had been agitating in an underhand and knavish way for war against Russia; whereas the German Centre Party, with religious ends in view, had worked to make the Austrian State the chief centre and turning-point of German policy. The consequences of this folly had now to be borne. What came was bound to come and under no circumstances could it have been avoided. The fault of the German Government lay in the fact that, merely for the sake of preserving peace at all costs, it continued to miss the occasions that were favourable for action, got entangled in an alliance for the purpose of preserving the peace of the world, and thus finally became the victim of a world coalition which opposed the German effort for the maintenance of peace and was determined to bring about the world war.

Had the Vienna Government of that time formulated its ultimatum in less drastic terms, that would not have altered the situation at all: but such a course might have aroused public indignation. For, in the eyes of the great masses, the ultimatum was too moderate and certainly not excessive or brutal. Those who would deny this to-day are either simpletons with feeble memories or else deliberate falsehood-mongers.

The War of 1914 was certainly not forced on the masses; it was even desired by the whole people.

There was a desire to bring the general feeling of uncertainty to an end once and for all. And it is only in the light of this fact that we can understand how more than two million German men and youths voluntarily joined the colours, ready to shed the last drop of their blood for the cause.

For me these hours came as a deliverance from the distress that had weighed upon me during the days of my youth. I am not ashamed to acknowledge to-day that I was carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment and that I sank down upon my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my heart for the favour of having been permitted to live in such a time.

The fight for freedom had broken out on an unparalleled scale in the history of the world. From the moment that Fate took the helm in hand the conviction grew among the mass of the people that now it was not a question of deciding the destinies of Austria or Serbia but that the very existence of the German nation itself was at stake.

At last, after many years of blindness, the people saw clearly into the future.

Therefore, almost immediately after the gigantic struggle had begun, an excessive enthusiasm was replaced by a more earnest and more fitting undertone, because the exaltation of the popular spirit was not a mere passing frenzy. It was only too necessary that the gravity of the situation should be recognized. At that time there was, generally speaking, not the slightest presentiment or conception of how long the war might last. People dreamed of the soldiers being home by Christmas and that then they would resume their daily work in peace.

Whatever mankind desires, that it will hope for and believe in. The overwhelming majority of the people had long since grown weary of the perpetual insecurity in the general condition of public affairs. Hence it was only natural that no one believed that the Austro-Serbian conflict could be shelved.

Therefore they looked forward to a radical settlement of accounts. I also belonged to the millions that desired this.

The moment the news of the Sarajevo outrage reached Munich two ideas came into my mind: First, that war was absolutely inevitable and, second, that the Habsburg State would now be forced to honour its signature to the alliance. For what I had feared most was that one day Germany herself, perhaps as a result of the Alliance, would become involved in a conflict the first direct cause of which did not affect Austria. In such a contingency, I feared that the Austrian State, for domestic political reasons, would find itself unable to decide in favour of its ally. But now this danger was removed. The old State was compelled to fight, whether it wished to do so or not.

My own attitude towards the conflict was equally simple and clear. I believed that it was not a case of Austria fighting to get satisfaction from Serbia but rather a case of Germany fighting for her own existence - the German nation for its own to-be-or-not-to-be, for its freedom and for its future. The work of Bismarck must now be carried on. Young Germany must show itself worthy of the blood shed by our fathers on so many heroic fields of battle, from Weissenburg to Sedan and Paris. And if this struggle should bring us victory our people will again rank foremost among the great nations. Only then could the German Empire assert itself as the mighty champion of peace, without the necessity of restricting the daily bread of its children for the sake of maintaining the peace.

As a boy and as a young man, I often longed for the occasion to prove that my national enthusiasm was not mere vapouring. Hurrahing sometimes seemed to me to be a kind of sinful indulgence, though I could not give any justification for that feeling; for, after all, who has the right to shout that triumphant word if he has not won the right to it there where there is no play-acting and where the hand of the Goddess of Destiny puts the truth and sincerity of nations and men through her inexorable test? Just as millions of others, I felt a proud joy in being permitted to go through this test. I had so often sung Deutschland über Alles and so often roared ‘Heil’ that I now thought it was as a kind of retro-active grace that I was granted the right of appearing before the Court of Eternal Justice to testify to the truth of those sentiments.

One thing was clear to me from the very beginning, namely, that in the event of war, which now seemed inevitable, my books would have to be thrown aside forthwith. I also realized that my place would have to be there where the inner voice of conscience called me.

I had left Austria principally for political reasons. What therefore could be more rational than that I should put into practice the logical consequences of my political opinions, now that the war had begun. I had no desire to fight for the Habsburg cause, but I was prepared to die at any time for my own kinsfolk and the Empire to which they really belonged.

On August 3rd, 1914, I presented an urgent petition to His Majesty, King Ludwig III, requesting to be allowed to serve in a Bavarian regiment. In those days the Chancellery had its hands quite full and therefore I was all the more pleased when I received the answer a day later, that my request had been granted. I opened the document with trembling hands; and no words of mine could now describe the satisfaction I felt on reading that I was instructed to report to a Bavarian regiment. Within a few days I was wearing that uniform which I was not to put oft again for nearly six years.

For me, as for every German, the most memorable period of my life now began.

Face to face with that mighty struggle, all the past fell away into oblivion. With a wistful pride I look back on those days, especially because we are now approaching the tenth anniversary of that memorable happening. I recall those early weeks of war when kind fortune permitted me to take my place in that heroic struggle among the nations.

As the scene unfolds itself before my mind, it seems only like yesterday. I see myself among my young comrades on our first parade drill, and so on until at last the day came on which we were to leave for the front.

In common with the others, I had one worry during those days. This was a fear that we might arrive too late for the fighting at the front. Time and again that thought disturbed me and every announcement of a victorious engagement left a bitter taste, which increased as the news of further victories arrived.

At long last the day came when we left Munich on war service. For the first time in my life I saw the Rhine, as we journeyed westwards to stand guard before that historic German river against its traditional and grasping enemy. As the first soft rays of the morning sun broke through the light mist and disclosed to us the Niederwald Statue, with one accord the whole troop train broke into the strains of Die Wacht am Rhein. I then felt as if my heart could not contain its spirit.

And then followed a damp, cold night in Flanders. We marched in silence throughout the night and as the morning sun came through the mist an iron greeting suddenly burst above our heads. Shrapnel exploded in our midst and spluttered in the damp ground. But before the smoke of the explosion disappeared a wild ‘Hurrah’ was shouted from two hundred throats, in response to this first greeting of Death. Then began the whistling of bullets and the booming of cannons, the shouting and singing of the combatants. With eyes straining feverishly, we pressed forward, quicker and quicker, until we finally came to close-quarter fighting, there beyond the beet-fields and the meadows.

Soon the strains of a song reached us from afar. Nearer and nearer, from company to company, it came. And while Death began to make havoc in our ranks we passed the song on to those beside us: Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, über Alles in der Welt.

After four days in the trenches we came back. Even our step was no longer what it had been. Boys of seventeen looked now like grown men. The rank and file of the List Regiment 11) had not been properly trained in the art of warfare, but they knew how to die like old soldiers.

That was the beginning. And thus we carried on from year to year. A feeling of horror replaced the romantic fighting spirit. Enthusiasm cooled down gradually and exuberant spirits were quelled by the fear of the ever-present Death. A time came when there arose within each one of us a conflict between the urge to self-preservation and the call of duty. And I had to go through that conflict too. As Death sought its prey everywhere and unrelentingly a nameless Something rebelled within the weak body and tried to introduce itself under the name of Common Sense; but in reality it was Fear, which had taken on this cloak in order to impose itself on the individual. But the more the voice which advised prudence increased its efforts and the more clear and persuasive became its appeal, resistance became all the stronger; until finally the internal strife was over and the call of duty was triumphant. Already in the winter of 1915-16 I had come through that inner struggle. The will had asserted its incontestable mastery. Whereas in the early days I went into the fight with a cheer and a laugh, I was now habitually calm and resolute. And that frame of mind endured.

Fate might now put me through the final test without my nerves or reason giving way. The young volunteer had become an old soldier.

This same transformation took place throughout the whole army. Constant fighting had aged and toughened it and hardened it, so that it stood firm and dauntless against every assault.

Only now was it possible to judge that army. After two and three years of continuous fighting, having been thrown into one battle after another, standing up stoutly against superior numbers and superior armament, suffering hunger and privation, the time had come when one could assess the value of that singular fighting force.

For a thousand years to come nobody will dare to speak of heroism without recalling the German Army of the World War. And then from the dim past will emerge the immortal vision of those solid ranks of steel helmets that never flinched and never faltered. And as long as Germans live they will be proud to remember that these men were the sons of their forefathers.

I was then a soldier and did not wish to meddle in politics, all the more so because the time was inopportune. I still believe that the most modest stable-boy of those days served his country better than the best of, let us say, the ‘parliamentary deputies’. My hatred for those footlers was never greater than in those days when all decent men who had anything to say said it point-blank in the enemy’s face; or, failing this, kept their mouths shut and did their duty elsewhere. I despised those political fellows and if I had had my way I would have formed them into a Labour Battalion and given them the opportunity of babbling amongst themselves to their hearts’ content, without offence or harm to decent people.

In those days I cared nothing for politics; but I could not help forming an opinion on certain manifestations which affected not only the whole nation but also us soldiers in particular. There were two things which caused me the greatest anxiety at that time and which I had come to regard as detrimental to our interests.

Shortly after our first series of victories a certain section of the Press already began to throw cold water, drip by drip, on the enthusiasm of the public. At first this was not obvious to many people. It was done under the mask of good intentions and a spirit of anxious care. The public was told that big celebrations of victories were somewhat out of place and were not worthy expressions of the spirit of a great nation. The fortitude and valour of German soldiers were accepted facts which did not necessarily call for outbursts of celebration.

