< home  >  11-26-2020  "Mein Kampf": Volume I :"A Retrospect"   - With hyperlinks and comments - by an American "Susan" -  year 2020  

                         by Adolf Hitler : "Author" [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler  ] 

Translated into English by James Murphy :: 

 A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Vincent_Murphy 

 B: https://bookshop.org/books/mein-kampf-james-murphy-nazi-authorized-translation/9780984536153 

 C: https://www.mhpbooks.com/the-remarkable-story-of-mein-kampfs-translation-into-english/  

 Author:  "Adolf Hitler: the Drama of his Career" : https://books.google.com/books/about/Adolf_Hitler.html?id=nXeXQAAACAAJ  

SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30697262  :: " Why did my grandfather translate Mein Kampf? "  By John Murphy -- BBC News  ( Published :: 14 January 2015 ) ..." 

  Aloph Hitler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler  :: 

h

Born Aril 20, 1889 : 1899 (10 yo) : 1909 (20 yo) : 1919 (30 yo) : 1929 (40 yo) : 1939 (50 yo) :  Died 30 April 1945  ( 56 yo)  : ... 1949 : ... 

h

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_in_Nazi_propaganda   "... Themes in Nazi propaganda ...  The propaganda of the National Socialist German Workers' Party regime that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945 promoted Nazi ideology by demonizing the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists, but also capitalists and intellectuals. It promoted the values asserted by the Nazis, including heroic death, Führerprinzip (leader principle), Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), Blut und Boden (blood and soil) and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk (master race). Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas. After the outbreak of World War II, Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war.  ..."

Mein Kamf : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf 
 
 https://greatwar.nl/books/meinkampf/meinkampf.pdf

 https://www.universitypressbooks.com/book/9781682042137

 TABLE FORMAT: 

"Mein Kampf" ::  Author's Introduction ( by Adolph Hitler)   ::  Translator's Introduction  (  unification of Germany  )

  Volume I    : A Retrospect  [ BEGIN ]
  Chapter 1  : In The Home Of My Parents
  Chapter 2  : Years Of Study And Suffering In Vienna
  Chapter 3  : Political Reflections Arising Out Of My Sojourn In Vienna
  Chapter 4  : Munich
  Chapter 5  : The World War
  Chapter 6  : War Propaganda 
  Chapter 7   : The Revolution
  Chapter 8   : The Beginning Of My Political Activities
  Chapter 9   : The German Labour Party
  Chapter 10 : Why The Second Reich Collapsed
  Chapter 11 : Race And People
  Chapter 12 : The First Stage In The Development Of The German National Socialist Labour Party  

  MK-V-TWO  Volume II   : The National Socialist Movement
Chapter 1   : Weltanschauung And Party
Chapter 2   : The State
Chapter 3   : Citizens And Subjects Of The State
Chapter 4   : Personality And The Ideal Of The People's State
Chapter 5   : Weltanschauung And Organization
Chapter 6   : The First Period Of Our Struggle 
Chapter 7   : The Conflict With The Red Forces
Chapter 8   : The Strong Is Strongest When Alone
Chapter 9   : Fundamental Ideas Regarding The Nature And Organization Of The Storm Troops
Chapter 10 : The Mask Of Federalism
Chapter 11 : Propaganda And Organization
Chapter 12 : The Problem Of The Trade Unions
Chapter 13 : The German Post-War Policy Of Alliances
Chapter 14 : Germany's Policy In Eastern Europe
Chapter 15 : The Right To Self-Defence

Author's Introduction ( by Adolph Hitler)
 ( Related to:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch ) 

[ " ... the aims of our Movement -  but also of its development..." ]  

 [ What were "NAZI's?]  SOURCE: [ Nazi "Movement" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party ]  
 "...   The Nazi Party,[a] officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party[b] (NSDAP), was a far-right[7][8] political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945, that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany.[9] The [ NAZI ] party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[10] Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes.[11]
  ... Pseudoscientific racist theories were central to "Nazism", expressed in the idea of a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft).[12]  The Nazi party aimed to unite "racially desirable" Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of a foreign race (Fremdvölkische).[13] ... The Nazis sought to "strengthen" the Germanic people, the [so-called] "Aryan master race", through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, [ "democracy" ]  which could be "sacrificed" for the good of the state on behalf of the people. To protect the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, Poles and most other Slavs, along with the physically and mentally handicapped. They disenfranchised and segregated homosexuals, Africans, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents.[14] The persecution reached its climax when the party-controlled German state set in motion the Final Solution—an industrial system of genocide which achieved the murder of around 6 million Jews and millions of other targeted victims, in what has become known as the Holocaust.[15]  Adolf Hitler, the [Nazi] party's leader since 1921, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime[16][17][18][19] known as the Third Reich. 

 SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
 "...  The Third Reich,^[i] meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazis' conceit that "Nazi Germany" was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the "Thousand Year Reich",^[j][4] ended in May 1945 after just 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe.  ..."

[ FIRST REICH]  Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire )  "...  The Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Sacrum Imperium Romanum; German: Heiliges Römisches Reich), later referred to as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in Western and Central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.^[6] The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it also included the neighboring Kingdom of Bohemia and Kingdom of Italy, plus numerous other territories, and soon after the Kingdom of Burgundy was added. However, while by the 15th century the Empire was still in theory composed of three major blocks – Italy, Germany, and Burgundy – in practice only the Kingdom of Germany remained, with the Burgundian territories lost to France and the Italian territories, ignored in the Imperial Reform, mostly either ruled directly by the Habsburg emperors or subject to competing foreign influence.^[7][8][9] The external borders of the Empire did not change noticeably from the Peace of Westphalia – which acknowledged the exclusion of Switzerland and the Northern Netherlands, and the French protectorate over Alsace – to the dissolution of the Empire. By then, it largely contained only German-speaking territories, plus the Kingdom of Bohemia. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, most of the Holy Roman Empire was included in the German Confederation.  ..."

[ SECOND REICH]  German Empire (1871–1918)  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Empire ) "... The German Empire or the Imperial State of Germany,^{[a][4][5][6][7]} also referred to as Imperial Germany or Second Reich,^[8] as well as simply Germany,^[9] was the period of the German Reich^[10] from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic.^[11][12]  ..."

Following the defeat of "the Third Reich" - at the conclusion of World War II in Europe, the party was "declared to be illegal" by the Allied powers,[20] who carried out denazification in the years after the war both in Germany and in territories occupied by Nazi forces.

 The use of any symbols associated with the [NAZI] party is now outlawed in many European countries, including Germany and Austria. ..."

[ BEGIN MEIN KAMPF] ... ON APRIL 1st, 1924, I [Adolph Hitler]  began to serve my sentence of detention in the Fortress of Landsberg am Lech, following the verdict of the Munich People's Court of that time. [ documents hyperlinked below ]

 Trial:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adolf_Hitler_Trial_before_the_People%27s_Court_in_Munich_Judgment

Indictment:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adolf_Hitler_Trial_before_the_People%27s_Court_in_Munich_Judgment/Basis_for_Indictment

Participants: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adolf_Hitler_Trial_before_the_People%27s_Court_in_Munich_Judgment/Information_Regarding_Individuals

The Verdict: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adolf_Hitler_Trial_before_the_People%27s_Court_in_Munich_Judgment/The_Verdict

Justification of the Verdict:  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adolf_Hitler_Trial_before_the_People%27s_Court_in_Munich_Judgment/Justification_of_the_Verdict

After years of uninterrupted labour [labor] it was now possible - for the first time - to begin a "work" which many had asked for and which I myself felt would be profitable for "the Movement".  
  [ Mein Kampf was published in year ( 1925 ) - thus, Hitler (who began serving his "sentence" - in 1924) - following the "putsch" 1923  begins his "document" with a lie. ]

So, I [Adolph Hitler] decided to devote two volumes to a description - not only of the aims of our Movement -  but also of its development. There is more to be learned from this than from any purely "doctrinaire treatise".  ( term invented by Hitler? ) 

This has also given me the opportunity of describing my own development - in so far as such a description is necessary - to the understanding of the first as well as the second volume and to destroy the legendary fabrications which the "Jewish Press" have circulated about me. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewish_Press ]

In this work, I turn not to strangers [such as Susan - in 2020 - is one]  but to those followers of the Movement [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party ] whose hearts belong to it and who wish to study it more profoundly.

I know that fewer people are won over by the written word than by the spoken word and that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great speakers and not to great writers. [ Which, [this] is not true (in 2020) - and, may have been his opinion... : Susan has a degree - in "Communications" - from the USA University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, WI Campus. ] 

Nevertheless, in order to produce more equality and uniformity in the defence [defense] of any doctrine, its fundamental principles must be committed to writing. May these two volumes therefore serve as the building stones which I contribute to the joint work.

The Fortress, Landsberg am Lech.  [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsberg_Prison ]

 [ "putsch" ] At half-past twelve in the afternoon of November 9th, 1923, those whose names are given below "fell" [ died ] in front of the FELDHERRNHALLE and in the forecourt of the former War Ministry in Munich for their loyal faith in the resurrection of their people:

• Alfarth, Felix, Merchant, born July 5th, 1901 
• Bauriedl, Andreas, Hatmaker, born May 4th, 1879
• Casella, Theodor, Bank Official, born August 8th, 1900
• Ehrlich, Wilhelm, Bank Official, born August 19th, 1894
• Faust, Martin, Bank Official, born January 27th, 1901
• Hechenberger, Anton, Locksmith, born September 28th, 1902
• Koerner, Oskar, Merchant, born January 4th, 1875
• Kuhn, Karl, Head Waiter, born July 25th, 1897
• Laforce, Karl, Student of Engineering, born October 28th, 1904
• Neubauer, Kurt, Waiter, born March 27th, 1899
• Pape, Claus von, Merchant, born August 16th, 1904
• Pfordten, Theodor von der, Councillor to the Superior Provincial Court, born May 14th, 1873
• Rickmers, Johann, retired Cavalry Captain, born May 7th, 1881
• Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin von, Dr. of Engineering, born January 9th, 1884
• Stransky, Lorenz Ritter von, Engineer, born March 14th, 1899
• Wolf, Wilhelm, Merchant, born October 19th, 1898

So-called national officials refused to allow the dead heroes a common burial. [ Such "burials" were not common practice - in Germany 1923 ... ]

So I dedicate the first volume of this work to them as a common memorial, that the memory of those martyrs may be a permanent source of light for the followers of our [ NAZI ] Movement.

The Fortress, Landsberg a/L.,

October 16th, 1924

Translator's Introduction

IN PLACING before the reader this unabridged translation of Adolf Hitler's book, MEIN KAMPF, I feel it my duty to call attention to certain historical facts which must be borne in mind if the reader would form a fair judgment of what is written in this extraordinary work. [ Written circa 1939 ]

The first volume of MEIN KAMPF was written while the author was imprisoned in a Bavarian fortress. How did he get there and why? The answer to that question is important, because the book [ Volume I ] deals with the events which brought the author [Adolph Hitler] into this plight - and because, he wrote under the emotional stress caused by the historical happenings of the time.

It was the hour of Germany's deepest humiliation, somewhat parallel to that of a little over a century before, when Napoleon had dismembered the old German Empire and French soldiers occupied almost the whole of Germany. 

In the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied the Ruhr district and seized several German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested against by every section of British political opinion at that time. The Germans could not effectively defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany, and therefore more appalling in its prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the German Republic and the establishment of an independent Rhenania.

Money was poured out lavishly to bribe agitators to carry on this work - and, some of the most insidious elements of the German population became active in the pay of the "invader". [ cite?] 

At the same time a vigorous movement was being carried on in Bavaria for the secession of that country and the establishment of an independent Catholic monarchy there, under vassalage to France, as Napoleon had done when he made Maximilian the first King of Bavaria in 1805. 

The "separatist movement" in the Rhineland went so far that some leading German politicians came out in favour of it, suggesting that if the Rhineland were thus ceded it might be possible for the German Republic to strike a bargain with the French in regard to Reparations.

But, in Bavaria  - the movement went even farther. And, it was more far reaching in its implications; for, if an independent Catholic monarchy could be set up in Bavaria, the next move would have been a union with Catholic German-Austria. possibly under a Habsburg King. Thus, a Catholic BLOC would have been created which would extend from the Rhineland through Bavaria and Austria into the Danube Valley and would have been at least under the moral and military, if not the full political, hegemony of France.

The dream seems fantastic now, but it was considered quite a practical thing in those fantastic times. The effect of putting such a plan into action would have meant the complete dismemberment of Germany; and that is what French diplomacy aimed at.[ cite?]

Of course such an aim no longer exists. And I should not recall what must now seem "old, unhappy, far-off things" to the modern generation [of 1939], were it not that they were very near and actual at the time MEIN KAMPF was written [1923-1924] and were more unhappy then than we can even imagine now.

By the autumn of 1923,  the separatist movement in Bavaria was on the point of becoming an accomplished fact.

General von Lossow, the Bavarian chief of the REICHSWEHR no longer took orders from Berlin. The flag of the German Republic was rarely to be seen.

Finally, the Bavarian Prime Minister decided to proclaim an independent Bavaria and its secession from the German Republic.

This was to have taken place on the eve of the Fifth Anniversary of the establishment of the German Republic ( November 9th, 1918. ) [ Weimar, Bavarian Nat., 

Hitler staged a counter-stroke. For several days he had been mobilizing his storm battalions in the neighbourhood of Munich, intending to make a national demonstration and hoping that the REICHSWEHR would stand by him to prevent secession. Ludendorff was with him. And he thought that the prestige of the great German Commander in the World War would be sufficient to win the allegiance of the professional army.

A meeting had been announced to take place in the Bürgerbräu Keller on the night of November 8th. The Bavarian patriotic societies were gathered there, and the Prime Minister, Dr. von Kahr, started to read his official PRONUNCIAMENTO, which practically amounted to a proclamation of Bavarian independence and secession from the Republic. While von Kahr was speaking Hitler entered the hall, followed by Ludendorff. And the meeting was broken up.

[The] Next day,  the Nazi battalions took the street for the purpose of making a mass demonstration in favour of national union. They marched in massed formation, led by Hitler and Ludendorff. As they reached one of the central squares of the city the army opened fire on them. Sixteen of the marchers [cited by Hitler's Introduction] were instantly killed, and two died of their wounds in the local barracks of the REICHSWEHR. Several others were wounded also. Hitler fell on the pavement and broke a collar-bone. Ludendorff marched straight up to the soldiers who were firing from the barricade, but not a man dared draw a trigger on his old Commander.

Hitler was arrested with several of his comrades and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg on the River Lech.

On February 26th, 1924, he was brought to trial before the VOLKSGERICHT, or People's Court in Munich. He [Hitler]  was sentenced to detention in a fortress for five years. [ Above: x, y, z, ] With several companions, who had been also sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, he returned to Landsberg am Lech and remained there until the 20th of the following December, when he was released. In all he spent about thirteen months in prison. It was during this period that he wrote the first volume of MEIN KAMPF. [ sentenced for "five" years - served "13 months" ]

If we bear all this in mind, we can account for the emotional stress under which MEIN KAMPF was written.

Hitler was naturally incensed against the Bavarian government authorities, against the footling patriotic societies - who were pawns in the French game, though often unconsciously so, and of course against the French. [ "translator" marrying the natives , explaining a "mad man"... ]

That he should write harshly of the French was only natural in the circumstances.

At that time [1923-1924], there was no exaggeration whatsoever in calling France the implacable and mortal enemy of Germany. [ IMAGE ]

Such language was being used by even the pacifists themselves, not only in Germany but abroad. And even though the second volume of MEIN KAMPF was written after Hitler's release from prison and was published after the French had left the Ruhr, the tramp of the invading armies still echoed in German ears, and the terrible ravages that had been wrought - in the industrial and financial life of Germany, as a consequence of the French invasion, - had plunged the country into a state of social and economic chaos.

In France itself,  the franc fell to fifty per cent of its previous value. Indeed, the whole of Europe had been brought to the brink of ruin, following the French invasion of the Ruhr and Rhineland.

But, as those things belong to the limbo of a dead past that nobody wishes to have remembered now, it is often asked [circa 1939]: Why doesn't Hitler revise MEIN KAMPF?

The answer, as I think, which would immediately come into the mind of an impartial critic is that "MEIN KAMPF" is an historical document which bears the imprint of its own time.

To revise it would involve taking it out of its historical context. Moreover Hitler has declared that his acts and public statements constitute a partial revision of his book and are to be taken as such. This refers especially to the statements in MEIN KAMPF regarding France and those German kinsfolk that have not yet been incorporated in the REICH. On behalf of Germany, he has definitely acknowledged the German portion of South Tyrol as permanently belonging to Italy; and, in regard to France, he has again and again declared that no grounds now exist for a conflict of political interests between Germany and France and that Germany has no territorial claims against France.

Finally, I may note here that Hitler has also declared that, as he was only a political leader and not yet a statesman [ blog ] in a position of official responsibility, when he wrote this book, [ That is ] what he stated in MEIN KAMPF  - does not implicate him as Chancellor of the REICH.

 [ James Freeman Clarke once said: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” ] 

I now come to some references in the text which are frequently recurring and which may not always be clear to every reader.
For instance, Hitler speaks indiscriminately of the German REICH. Sometimes he means to refer to the first REICH, or Empire, and sometimes to the German Empire as founded under William I in 1871.

Incidentally,  the "regime" which he inaugurated in 1933 - is generally known as the "THIRD REICH", though this expression is not used in MEIN KAMPF.

Hitler also speaks of the "Austrian REICH" and the "East Mark", without always explicitly distinguishing between the Habsburg Empire and Austria proper.

 [  https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/fodors/top/features/travel/destinations/europe/germany/berlin/fdrs_feat_28_10.html?pagewanted=2  ]

If the reader will bear the following historical outline in mind, he will understand the references as they occur.

The word REICH, which is a German form of the Latin word REGNUM, does not mean Kingdom or Empire or Republic.

 [  https://www.regnumchristi.org/en/the-regnum-christi-federation/  ]

 It is a sort of basic word that may apply to any form of Constitution (above).

Perhaps our [English] word, Realm, would be the best translation, though the word "Empire" can be used when the REICH was actually an Empire.

 The forerunner of the first German Empire was the Holy Roman Empire which Charlemagne founded in A.D. 800. Charlemagne was King of the Franks, a group of Germanic tribes that subsequently became Romanized. In the tenth century Charlemagne's Empire passed into German hands when Otto I (936-973) became Emperor.

