5. The World War
What had depressed me more than anything as a young madcap in my most high-spirited years was that I had been born into an age which evidently would build its temples of fame only for tradesmen or civil servants. The billows of history seemed to have calmed down so much that the future did indeed belong only to “peaceful competition of people,” i. e. to quiet mutual swindling, abandoning violent methods of resistance. The individual states began more and more to resemble enterprises which mutually undercut one another, steal customers and orders, and try to outwit one another in every way—all amid an outcry as loud as it is harmless. This development not only seemed to continue, but (it was generally hoped) would some day transform the world into one huge department store, in whose vestibule the busts of the adroitest manipulators and most chuckle-headed executives were to be stored up for immortality. The English could then furnish the merchants, the Germans the administrative officials, while no doubt the Jews would have to immolate themselves as proprietors, since by their own admission they never make a profit, but only “keep paying” forever, and speak the most languages besides.
Why could I not have been born a hundred years sooner? Say at the time of the Wars of Liberation, when a man really had some value, even apart from “business.”
I had often been annoyed that my earthly journey was begun, as I thought, too late, and had regarded the age of “peace and good order” ahead of me as an undeserved meanness of Fate. For even as a boy I was no “pacificist,” and every attempt to train me in that direction was a fizzle.
Then the Boer War appeared like heat-lightning on my horizon. Every day I lay in wait for the newspapers, devoured reports and dispatches, and was happy to witness this heroic struggle even from a distance.
The Russo-Japanese War found me considerably more mature, and also more observant. Here I took sides for more nationalist reasons, and supported the Japanese in every exchange of opinions among us. In the defeat of the Russians I saw at the same time a defeat of the Austrian Slavs.
Years had passed since then, and what as a boy I had thought was sluggish sickliness I now felt as the calm before the storm. Even in my Vienna days the Balkans were sweltering under the pale sultriness which usually presages the hurricane, and already gleams of light were beginning to flicker up, only to be lost again in the uncanny darkness. But then came the Balkan War, and with it the first puff of wind whipped across a nervous Europe. The coming time lay upon men like a nightmare, like feverish, brooding tropical heat, so that the perpetual worry finally turned the feeling of approaching catastrophe into longing: let Heaven give free rein to the destiny which could no longer be averted. Then the first mighty flash of lightning struck the earth. The storm broke, and the thunder of the sky was mixed with the roar of the batteries in the World War.
When the news of the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand arrived in Munich (I was sitting at home, and heard the deed only vaguely described), I was worried at first for fear the bullets had come from the pistols of German students, indignant at the Crown Prince’s continual work for Slavicization, who wished to free the German people from this enemy within. What the result would have been is easily imagined: a new wave of persecution which would have been “thoroughly justified” befor the whole world. But immediately afterward, when I heard the names of the suspected assassins and read that they were known to be Serbians, I began to feel a faint horror at this revenge of inscrutable Fate.
The great Slavophile had fallen by the bullets of Slavic fanatics.
No one who had had constant opportunity during previous years to watch the relation between Austria and Serbia could doubt for a moment that a boulder had started roiling which could never be halted.
It is unjust to the Vienna government to heap it today with reproaches for the form and substance of the ultimatum it presented. No other power in the world could have acted differently in a similar situation and on a similar occasion. On her Southeast border Austria had an implacable, deadly enemy that kept provoking the Monarchy at ever shorter intervals, and that never would have given in until at last a propitious moment had arrived to shatter the Empire.
There was good reason to fear that at the latest this would happen upon the death of the old Kaiser. But by then perhaps the Monarchy would no longer be in any position to offer serious resistance. In its last years the whole State rested so completely on the eyes of Francis Joseph that the death of this aged incarnation of the Empire meant in itself (so the broad masses felt) the death of the Empire. More than that, it was one of the slyest tricks of Slavic policy that they created the impression that the Austrian State owed its continued existence only to the Monarch’s marvelous and unique skill. This piece of flattery pleased the Hofburg the more because the Emperor’s actual merit so little deserved it. The sting hidden in the eulogy was not detected. People did not see, or perhaps no longer wished to see, that the more the Monarchy depended upon the outstanding governing skill (as they were accustomed to call it) of this “wisest Monarch” of all times, the more catastrophic must be the situation when Fate finally knocked at the door to demand its due.
Was old Austria really thinkable at all without the old Kaiser? Would not the tragedy which once befell Maria Theresa have been repeated?
