Mein Kampf
particular help of its most faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
The constant war upon German heavy industry was the visible start of the internationalization of the German economic system aimed at by Marxism, which could not, it is true, be completed until the victory of Marxism in the Revolution. As I write this, the attack has at last succeeded upon the German Government Railways, which are now handed over to International finance capital. “International” Social Democracy has thus once again accomplished one of its great objectives.
How far this attempt to make “economic animals” of the German people had succeeded we can see from the fact that after the war one of the leading minds of German industry and especially of commerce could express the opinion that only economic improvement could possibly put Germany on her feet again. This nonsense was served up at the moment when France was restoring the instruction in her schools primarily to a humanistic basis in order to prevent the growth of the mistaken attitude that the nation and the State owe their survival to economics and not to imperishable ideal values. This remark of a Stinnes caused the most incredible confusion; it was picked up at once, to become with astonishing rapidity the leitmotif of all the bunglers and twaddlers whom Fate had let loose on Germany as “statesmen” after the Revolution.
One of the worst phenomena of decay in Germany before the war was the common and everspreading habit of doing everything by halves. It always results from lack of certainty upon a subject, as well as from a cowardice growing out of this and other causes.
The disease was fostered by education. German education before the war had an extraordinary number of weaknesses. It was very one-sidedly aimed to produce pure “knowledge,” and placed less emphasis on ability. Still less value was attached to the development of individual character—in so far as this is possible at all—very little to fostering joy in responsibility, and none at all to
232