As the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, its formal appellation, it continued to exist under German Emperors until Napoleon overran and dismembered Germany during the first decade of the last century. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_of_the_Confederation_of_the_Rhine ]

On August 6th, 1806, the last Emperor, Francis II, formally resigned the German crown.

In the following October Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph, after the Battle of Jena. 

After the fall of Napoleon [ 1814 ]  - a movement set in for the reunion of the German states into one Empire. [ German History ]

But the first decisive step towards that end was the foundation of the Second German Empire in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War. [ German History ] 

This "Empire", however, did not include the German lands which remained under the Habsburg Crown. These were known as German Austria.

It was Bismarck's dream to unite German Austria with the German Empire; but it remained only a dream until Hitler turned it into a reality in 1938. [ Anschluss ]

It is well to bear that point in mind, because this dream of reuniting all the German states in one REICH has been a dominant feature of German patriotism and statesmanship for over a century and has been one of Hitler's ideals since his childhood.

In MEIN KAMPF Hitler often speaks of the "East Mark". This East Mark --i.e. eastern frontier land--was founded by Charlemagne as the eastern bulwark of the Empire. It was inhabited principally by Germano-Celtic tribes called Bajuvari and stood for centuries as the firm bulwark of Western Christendom against invasion from the East, especially against the Turks. Geographically it was almost identical with German Austria.

There are a few points more that I wish to mention in this introductory note. [A, B, C]

A. For instance, I have let the word WELTANSCHAUUNG stand in its original form very often. We have no one English word to convey the same meaning as the German word, and it would have burdened the text too much if I were to use a circumlocution each time the word occurs. "WELTANSCHAUUNG" literally means "Outlook-on-the World". But as generally used in German this outlook on the world means a whole system of ideas associated together in an organic unity--ideas of human life, human values, cultural and religious ideas, politics, economics, etc., in fact a totalitarian view of human existence.

Thus Christianity could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, and Mohammedanism could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, and Socialism could be called a WELTANSCHAUUNG, especially as preached in Russia. National Socialism claims definitely to be a WELTANSCHAUUNG.

B. Another word I have often left standing in the original is VÖLKISCH. The basic word here is VOLK, which is sometimes translated as PEOPLE; but the German word, VOLK, means the whole body of the PEOPLE without any distinction of class or caste. It is a primary word also that suggests what might be called the basic national stock. Now, after the defeat in 1918, the downfall of the Monarchy and the destruction of the aristocracy and the upper classes, the concept of DAS VOLK came into prominence - as the unifying co-efficient  - which would embrace the whole German people. Hence the large number of VÖLKISCH societies that arose after the war and hence also the National Socialist concept of unification which is expressed by the word VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT, or folk community.
 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkisch_movement ]  This is used in contra-distinction to the Socialist concept of the "nation" as being divided into classes. Hitler's ideal is the VÖLKISCHER STAAT, which I have translated as the People's State.

C. Finally, I would point out that the term "Social Democracy" may be misleading in [the] "1939" English [translation], as it has not a "democratic" connotation in our [English/European/American] sense. It was the name given to the Socialist Party in Germany. And that Party was purely Marxist; but it [the Marxist group] adopted the name "Social Democrat" in order to appeal to the democratic sections of the German people.

James Murphy

Abbots Langley

February, 1939

h

Born Aril 20, 1889 : 1899 (10 yo) : 1909 (20 yo) : 1919 (30 yo) : 1929 (40 yo) : 1939 (50 yo) :  Died 30 April 1945  ( 56 yo)  : ... 1949 : ... 

h

Volume I  -- A Retrospect      ( of  Mein Kampf  by Adolph Hitler ) [edits by Susan: American "English",  history, etc. ...]
 

 Chapter 1  ::      [ --  in The Home Of My Parents -- ]
 

IT HAS turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace. (Aril 20, 1889) For that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two States [ Celts : Bavaria : Germany, Austria  (19th Century)  ] -  the reunion of which - seems, at least to us (of the younger generation ), a task to which we should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed.

German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. 
    [  https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/lebensraum-and-anschluss/  ]

 And not indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even if the "union" were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to take place.

 People of the same blood should be in the same REICH. [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich  ]

[ Reich ::  People of the same blood should be in the same REICH.   [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_plasm
   :GENETICS HISTORY : AUGUST WEISMAN 1, 2 : "Reich" :: https://archive.org/stream/TheMythOfGermanVillainy/The%20Myth%20of%20German%20Villainy_djvu.txt  ]    


The German people will have no right to engage in a "colonial policy" until they shall have brought all their children together in the one State. ...

When the territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people -  to acquire foreign territory.

The plough is then the sword; and, the tears of war - will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.

And so, this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task.

 But in another regard also - it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. [ 1923 : Volume ONE of "Mein Kampf" was written in 1923. ]

 Over a hundred years ago - this sequestered spot -  was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German history.

At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a bookseller, Johannes Palm, uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the French, was put to death here - because, he had the misfortune to have loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for the "affair" [ "...  a pamphlet (presumably written by Philipp Christian Yelin in Ansbach) entitled Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung ("Germany in her deep humiliation"), which strongly attacked Napoleon and the behaviour of the French troops in Bavaria.  ..." ]. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like the latter, was denounced to the French by a "Government agent". It was a director of police from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by the neo-German officials of the REICH under Herr Severing's regime ( Note 1 ). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Severing ] 

 SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Leo_Schlageter   "...  Albert Leo Schlageter ([ˈalbɛʁt ˈleːo ˈʃlaːɡɛtɐ]; 12 August 1894 – 26 May 1923) was a member of the German Freikorps. Schlageter sabotaged a section of railroad track in the region of Germany that was under French occupation after World War I. He was arrested and executed by the French military. This led the German nationalists to proclaim him a hero. The manner of his death fostered an aura of martyrdom around him, which was cultivated by German nationalist groups, in particular the Nazi Party. During the Third Reich, he was widely commemorated as a national hero.  ..." 

 SOURCE:     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#German_Confederation_and_Empire 

 "... East Francia and Holy Roman Empire : Main articles: East Francia and Holy Roman Empire

Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire in 800; it was divided in 843[26] and the Holy Roman Empire emerged from the eastern portion.

The territory initially known as East Francia stretched from the Rhine in the west to the Elbe River in the east and from the North Sea to the Alps.[26] The Ottonian rulers (919–1024) consolidated several major duchies.[27] In 996 Gregory V became the first German Pope, appointed by his cousin Otto III, whom he shortly after crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
 The Holy Roman Empire absorbed northern Italy and Burgundy under the Salian emperors (1024–1125), although the emperors lost power through the Investiture controversy.[28]

Under the Hohenstaufen emperors (1138–1254), German princes encouraged German settlement to the south and east (Ostsiedlung). Members of the Hanseatic League, mostly north German towns, prospered in the expansion of trade.[29] Population declined starting with the Great Famine in 1315, followed by the Black Death of 1348–50.[30]
 The "Golden Bull" issued in 1356 provided the constitutional structure of the Empire and codified the election of the emperor by seven prince-electors.[31]

Martin Luther (1483–1546), Protestant Reformer :: Johannes Gutenberg introduced moveable-type printing to Europe, laying the basis for the democratization of knowledge.[32] In 1517, Martin Luther incited the Protestant Reformation; the 1555 Peace of Augsburg tolerated the "Evangelical" faith (Lutheranism), but also decreed that the faith of the prince was to be the faith of his subjects (cuius regio, eius religio).[33] From the Cologne War through the Thirty Years' Wars (1618–1648), religious conflict devastated German lands and significantly reduced the population.[34][35]

The Peace of Westphalia ended religious warfare among the Imperial Estates;[34] their mostly German-speaking rulers were able to choose Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, or the Reformed faith as their official religion.[36] The legal system initiated by a series of Imperial Reforms (approximately 1495–1555) provided for considerable local autonomy and a stronger Imperial Diet.[37] The House of Habsburg held the imperial crown from 1438 until the death of Charles VI in 1740. Following the War of Austrian Succession and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa ruled as Empress Consort when her husband, Francis I, became Emperor.[38][39]

From 1740, dualism between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia dominated German history. In 1772, 1793, and 1795, Prussia and Austria, along with the Russian Empire, agreed to the Partitions of Poland.[40][41] < THUS, A COUNTRY - CALLED "GERMANY" - DID NOT EXIST IN 1776.

During the period of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic era and the subsequent final meeting of the Imperial Diet, most of the Free Imperial Cities were annexed by dynastic territories; the ecclesiastical territories were secularised and annexed. In 1806 the Imperium was dissolved; France, Russia, Prussia and the Habsburgs (Austria) competed for hegemony in the German states during the Napoleonic Wars.[42]

The German Confederation in 1815

Following the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna founded the "German Confederation", a loose league of 39 sovereign states. The appointment of the Emperor of Austria as the permanent president reflected the Congress's rejection of Prussia's rising influence. Disagreement within restoration politics partly led to the rise of liberal movements, followed by new measures of repression by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich.[43][44] The Zollverein, a tariff union, furthered economic unity.[45]

In light of revolutionary movements in Europe, intellectuals and commoners started the revolutions of 1848 in the German states, raising the "German Question".

 King Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the title of Emperor, but with a loss of power; he rejected the crown and the proposed constitution, a temporary setback for the movement.[46]

King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck successfully concluded the war with Denmark in 1864; the subsequent decisive Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 enabled him to create the North German Confederation - which excluded Austria. After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, the German princes proclaimed the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Prussia was the dominant constituent state of the new empire; the King of Prussia ruled as its Kaiser, and Berlin became its capital.[47][48]

In the Gründerzeit period following the unification of Germany, Bismarck's foreign policy as Chancellor of Germany secured Germany's position as a great nation by forging alliances and avoiding war.

[48] However, under Wilhelm II, Germany took an imperialistic course, leading to friction with neighbouring countries.[49]

A dual alliance was created with the multinational realm of Austria-Hungary; the Triple Alliance of 1882 included Italy. Britain, France and Russia also concluded alliances to protect against Habsburg interference with Russian interests in the Balkans or German interference against France.[50]

At the Berlin Conference in 1884, Germany claimed several colonies including German East Africa, German South West Africa, Togoland, and Kamerun.[51]

Later, Germany further expanded its colonial empire to include holdings in the Pacific and China.[52] The colonial government in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), from 1904 to 1907, carried out the annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples as punishment for an uprising;[53][54] this was the 20th century's first genocide.[54]

The assassination of Austria's crown prince on 28 June 1914 provided the pretext for Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and trigger World War I.

After four years of warfare, in which approximately two million German soldiers were killed,[55] a general armistice ended the fighting.

In the German Revolution (November 1918), Emperor Wilhelm II and the ruling princes abdicated their positions and Germany was declared a federal republic.

Germany's new leadership signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, accepting defeat by the Allies. Germans perceived the treaty as humiliating, which was seen by historians as influential in the rise of Adolf Hitler.[56] Germany lost around 13% of its European territory and ceded all of its colonial possessions in Africa and the South Sea.[57] ... Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany ..." 

 Germany 

  SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_the_American_Revolution    

Germans in the American Revolution ( From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) 

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was a Prussian army officer who served as inspector general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. 

He is credited with teaching the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory.

Ethnic Germans served on both sides of the American Revolutionary War. 

Many, notably rented auxiliary troops[1] from Germanic states such as the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel, supported the Loyalist cause and served as allies of the Kingdom of Great Britain, whose King George III was also the Elector of Hanover.

American rebel agitators misrepresented such troops as mercenaries to fuel propaganda against the British Crown. Even American historians followed suit, in spite of Colonial-era jurists drawing a distinction between auxiliaries and mercenaries, with auxiliaries serving their prince when sent to the aid of another prince, and mercenaries serving a foreign prince as individuals.[1] By this distinction the troops which served in the American Revolution were auxiliaries.

Other German individuals came to assist the American rebels, but most who did so were already colonists.

Allies of Great Britain

The fate of the German auxiliaries that fought in the American revolution. : 

During the American Revolution, many German-speaking states, such as Hesse-Kassel, were loosely unified under the Holy Roman Empire. 

Typically these were officially Lutheran, making them traditional allies of other Protestant nations. 

Importantly, this included the Kingdom of Great Britain, whose king, George III, was also the Prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire. King George III came from an ethnic German family and was the first of the British royal House of Hanover to speak English as his first language.[2] Great Britain formed strong German alliances during the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 and during the Seven Years' War had combined forces with Frederick the Great of Prussia to form a coalition that functioned as one Army.[3] When the British colonies in America rebelled a decade later, several German-speaking states contracted soldiers to the British Army. Despite Whig opposition to using German soldiers to subjugate the "sons of Englishmen," Parliament overwhelmingly approved the measure in order to quickly raise the forces need to suppress the rebellion.[4] The leasing of soldiers to a foreign power was controversial to some Europeans,[5] the people of these continental states generally took great pride in their soldiers' service in the war.[6] In some instances, ethnic Germans even enlisted directly into British units,[7] such as the 60th Regiment of Foot.[8]

The sudden demand for new soldiers placed a burden on recruiters. Base standards had to be met, including a minimum height and number of teeth required to operate flintlock muskets.[9] Recruiters could be forced to pay losses due to desertion or loss of equipment.[10] Recruiting from outside the Holy Roman Empire required the permission of Joseph II, so recruiters largely enlisted Soldiers from within the Empire.[11] This put officers from one allied state in direct competition with officers from other states allied with Great Britain, as well as recruiters from Great Britain who also recruited from within the Holy Roman Empire.[8]

Americans were alarmed at the arrival of German-speaking auxiliary troops, on American soil, hired by King George III, viewing it as a betrayal by the King. Several American representatives to Continental bodies declared they would be willing to declare independence if King George used such soldiers against them.[12] The hired German troops were referred to as mercenaries by the patriots.[13] Patriot outrage was also reflected in the Declaration of Independence:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

— U.S. Declaration of Independence

Colonial-era jurists drawing a distinction between auxiliaries and mercenaries, with auxiliaries serving their prince when sent to the aid of another prince, and mercenaries serving a foreign prince as individuals.[1] By this distinction, the troops which served in the American Revolution were not mercenaries, but auxiliaries. Early Republican historians, however, defended the term "mercenaries" to distinguish the foreign, professional armies from the idealized citizen soldier who altruistically fought for independence.[14] Mercy Otis Warren promoted the idea of German auxiliaries as barbarians, but also as victims of tyranny.[15]

Throughout the war, the United States attempted to persuade German forces to stop fighting. In April 1778, Congress issued a letter "To the officers and soldiers in the service of the king of Great Britain, not subjects of the said king" which offered land and livestock to defecting German units, in addition to increased rank.[16] At the conclusion of the war, Congress offered incentives—especially free farmland—for these ethnic Germans to remain in the United States.[17] Great Britain also offered land and tax incentives to its Loyalist soldiers willing to settle in Nova Scotia.[17]

Hesse-Kassel

Main article: Hessian (soldier)

General Wilhelm von Knyphausen

The financial basis of some smaller continental states was the regular rental of their regiments to fight for various larger nations during the 18th century.[18] The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, in particular, was economically depressed,[19] and had "rented" out professional armies since the 17th century,[20] with general support from both upper and lower classes.[19] This allowed Hesse-Kassel to maintain a larger standing army, which in turn gave it the ability to play a larger role in European power politics.[21] Hesse-Kassel pressed eligible men into service for up to 20 years, and by mid-18th century, about 7% of the population was in military service.[20] The Hessian army was very well trained and equipped; its troops fought well for whomever was paying their prince.[22]

The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, under Frederick II, an uncle of King George III, initially provided over 12,000 soldiers to fight in the Americas.[23] Like their British allies, the Hessians had some difficulty acclimatizing to North America; the first troops to arrive suffered from widespread illness, which forced a delay in the attack on Long Island.[24] From 1776 on, Hessian soldiers were incorporated into the British Army serving in North America, and they fought in most of the major battles, including those of New York and New Jersey campaign, the Battle of Germantown, the Siege of Charleston, and the final Siege of Yorktown, where about 1,300 Germans were taken prisoner,[25] although various reports indicate that the Germans were in better spirits than their British counterparts.[26]

It has been estimated that Hesse-Kassel contributed over 16,000 troops during the course of the Revolutionary War, of whom 6,500 did not return.[27] Because the majority of the German-speaking troops came from Hesse, modern Americans sometimes refer to all such troops of this war generically as "Hessians". Hessian officer (later General) Adam Ludwig Ochs estimated that 1,800 Hessian soldiers were killed, but many in the Hessian army intended on staying in America, and remained after the war.[28] Captain Frederick Zeng, for example, served out his term with the armies of Hesse-Kassel and remained in the United States, even becoming an associate of Philip Schuyler.[29]

Hesse-Kassel signed a treaty of alliance with Great Britain to supply fifteen regiments, four grenadier battalions, two jäger companies, and three companies of artillery.[30] The jägers in particular were carefully recruited and well paid, well clothed, and free from manual labor.[31][Note 1] These jägers proved essential in the "Indian style" warfare in America, and Great Britain signed a new treaty in December 1777 in which Hesse-Kassel agreed to increase their number from 260 to 1,066.[32]

German-speaking armies could not quickly replace men lost on the other side of the Atlantic, so the Hessians recruited African-Americans as servants and soldiers. 

There were 115 black soldiers serving with Hessian units, most of them as drummers or fifers.[33]

Perhaps the best-known officer from Hesse-Kassel is General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, who commanded his troops in several major battles. Other notable officers include Colonel Carl von Donop (mortally wounded at the Battle of Red Bank in 1777) and Colonel Johann Rall, who was fatally wounded at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Rall's regiment was captured, and many of the soldiers were sent to Pennsylvania to work on farms.[34]

The war proved longer and more difficult than either Great Britain or Hesse-Kassel had anticipated, and the mounting casualties and extended supply lines took a political and economic toll. Following the American Revolution, Hesse-Kassel would end the practice of raising and leasing armies.[35]

Hesse-Hanau

Main article: Hesse-Hanau Troops in the American Revolutionary War

Hesse-Hanau was a semi-independent appendage of Hesse-Kassel, governed by the Protestant Hereditary Landgrave William, eldest son of the Roman Catholic Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel. When William received news of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, he unconditionally offered a regiment to King George III.[36] During the course of the war, Hanau provided 2,422 troops; only 1,441 returned in 1783.[27] A significant number of Hessian soldiers were volunteers from Hanau, who had enlisted with the intention of staying in the Americas when the war was over.[28]

Colonel Wilhelm von Gall is one well-known officer from Hesse-Hanau;[37] he commanded a regiment from Hanau under General John Burgoyne.[38] Among the units sent to North America were one battalion of infantry, a battalion of jägers, a battalion of irregular infantry known as a Frei-Corps, and a company of artillery.

Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Main article: Brunswick Troops in the American Revolutionary War

Prince Carl of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was a brother-in-law of King George III of Great Britain.
Brunswick-Lüneburg was a duchy that had been divided into several territories, one of which was ruled by George III as the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover). The neighboring Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Brunswick) was ruled by Duke Charles I of Brunswick-Bevern; his son and heir, Charles William Ferdinand, was married to Princess Augusta of Great Britain, the sister of George III.[39]

In 1775 Charles William Ferdinand ("Prince Carl") told King George III that Brunswick had soldiers who could be used to help put down the rebellion in the Americas.[40] In December 1775, General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel began recruiting in anticipation of the finalized treaty.[11] Brunswick was the first German-speaking state to sign a treaty supporting Great Britain, on 9 January 1776. It agreed to send 4,000 soldiers: four infantry regiments, one grenadier battalion, one dragoon regiment and one light infantry battalion.[30] The Brunswick treaty provided that all troops would be paid in Imperial Thalers – including two months' advance pay, but required that all troops take an oath of service to King George III.[41] A controversial clause in the agreement stipulated that Duke Charles I would be paid £7 and 4s to replace each Brunswick soldier killed in battle- with three wounded men equal to one dead man; Charles, however, would pay to replace any deserters or any soldier who fell sick with anything other than an "uncommon contagious malady."[42]

General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel
Duke Charles I provided Great Britain with 4,000 foot soldiers and 350 heavy dragoons (dismounted)[Note 2] under Lt-Colonel Friedrich Baum, all commanded by General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel.

General Riedesel reorganized the existing Braunschweig regiments into Corps to allow for the additional recruits required by the new treaty. Experienced soldiers were spread among the new companies in the Regiment von Riedesel, Regiment von Rhetz, Regiment Prinz Friedrich, and Regiment von Specht, as well as the Battalion von Barner and dragoons.[43] Braunschweig-Luneburg, along with Waldeck and Anhalt-Zerbst, was one of the three British auxiliary that avoided impressment,[43] and Karl I vowed not to send Landeskinder (sons of the land) to North America, so land owners were permitted to transfer to units that would remain in Braunschweig. Officers and non-commissioned officers went throughout the Holy Roman Empire recruiting to fill their ranks, offering financial incentives, travel to North America with the potential for economic opportunities in the New World, reduced sentences, and adventure.[44]

These soldiers were the majority of the German-speaking regulars under General John Burgoyne in the Saratoga campaign of 1777, and were generally referred to as "Brunswickers."[38] The combined forces from Brunswick and Hesse-Hanau accounted for nearly half of Burgoyne's army,[45] and the Brunswickers were known for being especially well-trained.[46] One of the ships used to cross Lake Champlain flew a flag of Braunschweig to recognize their significance to the army.[47] Riedesel's Brunswick troops made a notable entry into the Battle of Hubbardton, singing a Lutheran hymn while making a bayonet charge against the American right flank, which may have saved the collapsing British line.[48] Riedesel's wife, Friederike, traveled with her husband and kept a journal which remains an important primary account of the Saratoga campaign. After Burgoyne's surrender, 2,431 Brunswickers were detained as part of the Convention Army until the end of the war.[49]

Brunswick sent 5,723 troops to North America, of whom 3,015 did not return home in the autumn of 1783.[27][50] Some losses were to death or desertion, but many Brunswickers became familiar with America during their time with the Convention Army, and when the war ended, they were granted permission to stay by both Congress and their officers.[28] Many had taken the opportunity to desert as the Convention Army was twice marched through Pennsylvania German settlements in eastern Pennsylvania.[51] As the Duke of Brunswick received compensation from the British for every one of his soldiers killed in America, it was in his best interest to report the deserters as dead, whenever possible.[50] The Duke even offered six months' pay to soldiers who remained or returned to America.[52]

Ansbach-Bayreuth
The dual Margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth, under Margrave Charles Alexander, initially supplied 1,644 men to the British in two infantry battalions, one company of jägers and one of artillery, of whom 461 did not return home.[27] A total of 2,353 soldiers were sent from Ansbach-Bayreuth,[53] including an entire regiment of jägers.[54] They were described as "the tallest and best-looking regiments of all those here," and "better even than the Hessians."[55] These troops were incorporated into Howe's army in New York and were part of the Philadelphia campaign.[56] Ansbach-Bayreuth troops were also with General Cornwallis at the Siege of Yorktown,[57] with a force of nearly 1,100 troops.[58]

The Ansbach and Bayreuth regiments are remembered for a mutiny that occurred in Ochsenfurt. The soldiers were loaded onto boats on the Main River, but could not sail past the bridge at Ochsenfurt because the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim, refused to open it. The soldiers were also forced to stand through the night in the over-crowded boats.[59] On the morning of 8 March 1777 some Ansbach soldiers managed to get to the bank of the river and pulled the other boats to land. Wine merchants from Ochsenfurt soon arrived and sold drink to the soldiers.[59] The officers tried to address their concerns, but some men deserted. Chasseurs were posted to keep men from deserting, and fired warning shots; the mutineers returned fire. When the Margrave of Ansbach received word of the riot, he rode through the night to reach Ochsenfurt. The Margrave convinced his soldiers to reboard the boats and provided two additional boats to alleviate crowding.[60] The Margrave sailed with them as far as Mainz, where he succeeded in getting a bridge opened without the consent of Archbishop-Elector Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal.[61]

After the initial mobilization of troops, Ansbach-Beyreuth sent several other transports with new recruits. By the end of the war, 2,361 Soldiers had deployed to the Americas, but less than half, 1,041, returned had returned by the end of 1783.[55] The Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth was deeply in debt when the war broke out, and received more than £100,000 for the use of his soldiers.[53] In 1791 he sold Ansbach and Bayreuth to Prussia and lived the rest of his life in England on a Prussian pension.[62]

Waldeck
Waldeck had made a treaty to support Great Britain in London on 20 April 1776. Prince Friedrich Karl August of Waldeck kept three regiments ready for paid foreign service. The first of these regiments, with 684 officers and men, sailed from Portsmouth in July 1776 and participated in the New York campaign.[63] During the campaign the Waldeck regiment captured wine and spirits belonging to American General Lee and were embittered towards the British General Howe when he made them empty the bottles by the roadside.[64]

The Waldeck troops were integrated into the German auxiliaries under Hessian General Wilhelm von Knyphausen.

In 1778, the 3rd Waldeck Regiment was sent to defend Pensacola as part of the British force under General John Campbell.[65] The Regiment was dispersed throughout West Florida, including Fort Bute, Mobile and Baton Rouge. The regimental commander, Colonel Johann Ludwig Wilhelm von Hanxleden, complained that his soldiers were sickened and even died due to the climate. The remote locations received few supply ships, and the soldiers' pay was insufficient to buy local goods. Prince August informed Lord Germain that Waldeck could not recruit new soldiers fast enough to replace those dying in West Florida.[66] In addition to slow supplies, the British and Waldeck forces did not receive news in a timely manner. They were unaware that Spain had declared war on Great Britain until they were attacked by forces under Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez. When this campaign was complete at the Siege of Pensacola, Spain recruited many of the poorly fed and supplied Waldeck soldiers.[67] British prisoners of war were later exchanged, but Waldeck prisoners of war were kept by the Spanish in New Orleans, Veracruz, and more than a year in Havana before finally being exchanged in 1782.[68]

Waldeck contributed 1,225 men to the war, and lost 720 as casualties or deserters.[27] In the course of the war, 358 Waldeck soldiers died from sickness, and 37 died from combat.[68]

Hanover
Five battalions of troops of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover), whose Elector was none other than the British King George III, were sent to Gibraltar and Menorca to relieve the British soldiers stationed there, who could then be sent to fight in America.[30] Since Hanover was ruled in personal union and had its own government, Hanoverian troops were deployed under a British-Hanoverian Treaty in which Great Britain agreed to pay Hanoverian expenses and defend Hanover against invasion while the troops were away.[69] These Hanoverian soldiers were defenders during the Great Siege of Gibraltar, the largest and longest battle of the war, and in the defense of Menorca. Late in the war, two regiments from Hanover were sent to British India, where they served under British command in the Siege of Cuddalore against a combined French and Mysorean defense.

Anhalt-Zerbst
The Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Frederick Augustus signed a treaty to provide Great Britain with 1,160 men in 1777. The Regiment of two battalions was raised in five months, and consisted of 900 new recruits.[70] One battalion of 600–700 men arrived in the Canadas in May 1778 to guard Quebec City.[71] The other, consisting of some 500 "Pandours" (irregular soldiers recruited from Slavic lands within the Austrian Empire) was sent in 1780 to garrison British-occupied New York City. Whether these troops could function as irregular light infantry has been much debated, although they were described by contemporary accounts as Pandours.

Continental allies
German Americans

Frederick Muhlenberg, first Speaker of the House and son of German immigrants, studied theology in Saxony-Anhalt.[72]
German immigration to the British colonies began soon after English colonists founded Jamestown. In 1690, German colonials built the first paper mill in North America, and the Bible was printed in America in German before it was printed in English. By the mid-18th century, approximately 10% of the colonial American population spoke German.[73] Germans were easily the largest non-British European minority in British North America, but their assimilation and Anglicisation varied greatly.[74]

During the French and Indian War, Great Britain utilized the large German population in North America by forming the Royal American Regiment, whose enlisted men were principally German colonists.[75] The regiment's first commander was General Henry Bouquet, a Swiss native. The regiment would later be commanded by General Howe. Other Germans came to North America during the French and Indian War, including Frederick, Baron de Weissenfels, who settled in New York State as a British officer. When the Revolutionary War began, Weissenfels deserted the British forces and served with the rebellion from 1775 until the end of the war, obtaining a Congressional commission as a lieutenant colonel.[76]

As with other ethnic groups in the British colonies, German-speaking colonists were divided, supporting both the Patriot and Loyalist causes. German loyalists fought in their local militias, and some returned to Germany in exile following the war.[77][Note 3] New York had a notably large German population during the war. Other colonies formed German regiments, or filled the ranks of local militias with German Americans. German colonists in Charleston, South Carolina, formed a fusilier company in 1775, and some Germans in Georgia enlisted under General Anthony Wayne.[78]

German colonists are most remembered in Pennsylvania, partly due to friendlier naturalization terms for immigrants,[79] and also because the German soldiers in Pennsylvania stand in contrast to the large, pacifist Quaker population in Pennsylvania.[75] Brothers Peter and Frederick Muhlenberg, for example, were first-generation Pennsylvanians who were educated at the German Francke Foundations.[80] Both were elected to Congress, and Peter served on Washington's general staff.[81]

Provost Corps
Pennsylvania Germans were recruited for the American Provost corps under Captain Bartholomew von Heer,[82][Note 4] a Prussian who had served in a similar unit in Europe[83] before immigrating to Reading, Pennsylvania prior to the war.[84] During the Revolutionary War the Marechaussee Corps were utilized in a variety of ways, including intelligence gathering, route security, enemy prisoner of war operations, and even combat during the Battle of Springfield.[85] The Marechausee also provided security for Washington's headquarters during the Battle of Yorktown, acted as his security detail, and was one of the last units deactivated after the Revolutionary War.[82] The Marechaussee Corps was often not well received by the Continental Army, due in part to their defined duties but also due to the fact that some members of the corps spoke little or no English.[83] Six of the provosts had even been Hessian prisoners of war prior to their recruitment.[83] Because the provost corps completed many of the same functions as the modern U.S. Military Police Corps, it is considered a predecessor of the current United States Military Police Regiment.[85]

German Regiment
On 25 May 1776,[86] the Second Continental Congress authorized the 8th Maryland Regiment (aka the German Battalion or German Regiment) to be formed of colonial ethnic Germans as part of the Continental Army. Unlike most continental line units, it drew from multiple states,[86] initially comprising eight companies: four from Maryland and four (later five) from Pennsylvania. Nicholas Haussegger, a major under General Anthony Wayne, was commissioned as the colonel. The regiment saw service at the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton, and took part in campaigns against American Indians. The regiment was disbanded 1 January 1781.[87]

Europeans
European Germans also came to the United States as allied soldiers. Some Germans came to the United States under the French flag. Johann de Kalb was a Bavarian who served in the armies of France before receiving a commission as a general in the Continental Army. France had eight German-speaking regiments with over 2,500 soldiers.[88] The famous Lauzun's Legion included both French and German soldiers, and was commanded in German.[89] There were also German soldiers and officers in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment.[33]

Frederick the Great (1781)
Other Germans came to the United States to utilize their military training. Frederick William, Baron de Woedtke, for example, was a Prussian officer who obtained a Congressional commission early in the war; he died in New York in 1776.[90] Gustave Rosenthal was an ethnic German from Estonia who became an officer in the Continental Army. He returned to Estonia after the war, but other German soldiers, such as David Ziegler, chose to stay and become citizens in the nation they had helped found.

Perhaps the most well-known German to support the Patriot cause was Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben from Prussia, who came to America independently, through France, and served under George Washington as inspector general. General von Steuben is credited with training the Continental Army at Valley Forge, and he later wrote the first drill manual for the United States Army. In June 1780 he was given command of the advance guard in the defense of Morristown, New Jersey from General Knyphausen – a battle briefly led by two opposing German generals.[91]

Von Steuben's native Prussia joined the League of Armed Neutrality,[92] and Frederick II of Prussia was well appreciated in the United States for his support early in the war. He expressed interest in opening trade with the United States and bypassing English ports, and allowed an American agent to buy arms in Prussia.[93] Frederick predicted American success,[94] and promised to recognize the United States and American diplomats once France did the same.[95] Prussia also interfered in the recruiting efforts of Russia and neighboring German states when they raised armies to send to the Americas, and Frederick II forbade enlistment for the American war within Prussia.[96] All Prussian roads were denied to troops from Anhalt-Zerbst,[97] which delayed reinforcements that Howe had hoped to receive during the winter of 1777–1778.[98]

However, when the War of the Bavarian Succession erupted, Frederick II became much more cautious with Prussian/British relations. US ships were denied access to Prussian ports, and Frederick refused to officially recognize the United States until they had signed the Treaty of Paris. Even after the war, Frederick II predicted that the United States was too large to operate as a republic, and that it would soon rejoin the British Empire with representatives in Parliament.[99]

Notes and references
Notes: 
 Jägers were offered a signing bonus of one Louis d'or coin, which was increased to four Louis d'or as Hesse tried to fill its companies with expert riflemen and woodsmen.
 The heavy dragoons from Brunswick did not have horses and performed as foot soldiers. They were expected to acquire horses during the campaign, which led to the Battle of Bennington.
 This refers to "Deutschland," literally "the land of the Germans," or the German states of the 18th century; there was no nation called "Germany" in the 1780s.
 "It is interesting to note that nearly all men recruited into the Provost Corps were Pennsylvania German." -David L. Valuska 

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Palm   "... Johann Philipp Palm ... Johann Philipp Palm or Johannes Philipp Palm (17 December 1768 – 26 August 1806) was a German bookseller and a strong anti-French agitator and freedom fighter executed during the Napoleonic Wars at Napoleon's orders. ... He was born at Schorndorf in Württemberg. Having been apprenticed to his uncle, the publisher Johann Jakob Palm (1750–1826), in Erlangen, he married the daughter of the bookseller Stein in Nuremberg, and in the course of time became proprietor of his father-in-law's business. ... In the spring of 1806, the Stein publishing house sent to the bookselling establishment of Stage in Augsburg a pamphlet (presumably written by Philipp Christian Yelin in Ansbach) entitled Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung ("Germany in her deep humiliation"), which strongly attacked Napoleon and the behaviour of the French troops in Bavaria. On learning of the violent rhetorical attack made upon his régime and failing to discover the actual author, Napoleon had Palm arrested in and handed over to a military commission at Braunau am Inn on the Bavarian-Austrian frontier, with peremptory instructions to try the prisoner and execute him within twenty-four hours. Palm was denied the right of defence, and after a show trial on 25 August 1806, he was shot the following day without having betrayed the pamphlet's author. ... A life-size bronze statue was erected to his memory in Braunau in 1866, and on the centenary of his death, numerous patriotic meetings were held throughout Bavaria.  ... Since 2002 a private foundation at Schorndorf awards a Johann Philipp Palm Prize for freedom of speech and the press. ... It was to Palm that the poet Thomas Campbell was referring when he gave his famous (and possibly apocryphal) toast to Napoleon at a literary dinner. When this caused uproar, he admitted that Napoleon was a tyrant and an enemy of their country, "But gentlemen! He once shot a publisher." ... Johann Philipp Palm Prize laureates  ..."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Campbell_(poet) ::  http://nothingandall.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-this-day-in-history-jul-27.html  :: https://www.litscape.com/author/Thomas_Campbell/When_Napoleon_Was_Flying.html  ::  On this day in History - Jul 27  [ July 27, 1777 Campbell "Napoleon" ]"...  1777 - Thomas Campbell is born in Glasgow. British poet. After Napoleon sentences the German publisher Johann Palm to death for printing subversive pamphlets, Campbell will give this toast at an authors' dinner: "To Napoleon" - murmurs of protest - "But, gentlemen, he once shot a publisher!"  ..."

In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr, a town that was "Bavarian" by blood - but, under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century. [ 1880 - 1900 ] My father [ Alois Hitler :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler ] was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously. My mother looked after the household and lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not retained very much in my memory; because, after a few years my father had to leave that frontier town - which I had come to love so much - and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in Germany itself.

In those days, it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be transferred periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming to Passau my father was transferred to Linz, and while there he retired finally to live on his pension. But this did not mean that the old gentleman would now rest from his labours. 

He [Adolph's father: Alois Hitler ] was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew restless and left home. When he [ Alois Hitler ] was barely thirteen years old - he buckled on his satchel and set forth from his native woodland parish.

 SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler ... "...  Early life

Alois Hitler was originally born Alois Schicklgruber in the hamlet of Strones, a parish of Döllersheim in the Waldviertel of northwest Lower Austria; he was the son of a 42-year-old unmarried peasant, Maria Schicklgruber, whose family had lived in the area for generations. At his baptism in Döllersheim, the space for his father's name on the baptismal certificate was left blank and the priest wrote "illegitimate".[1][2][3] His mother cared for Alois in a house she shared with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber. The home of Johann Nepomuk Hiedler in Spital, Lower Austria (1807–1888) ... Sometime later, Johann Georg Hiedler moved in with the Schicklgrubers; he married Maria when Alois was five. By the age of 10, Alois had been sent to live with Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who owned a farm in the nearby village of Spital (part of Weitra). Alois attended elementary school, and took lessons in shoemaking from a local cobbler. At the age of 13 he left the farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years. In response to a recruitment drive by the Austrian government offering employment in the civil service to people from rural areas, Alois joined the frontier guards (customs service) of the Austrian Finance Ministry in 1855 at the age of 18.
 ... Biological father ... Historians have proposed various candidates as Alois's biological father: Johann Georg Hiedler, his brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler (or Hüttler), and Leopold Frankenberger (whose actual existence has never been documented).[4] During his lifetime, Johann Georg Hiedler was the stepfather and posthumously legally declared birth father of Alois.[5] According to historian Frank McDonough, the most plausible theory is that Hiedler was actually the birth father. An explanation for Alois being sent to live on his uncle's farm as a child is that Hiedler and Maria were simply too poor to raise him, or could not raise him as well as his uncle, or perhaps Maria's health was in decline.[citation needed] ... Historian Werner Maser suggests that Alois's father was Johann Nepomuk, Georg's brother and Hitler's step-uncle, who raised Alois through adolescence, and later willed him a considerable portion of his life savings, but never admitted publicly to being his real father. According to Maser, Nepomuk was a married farmer who had an affair and then arranged to have his single brother Hiedler marry Alois's mother Maria to provide a cover for Nepomuk's desire to assist and care for Alois, without upsetting his wife.[6] This assumes Hiedler was willing to marry Maria in this situation, and Adolf Hitler biographer Joachim Fest thinks this is too contrived and unlikely to be true.[citation needed] ... Alois's son Adolf, following the rumours that his paternal grandfather was a Jew, in 1931 ordered the Schutzstaffel (SS) to investigate the alleged rumours regarding his ancestry; unsurprisingly, they found no evidence of any Jewish ancestors.[7] 
... After the Nuremberg Laws came into effect in Nazi Germany, Hitler ordered the genealogist Rudolf Koppensteiner to publish a large illustrated genealogical tree showing his ancestry; this was published in the book Die Ahnentafel des Fuehrers ("The Pedigree of the Leader") in 1937, and concluded that Hitler's family were all Austrian Germans with no Jewish ancestry, and that Hitler had an unblemished "Aryan" pedigree.[8][9] ... As Alois himself legitimised Johann Georg Hiedler as his father and the priest changed this on his birth certificate in 1876, this was considered certified proof for Hitler's ancestry; thus Hitler was considered a "pure" Aryan.[8]

... Although Johann Georg Hiedler was considered the officially accepted paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler by the Third Reich, the question of who his grandfather was has caused much speculation and remains unknown.[10][11] 

German historian Joachim Fest wrote that: " The indulgence normally accorded to a man's origins is out of place in the case of Adolf Hitler, who made documentary proof of Aryan ancestry a matter of life and death for millions of people but himself possessed no such document. He did not know who his grandfather was. Intensive research into his origins, accounts of which have been distorted by propagandist legends and which are in any case confused and murky, has failed so far to produce a clear picture. National Socialist versions skimmed over the facts and emphasized, for example, that the population of the so-called Waldviertel, from which Hitler came, had been 'tribally German since the Migration of the Peoples', or more generally, that Hitler had 'absorbed the powerful forces of this German granite landscape into his blood through his father'.[12] ... After the war, Adolf Hitler's former lawyer, Hans Frank, claimed that Hitler told him in 1930 that one of his relatives was trying to blackmail him by threatening to reveal his alleged Jewish ancestry.[13] Adolf Hitler asked Frank to find out the facts. Frank says he determined that -- at the time Maria Schicklgruber gave birth to Alois she was working as a household cook in the town of Graz, that her employers were a Jewish family named Frankenberger, and that her child might have been conceived out of wedlock with the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger.[14] ... However, all Jews had been expelled from the province of Styria – which includes Graz – in the 15th century; they were not officially allowed to return until the 1860s, when Alois was around 30. Also, there is no evidence of a Frankenberger family living in Graz at that time. Scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis, which had only Frank's speculation to support it, as baseless.[15][16][17][18] ... Kershaw cites several stories circulating in the 1920s about Hitler's alleged Jewish ancestry, including one about a "Baron Rothschild" in Vienna in whose household Maria Schicklgruber had worked for some time as a servant.[19] Kershaw discusses and also lists Hitler's family tree in his biography of Adolf Hitler and gives no support to the Frankenberger tale.[20] Further, Frank's story contains several inaccuracies and contradictions, such as he said "The fact that Adolf Hitler had no Jewish blood in his veins, seems, from what has been his whole manner, so blatant to me that it needs no further word",[21] also the statement Frank had made that Maria Schicklgruber came from "Leonding near Linz", when in fact she came from the hamlet of Strones, near the village of Döllersheim.[22]

... In 2019, Leonard Sax published a scholarly paper titled "Aus den Gemeinden von Burgenland: revisiting the question of Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather".[23] Sax showed that Hamann, Kershaw, and other leading historians relied, either directly or indirectly, on a single source for the claim that no Jews were living in Graz prior to 1856: that source was the Austrian historian Nikolaus von Preradovich, whom Sax showed was a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler. Sax cited primary Austrian sources from the 1800s to demonstrate that there was in fact "eine kleine, nun angesiedelte Gemeinde" – "a small, now settled community" – of Jews living in Graz prior to 1856. Sax's article has been picked up by a number of news outlets[24] and Sax was interviewed by Eric Metaxas on this topic, on Metaxas' TV show.[25] ... Ron Rosenbaum suggests that Frank, who had turned against Nazism after 1945 - but remained an anti-Semitic fanatic, made the claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestry as a way of proving that Hitler was a Jew and not an Aryan.[26]   ..."

h 

 EVENTS LEADING TO WWI ... : SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I  

 hhhh

SOURCE:     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#German_Confederation_and_Empire 

 "... East Francia and Holy Roman Empire : Main articles: East Francia and Holy Roman Empire 

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Philipp_Palm   "... Johann Philipp Palm ... Johann Philipp Palm or Johannes Philipp Palm (17 December 1768 – 26 August 1806) was a German bookseller and a strong anti-French agitator and freedom fighter executed during the Napoleonic Wars at Napoleon's orders. ... He was born at Schorndorf in Württemberg. Having been apprenticed to his uncle, the publisher Johann Jakob Palm (1750–1826), in Erlangen, he married the daughter of the bookseller Stein in Nuremberg, and in the course of time became proprietor of his father-in-law's business. ... In the spring of 1806, the Stein publishing house sent to the bookselling establishment of Stage in Augsburg a pamphlet (presumably written by Philipp Christian Yelin in Ansbach) entitled Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung ("Germany in her deep humiliation"), which strongly attacked Napoleon and the behaviour of the French troops in Bavaria. On learning of the violent rhetorical attack made upon his régime and failing to discover the actual author, Napoleon had Palm arrested in and handed over to a military commission at Braunau am Inn on the Bavarian-Austrian frontier, with peremptory instructions to try the prisoner and execute him within twenty-four hours. Palm was denied the right of defence, and after a show trial on 25 August 1806, he was shot the following day without having betrayed the pamphlet's author. ... A life-size bronze statue was erected to his memory in Braunau in 1866, and on the centenary of his death, numerous patriotic meetings were held throughout Bavaria.  ... Since 2002 a private foundation at Schorndorf awards a Johann Philipp Palm Prize for freedom of speech and the press. ... It was to Palm that the poet Thomas Campbell was referring when he gave his famous (and possibly apocryphal) toast to Napoleon at a literary dinner. When this caused uproar, he admitted that Napoleon was a tyrant and an enemy of their country, "But gentlemen! He once shot a publisher." ... Johann Philipp Palm Prize laureates  ..."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Campbell_(poet) ::  http://nothingandall.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-this-day-in-history-jul-27.html  :: https://www.litscape.com/author/Thomas_Campbell/When_Napoleon_Was_Flying.html  ::  On this day in History - Jul 27  [ July 27, 1777 Campbell "Napoleon" ]"...  1777 - Thomas Campbell is born in Glasgow. British poet. After Napoleon sentences the German publisher Johann Palm to death for printing subversive pamphlets, Campbell will give this toast at an authors' dinner: "To Napoleon" - murmurs of protest - "But, gentlemen, he once shot a publisher!"  ..."

In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr, a town that was "Bavarian" by blood - but, under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century. [ 1880 - 1900 ] My father [ Alois Hitler :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler ] was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously. My mother looked after the household and lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not retained very much in my memory; because, after a few years my father had to leave that frontier town - which I had come to love so much - and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in Germany itself.

In those days, it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be transferred periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming to Passau my father was transferred to Linz, and while there he retired finally to live on his pension. But this did not mean that the old gentleman would now rest from his labours. 

He [Adolph's father: Alois Hitler ] was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew restless and left home. When he [ Alois Hitler ] was barely thirteen years old - he buckled on his satchel and set forth from his native woodland parish.

 Despite the dissuasion of villagers - who could speak from 'experience,' he went to Vienna to learn a trade there.

This was in the fiftieth year of the last century (1850). It was a sore trial, that of deciding to leave home and face the unknown, with three gulden in his pocket. By when the boy of thirteen was a lad of seventeen and had passed his apprenticeship examination as a "craftsman" he was not content. Quite the contrary.

The persistent economic depression of that period [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873 ]  and the constant want and misery strengthened his resolution to give up working at a trade and strive for 'something higher.'

As a boy, it had seemed to him [Adolph's father]  that the position of the parish priest in his native village was the highest in the scale of human attainment; but now that the big city had "enlarged his outlook" the young man looked up to the dignity of a State official as the highest of all. With the tenacity of one whom misery and trouble had already made old when only half-way through his youth the young man of seventeen obstinately set out on his new project and stuck to it until he won through. He became a civil servant. He was about twenty-three years old, I think, when he succeeded in making himself what he had resolved to become. Thus he was able to fulfil the promise he had made as a poor boy - not to return to his native village until he was 'somebody.'

He had gained his end. But in the village there was nobody who had remembered him as a little boy, and the village itself had become strange to him.

Now at last, when he was fifty-six years old, he gave up his active career; but he could not bear to be idle for a single day. On the outskirts of the small market town of Lambach in Upper Austria he bought a farm and tilled it himself. [ "Adolf Hitler lived here from 1897–1898. He attended 3rd grade in the local primary school. " SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambach ]
Thus, at the end of a long and hard-working career, he [Adolph's father] came back to the life which his father had led.

It was at this period [Adolph was in the third grade ] that I first began to have ideals of my own.

I spent a good deal of time scampering about in the open, on the long road from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest of the boys, which caused my mother many anxious moments. All this tended to make me something quite the reverse of a stay-at-home. I gave scarcely any serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but, I was certainly quite out of sympathy with the kind of career which my father had followed.

I think that an inborn talent for speaking now began to develop and take shape during the more or less strenuous arguments which I used to have with my comrades.

I had become a juvenile ringleader who learned well and easily at school but was rather difficult to manage.

In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of the monastery church at Lambach, and thus it happened that I was placed in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial. [ History "church" in Germany. Tribes to current.  ]

What could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days? At least, that was my idea for a while.

But the juvenile disputes I had with my father did not lead him to appreciate his son's oratorical gifts in such a way as to see in them a favourable promise for such a career, and so he naturally could not understand the boyish ideas I had in my head at that time. This contradiction in my character made him feel somewhat anxious.

As a matter of fact, that transitory yearning after such a vocation soon gave way to hopes that were better suited to my temperament.

Browsing through my father's books, I chanced to come across some publications that dealt with military subjects.

One of these publications was a popular history of the Franco-German War of 1870-71. It consisted of two volumes of an illustrated periodical dating from those years. These became my favourite reading. In a little while that great and heroic conflict began to take first place in my mind. And from that time onwards I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or military affairs.

But, this story of the Franco-German War had a special significance for me on other grounds also.

For the first time, and as yet only in quite a vague way, the question began to present itself: Is there a difference--and if there be, what is it--between the Germans who fought that war and the other Germans? Why did not Austria also take part in it? Why did not my father and all the others fight in that struggle? Are we not the same as the other Germans? Do we not all belong together?

That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small brain.

And,  from the replies that were given to the questions which I asked very tentatively, I was forced to accept the fact, though with a secret envy, that not all Germans had the good luck to belong to Bismarck's Empire. This was something that I could not understand.

It was decided that I should study. Considering my character as a whole, and especially my temperament, my father decided that the classical subjects studied at the Lyceum were not suited to my natural talents. He thought that the REALSCHULE (Note 2) would suit me better.

My obvious talent for drawing confirmed him in that view; for in his opinion drawing was a subject too much neglected in the Austrian GYMNASIUM. Probably also the memory of the hard road which he himself had travelled contributed to make him look upon classical studies as unpractical and accordingly to set little value on them.

At the back of his mind he had the idea that his son also should become an official of the Government. I

ndeed he had decided on that career for me. The difficulties through which he had to struggle in making his own career led him to overestimate what he had achieved, because this was exclusively the result of his own indefatigable industry and energy.

The characteristic pride of the "self-made man" urged him towards the idea that his son should follow the same calling and if possible rise to a higher position in it. Moreover, this idea was strengthened by the consideration that the results of his own life's industry had placed him in a position to facilitate his son's advancement in the same career.

He was simply incapable of imagining that I might reject what had meant everything in life to him. My father's decision was simple, definite, clear and, in his eyes, it was something to be taken for granted. A man of such a nature - who had become an "autocrat" by reason of his own hard struggle for existence, could not think of allowing 'inexperienced' and irresponsible young fellows to choose their own careers. To act in such a way, where the future of his own son was concerned, would have been a grave and reprehensible weakness in the exercise of "parental authority and responsibility", something utterly incompatible with his characteristic sense of duty.

And yet it had to be otherwise.

For the first time in my life--I was then eleven years old--I felt myself forced into open opposition.

No matter how hard and determined my father might be about putting his own plans and opinions into action, his son was no less obstinate in refusing to accept ideas on which he set little or no value.

I would not become a civil servant.

No amount of persuasion and no amount of 'grave' warnings could break down that opposition. I would not become a State official, not on any account. All the attempts which my father made to arouse in me a love or liking for that profession, by picturing his own career for me, had only the opposite effect. It nauseated me to think that one day I might be fettered to an office stool, that I could not dispose of my own time - but would be forced to spend the whole of my life filling out forms.

One can imagine what kind of thoughts such a prospect awakened in the mind of a young fellow [ 11 years old] who was by no means what is called a 'good boy' in the current sense of that term.

The ridiculously easy school tasks which we were given made it possible for me to spend far more time in the open air than at home.

To-day, when my political opponents pry into my life with diligent scrutiny, as far back as the days of my boyhood, so as finally to be able to prove what disreputable tricks this Hitler was accustomed to in his young days, I thank heaven that I can look back to those happy days and find the memory of them helpful.

The fields and the woods were then the terrain on which all disputes were fought out.

Even attendance at the REALSCHULE could not alter my way of spending my time. But I had now another battle to fight.

So long as the "paternal plan" to make a State functionary contradicted my own inclinations only in the abstract, the conflict was easy to bear.

I could be discreet about expressing my personal views and thus avoid constantly recurrent disputes.

My own resolution not to become a Government official was sufficient for the time being to put my mind completely at rest. I held on to that resolution inexorably. But the situation became more difficult once I had a positive plan of my own which I might present to my father as a "counter-suggestion". This happened when I was twelve years old. How it came about I cannot exactly say now; but one day it became clear to me that I would be a painter--I mean an artist. That I had an aptitude for drawing was an admitted fact. It was even one of the reasons why my father had sent me to the REALSCHULE; but he had never thought of having that talent developed - in such a way - that I could take up painting as a professional career. Quite the contrary. When, as a result of my renewed refusal to adopt his favourite plan, my father asked me for the first time what I myself really wished to be, the resolution that I had already formed expressed itself almost automatically. For a while my father was speechless. "A painter? An artist-painter?" he exclaimed.

He wondered whether  - I was in a sound state of mind. He thought that he might not have caught my words rightly - or, that he had misunderstood what I meant. But when I had explained my ideas to him and he saw how seriously I took them, he opposed them with that full determination which was characteristic of him.

His decision was exceedingly simple and could not be deflected from its course by any consideration of what my own natural qualifications really were.

"Artist! Not as long as I live, never." As the son had inherited some of the father's obstinacy, besides having other qualities of his own, my reply was equally energetic. But it stated something quite the contrary.

At that, our struggle became stalemate. The father would not abandon his 'Never', and I became all the more consolidated in my 'Nevertheless'.

Naturally, the resulting situation was not pleasant. The old gentleman was bitterly annoyed; and indeed - so was I, although I really loved him.

My father forbade me to entertain any hopes of taking up the art of painting as a profession. I went a step further and declared that I would not study anything else. With such declarations the situation became still more strained, so that the old gentleman irrevocably decided to assert his parental authority at all costs.

That led me to adopt an attitude of circumspect silence, but I put my threat into execution. I thought that, once it became clear to my father that I was making no progress at the REALSCHULE, for weal or for woe, he would be forced to allow me to follow the happy career I had dreamed of.

I do not know whether I calculated rightly or not. Certainly, my failure to make "progress" became quite visible in the school. I studied just the subjects that appealed to me, especially those which I thought might be of advantage to me - later on as a painter. What did not appear to have any importance from this point of view, or what did not otherwise appeal to me favourably, I completely sabotaged. My school reports of that time were always in the extremes of good or bad, according to the subject and the interest it had for me. In one column my qualification read 'very good' or 'excellent'. In another it read 'average' or even 'below average'.

By far my best subjects were geography and, even more so, general history. These were my two favourite subjects, and I led the class in them.

When I look back over so many years and try to judge the results of that experience - I find two very significant facts standing out clearly before my mind.

First, I became a nationalist.

Second, I learned to understand and grasp the true meaning of history.

The old Austria was a multi-national State. In those days at least the citizens of the German Empire, taken through and through, could not understand what that fact meant in the everyday life of the individuals within such a State. After the magnificent triumphant march of the victorious armies in the Franco-German War the Germans in the REICH became steadily more and more estranged from the Germans beyond their frontiers, partly because they did not deign to appreciate those other Germans at their true value or simply because they were incapable of doing so.

The Germans of the REICH did not realize that if the Germans in Austria had not been of the best racial stock they could never have given the stamp of their own character to an Empire of 52 millions, so definitely that in Germany itself the idea arose--though quite an erroneous one--that "Austria" was a German State.