Furthermore, it was asked, what would foreign opinion have to say about these manifestations? Would not foreign opinion react more favourably to a quiet and sober form of celebration rather than to all this wild jubilation? Surely the time had come - so the Press declared - for us Germans to remember that this war was not our work and that hence there need be no feeling of shame in declaring our willingness to do our share towards effecting an understanding among the nations. For this reason it would not be wise to sully the radiant deeds of our army with unbecoming jubilation; for the rest of the world would never understand this. Furthermore, nothing is more appreciated than the modesty with which a true hero quietly and unassumingly carries on and forgets. Such was the gist of their warning.

Instead of catching these fellows by their long ears and dragging them to some ditch and looping a cord around their necks, so that the victorious enthusiasm of the nation should no longer offend the aesthetic sensibilities of these knights of the pen, a general Press campaign was now allowed to go on against what was called ‘unbecoming’ and ‘undignified’ forms of victorious celebration.

No one seemed to have the faintest idea that when public enthusiasm is once damped, nothing can enkindle it again, when the necessity arises. This enthusiasm is an intoxication and must be kept up in that form. Without the support of this enthusiastic spirit how would it be possible to endure in a struggle which, according to human standards, made such immense demands on the spiritual stamina of the nation? I was only too well acquainted with the psychology of the broad masses not to know that in such cases a magnaminous ‘aestheticism’ cannot fan the fire which is needed to keep the iron hot. In my eyes it was even a mistake not to have tried to raise the pitch of public enthusiasm still higher. Therefore I could not at all understand why the contrary policy was adopted, that is to say, the policy of damping the public spirit.

Another thing which irritated me was the manner in which Marxism was regarded and accepted. I thought that all this proved how little they knew about the Marxist plague. It was believed in all seriousness that the abolition of party distinctions during the War had made Marxism a mild and moderate thing.

But here there was no question of party. There was question of a doctrine which was being expounded for the express purpose of leading humanity to its destruction. The purport of this doctrine was not understood because nothing was said about that side of the question in our Jew-ridden universities and because our supercilious bureaucratic officials did not think it worth while to read up a subject which had not been prescribed in their university course. This mighty revolutionary trend was going on beside them; but those ‘intellectuals’ would not deign to give it their attention. That is why State enterprise nearly always lags behind private enterprise. Of these gentry once can truly say that their maxim is: What we don’t know won’t bother us. In the August of 1914 the German worker was looked upon as an adherent of Marxist socialism. That was a gross error. When those fateful hours dawned the German worker shook off the poisonous clutches of that plague; otherwise he would not have been so willing and ready to fight. And people were stupid enough to imagine that Marxism had now become ‘national’, another apt illustration of the fact that those in authority had never taken the trouble to study the real tenor of the Marxist teaching. If they had done so, such foolish errors would not have been committed.

Marxism, whose final objective was and is and will continue to be the destruction of all non-Jewish national States, had to witness in those days of July 1914 how the German working classes, which it had been inveigling, were aroused by the national spirit and rapidly ranged themselves on the side of the Fatherland. Within a few days the deceptive smoke-screen of that infamous national betrayal had vanished into thin air and the Jewish bosses suddenly found themselves alone and deserted. It was as if not a vestige had been left of that folly and madness with which the masses of the German people had been inoculated for sixty years. That was indeed an evil day for the betrayers of German Labour. The moment, however, that the leaders realized the danger which threatened them they pulled the magic cap of deceit over their ears and, without being identified, played the part of mimes in the national reawakening.

The time seemed to have arrived for proceeding against the whole Jewish gang of public pests. Then it was that action should have been taken regardless of any consequent whining or protestation. At one stroke, in the August of 1914, all the empty nonsense about international solidarity was knocked out of the heads of the German working classes. A few weeks later, instead of this stupid talk sounding in their ears, they heard the noise of American-manufactured shrapnel bursting above the heads of the marching columns, as a symbol of international comradeship. Now that the German worker had rediscovered the road to nationhood, it ought to have been the duty of any Government which had the care of the people in its keeping, to take this opportunity of mercilessly rooting out everything that was opposed to the national spirit.

While the flower of the nation’s manhood was dying at the front, there was time enough at home at least to exterminate this vermin. But, instead of doing so, His Majesty the Kaiser held out his hand to these hoary criminals, thus assuring them his protection and allowing them to regain their mental composure.

And so the viper could begin his work again. This time, however, more carefully than before, but still more destructively. While honest people dreamt of reconciliation these perjured criminals were making preparations for a revolution.

Naturally I was distressed at the half-measures which were adopted at that time; but I never thought it possible that the final consequences could have been so disastrous? But what should have been done then? Throw the ringleaders into gaol, prosecute them and rid the nation of them? Uncompromising military measures should have been adopted to root out the evil. Parties should have been abolished and the Reichstag brought to its senses at the point of the bayonet, if necessary. It would have been still better if the Reichstag had been dissolved immediately. Just as the Republic to-day dissolves the parties when it wants to, so in those days there was even more justification for applying that measure, seeing that the very existence of the nation was at stake. Of course this suggestion would give rise to the question: Is it possible to eradicate ideas by force of arms? Could a Weltanschhauung be attacked by means of physical force? At that time I turned these questions over and over again in my mind. By studying analogous cases, exemplified in history, particularly those which had arisen from religious circumstances, I came to the following fundamental conclusion:

Ideas and philosophical systems as well as movements grounded on a definite spiritual foundation, whether true or not, can never be broken by the use of force after a certain stage, except on one condition: namely, that this use of force is in the service of a new idea or Weltanschhauung which burns with a new flame.

The application of force alone, without moral support based on a spiritual concept, can never bring about the destruction of an idea or arrest the propagation of it, unless one is ready and able ruthlessly to exterminate the last upholders of that idea even to a man, and also wipe out any tradition which it may tend to leave behind. Now in the majority of cases the result of such a course has been to exclude such a State, either temporarily or for ever, from the comity of States that are of political significance; but experience has also shown that such a sanguinary method of extirpation arouses the better section of the population under the persecuting power. As a matter of fact, every persecution which has no spiritual motives to support it is morally unjust and raises opposition among the best elements of the population; so much so that these are driven more and more to champion the ideas that are unjustly persecuted. With many individuals this arises from the sheer spirit of opposition to every attempt at suppressing spiritual things by brute force.

In this way the number of convinced adherents of the persecuted doctrine increases as the persecution progresses. Hence the total destruction of a new doctrine can be accomplished only by a vast plan of extermination; but this, in the final analysis, means the loss of some of the best blood in a nation or State.

And that blood is then avenged, because such an internal and total clean-up brings about the collapse of the nation’s strength. And such a procedure is always condemned to futility from the very start if the attacked doctrine should happen to have spread beyond a small circle.

That is why in this case, as with all other growths, the doctrine can be exterminated in its earliest stages. As time goes on its powers of resistance increase, until at the approach of age it gives way to younger elements, but under another form and from other motives.

The fact remains that nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine, without having some spiritual basis of attack against it, and also to wipe out all the organizations it has created, have led in many cases to the very opposite being achieved; and that for the following reasons:

When sheer force is used to combat the spread of a doctrine, then that force must be employed systematically and persistently. This means that the chances of success in the suppression of a doctrine lie only in the persistent and uniform application of the methods chosen. The moment hesitation is shown, and periods of tolerance alternate with the application of force, the doctrine against which these measures are directed will not only recover strength but every successive persecution will bring to its support new adherents who have been shocked by the oppressive methods employed. The old adherents will become more embittered and their allegiance will thereby be strengthened. Therefore when force is employed success is dependent on the consistent manner in which it is used. This persistence, however, is nothing less than the product of definite spiritual convictions. Every form of force that is not supported by a spiritual backing will be always indecisive and uncertain. Such a force lacks the stability that can be found only in a Weltanschhauung which has devoted champions.

Such a force is the expression of the individual energies; therefore it is from time to time dependent on the change of persons in whose hands it is employed and also on their characters and capacities.

But there is something else to be said: Every Weltanschhauung, whether religious or political - and it is sometimes difficult to say where the one ends and the other begins - fights not so much for the negative destruction of the opposing world of ideas as for the positive realization of its own ideas. Thus its struggle lies in attack rather than in defence. It has the advantage of knowing where its objective lies, as this objective represents the realization of its own ideas.

Inversely, it is difficult to say when the negative aim for the destruction of a hostile doctrine is reached and secured. For this reason alone a Weltanschhauung which is of an aggressive character is more definite in plan and more powerful and decisive in action than a Weltanschhauung which takes up a merely defensive attitude. If force be used to combat a spiritual power, that force remains a defensive measure only so long as the wielders of it are not the standard-bearers and apostles of a new spiritual doctrine.

To sum up, the following must be borne in mind: That every attempt to combat a Weltanschhauung by means of force will turn out futile in the end if the struggle fails to take the form of an offensive for the establishment of an entirely new spiritual order of’ things. It is only in the struggle between two Weltan-schauungen that physical force, consistently and ruthlessly applied, will eventually turn the scales in its own favour. It was here that the fight against Marxism had hitherto failed.

This was also the reason why Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation failed and was bound to fail in the long run, despite everything. It lacked the basis of a new Weltanschhauung for whose development and extension the struggle might have been taken up. To say that the serving up of drivel about a so-called ‘State-Authority’ or ‘Law-and-Order’ was an adequate foundation for the spiritual driving force in a life-or-death struggle is only what one would expect to hear from the wiseacres in high official positions.