No, it is really unjust to Vienna government circles to reproach them with having hurried into a war which otherwise might yet have been avoided. It could no longer have been avoided, but at most postponed one or two years. But the curse of German as well as of Austrian diplomacy was that it had always tried to postpone the inevitable reckoning, until at last it was forced to strike at the most unpropitious moment. We may be sure that another attempt to rescue the peace would only have brought on the war at a still more unfavorable juncture.
No, he who did not wish this war must have the courage to draw the logical conclusion. But this could have meant only the sacrifice of Austria. The war would still have come, but probably not with everyone against us; instead it would have taken the form of a dismemberment of the Hapsburg Monarchy. And it was necessary to decide whether to take part or simply to watch empty-handed while Destiny took its course.
But the very people who today curse most loudly and judge most wisely about the starting of the war were the ones who took the most fatal part in steering into it.
For decades the Social Democrats had been carrying on a most scoundrelly drive for war against Russia; the Centrist Party on the other hand for religious reasons had been the leader in making the Austrian State the pivotal point of German policy. Now the results of this madness were upon us. What came was bound to come, and could no longer be avoided under any circumstances. The German government’s share of the guilt was that in order to preserve peace it missed all the most opportune moments to fight, got entangled in the alliance to preserve world peace, and thus finally became the victim of a world coalition which was determined enough to oppose a World War to the urge to preserve world peace.
If the Vienna government had given a gentler form to the ultimatum, that would have made no change in the situation, or at most would have caused the government itself to be swept away by the indignation of the people. For in the eyes of the masses the tone of the ultimatum was far too considerate, as it was and by no means too brutal or too extreme. Anyone who today tries to deny this is either a forgetful blockhead or an intentional liar.
The struggle of 1914, Heaven knows, was not forced upon the masses, but was demanded by the whole people.
They wanted to put an end at last to the general uncertainty. Only on that ground can we understand how more than two million German men followed the flag into this supreme struggle, ready to protect it with the last drop of their blood.
To me those days seemed like deliverance from the angry feelings of my youth. I am not ashamed to say even now that I fell on my knees, overcome by a storm of enthusiasm, and thanked Heaven out of an overflowing heart that it had granted me the good fortune to live in this age.
A battle for freedom had begun whose superior in grandeur the earth had never seen; for Destiny had barely begun to take its course before the great masses started to realize that this time it was a matter not of Serbia’s or even Austria’s fate but of the existence or non-existence of the German nation.
For the last time in many years the people had a stroke of clairvoyance about its own future. And so at the very outset of the monstrous struggle the intoxicating extravagant enthusiasm took on the necessary serious undertone; only this realization made of the nation’s exaltation more than a mere flash in the pan. This was only too essential, for people in general had not, after all, the slightest conception of the possible length of the battle that was beginning. They dreamed of being home again by winter, to go back to their peaceable labors.
What man wishes, he hopes and believes. The overwhelming majority of the nation was long since sick of the eternal uncertainty; so it was only too understandable that no one believed in a peaceful solution of the Austro-Serbian conflict, and hoped for the final day of settlement. Of these millions I was one.
Scarcely had the news of the assassination become known in Munich when two ideas flashed through my head: first, that war was at last unavoidable, but beyond this, that the Hapsburg State would now be compelled to stick to its alliance; for what I had always feared above all was the possibility that some day Germany itself, perhaps because of this very alliance, might be involved in a conflict of which Austria was not the direct cause, and that then the Austrian State for domestic political reasons would not have the resolution to back up its ally. Even though the decision were made, the Slavic majority of the Empire would have begun to sabotage it at once, and would rather have shattered the whole State than have afforded the help demanded by their ally. This danger was now removed. The old State had to fight whether it would or no.
My own attitude toward the conflict was to me perfectly clear and simple; what I saw was not Austria fighting for some Serbian satisfaction, but Germany for its all, the German nation for its existence or non-existence, for its freedom and future. Bismarck’s creation must now go out and fight; what its fathers had once conquered in battle with their heroes’ blood, from Weissenburg to Sedan and Paris, young Germany had now to earn anew. If the battle was victoriously sustained, then our people had rejoined the circle of great nations again in outward power; then the German Empire could again prove itself a mighty stronghold of peace, without having to put its children on short rations for peace’s sake.