That was an error which led to dire consequences; but all the same it was a magnificent testimony to the character of the ten million Germans in that East Mark. (Note 3) Only very few of the Germans in the REICH (itself) had an idea of the bitter struggle which those Eastern Germans had to carry on daily for the preservation of their German language, their German schools and their German character. Only to-day [1923], when a tragic fate has torn several millions of our kinsfolk away from the REICH and has forced them to live under the rule of the stranger, dreaming of that common fatherland towards which all their yearnings are directed and struggling to uphold at least the sacred right of using their mother tongue-only - now have the wider circles of the German population come to realize what it means to have to fight for the traditions of one's race.

And so, at last perhaps - there are people here and there who can assess the greatness of that German spirit which animated the old East Mark and enabled those people, left entirely dependent on their own resources, to defend the Empire against the "Orient" for several centuries and subsequently to hold fast the frontiers of the German language - through a guerilla warfare of attrition, at a time when the "German Empire" was sedulously cultivating an interest for "colonies" - but not for its own flesh and blood before the threshold of its own door.

What has happened always and everywhere, in every kind of struggle, happened also in the language fight which was carried on in the old Austria.

There were three groups-the fighters, the hedgers and the traitors. Even in the schools this sifting already began to take place.

And, it is worth noting that the struggle for the language was waged perhaps in its bitterest form around the school; because this was the nursery where the seeds had to be watered which were to spring up and form the future generation. The tactical objective of the fight was the winning over of the child, and it was to the child that the first rallying cry was addressed:

"German youth, do not forget that you are a German," and "Remember, little girl, that one day you must be a German mother."

Those who know something of the "juvenile spirit" can understand how youth will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry.

Under many forms, the young people led the struggle, fighting in their own way and with their own weapons. They refused to sing non-German songs.

The greater the efforts made to win them away from their German allegiance, the more they exalted the glory of their German heroes.

They stinted themselves in buying things to eat, so that they might spare their pennies to help the war chest of their elders.

They were incredibly alert in the significance of what the non-German teachers said and they contradicted in unison.

They wore the forbidden emblems of their own kinsfolk and were happy when penalised for doing so, or even physically punished.

In miniature they were mirrors of loyalty from which the older people might learn a lesson. [ I see "selective observation" - to make a point - "propaganda" ]

And thus, it was that at a comparatively early age I took part in the struggle which the nationalities were waging against one another in the old Austria.

When meetings were held for the South Mark German League and the School League we wore cornflowers and black-red-gold colours to express our loyalty.

We greeted one another with HEIL! and instead of the Austrian anthem we sang our own DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES, despite warnings and penalties.

Thus, the youth were educated politically at a time when the citizens of a so-called national State for the most part knew little of their own nationality except the language.

Of course, I did not belong to the hedgers. Within a little while I had become an ardent 'German National', which has a different meaning from the party significance attached to that phrase to-day.

  [ history ::  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationalism ]

I developed very rapidly in the nationalist direction, and by the time I was 15 years old I had come to understand the distinction between dynastic patriotism and nationalism based on the concept of folk, or people, my inclination being entirely in favour of the latter.

Such a preference may not perhaps be clearly intelligible to those who have never taken the trouble to study the internal conditions that prevailed under the Habsburg Monarchy.

Among historical studies universal history was the subject almost exclusively taught in the Austrian schools, for of specific Austrian history there was only very little.

The fate of this State was closely bound up with the existence and development of Germany as a whole; so a division of history into German history and Austrian history would be practically inconceivable. And indeed, it was only when the German people came to be divided between two States that this division of German history began to take place.

The insignia (Note 4) of a former imperial sovereignty - which were still preserved in Vienna  - appeared to act as magical relics rather than as the visible guarantee of an everlasting bond of union.

When the Habsburg State crumbled to pieces in 1918 the Austrian Germans instinctively raised an outcry for union with their German fatherland.

That was the voice of a unanimous yearning in the hearts of the whole people for a return to the unforgotten home of their fathers. But, such a general yearning - could not be explained except by attributing the cause of it to the historical training through which the individual Austrian Germans had passed.

Therein lay a spring that never dried up. Especially in times of distraction and forgetfulness its quiet voice was a reminder of the past, bidding the people to look out beyond the mere welfare of the moment to a new future.

The teaching of universal history - in what are called the middle schools - is still very unsatisfactory. Few teachers realize that the purpose of teaching history is not the memorizing of some dates and facts, that the student is not interested in knowing the exact date of a battle or the birthday of some marshal or other, and not at all--or at least only very insignificantly--interested in knowing when the crown of his fathers was placed on the brow of some monarch. These are certainly not looked upon as important matters.

To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events.

The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.

Probably my whole future life was determined by the fact that I had a professor of history who understood, as few others understand, how to make this viewpoint prevail in teaching and in examining. This teacher was Dr. Leopold Poetsch, of the REALSCHULE at Linz.

He was the ideal personification of the qualities necessary to a teacher of history in the sense I have mentioned above.
An elderly gentleman with a decisive manner but a kindly heart, he was a very attractive speaker and was able to inspire us with his own enthusiasm. Even to-day [1923] I cannot recall -without emotion - that venerable personality whose enthusiastic exposition of history so often made us entirely forget the present and allow ourselves to be transported as if by magic into the past. He penetrated through the dim mist of thousands of years and transformed the historical memory of the dead past into a living reality. When we listened to him we became afire with enthusiasm and we were sometimes moved even to tears.

It was still more fortunate that this professor was able - not only to illustrate the past by examples from the present - but from the past he was also able to draw a lesson for the present.

He understood better than any other the everyday problems that were then agitating our minds. The national fervour - which we felt in our own small way  -was utilized by him as an instrument of our education, inasmuch as he often appealed to our national sense of honour; for in that way he maintained order and held our attention much more easily than he could have done by any other means. It was because I had such a professor that history became my favourite subject. As a natural consequence, but without the conscious connivance of my professor, I then and there became a young rebel. But who could have studied German history under such a teacher and not become an enemy of that State whose rulers exercised such a disastrous influence on the destinies of the German nation? Finally, how could one remain the faithful subject of the House of Habsburg, whose past history and present conduct proved it to be ready ever and always to betray the interests of the German people for the sake of paltry personal interests? Did not we as youngsters fully realize that the House of Habsburg did not, and could not, have any love for us Germans?

What history taught us about the policy followed by the House of Habsburg was corroborated by our own everyday experiences. In the north and in the south - the poison of foreign races was eating into the body of our people, and even Vienna was steadily becoming more and more a non-German city. The 'Imperial House' favoured the Czechs on every possible occasion. Indeed it was the hand of the goddess of eternal justice and inexorable retribution that caused the most deadly enemy of Germanism in Austria, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to fall by the very bullets which he himself had helped to cast. Working from above downwards, he was the chief patron of the movement to make Austria a Slav State.

The burdens laid on the shoulders of the German people were enormous and the sacrifices of money and blood which they had to make were incredibly heavy.

Yet, anybody who was not quite blind must have seen that it was all in vain.
 -- What affected us most bitterly was the consciousness of the fact that: this whole system was morally shielded by the alliance with Germany, whereby the slow extirpation of Germanism in the old Austrian Monarchy seemed in some way to be more or less sanctioned by Germany herself.
-- Habsburg hypocrisy, which endeavoured outwardly to make the people believe that Austria still remained a German State, increased the feeling of hatred against the Imperial House and at the same time aroused a spirit of rebellion and contempt.

But in the German Empire itself, those who were then its "rulers" saw nothing of what all this meant.
 -- As if struck blind, they stood beside a corpse and in the very symptoms of decomposition they believed that they recognized the signs of a renewed vitality.
-- In that unhappy alliance between the young German Empire and the illusory Austrian State lay the germ of the World War and also of the final collapse.

In the subsequent pages of this book I shall go to the root of the problem. Suffice it to say here: that in the very early years of my youth I came to certain conclusions which I have never abandoned.

Indeed I became more profoundly convinced of them as the years passed. They were:
 
[A] That the dissolution of the Austrian Empire is a preliminary condition for the defence of Germany;
further [B], that national feeling is by no means identical with dynastic patriotism;
finally, and above all [C], that the House of Habsburg was destined to bring misfortune to the German nation. 

As a logical consequence of these convictions, there arose in me a feeling of intense love for my German-Austrian home and a profound hatred for the Austrian State.

 

That kind of "historical thinking" which was developed in me through my study of history at school never left me afterwards.

World history became more and more an inexhaustible source for the understanding of contemporary historical events, which means politics.

 Therefore I will not "learn" politics but let politics teach me.

A precocious revolutionary in politics, I was no less a precocious revolutionary in art.  [ Susan is married to an "artist" - Hans Neuhart  - born in 1959 - New Concord, Ohio. Hans won awards - and, was "noticed" - by others - for his "talent" - from his early youth; From the time of our first meeting - in 1982 - Susan was impressed - in Hans' ability - to take 'that' - which was in his "mind's eye" - and, place it onto a medium - so that others (external) could view it. WE will review Adolph's survived "art" - and comment. In fact, there are "artists" "wanna-be" artists, AND "bull-shitters" - like Donald Trump - who self-proclaim their ability - as a "stepping stone"...  ]

At that time the provincial capital of Upper Austria had a theatre which, relatively speaking, was not bad. Almost everything was played there.
When I was twelve years old I saw William Tell performed. That was my first experience of the theatre. Some months later, I attended a performance of LOHENGRIN, the first opera I had ever heard. I was fascinated at once.

My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master [ Richard Wagner ] knew no limits. Again and again I was drawn to hear his operas; and to-day I consider it a great piece of luck that these modest productions - in the little provincial city - prepared the way and made it possible for me to appreciate the better productions later on.

But all this helped to intensify my profound aversion for the career that my father had chosen for me; and this dislike became especially strong as the rough corners of youthful boorishness became worn off, a process which in my case caused a good deal of pain.

I became more and more convinced that I should never be happy as a State official. And now that the REALSCHULE had recognized and acknowledged my aptitude for drawing, my own resolution became all the stronger.

Imprecations and threats had no longer any chance of changing it. I wanted to become a painter and no power in the world could force me to become a civil servant. The only peculiar feature of the situation now was that - as I grew bigger  - I became more and more interested in architecture.

I considered this fact as a natural development of my flair for painting and I rejoiced inwardly that the sphere of my artistic interests was thus enlarged. I had no notion that one day it would have to be otherwise.

The question of my career was decided much sooner than I could have expected.

When I was in my thirteenth year my father was suddenly taken from us. He was still in robust health when a stroke of apoplexy painlessly ended his earthly wanderings and left us all deeply bereaved. His most ardent longing was to be able to help his son to advance in a career and thus save me from the harsh ordeal that he himself had to go through. But it appeared to him - then, as if that longing were all in vain. And yet, though he himself was not conscious of it, he had sown the seeds of a future which neither of us foresaw at that time.

At first nothing changed outwardly.

My mother felt it her duty to continue my education in accordance with my father's wishes, which meant that she would have me study for the civil service.

For my own part I was even more firmly determined than ever before that under no circumstances would I become an official of the State.

The curriculum and teaching methods followed in the middle school were so far removed from my ideals that I became profoundly indifferent.
Illness suddenly came to my assistance. Within a few weeks it decided my future and put an end to the long-standing family conflict.

My lungs became so seriously affected that the doctor advised my mother very strongly not under any circumstances to allow me to take up a career which would necessitate working in an office. He ordered that I should give up attendance at the REALSCHULE for a year at least.
-- What I had secretly desired for such a long time, and had persistently fought for, now became a reality almost at one stroke.

Influenced by my illness, my mother agreed that I should leave the REALSCHULE and attend the Academy.

Those were happy days, which appeared to me almost as a dream; but they were bound to remain only a dream.
 Two years later my mother's death put a brutal end to all my fine projects. She succumbed to a long and painful illness which from the very beginning permitted little hope of recovery. Though expected, her death came as a terrible blow to me. I respected my father, but I loved my mother.

Poverty and stern reality forced me to decide promptly.

The meagre resources of the family had been almost entirely used up through my mother's severe illness. The allowance which came to me as an orphan was not enough for the bare necessities of life. Somehow or other I would have to earn my own bread.

With my clothes and linen packed in a valise and with an indomitable resolution in my heart, I left for Vienna. I hoped to forestall fate, as my father had done fifty years before.

I was determined to become 'something'--but certainly not a civil servant.

[Note 1. In order to understand the reference here, and similar references in later portions of MEIN KAMPF, the following must be borne in mind:

a. From 1792 to 1814 the French Revolutionary Armies overran Germany. In 1800 Bavaria shared in the Austrian defeat at Hohenlinden and the French occupied Munich. In 1805 the Bavarian Elector was made King of Bavaria by Napoleon and stipulated to back up Napoleon in all his wars with a force of 30,000 men. Thus Bavaria became the absolute vassal of the French. This was 'TheTime of Germany's Deepest Humiliation', Which is referred to again and again by Hitler.

b. In 1806 a pamphlet entitled 'Germany's Deepest Humiliation' was published in South Germany. Amnng those who helped to circulate the pamphlet was the Nürnberg bookseller, Johannes Philipp Palm. He was denounced to the French by a Bavarian police agent. At his trial he refused to disclose thename of the author. By Napoleon's orders, he was shot at Braunau-on-the-Innon August 26th, 1806. A monument erected to him on the site of the executionwas one of the first public objects that made an impression on Hitler asa little boy.

c. Leo Schlageter's case was in many respects parallel to that of Johannes Palm. Schlageter was a German theological student who volunteered for service in 1914. He became an artillery officer and won the Iron Cross of both classes. When the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923 Schlageter helped to organize the passive resistance on the German side. He and his companions blew up a railway bridge for the purpose of making the transport of coal to France more difficult.

d. Those who took part in the affair were denounced to the French by a German informer. Schlageter took the whole responsibility on his own shoulders and was condemned to death, his companions being sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and penal servitude by the French Court. Schlageter refused to disclose the identity of those who issued the order to blow up the railway bridge and he would not plead for mercy before a French Court. He was shot by a French firing-squad on May 26th, 1923. Severing was at that time German Minister of the Interior. It is said that representations were made, to himon Schlageter's behalf and that he refused to interfere.

e. Schlageter has become the chief martyr of the German resistancc to the French occupation of the Ruhr and also one of the great heroes of the National Socialist Movement. He had joined the Movement at a very early stage, his card of membership bearing the number 61.]

[Note 2. Non-classical secondary school. The Lyceum and GYMNASIUM were classical or semi-classical secondary schools.]

[Note 3. See Translator's Introduction.]

[Note 4. When Francis II had laid down his title as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,
 which he did at the command of Napoleon, the Crown and Mace, as the Imperial Insignia, were kept in Vienna.
   After the German Empire was refounded, in 1871, under William I, there were many demands to have the Insignia transferred to Berlin. But these went unheeded. Hitler had them brought to Germany after the Austrian Anschluss and displayed at Nuremberg during the Party Congress in September 1938.]

>>>>>>>>> STOPPED 

Chapter 2

Years Of Study And Suffering In Vienna

WHEN MY mother died my fate had already been decided in one respect. During the last months of her illness I went to Vienna to take the entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts. Armed with a bulky packet of sketches, I felt convinced that I should pass the examination quite easily. At the REALSCHULE I was by far the best student in the drawing class, and since that time I had made more than ordinary progress in the practice of drawing. Therefore I was pleased with myself and was proud and happy at the prospect of what I considered an assured success.

But there was one misgiving: It seemed to me that I was better qualified for drawing than for painting, especially in the various branches of architectural drawing. At the same time my interest in architecture was constantly increasing. And I advanced in this direction at a still more rapid pace after my first visit to Vienna, which lasted two weeks. I was not yet sixteen years old. I went to the Hof Museum to study the paintings in the art gallery there; but the building itself captured almost all my interest, from early morning until late at night I spent all my time visiting the various public buildings. And it was the buildings themselves that were always the principal attraction for me. For hours and hours I could stand in wonderment before the Opera and the Parliament. The whole Ring Strasse had a magic effect upon me, as if it were a scene from the Thousandand-one-Nights.

And now I was here for the second time in this beautiful city, impatiently waiting to hear the result of the entrance examination but proudly confident that I had got through. I was so convinced of my success that when the news that I had failed to pass was brought to me it struck me like a bolt from the skies. Yet the fact was that I had failed. I went to see the Rector and asked him to explain the reasons why they refused to accept me as a student in the general School of Painting, which was part of the Academy. He said that the sketches which I had brought with me unquestionably showed that painting was not what I was suited for but that the same sketches gave clear indications of my aptitude for architectural designing. Therefore the School of Painting did not come into question for me but rather the School of Architecture, which also formed part of the Academy. At first it was impossible to understand how this could be so, seeing that I had never been to a school for architecture and had never received any instruction in architectural designing.

When I left the Hansen Palace, on the SCHILLER PLATZ, I was quite crestfallen. I felt out of sorts with myself for the first time in my young life. For what I had heard about my capabilities now appeared to me as a lightning flash which clearly revealed a dualism under which I had been suffering for a long time, but hitherto I could give no clear account whatsoever of the why and wherefore.

Within a few days I myself also knew that I ought to become an architect. But of course the way was very difficult. I was now forced bitterly to rue my former conduct in neglecting and despising certain subjects at the REALSCHULE. Before taking up the courses at the School of Architecture in the Academy it was necessary to attend the Technical Building School; but a necessary qualification for entrance into this school was a Leaving Certificate from the Middle School. And this I simply did not have. According to the human measure of things my dream of following an artistic calling seemed beyond the limits of possibility.

After the death of my mother I came to Vienna for the third time. This visit was destined to last several years. Since I had been there before I had recovered my old calm and resoluteness. The former self-assurance had come back, and I had my eyes steadily fixed on the goal. I would be an architect. Obstacles are placed across our path in life, not to be boggled at but to be surmounted. And I was fully determined to surmount these obstacles, having the picture of my father constantly before my mind, who had raised himself by his own efforts to the position of a civil servant though he was the poor son of a village shoemaker. I had a better start, and the possibilities of struggling through were better. At that time my lot in life seemed to me a harsh one; but to-day I see in it the wise workings of Providence. The Goddess of Fate clutched me in her hands and often threatened to smash me; but the will grew stronger as the obstacles increased, and finally the will triumphed.