It was because there were no adequate spiritual motives back of this offensive that Bismarck was compelled to hand over the administration of his socialist legislative measures to the judgment and approval of those circles which were themselves the product of the Marxist teaching. Thus a very ludicrous state of affairs prevailed when the Iron Chancellor surrendered the fate of his struggle against Marxism to the goodwill of the bourgeois democracy. He left the goat to take care of the garden. But this was only the necessary result of the failure to find a fundamentally new Weltanschhauung which would attract devoted champions to its cause and could be established on the ground from which Marxism had been driven out. And thus the result of the Bismarckian campaign was deplorable.

During the World War, or at the beginning of it, were the conditions any different? Unfortunately, they were not.

The more I then pondered over the necessity for a change in the attitude of the executive government towards Social-Democracy, as the incorporation of contemporary Marxism, the more I realized the want of a practical substitute for this doctrine. Supposing Social-Democracy were overthrown, what had one to offer the masses in its stead? Not a single movement existed which promised any success in attracting vast numbers of workers who would be now more or less without leaders, and holding these workers in its train. It is nonsensical to imagine that the international fanatic who has just severed his connection with a class party would forthwith join a bourgeois party, or, in other words, another class organization. For however unsatisfactory these various organizations may appear to be, it cannot be denied that bourgeois politicians look on the distinction between classes as a very important factor in social life, provided it does not turn out politically disadvantageous to them. If they deny this fact they show themselves not only impudent but also mendacious.

Generally speaking, one should guard against considering the broad masses more stupid than they really are. In political matters it frequently happens that feeling judges more correctly than intellect. But the opinion that this feeling on the part of the masses is sufficient proof of their stupid international attitude can be immediately and definitely refuted by the simple fact that pacifist democracy is no less fatuous, though it draws its supporters almost exclusively from bourgeois circles. As long as millions of citizens daily gulp down what the social-democratic Press tells them, it ill becomes the ‘Masters’ to joke at the expense of the ‘Comrades’; for in the long run they all swallow the same hash, even though it be dished up with different spices. In both cases the cook is one and the same - the Jew.

One should be careful about contradicting established facts. It is an undeniable fact that the class question has nothing to do with questions concerning ideals, though that dope is administered at election time. Class arrogance among a large section of our people, as well as a prevailing tendency to look down on the manual labourer, are obvious facts and not the fancies of some day-dreamer.

Nevertheless it only illustrates the mentality of our so-called intellectual circles, that they have not yet grasped the fact that circumstances which are incapable of preventing the growth of such a plague as Marxism are certainly not capable of restoring what has been lost.

The bourgeois’ parties - a name coined by themselves - will never again be able to win over and hold the proletarian masses in their train. That is because two worlds stand opposed to one another here, in part naturally and in part artificially divided. These two camps have one leading thought, and that is that they must fight one another. But in such a fight the younger will come off victorious; and that is Marxism.

In 1914 a fight against Social-Democracy was indeed quite conceivable. But the lack of any practical substitute made it doubtful how long the fight could be kept up. In this respect there was a gaping void.

Long before the War I was of the same opinion and that was the reason why I could not decide to join any of the parties then existing. During the course of the World War my conviction was still further confirmed by the manifest impossibility of fighting Social-Democracy in anything like a thorough way: because for that purpose there should have been a movement that was something more than a mere ‘parliamentary’ party, and there was none such.

I frequently discussed that want with my intimate comrades. And it was then that I first conceived the idea of taking up political work later on. As I have often assured my friends, it was just this that induced me to become active on the public hustings after the War, in addition to my professional work. And I am sure that this decision was arrived at after much earnest thought.


CHAPTER VI: WAR PROPAGANDA

In watching the course of political events I was always struck by the active part which propaganda played in them. I saw that it was an instrument, which the Marxist Socialists knew how to handle in a masterly way and how to put it to practical uses. Thus I soon came to realize that the right use of propaganda was an art in itself and that this art was practically unknown to our bourgeois parties.

The Christian-Socialist Party alone, especially in Lueger’s time, showed a certain efficiency in the employment of this instrument and owed much of their success to it.

It was during the War, however, that we had the best chance of estimating the tremendous results which could be obtained by a propagandist system properly carried out. Here again, unfortunately, everything was left to the other side, the work done on our side being worse than insignificant. It was the total failure of the whole German system of information - a failure which was perfectly obvious to every soldier - that urged me to consider the problem of propaganda in a comprehensive way. I had ample opportunity to learn a practical lesson in this matter; for unfortunately it was only too well taught us by the enemy. The lack on our side was exploited by the enemy in such an efficient manner that one could say it showed itself as a real work of genius. In that propaganda carried on by the enemy I found admirable sources of instruction. The lesson to be learned from this had unfortunately no attraction for the geniuses on our own side. They were simply above all such things, too clever to accept any teaching. Anyhow they did not honestly wish to learn anything.

Had we any propaganda at all? Alas, I can reply only in the negative. All that was undertaken in this direction was so utterly inadequate and misconceived from the very beginning that not only did it prove useless but at times harmful.

In substance it was insufficient. Psychologically it was all wrong. Anybody who had carefully investigated the German propaganda must have formed that judgment of it. Our people did not seem to be clear even about the primary question itself: Whether propaganda is a means or an end? Propaganda is a means and must, therefore, be judged in relation to the end it is intended to serve. It must be organized in such a way as to be capable of attaining its objective. And, as it is quite clear that the importance of the objective may vary from the standpoint of general necessity, the essential internal character of the propaganda must vary accordingly. The cause for which we fought during the War was the noblest and highest that man could strive for.

We were fighting for the freedom and independence of our country, for the security of our future welfare and the honour of the nation. Despite all views to the contrary, this honour does actually exist, or rather it will have to exist; for a nation without honour will sooner or later lose its freedom and independence.

This is in accordance with the ruling of a higher justice, for a generation of poltroons is not entitled to freedom. He who would be a slave cannot have honour; for such honour would soon become an object of general scorn.

Germany was waging war for its very existence. The purpose of its war propaganda should have been to strengthen the fighting spirit in that struggle and help it to victory.

But when nations are fighting for their existence on this earth, when the question of ‘to be or not to be’ has to be answered, then all humane and æsthetic considerations must be set aside; for these ideals do not exist of themselves somewhere in the air but are the product of man’s creative imagination and disappear when he disappears. Nature knows nothing of them. Moreover, they are characteristic of only a small number of nations, or rather of races, and their value depends on the measure in which they spring from the racial feeling of the latter. Humane and æsthetic ideals will disappear from the inhabited earth when those races disappear which are the creators and standard-bearers of them.

All such ideals are only of secondary importance when a nation is struggling for its existence. They must be prevented from entering into the struggle the moment they threaten to weaken the stamina of the nation that is waging war.

That is always the only visible effect whereby their place in the struggle is to be judged.

In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke stated that in time of war the essential thing is to get a decision as quickly as possible and that the most ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the most humane. When people attempt to answer this reasoning by highfalutin talk about æsthetics, etc., only one answer can be given. It is that the vital questions involved in the struggle of a nation for its existence must not be subordinated to any æsthetic considerations. The yoke of slavery is and always will remain the most unpleasant experience that mankind can endure. Do the Schwabing 12) decadents look upon Germany’s lot to-day as ‘aesthetic’? Of course, one doesn’t discuss such a question with the Jews, because they are the modern inventors of this cultural perfume. Their very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God’s image in His creation.

Since these ideas of what is beautiful and humane have no place in warfare, they are not to be used as standards of war propaganda.

During the War, propaganda was a means to an end. And this end was the struggle for existence of the German nation. Propaganda, therefore, should have been regarded from the standpoint of its utility for that purpose. The most cruel weapons were then the most humane, provided they helped towards a speedier decision; and only those methods were good and beautiful which helped towards securing the dignity and freedom of the nation. Such was the only possible attitude to adopt towards war propaganda in the life-or-death struggle.

If those in what are called positions of authority had realized this there would have been no uncertainty about the form and employment of war propaganda as a weapon; for it is nothing but a weapon, and indeed a most terrifying weapon in the hands of those who know how to use it.

The second question of decisive importance is this: To whom should propaganda be made to appeal? To the educated intellectual classes? Or to the less intellectual? Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. For the intellectual classes, or what are called the intellectual classes to-day, propaganda is not suited, but only scientific exposition. Propaganda has as little to do with science as an advertisement poster has to do with art, as far as concerns the form in which it presents its message. The art of the advertisement poster consists in the ability of the designer to attract the attention of the crowd through the form and colours he chooses. The advertisement poster announcing an exhibition of art has no other aim than to convince the public of the importance of the exhibition. The better it does that, the better is the art of the poster as such.

Being meant accordingly to impress upon the public the meaning of the exposition, the poster can never take the place of the artistic objects displayed in the exposition hall. They are something entirely different. Therefore. those who wish to study the artistic display must study something that is quite different from the poster; indeed for that purpose a mere wandering through the exhibition galleries is of no use. The student of art must carefully and thoroughly study each exhibit in order slowly to form a judicious opinion about it.

The situation is the same in regard to what we understand by the word, propaganda. The purpose of propaganda is not the personal instruction of the individual, but rather to attract public attention to certain things, the importance of which can be brought home to the masses only by this means.

Here the art of propaganda consists in putting a matter so clearly and forcibly before the minds of the people as to create a general conviction regarding the reality of a certain fact, the necessity of certain things and the just character of something that is essential. But as this art is not an end in itself and because its purpose must be exactly that of the advertisement poster, to attract the attention of the masses and not by any means to dispense individual instructions to those who already have an educated opinion on things or who wish to form such an opinion on grounds of objective study - because that is not the purpose of propaganda, it must appeal to the feelings of the public rather than to their reasoning powers.

All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. Thus its purely intellectual level will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach. When there is question of bringing a whole nation within the circle of its influence, as happens in the case of war propaganda, then too much attention cannot be paid to the necessity of avoiding a high level, which presupposes a relatively high degree of intelligence among the public.