As a boy and young man I had often wished I might at least show by deeds that my nationalistic enthusiasm was no empty mania. It often seemed to me almost a sin to cry Hurrah without perhaps having any real right to do so; for who could rightfully use the word without having tried it where all trifling is at an end, and the Goddess of Fate’s implacable hand begins to weigh peoples and men for the reality and force of their convictions? My heart, like millions of others, overflowed with proud happiness that now at last I could be free of this paralyzing feeling. I had so often sung Deutschland über Alles and shouted Heil at the top of my lungs that it seemed to me almost like Heavenly grace, granted after the fact, now that I could appear in the Divine court of the Eternal Judge to bear witness that my convictions were real. For I knew from the first hour that in case of a war—which seemed to me inevitable—I must certainly leave my books at once. And I knew, too, that my place must be where the inner voice sent me.
For political reasons chiefly I had left Austria; what more natural, now the struggle was beginning, than that I should take account of my convictions? I would not fight for the Hapsburg State, but I was ready at any time to die for my people and for the Empire that embodied it.
On the third of August, I presented a direct petition to His Majesty King Ludwig III, requesting permission to join a Bavarian regiment. During those few days the Cabinet Chancellory must have had not a little to do; all the greater my joy when I received an answer to my request the very next day. I opened the letter with trembling hands, and read that my petition was granted, and I was instructed to enroll in a Bavarian regiment. My gratitude and exultation knew no bounds. In a few days I was wearing the coat which I was not to lay aside for almost six years.
For me, as probably for every German, the greatest and most unforgettable period of my earthly life now began. Compared with the events of this tremendous struggle everything in my past was a pale nothing. Just now, as the tenth anniversary of the great event approaches, I think back with melancholy pride on those weeks at the beginning of the heroic struggle of our people, in which Fate graciously allowed me to take part.
As if yesterday, image after image passes before me, I see myself uniformed among my beloved comrades, then marching out for the first time, drilling, etc., until at last the day of departure came.
One worry troubled me at that time, me and many others—whether we would not arrive too late at the front. This alone kept me often and often from my rest. Thus in the victorious exultation over each new heroic deed there lay a tiny drop of gall, since each new victory seemed to increase the danger that we would arrive too late.
And thus at last the day came when we left Munich to fall in and do our duty. I saw the Rhine for the first time as we were traveling beside its gentle waves on our way westward to protect it, the German stream of streams, from the greed of our old enemy. When the gentle rays of the first sun glinted down upon us through the delicate veil of morning mist from the Niederwald Monument, the old Wacht am Rhein roared from the endless transport train into the morning sky, and my breast was ready to burst.
And then came a cold, wet night in Flanders, through which we marched in silence, and when day began to break through the mist, suddenly an iron greeting hissed over our heads; with a sharp crack it hurled the little pellets among our ranks, splashing up the wet soil. But before the little cloud was gone the first hurrah from two hundred throats went to meet the first messenger of death; then began a crackling and roaring, singing and howling, and with feverish eyes everyone pressed forward, faster and faster, until at last across turnip-fields and hedges the battle began, the battle of man against man. But from the distance the sound of song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, and leaping from company to company; and just as Death was busy in our ranks the song reached us too, and we in turn passed it on: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!
Four days later we went back. Even our step was different. Seventeen-year-old boys now looked like men.
The volunteers of the List Regiment had perhaps not really learned to fight, but they did know how to die like old soldiers.
That was the beginning.
Thus it went on year after year; but horror had taken the place of the romance of battle. Enthusiasm gradually cooled, and the wild exultation was smothered in deadly fear. For each man the time came when he had to struggle between the instinct of self-preservation and the admonitions of duty. I was not exempt from this struggle. Whenever Death was giving chase, a vague Something tried to revolt, strove to appear as Reason to the weak body, and still was only Cowardice laying snares in disguise. A great tugging and warning would begin, and only the last remnant of conscience would carry the day. But the harder this voice urging caution labored, the louder and more piercingly it called, the stiffer was the resistance; until at last, after a long inner struggle, duty came off victorious. By the winter of 1915–16 in my case this battle was decided. The will had at last become absolute master. If in the first few days I had rushed along, laughing and exulting, now I was calm and determined. That was what would endure. Only now could Fate proceed to the final trial without nerves’ cracking or the mind’s failing. The young volunteer had become an old soldier.
This transformation had taken place throughout the army. Old and hard they had come out of the perpetual battle and whatever could not stand up to the storm was simply broken.
Not until then was it fair to judge this army. Then, after two or three years, during which it had been flung from one battle into another, always fighting a force superior in numbers and arms, starving and suffering privation—then was the time to judge the goodness of that unique army.