I am thankful for that period of my life, because it hardened me and enabled me to be as tough as I now am. And I am even more thankful because I appreciate the fact that I was thus saved from the emptiness of a life of ease and that a mother's darling was taken from tender arms and handed over to Adversity as to a new mother. Though I then rebelled against it as too hard a fate, I am grateful that I was thrown into a world of misery and poverty and thus came to know the people for whom I was afterwards to fight.

It was during this period that my eyes were opened to two perils, the names of which I scarcely knew hitherto and had no notion whatsoever of their terrible significance for the existence of the German people. These two perils were Marxism and Judaism.

For many people the name of Vienna signifies innocent jollity, a festive place for happy mortals. For me, alas, it is a living memory of the saddest period in my life. Even to-day the mention of that city arouses only gloomy thoughts in my mind. Five years of poverty in that Phaecian (Note 5) town. Five years in which, first as a casual labourer and then as a painter of little trifles, I had to earn my daily bread. And a meagre morsel indeed it was, not even sufficient to still the hunger which I constantly felt. That hunger was the faithful guardian which never left me but took part in everything I did. Every book that I bought meant renewed hunger, and every visit I paid to the opera meant the intrusion of that inalienabl companion during the following days. I was always struggling with my unsympathic friend. And yet during that time I learned more than I had ever learned before. Outside my architectural studies and rare visits to the opera, for which I had to deny myself food, I had no other pleasure in life except my books.

I read a great deal then, and I pondered deeply over what I read. All the free time after work was devoted exclusively to study. Thus within a few years I was able to acquire a stock of knowledge which I find useful even to-day.

But more than that. During those years a view of life and a definite outlook on the world took shape in my mind. These became the granite basis of my conduct at that time. Since then I have extended that foundation only very little, and I have changed nothing in it.

On the contrary: I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age--which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life--and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thought and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth.

The life which I had hitherto led at home with my parents differed in little or nothing from that of all the others. I looked forward without apprehension to the morrow, and there was no such thing as a social problem to be faced. Those among whom I passed my young days belonged to the small bourgeois class. Therefore it was a world that had very little contact with the world of genuine manual labourers. For, though at first this may appear astonishing, the ditch which separates that class, which is by no means economically well-off; from the manual labouring class is often deeper than people think. The reason for this division, which we may almost call enmity, lies in the fear that dominates a social group which has only just risen above the level of the manual labourer--a fear lest it may fall back into its old condition or at least be classed with the labourers. Moreover, there is something repulsive in remembering the cultural indigence of that lower class and their rough manners with one another; so that people who are only on the first rung of the social ladder find it unbearable to be forced to have any contact with the cultural level and standard of living out of which they have passed.

And so it happens that very often those who belong to what can really be called the upper classes find it much easier than do the upstarts to descend to and intermingle with their fellow beings on the lowest social level. For by the word upstart I mean everyone who has raised himself through his own efforts to a social level higher than that to which he formerly belonged. In the case of such a person the hard struggle through which he passes often destroys his normal human sympathy. His own fight for existence kills his sensibility for the misery of those who have been left behind.

From this point of view fate had been kind to me. Circumstances forced me to return to that world of poverty and economic insecurity above which my father had raised himself in his early days; and thus the blinkers of a narrow PETIT BOURGEOIS education were torn from my eyes. Now for the first time I learned to know men and I learned to distinguish between empty appearances or brutal manners and the real inner nature of the people who outwardly appeared thus.

At the beginning of the century Vienna had already taken rank among those cities where social conditions are iniquitous. Dazzling riches and loathsome destitution were intermingled in violent contrast. In the centre and in the Inner City one felt the pulsebeat of an Empire which had a population of fifty-two millions, with all the perilous charm of a State made up of multiple nationalities. The dazzling splendour of the Court acted like a magnet on the wealth and intelligence of the whole Empire. And this attraction was further strengthened by the dynastic policy of the Habsburg Monarchy in centralizing everything in itself and for itself.

This centralizing policy was necessary in order to hold together that hotchpotch of heterogeneous nationalities. But the result of it was an extraordinary concentration of higher officials in the city, which was at one and the same time the metropolis and imperial residence.

But Vienna was not merely the political and intellectual centre of the Danubian Monarchy; it was also the commercial centre. Besides the horde of military officers of high rank, State officials, artists and scientists, there was the still vaster horde of workers. Abject poverty confronted the wealth of the aristocracy and the merchant class face to face. Thousands of unemployed loitered in front of the palaces on the Ring Strasse; and below that VIA TRIUMPHALIS of the old Austria the homeless huddled together in the murk and filth of the canals.

There was hardly any other German city in which the social problem could be studied better than in Vienna. But here I must utter a warning against the illusion that this problem can be 'studied' from above downwards. The man who has never been in the clutches of that crushing viper can never know what its poison is. An attempt to study it in any other way will result only in superficial talk and sentimental delusions. Both are harmful. The first because it can never go to the root of the question, the second because it evades the question entirely. I do not know which is the more nefarious: to ignore social distress, as do the majority of those who have been favoured by fortune and those who have risen in the social scale through their own routine labour, or the equally supercilious and often tactless but always genteel condescension displayed by people who make a fad of being charitable and who plume themselves on

'sympathising with the people.' Of course such persons sin more than they can imagine from lack of instinctive understanding. And thus they are astonished to find that the 'social conscience' on which they pride themselves never produces any results, but often causes their good intentions to be resented; and then they talk of the ingratitude of the people.

Such persons are slow to learn that here there is no place for merely social activities and that there can be no expectation of gratitude; for in this connection there is no question at all of distributing favours but essentially a matter of retributive justice. I was protected against the temptation to study the social question in the way just mentioned, for the simple reason that I was forced to live in the midst of poverty-stricken people. Therefore it was not a question of studying the problem objectively, but rather one of testing its effects on myself. Though the rabbit came through the ordeal of the experiment, this must not be taken as evidence of its harmlessness.

When I try to-day to recall the succession of impressions received during that time I find that I can do so only with approximate completeness. Here I shall describe only the more essential impressions and those which personally affected me and often staggered me. And I shall mention the few lessons I then learned from this experience.

At that time it was for the most part not very difficult to find work, because I had to seek work not as a skilled tradesman but as a so-called extra-hand ready to take any job that turned up by chance, just for the sake of earning my daily bread.

Thus I found myself in the same situation as all those emigrants who shake the dust of Europe from their feet, with the cast-iron determination to lay the foundations of a new existence in the New World and acquire for themselves a new home. Liberated from all the paralysing prejudices of class and calling, environment and tradition, they enter any service that opens its doors to them, accepting any work that comes their way, filled more and more with the idea that honest work never disgraced anybody, no matter what kind it may be. And so I was resolved to set both feet in what was for me a new world and push forward on my own road.

I soon found out that there was some kind of work always to be got, but I also learned that it could just as quickly and easily be lost. The uncertainty of being able to earn a regular daily livelihood soon appeared to me as the gloomiest feature in this new life that I had entered.

Although the skilled worker was not so frequently thrown idle on the streets as the unskilled worker, yet the former was by no means protected against the same fate; because though he may not have to face hunger as a result of unemployment due to the lack of demand in the labour market, the lock-out and the strike deprived the skilled worker of the chance to earn his bread. Here the element of uncertainty in steadily earning one's daily bread was the bitterest feature of the whole social-economic system itself.

The country lad who migrates to the big city feels attracted by what has been described as easy work--which it may be in reality--and few working hours. He is especially entranced by the magic glimmer spread over the big cities. Accustomed in the country to earn a steady wage, he has been taught not to quit his former post until a new one is at least in sight. As there is a great scarcity of agricultural labour, the probability of long unemployment in the country has been very small. It is a mistake to presume that the lad who leaves the countryside for the town is not made of such sound material as those who remain at home to work on the land. On the contrary, experience shows that it is the more healthy and more vigorous that emigrate, and not the reverse. Among these emigrants I include not merely those who emigrate to America, but also the servant boy in the country who decides to leave his native village and migrate to the big city where he will be a stranger. He is ready to take the risk of an uncertain fate. In most cases he comes to town with a little money in his pocket and for the first few days he is not discouraged if he should not have the good fortune to find work. But if he finds a job and then loses it in a little while, the case is much worse. To find work anew, especially in winter, is often difficult and indeed sometimes impossible. For the first few weeks life is still bearable He receives his out-of-work money from his trade union and is thus enabled to carry on. But when the last of his own money is gone and his trade union ceases to pay out because of the prolonged unemployment, then comes the real distress.

He now loiters about and is hungry. Often he pawns or sells the last of his belongings. His clothes begin to get shabby and with the increasing poverty of his outward appearance he descends to a lower social level and mixes up with a class of human beings through whom his mind is now poisoned, in addition to his physical misery. Then he has nowhere to sleep and if that happens in winter, which is very often the case, he is in dire distress. Finally he gets work. But the old story repeats itself. A second time the same thing happens. Then a third time; and now it is probably much worse. Little by little he becomes indifferent to this everlasting insecurity. Finally he grows used to the repetition. Thus even a man who is normally of industrious habits grows careless in his whole attitude towards life and gradually becomes an instrument in the hands of unscrupulous people who exploit him for the sake of their own ignoble aims. He has been so often thrown out of employment through no fault of his own that he is now more or less indifferent whether the strike in which he takes part be for the

purpose of securing his economic rights or be aimed at the destruction of the State, the whole social order and even civilization itself. Though the idea of going on strike may not be to his natural liking, yet he joins in it out of sheer indifference.

I saw this process exemplified before my eyes in thousands of cases. And the longer I observed it the greater became my dislike for that mammoth city which greedily attracts men to its bosom, in order to break them mercilessly in the end. When they came they still felt themselves in communion with their own people at home; if they remained that tie was broken.

I was thrown about so much in the life of the metropolis that I experienced the workings of this fate in my own person and felt the effects of it in my own soul. One thing stood out clearly before my eyes: It was the sudden changes from work to idleness and vice versa; so that the constant fluctuations thus caused by earnings and expenditure finally destroyed the 'sense of thrift for many people and also the habit of regulating expenditure in an intelligent way. The body appeared to grow accustomed to the vicissitudes of food and hunger, eating heartily in good times and going hungry in bad. Indeed hunger shatters all plans for rationing expenditure on a regular scale in better times when employment is again found. The reason for this is that the deprivations which the unemployed worker has to endure must be compensated for psychologically by a persistent mental mirage in which he imagines himself eating heartily once again. And this dream develops into such a longing that it turns into a morbid impulse to cast off all self-restraint when work and wages turn up again. Therefore the moment work is found anew he forgets to regulate the expenditure of his earnings but spends them to the full without thinking of to-morrow. This leads to confusion in the little weekly housekeeping budget, because the expenditure is not rationally planned. When the phenomenon which I have mentioned first happens, the earnings will last perhaps for five days instead of seven; on subsequent occasions they will last only for three days; as the habit recurs, the earnings will last scarcely for a day; and finally they will disappear in one night of feasting.

Often there are wife and children at home. And in many cases it happens that these become infected by such a way of living, especially if the husband is good to them and wants to do the best he can for them and loves them in his own way and according to his own lights. Then the week's earnings are spent in common at home within two or three days. The family eat and drink together as long as the money lasts and at the end of the week they hunger together. Then the wife wanders about furtively in the neighbourhood, borrows a little, and runs up small debts with the shopkeepers in an effort to pull through the lean days towards the end of the week. They sit down together to the midday meal with only meagre fare on the table, and often even nothing to eat. They wait for the coming payday, talking of it and making plans; and while they are thus hungry they dream of the plenty that is to come. And so the little children become acquainted with misery in their early years.

But the evil culminates when the husband goes his own way from the beginning of the week and the wife protests, simply out of love for the children. Then there are quarrels and bad feeling and the husband takes to drink according as he becomes estranged from his wife. He now becomes drunk every Saturday. Fighting for her own existence and that of the children, the wife has to hound him along the road from the factory to the tavern in order to get a few shillings from him on payday. Then when he finally comes home, maybe on the Sunday or the Monday, having parted with his last shillings and pence, pitiable scenes follow, scenes that cry out for God's mercy.

I have had actual experience of all this in hundreds of cases. At first I was disgusted and indignant; but later on I came to recognize the whole tragedy of their misfortune and to understand the profound causes of it. They were the unhappy victims of evil circumstances.

Housing conditions were very bad at that time. The Vienna manual labourers lived in surroundings of appalling misery. I shudder even to-day when I think of the woeful dens in which people dwelt, the night shelters and the slums, and all the tenebrous spectacles of ordure, loathsome filth and wickedness.

What will happen one day when hordes of emancipated slaves come forth from these dens of misery to swoop down on their unsuspecting fellow men? For this other world does not think about such a possibility. They have allowed these things to go on without caring and even without suspecting--in their total lack of instinctive understanding--that sooner or later destiny will take its vengeance unless it will have been appeased in time.

To-day I fervidly thank Providence for having sent me to such a school. There I could not refuse to take an interest in matters that did not please me. This school soon taught me a profound lesson.

In order not to despair completely of the people among whom I then lived I had to set on one side the outward appearances of their lives and on the other the reasons why they had developed in that way. Then I could hear everything without discouragement; for those who emerged from all this misfortune and misery, from this filth and outward degradation, were not human beings as such but rather lamentable results of lamentable laws. In my own life similar hardships prevented me from giving way to a pitying sentimentality at the sight of these degraded products which had finally resulted from the pressure of circumstances. No, the sentimental attitude would be the wrong one to adopt.

Even in those days I already saw that there was a two-fold method by which alone it would be possible to bring about an amelioration of these conditions. This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved.

Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation-which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred--and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development.

During my struggle for existence in Vienna I perceived very clearly that the aim of all social activity must never be merely charitable relief, which is ridiculous and useless, but it must rather be a means to find a way of eliminating the fundamental deficiencies in our economic and cultural life--deficiencies which necessarily bring about the degradation of the individual or at least lead him towards such degradation. The difficulty of employing every means, even the most drastic, to eradicate the hostility prevailing among the working classes towards the State is largely due to an attitude of uncertainty in deciding upon the inner motives and causes of this contemporary phenomenon. The grounds of this uncertainty are to be found exclusively in the sense of guilt which each individual feels for having permitted this tragedy of degradation. For that feeling paralyses every effort at making a serious and firm decision to act. And thus because the people whom it concerns are vacillating they are timid and halfhearted in putting into effect even the measures which are indispensable for selfpreservation. When the individual is no longer burdened with his own consciousness of blame in this regard, then and only then will he have that inner tranquillity and outer force to cut off drastically and ruthlessly all the parasite growth and root out the weeds.

But because the Austrian State had almost no sense of social rights or social legislation its inability to abolish those evil excrescences was manifest.

I do not know what it was that appalled me most at that time: the economic misery of those who were then my companions, their crude customs and morals, or the low level of their intellectual culture.

How often our bourgeoisie rises up in moral indignation on hearing from the mouth of some pitiable tramp that it is all the same to him whether he be a German or not and that he will find himself at home wherever he can get enough to keep body and soul together. They protest sternly against such a lack of 'national pride' and strongly express their horror at such sentiments.

But how many people really ask themselves why it is that their own sentiments are better? How many of them understand that their natural pride in being members of so favoured a nation arises from the innumerable succession of instances they have encountered which remind them of the greatness of the Fatherland and the Nation in all spheres of artistic and cultural life? How many of them realize that pride in the Fatherland is largely dependent on knowledge of its greatness in all those spheres? Do our bourgeois circles ever think what a ridiculously meagre share the people have in that knowledge which is a necessary prerequisite for the feeling of pride in one's fatherland?

It cannot be objected here that in other countries similar conditions exist and that nevertheless the working classes in those countries have remained patriotic. Even if that were so, it would be no excuse for our negligent attitude. But it is not so. What we call chauvinistic education--in the case of the French people, for example--is only the excessive exaltation of the greatness of France in all spheres of culture or, as the French say, civilization. The French boy is not educated on purely objective principles. Wherever the importance of the political and cultural greatness of his country is concerned he is taught in the most subjective way that one can imagine.

This education will always have to be confined to general ideas in a large perspective and these ought to be deeply engraven, by constant repetition if necessary, on the memories and feelings of the people.

In our case, however, we are not merely guilty of negative sins of omission but also of positively perverting the little which some individuals had the luck to learn at school. The rats that poison our body-politic gnaw from the hearts and memories of the broad masses even that little which distress and misery have left.

Let the reader try to picture the following:

There is a lodging in a cellar and this lodging consists of two damp rooms. In these rooms a workman and his family live--seven people in all. Let us assume that one of the children is a boy of three years. That is the age at which children first become conscious of the impressions which they receive. In the case of highly gifted people traces of the impressions received in those early years last in the memory up to an advanced age. Now the narrowness and congestion of those living quarters do not conduce to pleasant inter-relations. Thus quarrels and fits of mutual anger arise. These people can hardly be said to live with one another, but rather down on top of one another. The small misunderstandings which disappear of themselves in a home where there is enough space for people to go apart from one another for a while, here become the source of chronic disputes. As far as the children are concerned the situation is tolerable from this point of view. In such conditions they are constantly quarrelling with one another, but the quarrels are quickly and entirely forgotten. But when the parents fall out with one another these daily bickerings often descend to rudeness such as cannot be adequately imagined. The results of such experiences must become apparent later on in the children. One must have practical experience of such a MILIEU so as to be able to picture the state of affairs that arises from these mutual recriminations when the father physically assaults the mother and maltreats her in a fit of drunken rage. At the age of six the child can no longer ignore those sordid details which even an adult would find revolting. Infected with moral poison, bodily undernourished, and the poor little head filled with vermin, the young 'citizen' goes to the primary school. With difficulty he barely learns to read and write. There is no possibility of learning any lessons at home. Quite the contrary. The father and mother themselves talk before the children in the most disparaging way about the teacher and the school and they are much more inclined to insult the teachers than to put their offspring across the knee and knock sound reason into him. What the little fellow hears at home does not tend to increase respect for his human surroundings. Here nothing good is said of human nature as a whole and every institution, from the school to the government, is reviled. Whether religion and morals are concerned or the State and the social order, it is all the same; they are all scoffed at. When the young lad leaves school, at the age of fourteen, it would be difficult to say what are the most striking features of his character, incredible ignorance in so far as real knowledge is concerned or cynical impudence combined with an attitude towards morality which is really startling at so young an age.

What station in life can such a person fill, to whom nothing is sacred, who has never experienced anything noble but, on the contrary, has been intimately acquainted with the lowest kind of human existence? This child of three has got into the habit of reviling all authority by the time he is fifteen. He has been acquainted only with moral filth and vileness, everything being excluded that might stimulate his thought towards higher things. And now this young specimen of humanity enters the school of life.

