which Marxism was striving, though this could not be carried to its ultimate end until the victory of Marxism and the revolution. While I am writing these words, the general attack against the German state railways has finally succeeded, and they are now being handed over to international finance capitals ‘International’ Social Democracy has thus realized one of its highest goals.

How far this ‘economization’ of the German people had succeeded is most visible in the fact that after the War one of the leading heads of German industry, and above all of commerce, was finally able to express the opinion that economic effort as such was alone in a position to re­establish Germany. This nonsense was poured forth at a moment when France was primarily bringing back the curriculum of her schools to humanistic foundations in order to combat the error that the nation and the state owed their survival to economics and not to eternal ideal values. These words pronounced by a Stinnes created the most incredible confusion; they were picked up at once, and with amazing rapidity became the leitmotif of all the quacks and big­mouths that since the revolution Fate has let loose on Germany in the capacity of ‘statesmen.’

One of the worst symptoms of decay in Germany of the pre­War era was the steadily increasing habit of doing things by halves. This is always a consequence of uncertainty on some matter and of the cowardice resulting from this and other grounds. This disease was­further promoted by education.

German education before the War was afflicted with an extraordinary number of weaknesses. It was extremely one­sided and adapted to breeding pure ‘knowledge,’ with less attention to ‘ability.’ Even less emphasis was laid on the development of the character of the individual­in so far as this is possible; exceedingly little on the sense of joy in responsibility, and none at all on the training of will and force of decision. Its results, you may be sure, were not strong men, but compliant ‘ walking encyclopedias,’ as we Germans were generally looked upon and accordingly estimated before the War. People liked the German because he was easy to make use of, but respected him little, precisely because of his weakness of will. It was not for nothing that more than almost any other people he was prone to lose his nationality and fatherland. The lovely proverb, ‘with hat in hand, he travels all about the land,’ tells the whole story.

This compliance became really disastrous, however, when it determined the sole form in which the monarch could be approached; that is, never to contradict him, but agree to anything and everything that His Majesty condescends to do. Precisely in this place was free, manly dignity most necessary; otherwise the monarchic institution was one day bound to perish from all this crawling; for crawling it was and nothing else! And only miserable crawlers and sneaks­in short, all the decadents who have always felt more at ease around the highest thrones than sincere, decent, honorable souls­can regard this as the sole proper form of intercourse with the bearers of the crown! These ‘most humble’ creatures, to be sure, despite all their humility before their master and source of livelihood, have always demonstrated the greatest arrogance toward the rest of humanity, and worst of all when they pass themselves off with shameful effrontery on their sinful fellow men as the only ‘monarchists’; this is real gall such as only these ennobled or even unennobled tapeworms are capable of! For in reality these people remained the gravediggers of the monarchy and particularly the monarchistic idea. Nothing else is conceivable: a man who is prepared to stand up for a cause will never and can never be a sneak and a spineless lickspittle. Anyone who is really serious about the preservation and furtherance of an institution will cling to it with the last fiber of his heart and will not be able to abandon it if evils of some sort appear in this institution. To be sure, he will not cry this out to the whole public as the democratic ‘friends’ of the monarchy did in the exact same lying way; he will most earnestly warn and attempt to influence His Majesty, the bearer of the crown himself. He will not and must not adopt the attitude that His Majesty remains free to act according to his own will anyway, even if this obviously must and will lead to a catastrophe, but in such a case he will have to protect the monarchy against the monarch, and this despite all perils. If the value of this institution lay in the momentary person of the monarch, it would be the worst institution that can be imagined; for monarchs only in the rarest cases are the cream of wisdom and reason or even of character, as some people like to claim. This is believed only by professional lickspittles and sneaks, but all straightforward men­and these remain the most valuable men in the state despite everything­ will only feel repelled by the idea of arguing such nonsense. For them history remains history and the truth the truth even where monarchs are concerned. No, the good fortune to possess a great monarch who is also a great man falls to peoples so seldom that they must be content if the malice of Fate abstains at least from the worst possible mistakes.

Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the crown on the brow of a heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise character like William I. This happens once in centuries and hardly more often. Otherwise the idea takes precedence over the person and the meaning of this institution must lie exclusively in the institution itself. With this the monarch himself falls into the sphere of service. Then he, too, becomes a mere cog in this work, to which he is obligated as such. Then he, too, must comply with a higher purpose, and the ‘ monarchist’ is then no longer the man who in silence lets the bearer of the crown profane it, but the man who prevents this. Otherwise, it would not be permissible to depose an obviously insane prince, if the sense of the institution lay not in the idea, but in the ‘ sanctified ‘ person at any price.