The more modest the scientific tenor of this propaganda and the more it is addressed exclusively to public sentiment, the more decisive will be its success.

This is the best test of the value of a propaganda, and not the approbation of a small group of intellectuals or artistic people.

The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. That this is not understood by those among us whose wits are supposed to have been sharpened to the highest pitch is only another proof of their vanity or mental inertia.

Once we have understood how necessary it is to concentrate the persuasive forces of propaganda on the broad masses of the people, the following lessons result therefrom: That it is a mistake to organize the direct propaganda as if it were a manifold system of scientific instruction.

The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. If this principle be forgotten and if an attempt be made to be abstract and general, the propaganda will turn out ineffective; for the public will not be able to digest or retain what is offered to them in this way. Therefore, the greater the scope of the message that has to be presented, the more necessary it is for the propaganda to discover that plan of action which is psychologically the most efficient.

It was, for example, a fundamental mistake to ridicule the worth of the enemy as the Austrian and German comic papers made a chief point of doing in their propaganda. The very principle here is a mistaken one; for, when they came face to face with the enemy, our soldiers had quite a different impression. Therefore, the mistake had disastrous results. Once the German soldier realised what a tough enemy he had to fight he felt that he had been deceived by the manufacturers of the information which had been given him. Therefore, instead of strengthening and stimulating his fighting spirit, this information had quite the contrary effect. Finally he lost heart.

On the other hand, British and American war propaganda was psychologically efficient. By picturing the Germans to their own people as Barbarians and Huns, they were preparing their soldiers for the horrors of war and safeguarding them against illusions. The most terrific weapons which those soldiers encountered in the field merely confirmed the information that they had already received and their belief in the truth of the assertions made by their respective governments was accordingly reinforced. Thus their rage and hatred against the infamous foe was increased. The terrible havoc caused by the German weapons of war was only another illustration of the Hunnish brutality of those barbarians; whereas on the side of the Entente no time was left the soldiers to meditate on the similar havoc which their own weapons were capable of. Thus the British soldier was never allowed to feel that the information which he received at home was untrue. Unfortunately the opposite was the case with the Germans, who finally wound up by rejecting everything from home as pure swindle and humbug. This result was made possible because at home they thought that the work of propaganda could be entrusted to the first ass that came along, braying of his own special talents, and they had no conception of the fact that propaganda demands the most skilled brains that can be found.

Thus the German war propaganda afforded us an incomparable example of how the work of ‘enlightenment’ should not be done and how such an example was the result of an entire failure to take any psychological considerations whatsoever into account.

From the enemy, however, a fund of valuable knowledge could be gained by those who kept their eyes open, whose powers of perception had not yet become sclerotic, and who during four-and-a-half years had to experience the perpetual flood of enemy propaganda.

The worst of all was that our people did not understand the very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of propaganda; namely, a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with. In this regard so many errors were committed, even from the very beginning of the war, that it was justifiable to doubt whether so much folly could be attributed solely to the stupidity of people in higher quarters.

What, for example, should we say of a poster which purported to advertise some new brand of soap by insisting on the excellent qualities of the competitive brands? We should naturally shake our heads. And it ought to be just the same in a similar kind of political advertisement. The aim of propaganda is not to try to pass judgment on conflicting rights, giving each its due, but exclusively to emphasize the right which we are asserting. Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side.

It was a fundamental mistake to discuss the question of who was responsible for the outbreak of the war and declare that the sole responsibility could not be attributed to Germany. The sole responsibility should have been laid on the shoulders of the enemy, without any discussion whatsoever.

And what was the consequence of these half-measures? The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. As soon as our own propaganda made the slightest suggestion that the enemy had a certain amount of justice on his side, then we laid down the basis on which the justice of our own cause could be questioned. The masses are not in a position to discern where the enemy’s fault ends and where our own begins. In such a case they become hesitant and distrustful, especially when the enemy does not make the same mistake but heaps all the blame on his adversary.

Could there be any clearer proof of this than the fact that finally our own people believed what was said by the enemy’s propaganda, which was uniform and consistent in its assertions, rather than what our own propaganda said? And that, of course, was increased by the mania for objectivity which addicts our people.

Everybody began to be careful about doing an injustice to the enemy, even at the cost of seriously injuring, and even ruining his own people and State.

Naturally the masses were not conscious of the fact that those in authority had failed to study the subject from this angle.

The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Its notions are never partly this and partly that. English propaganda especially understood this in a marvellous way and put what they understood into practice. They allowed no half-measures which might have given rise to some doubt.

Proof of how brilliantly they understood that the feeling of the masses is something primitive was shown in their policy of publishing tales of horror and outrages which fitted in with the real horrors of the time, thereby cleverly and ruthlessly preparing the ground for moral solidarity at the front, even in times of great defeats. Further, the way in which they pilloried the German enemy as solely responsible for the war - which was a brutal and absolute falsehood - and the way in which they proclaimed his guilt was excellently calculated to reach the masses, realizing that these are always extremist in their feelings. And thus it was that this atrocious lie was positively believed.

The effectiveness of this kind of propaganda is well illustrated by the fact that after four-and-a-half years, not only was the enemy still carrying on his propagandist work, but it was already undermining the stamina of our people at home.

That our propaganda did not achieve similar results is not to be wondered at, because it had the germs of inefficiency lodged in its very being by reason of its ambiguity. And because of the very nature of its content one could not expect it to make the necessary impression on the masses. Only our feckless ‘statesmen’ could have imagined that on pacifists slops of such a kind the enthusiasm could be nourished which is necessary to enkindle that spirit which leads men to die for their country.

And so this product of ours was not only worthless but detrimental.

No matter what an amount of talent employed in the organization of propaganda, it will have no result if due account is not taken of these fundamental principles. Propaganda must be limited to a few simple themes and these must be represented again and again. Here, as in innumerable other cases, perseverance is the first and most important condition of success.

Particularly in the field of propaganda, placid æsthetes and blase intellectuals should never be allowed to take the lead. The former would readily transform the impressive character of real propaganda into something suitable only for literary tea parties. As to the second class of people, one must always beware of this pest; for, in consequence of their insensibility to normal impressions, they are constantly seeking new excitements.

Such people grow sick and tired of everything. They always long for change and will always be incapable of putting themselves in the position of picturing the wants of their less callous fellow-creatures in their immediate neighbourhood, let alone trying to understand them. The blase intellectuals are always the first to criticize propaganda, or rather its message, because this appears to them to be outmoded and trivial. They are always looking for something new, always yearning for change; and thus they become the mortal enemies of every effort that may be made to influence the masses in an effective way. The moment the organization and message of a propagandist movement begins to be orientated according to their tastes it becomes incoherent and scattered.

It is not the purpose of propaganda to create a series of alterations in sentiment with a view to pleasing these blase gentry. Its chief function is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd.

Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula. In this way alone can propaganda be consistent and dynamic in its effects.

Only by following these general lines and sticking to them steadfastly, with uniform and concise emphasis, can final success be reached. Then one will be rewarded by the surprising and almost incredible results that such a persistent policy secures.

The success of any advertisement, whether of a business or political nature, depends on the consistency and perseverance with which it is employed.

In this respect also the propaganda organized by our enemies set us an excellent example. It confined itself to a few themes, which were meant exclusively for mass consumption, and it repeated these themes with untiring perseverance.

Once these fundamental themes and the manner of placing them before the world were recognized as effective, they adhered to them without the slightest alteration for the whole duration of the War. At first all of it appeared to be idiotic in its impudent assertiveness. Later on it was looked upon as disturbing, but finally it was believed.

But in England they came to understand something further: namely, that the possibility of success in the use of this spiritual weapon consists in the mass employment of it, and that when employed in this way it brings full returns for the large expenses incurred.

In England propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first order, whereas with us it represented the last hope of a livelihood for our unemployed politicians and a snug job for shirkers of the modest hero type.

Taken all in all, its results were negative.


CHAPTER VII: THE REVOLUTION

In 1915 the enemy started his propaganda among our soldiers. From 1916 onwards it steadily became more intensive, and at the beginning of 1918 it had swollen into a storm flood. One could now judge the effects of this proselytizing movement step by step. Gradually our soldiers began to think just in the way the enemy wished them to think. On the German side there was no counter-propaganda.

At that time the army authorities, under our able and resolute Commander, were willing and ready to take up the fight in the propaganda domain also, but unfortunately they did not have the necessary means to carry that intention into effect. Moreover, the army authorities would have made a psychological mistake had they undertaken this task of mental training. To be efficacious it had come from the home front. For only thus could it be successful among men who for nearly four years now had been performing immortal deeds of heroism and undergoing all sorts of privations for the sake of that home. But what were the people at home doing? Was their failure to act merely due to unintelligence or bad faith? In the midsummer of 1918, after the evacuation of the southern bank of the hearne, the German Press adopted a policy which was so woefully inopportune, and even criminally stupid, that I used to ask myself a question which made me more and more furious day after day: Is it really true that we have nobody who will dare to put an end to this process of spiritual sabotage which is being carried on among our heroic troops? What happened in France during those days of 1914, when our armies invaded that country and were marching in triumph from one victory to another? What happened in Italy when their armies collapsed on the Isonzo front? What happened in France again during the spring of 1918, when German divisions took the main French positions by storm and heavy long-distance artillery bombarded Paris? How they whipped up the flagging courage of those troops who were retreating and fanned the fires of national enthusiasm among them! How their propaganda and their marvellous aptitude in the exercise of mass-influence reawakened the fighting spirit in that broken front and hammered into the heads of the soldiers a, firm belief in final victory! Meanwhile, what were our people doing in this sphere? Nothing, or even worse than nothing. Again and again I used to become enraged and indignant as I read the latest papers and realized the nature of the mass-murder they were committing: through their influence on the minds of the people and the soldiers.

