Political Considerations of Vienna Period
inadequate training for Germanity from childhood, along with complete subjection to an idea which has become an idol.
Training for democracy, for international Socialism, for pacifism, etc., is so rigid and exclusive—that is, so completely subjective—that the fundamental conception influences even the general image of the rest of the world, while from childhood onward the attitude toward Germanity has always been most objective. Thus the pacifist, subjectively surrendering himself altogether to his idea, will (if he is a German) look for the objective justice in every grave and unjust menace to his people, and will never join and fight, purely from an instinct of self-preservation, in the ranks of his herd.
How true this is of the two churches may be seen from what follows.
By nature, Protestantism upholds the interests of Germanity better, in so far as this is implicit in its birth and later tradition; but it fails whenever the defense of national interests carries over into a field either missing from the general line of its concepts and traditional development, or for some reason actually objectionable to the Church.
Protestantism will always make a stand for the betterment of Germanity in itself, so long as it is a matter of inner purity or deepening of the nation, of the defense of German character, the German language, or German freedom; all this is firmly rooted in Protestantism itself. But it is quick to combat bitterly every attempt to free the nation from the embrace of its most deadly enemy, because its attitude toward Jewry is more or less firmly fixed by dogma. And yet this is the question which must be solved before any further attempts at a German renaissance or revival can ever have the slightest sense or possibility of success.
While I was in Vienna I had leisure and opportunity enough to look into this question without previous prejudice; and my daily social contacts confirmed my opinion a thousand times over.
It was quickly proved in this focal point of miscellaneous nationalities that only a German pacifist will always try to look objectively at the interests of his own nation, but that the Jew
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