Today it is really necessary to put this down, for in recent times more and more of these creatures, to whose wretched attitude the collapse of the monarchy must not least of all be attributed are rising out of obscurity. With a certain naive gall, these people have started in again to speak of nothing but ‘their King’­ whom only a few years ago they left in the lurch in the critical hour and in the most despicable fashion­and are beginning to represent every person who is not willing to agree to their lying tirades as a bad German. And in reality they are the very same poltroons who in 1919 scattered and ran from every red armband, abandoned their King, in a twinkling exchanged the halberd for the walking stick, put on noncommittal neckties, and vanished without trace as peaceful ‘ citizens.’ At one stroke they were gone, these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary storm, thanks to the activity of others, had subsided enough so that a man could again roar his ‘Hail, hail to the King’ into the breezes, these ‘servants and counselors’ of the crown began again cautiously to emerge. And now they are all here again, looking back longingly to the fieshpots of Egypt; they can hardly restrain themselves in their loyalty to the King and their urge to do great things, until the day when again the first red arm­band will appear, and the whole gang of ghosts profiting from the old monarchy will again vanish like mice at the sight of a cat!

If the monarchs were not themselves to blame for these things, they could be most heartily pitied because of their present defenders. In any case, they might as well know that with such knights a crown can be lost, but no crowns gained.

This servility, however, was a flaw in our whole education, for which we suffered most terribly in this connection. For, as its consequence, these wretched creatures were able to maintain themselves at all the courts and gradually undermine the foundations of the monarchy. And when the structure finally began to totter, they evaporated. Naturally: cringers and lickspittles do not let themselves be knocked dead for their master. That monarchs never know this and fail to learn it almost on principle has from time immemorial been their undoing.

One of the worst symptoms of decay was Mate increasing cowardice in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant halfheartedness in all things.

To be sure, the starting point of this plague in our country lies in large part in the parliamentary institution in which irresponsibility of the purest breed is cultivated. Unfortunately, this plague slowly spread to all other domains of life, most strongly to state life. Everywhere responsibility was evaded and inadequate half­measures were preferred as a result; for in the use of such measures personal responsibility seems reduced to the smallest dimensions.

Just examine the attitude of the various governments toward a number of truly injurious manifestations of our public life, and you will easily recognize the terrible significance of this general half­heartedness and cowardice in the face of responsibility. I shall take only a few cases from the mass of existing examples:

Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a ‘great power’ in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood.

Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:

First, into those who believe everything they read; second, into those who have ceased to believe anything; third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.

Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest­minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a serious and truth­loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and liars provide it.

The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper; either they don’t read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political work.

The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.

For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in their number­ a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous.

It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to prevent these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or even vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of watching over their education and preventing any mischief. It must particularly exercise strict control over the press; for its influence on these people is by far the strongest and most penetrating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but over and over again. In the uniformity and constant repetition of this instruction lies its tremendous power. If anywhere, therefore, it is here that the state must not forget that all means must serve an end; it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so­called ‘freedom of the press’ and let itself be talked into neglecting its duty and denying the nation the food which it needs and which is good for it; with ruthless determination it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state and the nation.

But what food did the German press of the pre­War period dish out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined? Wasn’t the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle Germany, slowly but surely? Even in peacetime didn’t the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them in the choice of means for its defense? Was it not the German press which knew how to make the absurdity of ‘Western democracy’ palatable to our people until finally, ensnared by all the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could entrust their future to a League of Nations? Did it not help to teach our people a miserable immorality? Did it not ridicule morality and ethics as backward and petty­bourgeois, until our people finally became ‘modern’? Did it not with its constant attacks undermine the foundations of the state’s authority until a single thrust sufficed to make the edifice collapse? Did it not fight with all possible means against every effort to give unto the state that which is the state’s? Did it not belittle the army with constant criticism, sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military credits, etc., until the result became inevitable?

The so­called liberal press was actively engaged in digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people’s national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave’s yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews.

And what did the state do against this mass poisoning of the nation? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A few ridiculous decrees, a few fines for villainy that went too far, and that was the end of it. Instead, they hoped to curry favor with this plague by flattery, by recognition of the ‘value’ of the press, its ‘importance,’ its ‘educational mission,’ and more such nonsense­as for the Jews, they took all this with a crafty smile and acknowledged it with sly thanks.

The reason, however, for this disgraceful failure on the part of the state was not that it did not recognize the danger, but rather in a cowardice crying to high Heaven and the resultant halfheartedness of all decisions and measures. No one had the courage to use thoroughgoing radical methods, but in this as in everything else they tinkered about with a lot of halfway prescriptions, and instead of carrying the thrust to the heart, they at most irritated the viper­with the result that not only did everything remain as before, but on the contrary the power of the institutions which should have been combated increased from year to year.

The defensive struggle of the German government at that time against the press­mainly that of Jewish origin­which was slowly ruining the nation was without any straight line, irresolute and above all without any visible goal. The intelligence of the privy councilors failed completely when it came to estimating the importance of this struggle, to choosing means or drawing up a clear plan. Planlessly they fiddled about; sometimes, after being bitten too badly, they locked up one of the journalistic vipers for a few weeks or months, but they left the snakes’ nest as such perfectly unmolested.