Mein Kampf
nounce the recognition of the present, but in its place, if his ideas are immortal, he gathers glory among posterity.
Once in a long stretch of human history it may happen that the politician and the program-maker are united. But the more intimate this fusion, the greater the resistance which the politician’s efforts must meet. He is no longer working for necessities obvious to any middle-class voter, but for purposes which few can understand. And so his life is torn between love and hatred. The protest of the present, which does not understand the man, struggles with the admiration of posterity, for which, after all, he is working.
For the higher the future holds a man’s work, the less the present can grasp it, the harder is the battle, and the rarer the success. But if it does smile on one man in centuries, a glimmer of the coming glory may possibly surround him in his old age. Even so, these great men are but the Marathon runners of history: the laurel wreath of the present rests but upon the brow of the dying hero.
Among these we must count the great warriors of this world, those not understood by the present, who are nevertheless ready to fight through to the end for their ideas and ideals. They it is who some day will be closest to the people’s hearts; it almost seems as if each individual felt the personal duty of making good to the past the sins which the present once committed against the great man. Their life and work are studied with touchingly grateful admiration, and have the power, especially in times of distress, to lift up shattered hearts and despairing souls.
But among these men we must count not only the really great statesmen, but all the other great reformers. Beside Frederick the Great we have Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
When I heard Gottfried Feder’s first lecture on “Breaking the Slavery of Interest” I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which must be of immense importance for the future of the German people. Sharp separation of finance capital from the national economy made it possible to oppose the internationalization of German economy without threatening the whole
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