Though tens of centuries may pass, no one shall speak of heroism without mentioning the German Army in the World War. Through the veil of the past the iron front of the grey steel helmet will appear, unswerving and unyielding, a monument of immortality. So long as there are Germans they will remember that once these were sons of their people.
I was a soldier, and did not want to talk politics. Nor was that the time for it. To this day I am convinced that the last teamster did more valuable service to the Fatherland than even the first (let us say) “parliamentarian.” I had never hated these windbags more than now when every truthful lad who had anything to say shouted it in the teeth of the enemy, or else properly left his talking-machine at home, and did his duty somewhere in silence. Yes, at that time I hated all these “politicians,” and if I had had anything to say about it, a parliamentary pick-and-shovel brigade would have been formed at once; there they could have chattered among themselves to their hearts’ content without annoying or harming decent, honest humanity.
I wanted nothing to do with politics, but could not help adopting some attitude toward certain things which affected the whole nation, but concerned us soldiers particularly.
At that time there were two things which annoyed me, and which I thought harmful.
After the very first report of victory a certain section of the press began slowly, and to many people at first perhaps unnoticeably, to sprinkle a few drops of gall into the general enthusiasm. This was done behind a false front of benevolence and good intentions, and of a certain solicitude, in fact. They had misgivings against too-great extravagance in celebrating victories. They feared that in its present form it was unworthy of a great nation, and thus out of place. The bravery and heroism of the German soldier were to be taken for granted, so they should not give rise to unconsidered outbursts of joy—if for no other reason, then on account of foreign countries, which would find quiet and dignified rejoicing more attractive than unrestrained exultation, etc. And finally we Germans even now should not forget that the war was not our intention, and that we need not be ashamed to admit openly and like men that we were ready at any time to do our share in the reconciliation of mankind. It was therefore not wise to besmirch the purity of the army’s deeds by too much shouting, because the rest of the world would have little sympathy for such behavior. Nothing was more admired than the modesty with which a true hero serenely and silently—forgot his deeds; for that was what it all amounted to. Instead of dragging such fellows by their long ears to a lamppost, and running them up on a rope, so that the rejoicing nation should no longer offend the æsthetic sense of the knights of the ink-well, people actually began to issue warnings against the “unsuitable” character of the victory jubilation.
They never dreamed that once the enthusiasm was broken off it could not be reawakened at need. It is a state of intoxication, and must be so maintained. Without this sort of enthusiasm, how was a struggle to be endured which in all human probability would make the most enormous demands upon the spiritual qualities of the nation?
I knew the nature of the broad masses well enough to realize that “æsthetic” loftiness was no way to fan the flames necessary to keep the iron hot. I thought people were crazy when they did nothing to raise the boiling heat of passion; but that they even restrained what luckily existed I simply could not understand.
The second thing that annoyed me was the attitude it was thought proper to adopt toward Marxism. In my eyes people merely proved by this that they had not the slightest conception of that pestilence. They seemed to believe in good earnest that by declaring they no longer recognized any parties they had brought Marxism to reason and restraint.
It is not a matter of party, but of a doctrine which is bound to lead to the utter destruction of humanity; but this was understood the less because it is not taught at our judaized universities; and all too many, particularly among our higher civil servants, have been so trained in silly prejudice that they do not think it worth the trouble to pick up a book, and learn something not in the curriculum of their college. The most complete upheavals passed over these “heads” without a trace, which is the reason why state institutions usually limp behind private ones.
Heaven knows the German proverb is truer of them than of anyone else: What the peasant doesn’t know, he won’t eat. A few exceptions but prove the rule.
It was unparalleled nonsense to identify the German workman with Marxism in August of 1914. At that time the German workman had freed himself from the embrace of this poisonous epidemic, or he could never even have prepared to take part in the struggle. But people were stupid enough to think that now perhaps Marxism had become “national.” This was a stroke of genius which only goes to show that for many long years none of these official steersmen of the State had ever thought it worth the trouble to study the nature of the doctrine; otherwise such an insane idea could hardly have survived.
Marxism, whose final goal is and always will be the destruction of all non-Jewish national states, was horrified to see that in July of 1914 the German working class which it had ensnared was awakening, and was entering the service of the Fatherland faster from hour to hour. Within a few days the whole aura and swindle of this infamous fraud upon the people were blown away, and suddenly the Jewish pack of leaders was alone and deserted, as if not a trace were left of the nonsense and insanity which they had been pouring into the masses for sixty years. It was a bad moment for the defrauders of the working class of the German people. But the moment the leaders recognized the danger which threatened, they pulled their Cap of Invisibility—the lie—hastily over their ears, and boldly pretended to take part in the national revival.