More than once I was tormented by the thought that if Providence had put the conduct of German propaganda into my hands, instead of into the hands of those incompetent and even criminal ignoramuses and weaklings, the outcome of the struggle might have been different.

During those months I felt for the first time that Fate was dealing adversely with me in keeping me on the fighting front and in a position where any chance bullet from some nigger or other might finish me, whereas I could have done the Fatherland a real service in another sphere. For I was then presumptuous enough to believe that I would have been successful in managing the propaganda business.

But I was a being without a name, one among eight millions. Hence it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and do my duty as well as I could in the position to which I had been assigned.

In the summer of 1915 the first enemy leaflets were dropped on our trenches.

They all told more or less the same story, with some variations in the form of it.

The story was that distress was steadily on the increase in Germany; that the War would last indefinitely; that the prospect of victory for us was becoming fainter day after day; that the people at home were yearning for peace, but that ‘Militarism’ and the ‘Kaiser’ would not permit it; that the world - which knew this very well - was not waging war against the German people but only against the man who was exclusively responsible, the Kaiser; that until this enemy of world-peace was removed there could be no end to the conflict; but that when the War was over the liberal and democratic nations would receive the Germans as colleagues in the League for World Peace. This would be done the moment ‘Prussian Militarism’ had been finally destroyed.

To illustrate and substantiate all these statements, the leaflets very often contained ‘Letters from Home’, the contents of which appeared to confirm the enemy’s propagandist message.

Generally speaking, we only laughed at all these efforts. The leaflets were read, sent to base headquarters, then forgotten until a favourable wind once again blew a fresh contingent into the trenches. These were mostly dropped from æroplanes which were used specially for that purpose.

One feature of this propaganda was very striking. It was that in sections where Bavarian troops were stationed every effort was made by the enemy propagandists to stir up feeling against the Prussians, assuring the soldiers that Prussia and Prussia alone was the guilty party who was responsible for bringing on and continuing the War, and that there was no hostility whatsoever towards the Bavarians; but that there could be no possibility of coming to their assistance so long as they continued to serve Prussian interests and helped to pull the Prussian chestnuts out of the fire.

This persistent propaganda began to have a real influence on our soldiers in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite noticeable among the Bavarian troops, but those in authority did nothing to counteract it. This was something more than a mere crime of omission; for sooner or later not only the Prussians were bound to have to atone severely for it but the whole German nation and consequently the Bavarians themselves also.

In this direction the enemy propaganda began to achieve undoubted success from 1916 onwards.

In a similar way letters coming directly from home had long since been exercising their effect. There was now no further necessity for the enemy to broadcast such letters in leaflet form. And also against this influence from home nothing was done except a few supremely stupid ‘warnings’ uttered by the executive government. The whole front was drenched in this poison which thoughtless women at home sent out, without suspecting for a moment that the enemy’s chances of final victory were thus strengthened or that the sufferings of their own men at the front were thus being prolonged and rendered more severe.

These stupid letters written by German women eventually cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of our men.

Thus in 1916 several distressing phenomena were already manifest. The whole front was complaining and grousing, discontented over many things and often justifiably so. While they were hungry and yet patient, and their relatives at home were in distress, in other quarters there was feasting and revelry. Yes; even on the front itself everything was not as it ought to have been in this regard.

Even in the early stages of the war the soldiers were sometimes prone to complain; but such criticism was confined to ‘internal affairs’. The man who at one moment groused and grumbled ceased his murmur after a few moments and went about his duty silently, as if everything were in order. The company which had given signs of discontent a moment earlier hung on now to its bit of trench, defending it tooth and nail, as if Germany’s fate depended on these few hundred yards of mud and shell-holes. The glorious old army was still at its post. A sudden change in my own fortunes soon placed me in a position where I had first-hand experience of the contrast between this old army and the home front.

At the end of September 1916 my division was sent into the Battle of the Somme. For us this was the first of a series of heavy engagements, and the impression created was that of a veritable inferno, rather than war. Through weeks of incessant artillery bombardment we stood firm, at times ceding a little ground but then taking it back again, and never giving way. On October 7th, 1916, I was wounded but had the luck of being able to get back to our lines and was then ordered to be sent by ambulance train to Germany.

Two years had passed since I had left home, an almost endless period in such circumstances. I could hardly imagine what Germans looked like without uniforms. In the clearing hospital at Hermies I was startled when I suddenly heard the voice of a German woman who was acting as nursing sister and talking with one of the wounded men lying near me. Two years! And then this voice for the first time! The nearer our ambulance train approached the German frontier the more restless each one of us became. En route we recognised all these places through which we passed two years before as young volunteers - Brussels, Louvain, Liège - and finally we thought we recognized the first German homestead, with its familiar high gables and picturesque window-shutters. Home! What a change! From the mud of the Somme battlefields to the spotless white beds in this wonderful building. One hesitated at first before entering them. It was only by slow stages that one could grow accustomed to this new world again. But unfortunately there were certain other aspects also in which this new world was different.

The spirit of the army at the front appeared to be out of place here. For the first time I encountered something which up to then was unknown at the front: namely, boasting of one’s own cowardice. For, though we certainly heard complaining and grousing at the front, this was never in the spirit of any agitation to insubordination and certainly not an attempt to glorify one’s fear.

No; there at the front a coward was a coward and nothing else, And the contempt which his weakness aroused in the others was quite general, just as the real hero was admired all round. But here in hospital the spirit was quite different in some respects. Loudmouthed agitators were busy here in heaping ridicule on the good soldier and painting the weak-kneed poltroon in glorious colours. A couple of miserable human specimens were the ringleaders in this process of defamation. One of them boasted of having intentionally injured his hand in barbed-wire entanglements in order to get sent to hospital. Although his wound was only a slight one, it appeared that he had been here for a very long time and would be here interminably. Some arrangement for him seemed to be worked by some sort of swindle, just as he got sent here in the ambulance train through a swindle. This pestilential specimen actually had the audacity to parade his knavery as the manifestation of a courage which was superior to that of the brave soldier who dies a hero’s death. There were many who heard this talk in silence; but there were others who expressed their assent to what the fellow said.

Personally I was disgusted at the thought that a seditious agitator of this kind should be allowed to remain in such an institution. What could be done? The hospital authorities here must have known who and what he was; and actually they did know. But still they did nothing about it.

As soon as I was able to walk once again I obtained leave to visit Berlin.

Bitter want was in evidence everywhere. The metropolis, with its teeming millions, was suffering from hunger. The talk that was current in the various places of refreshment and hospices visited by the soldiers was much the same as that in our hospital. The impression given was that these agitators purposely singled out such places in order to spread their views.

But in Munich conditions were far worse. After my discharge from hospital, I was sent to a reserve battalion there. I felt as in some strange town. Anger, discontent, complaints met one’s ears wherever one went. To a certain extent this was due to the infinitely maladroit manner in which the soldiers who had returned from the front were treated by the non-commissioned officers who had never seen a day’s active service and who on that account were partly incapable of adopting the proper attitude towards the old soldiers. Naturally those old soldiers displayed certain characteristics which had been developed from the experiences in the trenches. The officers of the reserve units could not understand these peculiarities, whereas the officer home from active service was at least in a position to understand them for himself. As a result he received more respect from the men than officers at the home headquarters. But, apart from all this, the general spirit was deplorable. The art of shirking was looked upon as almost a proof of higher intelligence, and devotion to duty was considered a sign of weakness or bigotry. Government offices were staffed by Jews. Almost every clerk was a Jew and every Jew was a clerk. I was amazed at this multitude of combatants who belonged to the chosen people and could not help comparing it with their slender numbers in the fighting lines.

In the business world the situation was even worse. Here the Jews had actually become ‘indispensable’. Like leeches, they were slowly sucking the blood from the pores of the national body. By means of newly floated War Companies an instrument had been discovered whereby all national trade was throttled so that no business could be carried on freely Special emphasis was laid on the necessity for unhampered centralization.

Hence as early as 1916-17 practically all production was under the control of Jewish finance.

But against whom was the anger of the people directed? It was then that I already saw the fateful day approaching which must finally bring the debacle, unless timely preventive measures were taken.

While Jewry was busy despoiling the nation and tightening the screws of its despotism, the work of inciting the people against the Prussians increased. And just as nothing was done at the front to put a stop to the venomous propaganda, so here at home no official steps were taken against it. Nobody seemed capable of understanding that the collapse of Prussia could never bring about the rise of Bavaria. On the contrary, the collapse of the one must necessarily drag the other down with it.

This kind of behaviour affected me very deeply. In it I could see only a clever Jewish trick for diverting public attention from themselves to others. While Prussians and Bavarians were squabbling, the Jews were taking away the sustenance of both from under their very noses. While Prussians were being abused in Bavaria the Jews organized the revolution and with one stroke smashed both Prussia and Bavaria.

I could not tolerate this execrable squabbling among people of the same German stock and preferred to be at the front once again. Therefore, just after my arrival in Munich I reported myself for service again. At the beginning of March 1917 I rejoined my old regiment at the front.

Towards the end of 1917 it seemed as if we had got over the worst phases of moral depression at the front. After the Russian collapse the whole army recovered its courage and hope, and all were gradually becoming more and more convinced that the struggle would end in our favour. We could sing once again.

The ravens were ceasing to croak. Faith in the future of the Fatherland was once more in the ascendant.

The Italian collapse in the autumn of 1917 had a wonderful effect; for this victory proved that it was possible to break through another front besides the Russian. This inspiring thought now became dominant in the minds of millions at the front and encouraged them to look forward with confidence to the spring of 1918. It was quite obvious that the enemy was in a state of depression. During this winter the front was somewhat quieter than usual. But that was the calm before the storm.