He leads the same kind of life which was exemplified for him by his father during his childhood. He loiters about and comes home at all hours. He now even black-guards that broken-hearted being who gave him birth. He curses God and the world and finally ends up in a House of Correction for young people. There he gets the final polish.

And his bourgeois contemporaries are astonished at the lack of 'patriotic enthusiasm' which this young 'citizen' manifests.

Day after day the bourgeois world are witnesses to the phenomenon of spreading poison among the people through the instrumentality of the theatre and the cinema, gutter journalism and obscene books; and yet they are astonished at the deplorable 'moral standards' and 'national indifference' of the masses. As if the cinema bilge and the gutter press and suchlike could inculcate knowledge of the greatness of one's country, apart entirely from the earlier education of the individual.

I then came to understand, quickly and thoroughly, what I had never been aware of before. It was the following:

The question of 'nationalizing' a people is first and foremost one of establishing healthy social conditions which will furnish the grounds that are necessary for the education of the individual. For only when family upbringing and school education have inculcated in the individual a knowledge of the cultural and economic and, above all, the political greatness of his own country--then, and then only, will it be possible for him to feel proud of being a citizen of such a country. I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it.

As soon as my interest in social questions was once awakened I began to study them in a fundamental way. A new and hitherto unknown world was thus revealed to me.

In the years 1909-10 I had so far improved my, position that I no longer had to earn my daily bread as a manual labourer. I was now working independently as draughtsman, and painter in water colours. This MÉTIER was a poor one indeed as far as earnings were concerned; for these were only sufficient to meet the bare exigencies of life. Yet it had an interest for me in view of the profession to which I aspired. Moreover, when I came home in the evenings I was now no longer dead-tired as formerly, when I used to be unable to look into a book without falling asleep almost immediately. My present occupation therefore was in line with the profession I aimed at for the future. Moreover, I was master of my own time and could distribute my working-hours now better than formerly. I painted in order to earn my bread, and I studied because I liked it.

Thus I was able to acquire that theoretical knowledge of the social problem which was a necessary complement to what I was learning through actual experience. I studied all the books which I could find that dealt with this question and I thought deeply on what I read. I think that the MILIEU in which I then lived considered me an eccentric person.

Besides my interest in the social question I naturally devoted myself with enthusiasm to the study of architecture. Side by side with music, I considered it queen of the arts. To study it was for me not work but pleasure. I could read or draw until the small hours of the morning without ever getting tired. And I became more and more confident that my dream of a brilliant future would become true, even though I should have to wait long years for its fulfilment. I was firmly convinced that one day I should make a name for myself as an architect.

The fact that, side by side with my professional studies, I took the greatest interest in everything that had to do with politics did not seem to me to signify anything of great importance. On the contrary: I looked upon this practical interest in politics merely as part of an elementary obligation that devolves on every thinking man. Those who have no understanding of the political world around them have no right to criticize or complain. On political questions therefore I still continued to read and study a great deal. But reading had probably a different significance for me from that which it has for the average run of our so-called 'intellectuals'.

I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I should not call them 'well-read people'. Of course they 'know' an immense amount; but their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then--when once read--throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one's daily bread or a calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading. And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live. In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader.

Otherwise only a confused jumble of chaotic notions will result from all this reading. That jumble is not merely useless, but it also tends to make the unfortunate possessor of it conceited. For he seriously considers himself a well-educated person and thinks that he understands something of life. He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas the truth is that every increase in such 'knowledge' draws him more and more away from real life, until he finally ends up in some sanatorium or takes to politics and becomes a parliamentary deputy.

Such a person never succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the opportune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a view to meeting the demands of everyday life. His knowledge is stored in his brain as a literal transcript of the books he has read and the order of succession in which he has read them. And if Fate should one day call upon him to use some of his book-knowledge for certain practical ends in life that very call will have to name the book and give the number of the page; for the poor noodle himself would never be able to find the spot where he gathered the information now called for. But if the page is not mentioned at the critical moment the widely-read intellectual will find himself in a state of hopeless embarrassment. In a high state of agitation he searches for analogous cases and it is almost a dead certainty that he will finally deliver the wrong prescription.

If that is not a correct description, then how can we explain the political achievements of our Parliamentary heroes who hold the highest positions in the government of the country? Otherwise we should have to attribute the doings of such political leaders, not to pathological conditions but simply to malice and chicanery.

On the other hand, one who has cultivated the art of reading will instantly discern, in a book or journal or pamphlet, what ought to be remembered because it meets one's personal needs or is of value as general knowledge. What he thus learns is incorporated in his mental analogue of this or that problem or thing, further correcting the mental picture or enlarging it so that it becomes more exact and precise. Should some practical problem suddenly demand examination or solution, memory will immediately select the opportune information from the mass that has been acquired through years of reading and will place this information at the service of one's powers of judgment so as to get a new and clearer view of the problem in question or produce a definitive solution.

Only thus can reading have any meaning or be worth while.

The speaker, for example, who has not the sources of information ready to hand which are necessary to a proper treatment of his subject is unable to defend his opinions against an opponent, even though those opinions be perfectly sound and true. In every discussion his memory will leave him shamefully in the lurch. He cannot summon up arguments to support his statements or to refute his opponent. So long as the speaker has only to defend himself on his own personal account, the situation is not serious; but the evil comes when Chance places at the head of public affairs such a soi-disant knowit-all, who in reality knows nothing.

From early youth I endeavoured to read books in the right way and I was fortunate in having a good memory and intelligence to assist me. From that point of view my sojourn in Vienna was particularly useful and profitable. My experiences of everyday life there were a constant stimulus to study the most diverse problems from new angles. Inasmuch as I was in a position to put theory to the test of reality and reality to the test of theory, I was safe from the danger of pedantic theorizing on the one hand and, on the other, from being too impressed by the superficial aspects of reality.

The experience of everyday life at that time determined me to make a fundamental theoretical study of two most important questions outside of the social question.

It is impossible to say when I might have started to make a thorough study of the doctrine and characteristics of Marxism were it not for the fact that I then literally ran head foremost into the problem.

What I knew of Social Democracy in my youth was precious little and that little was for the most part wrong. The fact that it led the struggle for universal suffrage and the secret ballot gave me an inner satisfaction; for my reason then told me that this would weaken the Habsburg regime, which I so thoroughly detested. I was convinced that even if it should sacrifice the German element the Danubian State could not continue to exist. Even at the price of a long and slow Slaviz-ation of the Austrian Germans the State would secure no guarantee of a really durable Empire; because it was very questionable if and how far the Slavs possessed the necessary capacity for constructive politics. Therefore I welcomed every movement that might lead towards the final disruption of that impossible State which had decreed that it would stamp out the German character in ten millions of people. The more this babel of tongues wrought discord and disruption, even in the Parliament, the nearer the hour approached for the dissolution of this Babylonian Empire. That would mean the liberation of my German Austrian people, and only then would it become possible for them to be re-united to the Motherland.

Accordingly I had no feelings of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes-which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed--was a further reason why I should speak in favour of Social Democracy rather than against it. But the features that contributed most to estrange me from the Social Democratic movement was its hostile attitude towards the struggle for the conservation of Germanism in Austria, its lamentable cocotting with the Slav 'comrades', who received these approaches favourably as long as any practical advantages were forthcoming but otherwise maintained a haughty reserve, thus giving the importunate mendicants the sort of answer their behaviour deserved.

And so at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was very little known to me, while I looked on 'Social Democracy' and 'Socialism' as synonymous expressions. It was only as the result of a sudden blow from the rough hand of Fate that my eyes were opened to the nature of this unparalleled system for duping the public.

Hitherto my acquaintance with the Social Democratic Party was only that of a mere spectator at some of their mass meetings. I had not the slightest idea of the socialdemocratic teaching or the mentality of its partisans. All of a sudden I was brought face to face with the products of their teaching and what they called their

WELTANSCHAUUNG. In this way a few months sufficed for me to learn something which under other circumstances might have necessitated decades of study--namely, that under the cloak of social virtue and love of one's neighbour a veritable pestilence was spreading abroad and that if this pestilence be not stamped out of the world without delay it may eventually succeed in exterminating the human race.

I first came into contact with the Social Democrats while working in the building trade.

From the very time that I started work the situation was not very pleasant for me. My clothes were still rather decent. I was careful of my speech and I was reserved in manner. I was so occupied with thinking of my own present lot and future possibilities that I did not take much of an interest in my immediate surroundings. I had sought work so that I shouldn't starve and at the same time so as to be able to make further headway with my studies, though this headway might be slow. Possibly I should not have bothered to be interested in my companions were it not that on the third or fourth day an event occurred which forced me to take a definite stand. I was ordered to join the trade union.

At that time I knew nothing about the trades unions. I had had no opportunity of forming an opinion on their utility or inutility, as the case might be. But when I was told that I must join the union I refused. The grounds which I gave for my refusal were simply that I knew nothing about the matter and that anyhow I would not allow myself to be forced into anything. Probably the former reason saved me from being thrown out right away. They probably thought that within a few days I might be converted' and become more docile. But if they thought that they were profoundly mistaken. After two weeks I found it utterly impossible for me to take such a step, even if I had been willing to take it at first. During those fourteen days I came to know my fellow workmen better, and no power in the world could have moved me to join an organization whose representatives had meanwhile shown themselves in a light which I found so unfavourable.

During the first days my resentment was aroused.

At midday some of my fellow workers used to adjourn to the nearest tavern, while the others remained on the building premises and there ate their midday meal, which in most cases was a very scanty one. These were married men. Their wives brought them the midday soup in dilapidated vessels. Towards the end of the week there was a gradual increase in the number of those who remained to eat their midday meal on the building premises. I understood the reason for this afterwards. They now talked politics.

I drank my bottle of milk and ate my morsel of bread somewhere on the outskirts, while I circumspectly studied my environment or else fell to meditating on my own harsh lot. Yet I heard more than enough. And I often thought that some of what they said was meant for my ears, in the hope of bringing me to a decision. But all that I heard had the effect of arousing the strongest antagonism in me. Everything was disparaged--the nation, because it was held to be an invention of the 'capitalist' class (how often I had to listen to that phrase!); the Fatherland, because it was held to be an instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of' the working masses; the authority of the law, because that was a means of holding down the proletariat; religion, as a means of doping the people, so as to exploit them afterwards; morality, as a badge of stupid and sheepish docility. There was nothing that they did not drag in the mud.

At first I remained silent; but that could not last very long. Then I began to take part in the discussion and to reply to their statements. I had to recognize, however, that this was bound to be entirely fruitless, as long as I did not have at least a certain amount of definite information about the questions that were discussed. So I decided to consult the source from which my interlocutors claimed to have drawn their so-called wisdom. I devoured book after book, pamphlet after pamphlet.

Meanwhile, we argued with one another on the building premises. From day to day I was becoming better informed than my companions in the subjects on which they claimed to be experts. Then a day came when the more redoubtable of my adversaries resorted to the most effective weapon they had to replace the force of reason. This was intimidation and physical force. Some of the leaders among my adversaries ordered me to leave the building or else get flung down from the scaffolding. As I was quite alone I could not put up any physical resistance; so I chose the first alternative and departed, richer however by an experience.

I went away full of disgust; but at the same time so deeply moved that it was quite impossible for me to turn my back on the whole situation and think no more about it. When my anger began to calm down the spirit of obstinacy got the upper hand and I decided that at all costs I would get back to work again in the building trade. This decision became all the stronger a few weeks later, when my little savings had entirely run out and hunger clutched me once again in its merciless arms. No alternative was left to me. I got work again and had to leave it for the same reasons as before.

Then I asked myself: Are these men worthy of belonging to a great people? The question was profoundly disturbing; for if the answer were 'Yes', then the struggle to defend one's nationality is no longer worth all the trouble and sacrifice we demand of our best elements if it be in the interests of such a rabble. On the other hand, if the answer had to be 'No--these men are not worthy of the nation', then our nation is poor indeed in men. During those days of mental anguish and deep meditation I saw before my mind the ever-increasing and menacing army of people who could no longer be reckoned as belonging to their own nation.

It was with quite a different feeling, some days later, that I gazed on the interminable ranks, four abreast, of Viennese workmen parading at a mass demonstration. I stood dumbfounded for almost two hours, watching that enormous human dragon which slowly uncoiled itself there before me. When I finally left the square and wandered in the direction of my lodgings I felt dismayed and depressed. On my way I noticed the ARBEITERZEITUNG (The Workman's Journal) in a tobacco shop. This was the chief press-organ of the old Austrian Social Democracy. In a cheap café, where the common people used to foregather and where I often went to read the papers, the

ARBEITERZEITUNG was also displayed. But hitherto I could not bring myself to do more than glance at the wretched thing for a couple of minutes: for its whole tone was a sort of mental vitriol to me. Under the depressing influence of the demonstration I had witnessed, some interior voice urged me to buy the paper in that tobacco shop and read it through. So I brought it home with me and spent the whole evening reading it, despite the steadily mounting rage provoked by this ceaseless outpouring of falsehoods.

I now found that in the social democratic daily papers I could study the inner character of this politico-philosophic system much better than in all their theoretical literature.

For there was a striking discrepancy between the two. In the literary effusions which dealt with the theory of Social Democracy there was a display of high-sounding phraseology about liberty and human dignity and beauty, all promulgated with an air of profound wisdom and serene prophetic assurance; a meticulously-woven glitter of words to dazzle and mislead the reader. On the other hand, the daily Press inculcated this new doctrine of human redemption in the most brutal fashion. No means were too base, provided they could be exploited in the campaign of slander. These journalists were real virtuosos in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form. The theoretical literature was intended for the simpletons of the soi-disant intellectuals belonging to the middle and, naturally, the upper classes. The newspaper propaganda was intended for the masses.

This probing into books and newspapers and studying the teachings of Social Democracy reawakened my love for my own people. And thus what at first seemed an impassable chasm became the occasion of a closer affection.

Having once understood the working of the colossal system for poisoning the popular mind, only a fool could blame the victims of it. During the years that followed I became more independent and, as I did so, I became better able to understand the inner cause of the success achieved by this Social Democratic gospel. I now realized the meaning and purpose of those brutal orders which prohibited the reading of all books and newspapers that were not 'red' and at the same time demanded that only the 'red' meetings should be attended. In the clear light of brutal reality I was able to see what must have been the inevitable consequences of that intolerant teaching.

The PSYCHE of the broad masses is accessible only to what is strong and uncompromising. Like a woman whose inner sensibilities are not so much under the sway of abstract reasoning but are always subject to the influence of a vague emotional longing for the strength that completes her being, and who would rather bow to the strong man than dominate the weakling--in like manner the masses of the people prefer the ruler to the suppliant and are filled with a stronger sense of mental security by a teaching that brooks no rival than by a teaching which offers them a liberal choice. They have very little idea of how to make such a choice and thus they are prone to feel that they have been abandoned. They feel very little shame at being terrorized intellectually and they are scarcely conscious of the fact that their freedom as human beings is impudently abused; and thus they have not the slightest suspicion of the intrinsic fallacy of the whole doctrine. They see only the ruthless force and brutality of its determined utterances, to which they always submit.

IF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE OPPOSED BY A MORE TRUTHFUL

TEACHING, THEN EVEN, THOUGH THE STRUGGLE BE OF THE BITTEREST KIND, THIS TRUTHFUL TEACHING WILL FINALLY PREVAIL PROVIDED IT BE ENFORCED WITH EQUAL RUTHLESSNESS.

Within less than two years I had gained a clear understanding of Social Democracy, in its teaching and the technique of its operations.

I recognized the infamy of that technique whereby the movement carried on a campaign of mental terrorism against the bourgeoisie, who are neither morally nor spiritually equipped to withstand such attacks. The tactics of Social Democracy consisted in opening, at a given signal, a veritable drum-fire of lies and calumnies against the man whom they believed to be the most redoubtable of their adversaries, until the nerves of the latter gave way and they sacrificed the man who was attacked, simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace. But the hope proved always to be a foolish one, for they were never left in peace.

The same tactics are repeated again and again, until fear of these mad dogs exercises, through suggestion, a paralysing effect on their Victims.

Through its own experience Social Democracy learned the value of strength, and for that reason it attacks mostly those in whom it scents stuff of the more stalwart kind, which is indeed a very rare possession. On the other hand it praises every weakling among its adversaries, more or less cautiously, according to the measure of his mental qualities known or presumed. They have less fear of a man of genius who lacks willpower than of a vigorous character with mediocre intelligence and at the same time they highly commend those who are devoid of intelligence and will-power.

The Social Democrats know how to create the impression that they alone are the protectors of peace. In this way, acting very circumspectly but never losing sight of their ultimate goal, they conquer one position after another, at one time by methods of quiet intimidation and at another time by sheer daylight robbery, employing these latter tactics at those moments when public attention is turned towards other matters from which it does not wish to be diverted, or when the public considers an incident too trivial to create a scandal about it and thus provoke the anger of a malignant opponent.

These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human frailties and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be.

I also came to understand that physical intimidation has its significance for the mass as well as for the individual. Here again the Socialists had calculated accurately on the psychological effect.

Intimidation in workshops and in factories, in assembly halls and at mass demonstrations, will always meet with success as long as it does not have to encounter the same kind of terror in a stronger form.

Then of course the Party will raise a horrified outcry, yelling blue murder and appealing to the authority of the State, which they have just repudiated. In doing this their aim generally is to add to the general confusion, so that they may have a better opportunity of reaching their own goal unobserved. Their idea is to find among the higher government officials some bovine creature who, in the stupid hope that he may win the good graces of these awe-inspiring opponents so that they may remember him in case of future eventualities, will help them now to break all those who may oppose this world pest.

The impression which such successful tactics make on the minds of the broad masses, whether they be adherents or opponents, can be estimated only by one who knows the popular mind, not from books but from practical life. For the successes which are thus obtained are taken by the adherents of Social Democracy as a triumphant symbol of the righteousness of their own cause; on the other hand the beaten opponent very often loses faith in the effectiveness of any further resistance.

The more I understood the methods of physical intimidation that were employed, the more sympathy I had for the multitude that had succumbed to it.

I am thankful now for the ordeal which I had to go through at that time; for it was the means of bringing me to think kindly again of my own people, inasmuch as the experience enabled me to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been led astray.