Here would have been the moment to advance against the whole fraudulent brotherhood of Jewish poisoners of the people. Now was the time to give them short shrift, without the slightest consideration for any outcry or wailing there might have been. In August of 1914 the Jewish cant of international solidarity was gone at a blow from the heads of the German working class, and in its stead a few weeks later American shrapnel began to pour the blessings of brotherhood over the helmets of the marching columns. It would have been the duty of any responsible national government, now that the German workman had found his way back to his own nationality, unmercifully to exterminate the agitators against it. If the best men were falling at the front, the vermin could at least have been exterminated at home.
But instead His Majesty the Kaiser himself held out his hand to the old criminals, thus offering perfidious assassins of the nation mercy and an opportunity to collect themselves.
The serpent therefore could go on working, more cautiously than before, but all the more dangerously. While honest people dreamed of peace with security, the perjured criminals were organizing the Revolution.
The fact that people had resolved upon this frightful half-measure I viewed with ever-increasing dissatisfaction; but that the result would be so horrible even I did not yet suppose possible.
What was to be done next? The leaders of the whole movement should have been put under lock and key at once; they should have been put on trial, and the nation ridded of them. Every resource of military power should have been used ruthlessly to exterminate the pestilence. The parties should have been dissolved, the Reichstag brought to reason, with the bayonet if necessary, or best of all it should have been abolished at once. Just as the Republic dissolves parties today, so they should have resorted to this means then, and with more reason. After all, the existence or non-existence of a whole people was at stake!
This would indeed have raised another question: can intellectual ideas be exterminated by the sword at all? Can violence be used to combat “world-concepts”?
I asked myself this question more than once at that time.
If we think through analogous cases, which can be found in the history of religious matters especially, we arrive at the following principle:
Conceptions and ideas, as well as movements on a definite intellectual basis, true or false, can, after a certain point in their growth, be broken by forcible methods of a technical sort only if these physical weapons at the same time represent a new kindling idea, thought, or world-concept.
The use of force alone without the driving power of a basic intellectual conception can never destroy an idea and its spread except by complete extermination of its very last adherent and the destruction of all tradition. But this usually means the disappearance of such a state from the realm of power politics, often for an endless time, and sometimes forever; for experience shows that a blood sacrifice of this sort hits the best part of the nation, since any persecution carried on without an intellectual basis appears morally unjustified, and spurs precisely the most valuable part of a people to protest—a protest which takes the form of acquiring the intellectual substance of the unjustly persecuted movement. Many people do this simply from a feeling of opposition toward an attempt to club down an idea by brutal violence.
Thus the number of inward followers grows at the same rate that the persecution increases. Hence the complete destruction of the new teaching can be carried out only by way of so tremendous and ever-increasing an extermination that finally the people or state in question loses all the really valuable blood it has. Retribution is at hand, however, because a so-called “internal” purge may indeed take place, but only at the price of general exhaustion. And such a proceeding will always be futile from the beginning if the doctrines to be combatted have gone beyond a certain small circle.
Here too, therefore, as with all growths, the first part of childhood is still most liable to possible destruction, while resistance increases with the years, to yield to fresh youth only with approaching senility, even if in a different form and for different reasons.
And indeed almost all attempts to uproot a doctrine and its organized results by violence with no intellectual basis are failures, quite frequently in fact producing the opposite from the intended result, for the following reasons:
The very first essential for a fight by the weapons of naked violence is always persistence. That is to say, only regular and steady employment of the methods used to suppress a doctrine, etc., can possibly make the project a success. But the moment there is any vacillation, and violence alternates with forbearance, the doctrine being suppressed will not only keep recovering, but will be able to derive new values from each persecution, because, on recession of a wave of pressure, indignation at what has been suffered brings new followers to the old doctrine, while existing adherents cling to it with greater defiance and deeper hatred than ever; in fact after the danger is gone, even apostates try to return to their old attitude. The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence. But this persistence can never result except from a definite intellectual conviction alone. All violence not founded upon a solid intellectual basis is vacillating and uncertain. It lacks that stability which can reside only in a fanatically intense world-concept. It flows from the energy and brutal determination of an individual, and is subject to all the changes of personality, its nature and strength.