Just when preparations were being made to launch a final offensive which would bring this seemingly eternal struggle to an end, while endless columns of transports were bringing men and munitions to the front, and while the men were being trained for that final onslaught, then it was that the greatest act of treachery during the whole War was accomplished in Germany.

Germany must not win the War. At that moment when victory seemed ready to alight on the German standards, a conspiracy was arranged for the purpose of striking at the heart of the German spring offensive with one blow from the rear and thus making victory impossible. A general strike in the munition factories was organized.

If this conspiracy could achieve its purpose the German front would have collapsed and the wishes of the Vorwärts (the organ of the Social-Democratic Party) that this time victory should not take the side of the German banners, would have been fulfilled. For want of munitions the front would be broken through within a few weeks, the offensive would be effectively stopped and the Entente saved. Then International Finance would assume control over Germany and the internal objective of the Marxist national betrayal would be achieved.

That objective was the destruction of the national economic system and the establishment of international capitalistic domination in its stead. And this goal has really been reached, thanks to the stupid credulity of the one side and the unspeakable treachery of the other.

The munition strike, however, did not bring the final success that had been hoped for: namely, to starve the front of ammunition. It lasted too short a time for the lack of ammunitions as such to bring disaster to the army, as was originally planned. But the moral damage was much more terrible.

In the first place. what was the army fighting for if the people at home did not wish it to be victorious? For whom then were these enormous sacrifices and privations being made and endured? Must the soldiers fight for victory while the home front goes on strike against it? In the second place, what effect did this move have on the enemy? In the winter of 1917-18 dark clouds hovered in the firmament of the Entente.

For nearly four years onslaught after onslaught has been made against the German giant, but they failed to bring him to the ground. He had to keep them at bay with one arm that held the defensive shield because his other arm had to be free to wield the sword against his enemies, now in the East and now in the South. But at last these enemies were overcome and his rear was now free for the conflict in the West. Rivers of blood had been shed for the accomplishment of that task; but now the sword was free to combine in battle with the shield on the Western Front. And since the enemy had hitherto failed to break the German defence here, the Germans themselves had now to launch the attack. The enemy feared and trembled before the prospect of this German victory.

At Paris and London conferences followed one another in unending series. Even the enemy propaganda encountered difficulties. It was no longer so easy to demonstrate that the prospect of a German victory was hopeless. A prudent silence reigned at the front, even among the troops of the Entente. The insolence of their masters had suddenly subsided. A disturbing truth began to dawn on them. Their opinion of the German soldier had changed. Hitherto they were able to picture him as a kind of fool whose end would be destruction; but now they found themselves face to face with the soldier who had overcome their Russian ally. The policy of restricting the offensive to the East, which had been imposed on the German military authorities by the necessities of the situation, now seemed to the Entente as a tactical stroke of genius. For three years these Germans had been battering away at the Russian front without any apparent success at first. Those fruitless efforts were almost sneered at; for it was thought that in the long run the Russian giant would triumph through sheer force of numbers. Germany would be worn out through shedding so much blood. And facts appeared to confirm this hope.

Since the September days of 1914, when for the first time interminable columns of Russian war prisoners poured into Germany after the Battle of Tannenberg, it seemed as if the stream would never end but that as soon as one army was defeated and routed another would take its place. The supply of soldiers which the gigantic Empire placed at the disposal of the Czar seemed inexhaustible; new victims were always at hand for the holocaust of war. How long could Germany hold out in this competition? Would not the day finally have to come when, after the last victory which the Germans would achieve, there would still remain reserve armies in Russia to be mustered for the final battle? And what then? According to human standards a Russian victory over Germany might be delayed but it would have to come in the long run.

All the hopes that had been based on Russia were now lost. The Ally who had sacrificed the most blood on the altar of their mutual interests had come to the end of his resources and lay prostrate before his unrelenting foe. A feeling of terror and dismay came over the Entente soldiers who had hitherto been buoyed up by blind faith. They feared the coming spring. For, seeing that hitherto they had failed to break the Germans when the latter could concentrate only part of the fighting strength on the Western Front, how could they count on victory now that the undivided forces of that amazing land of heroes appeared to be gathered for a massed attack in the West? The shadow of the events which had taken place in South Tyrol, the spectre of General Cadorna’s defeated armies, were reflected in the gloomy faces of the Entente troops in Flanders. Faith in victory gave way to fear of defeat to come.

Then, on those cold nights, when one almost heard the tread of the German armies advancing to the great assault, and the decision was being awaited in fear and trembling, suddenly a lurid light was set aglow in Germany and sent its rays into the last shell-hole on the enemy’s front. At the very moment when the German divisions were receiving their final orders for the great offensive a general strike broke out in Germany.

At first the world was dumbfounded. Then the enemy propaganda began activities once again and pounced on this theme at the eleventh hour. All of a sudden a means had come which could be utilized to revive the sinking confidence of the Entente soldiers. The probabilities of victory could now be presented as certain, and the anxious foreboding in regard to coming events could now be transformed into a feeling of resolute assurance. The regiments that had to bear the brunt of the Greatest German onslaught in history could now be inspired with the conviction that the final decision in this war would not be won by the audacity of the German assault but rather by the powers of endurance on the side of the defence. Let the Germans now have whatever victories they liked, the revolution and not the victorious army was welcomed in the Fatherland.

British, French and American newspapers began to spread this belief among their readers while a very ably managed propaganda encouraged the morale of their troops at the front.

‘Germany Facing Revolution! An Allied Victory Inevitable!’ That was the best medicine to set the staggering Poilu and Tommy on their feet once again. Our rifles and machine-guns could now open fire once again; but instead of effecting a panic-stricken retreat they were now met with a determined resistance that was full of confidence.

That was the result of the strike in the munitions factories. Throughout the enemy countries faith in victory was thus revived and strengthened, and that paralysing feeling of despair which had hitherto made itself felt on the Entente front was banished. Consequently the strike cost the lives of thousands of German soldiers. But the despicable instigators of that dastardly strike were candidates for the highest public positions in the Germany of the Revolution.

At first it was apparently possible to overcome the repercussion of these events on the German soldiers, but on the enemy’s side they had a lasting effect. Here the resistance had lost all the character of an army fighting for a lost cause. In its place there was now a grim determination to struggle through to victory. For, according to all human rules of judgment, victory would now be assured if the Western front could hold out against the German offensive even for only a few months. The Allied parliaments recognized the possibilities of a better future and voted huge sums of money for the continuation of the propaganda which was employed for the purpose of breaking up the internal cohesion of Germany.

It was my luck that I was able to take part in the first two offensives and in the final offensive. These have left on me the most stupendous impressions of my life - stupendous, because now for the last time the struggle lost its defensive character and assumed the character of an offensive, just as it was in 1914. A sigh of relief went up from the German trenches and dug-outs when finally, after three years of endurance in that inferno, the day for the settling of accounts had come. Once again the lusty cheering of victorious battalions was heard, as they hung the last crowns of the immortal laurel on the standards which they consecrated to Victory. Once again the strains of patriotic songs soared upwards to the heavens above the endless columns of marching troops, and for the last time the Lord smiled on his ungrateful children.

In the midsummer of 1918 a feeling of sultry oppression hung over the front. At home they were quarrelling. About what? We heard a great deal among various units at the front. The War was now a hopeless affair, and only the foolhardy could think of victory. It was not the people but the capitalists and the Monarchy who were interested in carrying on. Such were the ideas that came from home and were discussed at the front.

At first this gave rise to only very slight reaction. What did universal suffrage matter to us? Is this what we had been fighting for during four years? It was a dastardly piece of robbery thus to filch from the graves of our heroes the ideals for which they had fallen. It was not to the slogan, ‘Long Live Universal Suffrage,’ that our troops in Flanders once faced certain death but with the cry, ‘Deutschland über Alles in der Welt’. A small but by no means an unimportant difference. And the majority of those who were shouting for this suffrage were absent when it came to fighting for it. All this political rabble were strangers to us at the front. During those days only a fraction of these parliamentarian gentry were to be seen where honest Germans foregathered.

The old soldiers who had fought at the front had little liking for those new war aims of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebknecht and others. We could not understand why, all of a sudden, the shirkers should abrogate all executive powers to themselves, without having any regard to the army.

From the very beginning I had my own definite personal views. I intensely loathed the whole gang of miserable party politicians who had betrayed the people. I had long ago realized that the interests of the nation played only a very small part with this disreputable crew and that what counted with them was the possibility of filling their own empty pockets. My opinion was that those people thoroughly deserved to be hanged, because they were ready to sacrifice the peace and if necessary allow Germany to be defeated just to serve their own ends. To consider their wishes would mean to sacrifice the interests of the working classes for the benefit of a gang of thieves. To meet their wishes meant that one should agree to sacrifice Germany.

Such, too, was the opinion still held by the majority of the army. But the reinforcements which came from home were fast becoming worse and worse; so much so that their arrival was a source of weakness rather than of strength to our fighting forces. The young recruits in particular were for the most part useless.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that they were sons of the same nation that sent its youth into the battles that were fought round Ypres.

In August and September the symptoms of moral disintegration increased more and more rapidly, although the enemy’s offensive was not at all comparable to the frightfulness of our own former defensive battles. In comparison with this offensive the battles fought on the Somme and in Flanders remained in our memories as the most terrible of all horrors.

At the end of September my division occupied, for the third time, those positions which we had once taken by storm as young volunteers. What a memory! Here we had received our baptism of fire, in October and November 1914. With a burning love of the homeland in their hearts and a song on their lips, our young regiment went into action as if going to a dance. The dearest blood was given freely here in the belief that it was shed to protect the freedom and independence of the Fatherland.

In July 1917 we set foot for the second time on what we regarded as sacred soil.

