Mein Kampf
speeches, whose disjunction could not but seem like nonsense—and was meant to. The only forum to which they really spoke consisted of barely five hundred parliamentarians, and that tells the whole story.
But the worst of it was this: the Pan-German movement could count on success only if it understood from the outset that the matter was one not of a new party but of a new world-system. Nothing less could rouse the indispensable inner strength to fight this gigantic battle through. Only the best and bravest brains were of any use as leaders.
Unless heroes, ready to sacrifice themselves, lead the fight for a world-concept, there will soon be no rank-and-file warriors ready to die either. A man who is fighting for his own existence can scarcely have much left over for the common cause.
But to preserve this essential it is necessary for everyone to know that while the new movement may offer fame and honor among posterity, for the present it can offer nothing. The more a movement has at its disposal in the way of easily-acquired posts and positions, the greater will be the rush of nonentities. Finally these political day-laborers overrun a successful party in such numbers that the honest fighter of the early days no longer recognizes the old movement, and the new arrivals strongly object to him as an “interloper.” That is the end of any such movement’s “mission.”
The moment the Pan-German movement sold its soul to Parliament, it naturally got “parliamentarians” instead of leaders and fighters. Thus it sank to the level of one of the ordinary political parties of the day, and lost the strength to defy a fatal destiny with the courage of martyrhood. Instead of fighing, it learned to “speak” and “negotiate.” The new parliamentarian soon felt it a preferable, because a less risky, duty to fight for the new world-concept with the “intellectual” weapons of parliamentary eloquence rather than to fling himself, possibly risking his own life, into a battle whose result was uncertain, but which in any case could bring no profits.
Now that they had people in Parliament, the followers out-
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