But there is yet another consideration:
Any world-concept, whether religious or political in nature—the dividing line is often hard to fix—strives less for the negative destruction of hostile ideas than positively to affirm its own. Thus its battle is less defense than attack. It is at an advantage even in setting its aim, because the aim is victory for its own idea, whereas on the other hand it is hard to decide when the negative aim of destroying a hostile doctrine may be considered accomplished and assured. For this reason if for no other, the world-concept’s attack is better planned and also more forceful than its defense; as everywhere else, so here the decision rests with the attack, not with the defense. But a struggle by violent means against an intellectual power remains mere defense unless the sword is in turn upholding, proclaiming, and disseminating a new intellectual teaching.
In summation, therefore, we may remember this:
Every attempt to combat a world-concept by violent means will eventually fail unless the struggle takes on the form of an attack for a new intellectual attitude. Only in a struggle of two world-concepts may the weapon of brute force, persistently and ruthlessly used, bring victory to the side it supports.
Thus far the attempts to combat Marxism had always failed for that reason. This was why even Bismarck’s socialistic legislation fell short, and was bound to fall short. There was no platform, no new world-concept for whose rise the battle could have been fought. For only the proverbial wisdom of high ministerial functionaries could have managed to suppose that drivel about so-called “governmental authority” or “peace and good order” was a suitable basis for the intellectual driving force of a life-and-death battle.
Because there was no real intellectual basis for the struggle, Bismarck was obliged to entrust the carrying-out of his Socialistic legislation to the judgment and good will of the very institution which itself was born of the Marxist way of thought. When the Iron Chancellor left his war on Marxism to the good will of bourgeois Democracy, he was setting the fox to watch the geese.
But all this was only the inevitable result, since there was no new fundamental world-concept, of imperious, conquering will, opposed to Marxism. The sole result of Bismarck’s struggle, consequently, was a severe disappointment.
But were conditions at the beginning of the World War in any way different? Unfortunately not.
The more I thought about the necessary change in the attitude of the government toward Social Democracy, as the momentary embodiment of Marxism, the more I recognized the absence of a workable substitute for this doctrine. What could they have given to the masses, supposing Social Democracy to have been broken? Not one movement existed that could be expected to succeed in getting the great hordes of now more or less leaderless workers under its influence. It is silly and more than stupid to suppose that the international fanatic, having left his class party, will at once join a bourgeois party, that is to say, a new class organization. For disagreeable as it may be to various organizations, there is no denying the fact that bourgeois politicians very largely take class division for granted, so long as the political results do not work out to their disadvantage. Denial of this fact proves only the impudence and the stupidity of the liars.
In general we must avoid thinking the masses stupider than they are. In political matters feeling often decides more truly than understanding. The belief that the masses’ stupid internationalist attitude sufficiently proves the wrongness of their feelings can at once be absolutely refuted by simply pointing out that pacificistic democracy is no less insane, although its supporters come almost exclusively from the bourgeois camp. So long as millions of middle-class citizens continue reverently to worship their Jewish democratic press every morning, it ill becomes these gentry to make witticisms about the stupidity of the “comrade,” who in the end is but swallowing the same muck, though in a different guise. The manufacturer is one and the same Jew in both cases.
We must beware of denying things whose existence is a simple fact. The fact that the class question is not (as people are fond of claiming just before election) a matter of mere intellectual problems cannot be denied. The class conceit of a great part of our people, as well as the lower esteem in which the manual worker is held, is a phenomenon which does not proceed from the imagination of a lunatic.
But this quite aside, it shows the small thinking-power of our so-called intelligentsia that they suppose a condition which could not prevent the rise of such a pestilence as Marxism can now still find it possible to recover what has been lost.
The “bourgeois” party, as they describe themselves, can never attach the “proletarian” masses to their camp. These are two worlds, divided partly by nature, partly artificially, whose mutual footing can be only battle. But the younger one will be victorious—and that one is Marxism.
A war upon Social Democracy in 1914 would indeed have been conceivable; but it was doubtful, in view of the lack of any practical substitute, how long that state could have been maintained. There was a great gap here.
I was of this opinion long before the war, and could therefore never make up my mind to join one of the existing parties. In the course of the World War my opinion was further strengthened by the obvious impossibility—owing to the very lack of a movement which would be more than a “parliamentary” party—of declaring a ruthless war upon Social Democracy.
I often expressed myself openly to my army intimates.
And now it first occurred to me that I might some day become active in politics. This was the reason why I often assured my whole circle of friends that after the War I would become a speaker besides practicing my profession.
I believe I was very much in earnest about it.