Were not our best comrades at rest here, some of them little more than boys - the soldiers who had rushed into death for their country’s sake, their eyes glowing with enthusiastic love.

The older ones among us, who had been with the regiment from the beginning, were deeply moved as we stood on this sacred spot where we had sworn ‘Loyalty and Duty unto Death’. Three years ago the regiment had taken this position by storm; now it was called upon to defend it in a gruelling struggle.

With an artillery bombardment that lasted three weeks the English prepared for their great offensive in Flanders. There the spirits of the dead seemed to live again. The regiment dug itself into the mud, clung to its shell-holes and craters, neither flinching nor wavering, but growing smaller in numbers day after day.

Finally the British launched their attack on July 31st, 1917.

We were relieved in the beginning of August. The regiment had dwindled down to a few companies, who staggered back, mud-crusted, more like phantoms than human beings. Besides a few hundred yards of shell-holes, death was the only reward which the English gained.

Now in the autumn of 1918 we stood for the third time on the ground we had stormed in 1914. The village of Comines, which formerly had served us as a base, was now within the fighting zone. Although little had changed in the surrounding district itself, yet the men had become different, somehow or other.

They now talked politics. Like everywhere else, the poison from home was having its effect here also. The young drafts succumbed to it completely. They had come directly from home.

During the night of October 13th-14th, the British opened an attack with gas on the front south of Ypres. They used the yellow gas whose effect was unknown to us, at least from personal experience. I was destined to experience it that very night. On a hill south of Werwick, in the evening of October 13th, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night with more or less intensity. About midnight a number of us were put out of action, some for ever. Towards morning I also began to feel pain. It increased with every quarter of an hour; and about seven o’clock my eyes were scorching as I staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this war. A few hours later my eyes were like glowing coals and all was darkness around me.

I was sent into hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and there it was that I had to hear of the Revolution.

For a long time there had been something in the air which was indefinable and repulsive. People were saying that something was bound to happen within the next few weeks, although I could not imagine what this meant. In the first instance I thought of a strike similar to the one which had taken place in spring.

Unfavourable rumours were constantly coming from the Navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment. But this seemed to be a fanciful creation of a few isolated young people. It is true that at the hospital they were all talking abut the end of the war and hoping that this was not far off, but nobody thought that the decision would come immediately. I was not able to read the newspapers.

In November the general tension increased. Then one day disaster broke in upon us suddenly and without warning. Sailors came in motor-lorries and called on us to rise in revolt. A few Jew-boys were the leaders in that combat for the ‘Liberty, Beauty, and Dignity’ of our National Being. Not one of them had seen active service at the front. Through the medium of a hospital for venereal diseases these three Orientals had been sent back home. Now their red rags were being hoisted here.

During the last few days I had begun to feel somewhat better. The burning pain in the eye-sockets had become less severe. Gradually I was able to distinguish the general outlines of my immediate surroundings. And it was permissible to hope that at least I would recover my sight sufficiently to be able to take up some profession later on. That I would ever be able to draw or design once again was naturally out of the question. Thus I was on the way to recovery when the frightful hour came.

My first thought was that this outbreak of high treason was only a local affair. I tried to enforce this belief among my comrades. My Bavarian hospital mates, in particular, were readily responsive. Their inclinations were anything but revolutionary. I could not imagine this madness breaking out in Munich; for it seemed to me that loyalty to the House of Wittelsbach was, after all, stronger than the will of a few Jews. And so I could not help believing that this was merely a revolt in the Navy and that it would be suppressed within the next few days.

With the next few days came the most astounding information of my life. The rumours grew more and more persistent. I was told that what I had considered to be a local affair was in reality a general revolution. In addition to this, from the front came the shameful news that they wished to capitulate! What! Was such a thing possible? On November 10th the local pastor visited the hospital for the purpose of delivering a short address. And that was how we came to know the whole story.

I was in a fever of excitement as I listened to the address. The reverend old gentleman seemed to be trembling when he informed us that the House of Hohen-zollern should no longer wear the Imperial Crown, that the Fatherland had become a ‘Republic’, that we should pray to the Almighty not to withhold His blessing from the new order of things and not to abandon our people in the days to come. In delivering this message he could not do more than briefly express appreciation of the Royal House, its services to Pomerania, to Prussia, indeed, to the whole of the German Fatherland, and - here he began to weep. A feeling of profound dismay fell on the people in that assembly, and I do not think there was a single eye that withheld its tears. As for myself, I broke down completely when the old gentleman tried to resume his story by informing us that we must now end this long war, because the war was lost, he said, and we were at the mercy of the victor. The Fatherland would have to bear heavy burdens in the future. We were to accept the terms of the Armistice and trust to the magnanimity of our former enemies. It was impossible for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and pillow.

I had not cried since the day that I stood beside my mother’s grave. Whenever Fate dealt cruelly with me in my young days the spirit of determination within me grew stronger and stronger. During all those long years of war, when Death claimed many a true friend and comrade from our ranks, to me it would have appeared sinful to have uttered a word of complaint. Did they not die for Germany? And, finally, almost in the last few days of that titanic struggle, when the waves of poison gas enveloped me and began to penetrate my eyes, the thought of becoming permanently blind unnerved me; but the voice of conscience cried out immediately: Poor miserable fellow, will you start howling when there are thousands of others whose lot is a hundred times worse than yours? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence, realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one’s country.

So all had been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations, in vain the hunger and thirst for endless months, in vain those hours that we stuck to our posts though the fear of death gripped our souls, and in vain the deaths of two millions who fell in discharging this duty. Think of those hundreds of thousands who set out with hearts full of faith in their fatherland, and never returned; ought not their graves to open, so that the spirits of those heroes bespattered with mud and blood should come home and take vengeance on those who had so despicably betrayed the greatest sacrifice which a human being can make for his country? Was it for this that the soldiers died in August and September 1914, for this that the volunteer regiments followed the old comrades in the autumn of the same year? Was it for this that those boys of seventeen years of age were mingled with the earth of Flanders? Was this meant to be the fruits of the sacrifice which German mothers made for their Fatherland when, with heavy hearts, they said good-bye to their sons who never returned? Has all this been done in order to enable a gang of despicable criminals to lay hands on the Fatherland? Was this then what the German soldier struggled for through sweltering heat and blinding snowstorm, enduring hunger and thirst and cold, fatigued from sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for this that he lived through an inferno of artillery bombardments, lay gasping and choking during gas attacks, neither flinching nor faltering, but remaining staunch to the thought of defending the Fatherland against the enemy? Certainly these heroes also deserved the epitaph: Traveller, when you come to Germany, tell the Homeland that we lie here, true to the Fatherland and faithful to our duty.

And at Home? But - was this the only sacrifice that we had to consider? Was the Germany of the past a country of little worth? Did she not owe a certain duty to her own history? Were we still worthy to partake in the glory of the past? How could we justify this act to future generations? What a gang of despicable and depraved criminals! The more I tried then to glean some definite information of the terrible events that had happened the more my head became afire with rage and shame. What was all the pain I suffered in my eyes compared with this tragedy? The following days were terrible to bear, and the nights still worse. To depend on the mercy of the enemy was a precept which only fools or criminal liars could recommend. During those nights my hatred increased - hatred for the orignators of this dastardly crime.

During the following days my own fate became clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future, which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous to think of building up anything on such a foundation? Finally, it also became clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it.

Emperor William II was the first German Emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of honour. While they held the imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger.

There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard-and-fast ‘Either-Or.’

For my part I then decided that I would take up political work.


CHAPTER VIII: THE BEGINNING OF MY POLITICAL ACTIVITIES

Towards the end of November I returned to Munich. I went to the depot of my regiment, which was now in the hands of the ‘Soldiers’ Councils’. As the whole administration was quite repulsive to me, I decided to leave it as soon as I possibly could. With my faithful war-comrade, Ernst-Schmidt, I came to Traunstein and remained there until the camp was broken up. In March 1919 we were back again in Munich.

The situation there could not last as it was. It tended irresistibly to a further extension of the Revolution. Eisner’s death served only to hasten this development and finally led to the dictatorship of the Councils - or, to put it more correctly, to a Jewish hegemony, which turned out to be transitory but which was the original aim of those who had contrived the Revolution.

At that juncture innumerable plans took shape in my mind. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done, but unfortunately every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown and therefore did not have even the first pre-requisite necessary for effective action.

Later on I shall explain the reasons why I could not decide to join any of the parties then in existence.

As the new Soviet Revolution began to run its course in Munich my first activities drew upon me the ill-will of the Central Council. In the early morning of April 27th, 1919, I was to have been arrested; but the three fellows who came to arrest me did not have the courage to face my rifle and withdrew just as they had arrived.

A few days after the liberation of Munich I was ordered to appear before the Inquiry Commission which had been set up in the 2nd Infantry Regiment for the purpose of watching revolutionary activities. That was my first incursion into the more or less political field.

After another few weeks I received orders to attend a course of lectures which were being given to members of the army. This course was meant to inculcate certain fundamental principles on which the soldier could base his political ideas. For me the advantage of this organization was that it gave me a chance of meeting fellow soldiers who were of the same way of thinking and with whom I could discuss the actual situation. We were all more or less firmly convinced that Germany could not be saved from imminent disaster by those who had participated in the November treachery - that is to say, the Centre and the Social-Democrats; and also that the so-called Bourgeois-National group could not make good the damage that had been done, even if they had the best intentions. They lacked a number of requisites without which such a task could never be successfully undertaken. The years that followed have justified the opinions which we held at that time.

