Causes of the Collapse
of the German flag, but that by this road the German people would advance toward its inner and also its outward freedom?
Was this not so, you contemptible and lying scoundrels?
It must require a truly Jewish impudence to blame the collapse upon the military defeat now, while the official organ of high treason, the Berlin Vorwäerts, wrote that this time the German people must not bring its banner back victorious!
And now is that supposed to be the cause of our collapse?
Of course it would be quite futile to wrangle with such a set of forgetful liars, and I would waste no words on it, if this nonsense were not unfortunately parroted by so many quite thoughtless persons with no particular malice or intentional untruthfulness. This discussion is intended also to furnish our warriors of enlightenment with weapons very necessary at a time when the spoken word is so often twisted before one can get it out of his mouth.
The following, then, should be said in reply to the statement that the lost war is responsible for the German collapse:
True enough, the loss of the War was of fearful importance for the future of our Fatherland; yet the loss is not a cause, but itself only a result of such things. It was always perfectly clear to every intelligent and not ill-intentioned person that an unsuccessful ending of this life-and-death struggle was bound to have devastating results. But unfortunately there were also people who seemed not to see this at the right time, or who at first, although they knew better, disputed and denied the truth. These were largely the ones whose secret wish was fulfilled, and who then suddenly understood too late the catastrophe they had helped to cause. It is they who are guilty of the collapse, and not the lost war, as they suddenly choose to say and to know. For the loss of the war, after all, was only the result of their activity, and not, as they now try to claim, the result of “bad” leadership. The enemy too was no coward, he too knew how to die, his number was greater than that of the German army at the outset, and the arsenals of the whole world were at his disposal for technical armament; therefore the fact that the German victories gained through four long years
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