In our small circle we discussed the project of forming a new party. The leading ideas which we then proposed were the same as those which were carried into effect afterwards, when the German Labour Party was founded. The name of the new movement which was to be founded should be such that of itself, it would appeal to the mass of the people; for all our efforts would turn out vain and useless if this condition were lacking. And that was the reason why we chose the name ‘Social-Revolutionary Party’, particularly because the social principles of our new organization were indeed revolutionary.

But there was also a more fundamental reason. The attention which I had given to economic problems during my earlier years was more or less confined to considerations arising directly out of the social problem. Subsequently this outlook broadened as I came to study the German policy of the Triple Alliance.

This policy was very largely the result of an erroneous valuation of the economic situation, together with a confused notion as to the basis on which the future subsistence of the German people could be guaranteed. All these ideas were based on the principle that capital is exclusively the product of labour and that, just like labour, it was subject to all the factors which can hinder or promote human activity. Hence, from the national standpoint, the significance of capital depended on the greatness and freedom and power of the State, that is to say, of the nation, and that it is this dependence alone which leads capital to promote the interests of the State and the nation, from the instinct of self-preservation and for the sake of its own development.

On such principles the attitude of the State towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear. Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the State and did not allocate to itself the right to dominate national interests. Thus it could confine its activities within the two following limits: on the one side, to assure a vital and independent system of national economy and, on the other, to safeguard the social rights of the workers.

Previously I did not recognize with adequate clearness the difference between capital which is purely the product of creative labour and the existence and nature of capital which is exclusively the result of financial speculation. Here I needed an impulse to set my mind thinking in this direction; but that impulse had hitherto been lacking.

The requisite impulse now came from one of the men who delivered lectures in the course I have already mentioned. This was Gottfried Feder.

For the first time in my life I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock-exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. After hearing the first lecture delivered by Feder, the idea immediately came into my head that I had now found a way to one of the most essential pre-requisites for the founding of a new party.

To my mind, Feder’s merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock-exchange and loan transaction, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that au fond his ideas were sound but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me this seemed the strongest point in Feder’s teaching, though others considered it a weak point.

It is not the business of him who lays down a theoretical programme to explain the various ways in which something can be put into practice. His task is to deal with the problem as such; and, therefore, he has to look to the end rather than the means. The important question is whether an idea is fundamentally right or not.

The question of whether or not it may be difficult to carry it out in practice is quite another matter. When a man whose task it is to lay down the principles of a programme or policy begins to busy himself with the question as to whether it is expedient and practical, instead of confining himself to the statement of the absolute truth, his work will cease to be a guiding star to those who are looking about for light and leading and will become merely a recipe for every-day iife.

The man who lays down the programme of a movement must consider only the goal. It is for the political leader to point out the way in which that goal may be reached. The thought of the former will, therefore, be determined by those truths that are everlasting, whereas the activity of the latter must always be guided by taking practical account of the circumstances under which those truths have to be carried into effect.

The greatness of the one will depend on the absolute truth of his idea, considered in the abstract; whereas that of the other will depend on whether or not he correctly judges the given realities and how they may be utilized under the guidance of the truths established by the former. The test of greatness as applied to a political leader is the success of his plans and his enterprises, which means his ability to reach the goal for which he sets out; whereas the final goal set up by the political philosopher can never be reached; for human thought may grasp truths and picture ends which it sees like clear crystal, though such ends can never be completely fulfilled because human nature is weak and imperfect.

The more an idea is correct in the abstract, and, therefore, all the more powerful, the smaller is the possibility of putting it into practice, at least as far as this latter depends on human beings. The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If it were otherwise, the founders of religions could not be considered as the greatest men who have ever lived, because their moral aims will never be completely or even approximately carried out in practice. Even that religion which is called the Religion of Love is really no more than a faint reflex of the will of its sublime Founder. But its significance lies in the orientation which it endeavoured to give to human civilization, and human virtue and morals.

This very wide difference between the functions of a political philosopher and a practical political leader is the reason why the qualifications necessary for both functions are scarcely ever found associated in the same person. This applies especially to the so-called successful politician of the smaller kind, whose activity is indeed hardly more than practising the art of doing the possible, as Bismarck modestly defined the art of politics in general. If such a politician resolutely avoids great ideas his success will be all the easier to attain; it will be attained more expeditely and frequently will be more tangible. By reason of this very fact, however, such success is doomed to futility and sometimes does not even survive the death of its author. Generally speaking, the work of politicians is without significance for the following generation, because their temporary success was based on the expediency of avoiding all really great decisive problems and ideas which would be valid also for future generations.

To pursue ideals which will still be of value and significance for the future is generally not a very profitable undertaking and he who follows such a course is only very rarely understood by the mass of the people, who find beer and milk a more persuasive index of political values than far-sighted plans for the future, the realization of which can only take place later on and the advantages of which can be reaped only by posterity.

Because of a certain vanity, which is always one of the blood-relations of unintelligence, the general run of politicians will always eschew those schemes for the future which are really difficult to put into practice; and they will practise this avoidance so that they may not lose the immediate favour of the mob. The importance and the success of such politicians belong exclusively to the present and will be of no consequence for the future. But that does not worry small-minded people; they are quite content with momentary results.

The position of the constructive political philosopher is quite different. The importance of his work must always be judged from the standpoint of the future; and he is frequently described by the word Weltfremd, or dreamer. While the ability of the politician consists in mastering the art of the possible, the founder of a political system belongs to those who are said to please the gods only because they wish for and demand the impossible. They will always have to renounce contemporary fame; but if their ideas be immortal, posterity will grant them its acknowledgment.

Within long spans of human progress it may occasionally happen that the practical politician and political philosopher are one. The more intimate this union is, the greater will be the obstacles which the activity of the politician will have to encounter. Such a man does not labour for the purpose of satisfying demands that are obvious to every philistine, but he reaches out towards ends which can be understood only by the few. His life is torn asunder by hatred and love. The protest of his contemporaries, who do not understand the man, is in conflict with the recognition of posterity, for whom he also works.

For the greater the work which a man does for the future, the less will he be appreciated by his contemporaries. His struggle will accordingly be all the more severe, and his success all the rarer. When, in the course of centuries, such a man appears who is blessed with success then, towards the end of his days, he may have a faint prevision of his future fame. But such great men are only the Marathon runners of history. The laurels of contemporary fame are only for the brow of the dying hero.

The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations. It seems then as if each individual felt it his duty to make retroactive atonement for the wrong which great men have suffered at the hands of their contemporaries. Their lives and their work are then studied with touching and grateful admiration. Especially in dark days of distress, such men have the power of healing broken hearts and elevating the despairing spirit of a people.

To this group belong not only the genuinely great statesmen but all the great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great we have such men as Martin Luther and Richard Wagner.

When I heard Gottfried Feder’s first lecture on ‘The Abolition of the Interest-Servitude’, I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such, for to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital.

In Feder’s speech I found an effective rallying-cry for our coming struggle.

Here, again, later events proved how correct was the impression we then had.

The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point any more; for even those politicians now see - if they would speak the truth - that international stock-exchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the War but that now when the War is over it turns the peace into a hell.

The struggle against international finance capital and loan-capital has become one of the most important points in the programme on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence.

Regarding the objections raised by so-called practical people, the following answer must suffice: All apprehensions concerning the fearful economic consequences that would follow the abolition of the servitude that results from interest-capital are ill-timed; for, in the first place, the economic principles hitherto followed have proved quite fatal to the interests of the German people.

The attitude adopted when the question of maintaining our national existence arose vividly recalls similar advice once given by experts - the Bavarian Medical College, for example - on the question of introducing railroads. The fears expressed by that august body of experts were not realized. Those who travelled in the coaches of the new ‘Steam-horse’ did not suffer from vertigo. Those who looked on did not become ill and the hoardings which had been erected to conceal the new invention were eventually taken down. Only those blinds which obscure the vision of the would-be ‘experts’, have remained. And that will be always so.

In the second place, the following must be borne in mind: Any idea may be a source of danger if it be looked upon as an end in itself, when really it is only the means to an end. For me and for all genuine National-Socialists there is only one doctrine. People and Fatherland.

What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the Creator.

All ideas and ideals, all teaching and all knowledge, must serve these ends. It is from this standpoint that everything must be examined and turned to practical uses or else discarded. Thus a theory can never become a mere dead dogma since everything will have to serve the practical ends of everyday life.

Thus the judgment arrived at by Gottfried Feder determined me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had hitherto not been very familiar.

I began to study again and thus it was that I first came to understand perfectly what was the substance and purpose of the life-work of the Jew, Karl Marx. His Capital became intelligible to me now for the first time. And in the light of it I now exactly understood the fight of the Social-Democrats against national economics, a fight which was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a real international and stock-exchange capital.

In another direction also this course of lectures had important consequences for me.

One day I put my name down as wishing to take part in the discussion. Another of the participants thought that he would break a lance for the Jews and entered into a lengthy defence of them. This aroused my opposition. An overwhelming number of those who attended the lecture course supported my views. The consequence of it all was that, a few days later, I was assigned to a regiment then stationed at Munich and given a position there as ‘instruction officer’.

At that time the spirit of discipline was rather weak among those troops. It was still suffering from the after-effects of the period when the Soldiers’ Councils were in control. Only gradually and carefully could a new spirit of military discipline and obedience be introduced in place of ‘voluntary obedience’, a term which had been used to express the ideal of military discipline under Kurt Eisner’s higgledy-piggledy regime. The soldiers had to be taught to think and feel in a national and patriotic way. In these two directions lay my future line of action.

I took up my work with the greatest delight and devotion. Here I was presented with an opportunity of speaking before quite a large audience. I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled.

No task could have been more pleasing to me than this one; for now, before being demobilized, I was in a position to render useful service to an institution which had been infinitely dear to my heart: namely, the army.

I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I ‘nationalized’ these troops and by so doing I helped to restore general discipline.