We must look upon the latter simply as victims. I have just now tried to depict a few traits which express the mentality of those on the lowest rung of the social ladder; but my picture would be disproportionate if I do not add that amid the social depths I still found light; for I experienced a rare spirit of self-sacrifice and loyal comradeship among those men, who demanded little from life and were content amid their modest surroundings. This was true especially of the older generation of workmen. And although these qualities were disappearing more and more in the younger generation, owing to the all-pervading influence of the big city, yet among the younger generation also there were many who were sound at the core and who were able to maintain themselves uncontaminated amid the sordid surroundings of their everyday existence. If these men, who in many cases meant well and were upright in themselves, gave the support to the political activities carried on by the common enemies of our people, that was because those decent workpeople did not and could not grasp the downright infamy of the doctrine taught by the socialist agitators. Furthermore, it was because no other section of the community bothered itself about the lot of the working classes. Finally, the social conditions became such that men who otherwise would have acted differently were forced to submit to them, even though unwillingly at first. A day came when poverty gained the upper hand and drove those workmen into the Social Democratic ranks.

On innumerable occasions the bourgeoisie took a definite stand against even the most legitimate human demands of the working classes. That conduct was ill-judged and indeed immoral and could bring no gain whatsoever to the bourgeois class. The result was that the honest workman abandoned the original concept of the trades union organization and was dragged into politics.

There were millions and millions of workmen who began by being hostile to the Social Democratic Party; but their defences were repeatedly stormed and finally they had to surrender. Yet this defeat was due to the stupidity of the bourgeois parties, who had opposed every social demand put forward by the working class. The short-sighted refusal to make an effort towards improving labour conditions, the refusal to adopt measures which would insure the workman in case of accidents in the factories, the refusal to forbid child labour, the refusal to consider protective measures for female workers, especially expectant mothers--all this was of assistance to the Social

Democratic leaders, who were thankful for every opportunity which they could exploit for forcing the masses into their net. Our bourgeois parties can never repair the damage that resulted from the mistake they then made. For they sowed the seeds of hatred when they opposed all efforts at social reform. And thus they gave, at least, apparent grounds to justify the claim put forward by the Social Democrats--namely, that they alone stand up for the interests of the working class.

And this became the principal ground for the moral justification of the actual existence of the Trades Unions, so that the labour organization became from that time onwards the chief political recruiting ground to swell the ranks of the Social Democratic Party.

While thus studying the social conditions around me I was forced, whether I liked it or not, to decide on the attitude I should take towards the Trades Unions. Because I looked upon them as inseparable from the Social Democratic Party, my decision was hasty--

and mistaken. I repudiated them as a matter of course. But on this essential question also Fate intervened and gave me a lesson, with the result that I changed the opinion which I had first formed.

When I was twenty years old I had learned to distinguish between the Trades Union as a means of defending the social rights of the employees and fighting for better living conditions for them and, on the other hand, the Trades Union as a political instrument used by the Party in the class struggle.

The Social Democrats understood the enormous importance of the Trades Union movement. They appropriated it as an instrument and used it with success, while the bourgeois parties failed to understand it and thus lost their political prestige. They thought that their own arrogant VETO would arrest the logical development of the movement and force it into an illogical position. But it is absurd and also untrue to say that the Trades Union movement is in itself hostile to the nation. The opposite is the more correct view. If the activities of the Trades Union are directed towards improving the condition of a class, and succeed in doing so, such activities are not against the Fatherland or the State but are, in the truest sense of the word, national. In that way the trades union organization helps to create the social conditions which are indispensable in a general system of national education. It deserves high recognition when it destroys the psychological and physical germs of social disease and thus fosters the general welfare of the nation.

It is superfluous to ask whether the Trades Union is indispensable.

So long as there are employers who attack social understanding and have wrong ideas of justice and fair play it is not only the right but also the duty of their employees--who are, after all, an integral part of our people--to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the individual. For to safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health.

Both are seriously menaced by dishonourable employers who are not conscious of their duty as members of the national community. Their personal avidity or irresponsibility sows the seeds of future trouble. To eliminate the causes of such a development is an action that surely deserves well of the country.

It must not be answered here that the individual workman is free at any time to escape from the consequences of an injustice which he has actually suffered at the hands of an employer, or which he thinks he has suffered--in other words, he can leave. No. That argument is only a ruse to detract attention from the question at issue. Is it, or is it not, in the interests of the nation to remove the causes of social unrest? If it is, then the fight must be carried on with the only weapons that promise success. But the individual workman is never in a position to stand up against the might of the big employer; for the question here is not one that concerns the triumph of right. If in such a relation right had been recognized as the guiding principle, then the conflict could not have arisen at all. But here it is a question of who is the stronger. If the case were otherwise, the sentiment of justice alone would solve the dispute in an honourable way; or, to put the case more correctly, matters would not have come to such a dispute at all.

No. If unsocial and dishonourable treatment of men provokes resistance, then the stronger party can impose its decision in the conflict until the constitutional legislative authorities do away with the evil through legislation. Therefore it is evident that if the individual workman is to have any chance at all of winning through in the struggle he must be grouped with his fellow workmen and present a united front before the individual employer, who incorporates in his own person the massed strength of the vested interests in the industrial or commercial undertaking which he conducts.

Thus the trades unions can hope to inculcate and strengthen a sense of social responsibility in workaday life and open the road to practical results. In doing this they tend to remove those causes of friction which are a continual source of discontent and complaint.

Blame for the fact that the trades unions do not fulfil this much-desired function must be laid at the doors of those who barred the road to legislative social reform, or rendered such a reform ineffective by sabotaging it through their political influence.

The political bourgeoisie failed to understand--or, rather, they did not wish to understand--the importance of the trades union movement. The Social Democrats accordingly seized the advantage offered them by this mistaken policy and took the labour movement under their exclusive protection, without any protest from the other side. In this way they established for themselves a solid bulwark behind which they could safely retire whenever the struggle assumed a critical aspect. Thus the genuine purpose of the movement gradually fell into oblivion, and was replaced by new objectives. For the Social Democrats never troubled themselves to respect and uphold the original purpose for which the trade unionist movement was founded. They simply took over the Movement, lock, stock and barrel, to serve their own political ends.

Within a few decades the Trades Union Movement was transformed, by the expert hand of Social Democracy, from an instrument which had been originally fashioned for the defence of human rights into an instrument for the destruction of the national economic structure. The interests of the working class were not allowed for a moment to cross the path of this purpose; for in politics the application of economic pressure is always possible if the one side be sufficiently unscrupulous and the other sufficiently inert and docile. In this case both conditions were fulfilled.

By the beginning of the present century the Trades Unionist Movement had already ceased to recognize the purpose for which it had been founded. From year to year it fell more and more under the political control of the Social Democrats, until it finally came to be used as a battering-ram in the class struggle. The plan was to shatter, by means of constantly repeated blows, the economic edifice in the building of which so much time and care had been expended. Once this objective had been reached, the destruction of the State would become a matter of course, because the State would already have been deprived of its economic foundations. Attention to the real interests of the workingclasses, on the part of the Social Democrats, steadily decreased until the cunning leaders saw that it would be in their immediate political interests if the social and cultural demands of the broad masses remained unheeded; for there was a danger that if these masses once felt content they could no longer be employed as mere passive material in the political struggle.

The gloomy prospect which presented itself to the eyes of the CONDOTTIERI of the class warfare, if the discontent of the masses were no longer available as a war weapon, created so much anxiety among them that they suppressed and opposed even the most elementary measures of social reform. And conditions were such that those leaders did not have to trouble about attempting to justify such an illogical policy.

As the masses were taught to increase and heighten their demands the possibility of satisfying them dwindled and whatever ameliorative measures were taken became less and less significant; so that it was at that time possible to persuade the masses that this ridiculous measure in which the most sacred claims of the working-classes were being granted represented a diabolical plan to weaken their fighting power in this easy way and, if possible, to paralyse it. One will not be astonished at the success of these allegations if one remembers what a small measure of thinking power the broad masses possess.

In the bourgeois camp there was high indignation over the bad faith of the Social Democratic tactics; but nothing was done to draw a practical conclusion and organize a counter attack from the bourgeois side. The fear of the Social Democrats, to improve the miserable conditions of the working-classes ought to have induced the bourgeois parties to make the most energetic efforts in this direction and thus snatch from the hands of the class-warfare leaders their most important weapon; but nothing of this kind happened.

Instead of attacking the position of their adversaries the bourgeoisie allowed itself to be pressed and harried. Finally it adopted means that were so tardy and so insignificant that they were ineffective and were repudiated. So the whole situation remained just as it had been before the bourgeois intervention; but the discontent had thereby become more serious.

Like a threatening storm, the 'Free Trades Union' hovered above the political horizon and above the life of each individual. It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror that threatened the security and independence of the national economic structure, the foundations of the State and the liberty of the individual. Above all, it was the 'Free Trades Union' that turned democracy into a ridiculous and scorned phrase, insulted the ideal of liberty and stigmatized that of fraternity with the slogan 'If you will not become our comrade we shall crack your skull'.

It was thus that I then came to know this friend of humanity. During the years that followed my knowledge of it became wider and deeper; but I have never changed anything in that regard.

The more I became acquainted with the external forms of Social Democracy, the greater became my desire to understand the inner nature of its doctrines.

For this purpose the official literature of the Party could not help very much. In discussing economic questions its statements were false and its proofs unsound. In treating of political aims its attitude was insincere. Furthermore, its modern methods of chicanery in the presentation of its arguments were profoundly repugnant to me. Its flamboyant sentences, its obscure and incomprehensible phrases, pretended to contain great thoughts, but they were devoid of thought, and meaningless. One would have to be a decadent Bohemian in one of our modern cities in order to feel at home in that labyrinth of mental aberration, so that he might discover 'intimate experiences' amid the stinking fumes of this literary Dadism. These writers were obviously counting on the proverbial humility of a certain section of our people, who believe that a person who is incomprehensible must be profoundly wise.

In confronting the theoretical falsity and absurdity of that doctrine with the reality of its external manifestations, I gradually came to have a clear idea of the ends at which it aimed.

During such moments I had dark presentiments and feared something evil. I had before me a teaching inspired by egoism and hatred, mathematically calculated to win its victory, but the triumph of which would be a mortal blow to humanity.

Meanwhile I had discovered the relations existing between this destructive teaching and the specific character of a people, who up to that time had been to me almost unknown.

Knowledge of the Jews is the only key whereby one may understand the inner nature and therefore the real aims of Social Democracy.

The man who has come to know this race has succeeded in removing from his eyes the veil through which he had seen the aims and meaning of his Party in a false light; and then, out of the murk and fog of social phrases rises the grimacing figure of Marxism.

To-day it is hard and almost impossible for me to say when the word 'Jew' first began to raise any particular thought in my mind. I do not remember even having heard the word at home during my father's lifetime. If this name were mentioned in a derogatory sense I think the old gentleman would just have considered those who used it in this way as being uneducated reactionaries. In the course of his career he had come to be more or less a cosmopolitan, with strong views on nationalism, which had its effect on me as well. In school, too, I found no reason to alter the picture of things I had formed at home.

At the REALSCHULE I knew one Jewish boy. We were all on our guard in our relations with him, but only because his reticence and certain actions of his warned us to be discreet. Beyond that my companions and myself formed no particular opinions in regard to him.

It was not until I was fourteen or fifteen years old that I frequently ran up against the word 'Jew', partly in connection with political controversies. These references aroused a slight aversion in me, and I could not avoid an uncomfortable feeling which always came over me when I had to listen to religious disputes. But at that time I had no other feelings about the Jewish question.

There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their Faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.

Then I came to Vienna.

Confused by the mass of impressions I received from the architectural surroundings and depressed by my own troubles, I did not at first distinguish between the different social strata of which the population of that mammoth city was composed. Although Vienna then had about two hundred thousand Jews among its population of two millions, I did not notice them. During the first weeks of my sojourn my eyes and my mind were unable to cope with the onrush of new ideas and values. Not until I gradually settled down to my surroundings, and the confused picture began to grow clearer, did I acquire a more discriminating view of my new world. And with that I came up against the Jewish problem.

I will not say that the manner in which I first became acquainted with it was particularly unpleasant for me. In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith. And so I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people. The memory of certain events which happened in the middle ages came into my mind, and I felt that I should not like to see them repeated. Generally speaking, these anti-Semitic newspapers did not belong to the first rank--but I did not then understand the reason of this--and so I regarded them more as the products of jealousy and envy rather than the expression of a sincere, though wrong-headed, feeling.

My own opinions were confirmed by what I considered to be the infinitely more dignified manner in which the really great Press replied to those attacks or simply ignored them, which latter seemed to me the most respectable way.

I diligently read what was generally called the World Press--NEUE FREIE PRESSE, WIENER TAGEBLATT, etc.--and I was astonished by the abundance of information they gave their readers and the impartial way in which they presented particular problems. I appreciated their dignified tone; but sometimes the flamboyancy of the style was unconvincing, and I did not like it. But I attributed all this to the overpowering influence of the world metropolis.

Since I considered Vienna at that time as such a world metropolis, I thought this constituted sufficient grounds to excuse these shortcomings of the Press. But I was frequently disgusted by the grovelling way in which the Vienna Press played lackey to the Court. Scarcely a move took place at the Hofburg which was not presented in glorified colours to the readers. It was a foolish practice, which, especially when it had to do with 'The Wisest Monarch of all Times', reminded one almost of the dance which the mountain cock performs at pairing time to woo his mate. It was all empty nonsense. And I thought that such a policy was a stain on the ideal of liberal democracy. I thought that this way of currying favour at the Court was unworthy of the people. And that was the first blot that fell on my appreciation of the great Vienna Press.

While in Vienna I continued to follow with a vivid interest all the events that were taking place in Germany, whether connected with political or cultural question. I had a feeling of pride and admiration when I compared the rise of the young German Empire with the decline of the Austrian State. But, although the foreign policy of that Empire was a source of real pleasure on the whole, the internal political happenings were not always so satisfactory. I did not approve of the campaign which at that time was being carried on against William II. I looked upon him not only as the German Emperor but, above all, as the creator of the German Navy. The fact that the Emperor was prohibited from speaking in the Reichstag made me very angry, because the prohibition came from a side which in my eyes had no authority to make it. For at a single sitting those same parliamentary ganders did more cackling together than the whole dynasty of Emperors, comprising even the weakest, had done in the course of centuries.

It annoyed me to have to acknowledge that in a nation where any half-witted fellow could claim for himself the right to criticize and might even be let loose on the people as a 'Legislator' in the Reichstag, the bearer of the Imperial Crown could be the subject of a 'reprimand' on the part of the most miserable assembly of drivellers that had ever existed.

I was even more disgusted at the way in which this same Vienna Press salaamed obsequiously before the meanest steed belonging to the Habsburg royal equipage and went off into wild ecstacies of delight if the nag wagged its tail in response. And at the same time these newspapers took up an attitude of anxiety in matters that concerned the German Emperor, trying to cloak their enmity by the serious air they gave themselves. But in my eyes that enmity appeared to be only poorly cloaked. Naturally they protested that they had no intention of mixing in Germany's internal affairs--God forbid! They pretended that by touching a delicate spot in such a friendly way they were fulfilling a duty that devolved upon them by reason of the mutual alliance between the two countries and at the same time discharging their obligations of journalistic truthfulness. Having thus excused themselves about tenderly touching a sore spot, they bored with the finger ruthlessly into the wound.

That sort of thing made my blood boil. And now I began to be more and more on my guard when reading the great Vienna Press.

I had to acknowledge, however, that on such subjects one of the anti-Semitic papers-the DEUTSCHE VOLKSBLATT--acted more decently.

What got still more on my nerves was the repugnant manner in which the big newspapers cultivated admiration for France. One really had to feel ashamed of being a German when confronted by those mellifluous hymns of praise for 'the great culturenation'. This wretched Gallomania more often than once made me throw away one of those 'world newspapers'. I now often turned to the VOLKSBLATT, which was much smaller in size but which treated such subjects more decently. I was not in accord with its sharp anti-Semitic tone; but again and again I found that its arguments gave me grounds for serious thought.

Anyhow, it was as a result of such reading that I came to know the man and the movement which then determined the fate of Vienna. These were Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian Socialist Movement. At the time I came to Vienna I felt opposed to both. I looked on the man and the movement as 'reactionary'.

But even an elementary sense of justice enforced me to change my opinion when I had the opportunity of knowing the man and his work, and slowly that opinion grew into outspoken admiration when I had better grounds for forming a judgment. To-day, as well as then, I hold Dr. Karl Lueger as the most eminent type of German Burgermeister. How many prejudices were thrown over through such a change in my attitude towards the Christian-Socialist Movement!

My ideas about anti-Semitism changed also in the course of time, but that was the change which I found most difficult. It cost me a greater internal conflict with myself, and it was only after a struggle between reason and sentiment that victory began to be decided in favour of the former. Two years later sentiment rallied to the side of reasons and became a faithful guardian and counsellor.

At the time of this bitter struggle, between calm reason and the sentiments in which I had been brought up, the lessons that I learned on the streets of Vienna rendered me invaluable assistance. A time came when I no longer passed blindly along the street of the mighty city, as I had done in the early days, but now with my eyes open not only to study the buildings but also the human beings.

Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?

As was always my habit with such experiences, I turned to books for help in removing my doubts. For the first time in my life I bought myself some anti-Semitic pamphlets for a few pence. But unfortunately they all began with the assumption that in principle the reader had at least a certain degree of information on the Jewish question or was even familiar with it. Moreover, the tone of most of these pamphlets was such that I became doubtful again, because the statements made were partly superficial and the proofs extraordinarily unscientific. For weeks, and indeed for months, I returned to my old way of thinking. The subject appeared so enormous and the accusations were so farreaching that I was afraid of dealing with it unjustly and so I became again anxious and uncertain.

Naturally I could no longer doubt that here there was not a question of Germans who happened to be of a different religion but rather that there was question of an entirely different people. For as soon as I began to investigate the matter and observe the Jews, then Vienna appeared to me in a different light. Wherever I now went I saw Jews, and the more I saw of them the more strikingly and clearly they stood out as a different people from the other citizens. Especially the Inner City and the district northwards from the Danube Canal swarmed with a people who, even in outer appearance, bore no similarity to the Germans.

But any indecision which I may still have felt about that point was finally removed by the activities of a certain section of the Jews themselves. A great movement, called Zionism, arose among them. Its aim was to assert the national character of Judaism, and the movement was strongly represented in Vienna.

To outward appearances it seemed as if only one group of Jews championed this movement, while the great majority disapproved of it, or even repudiated it. But an investigation of the situation showed that those outward appearances were purposely misleading. These outward appearances emerged from a mist of theories which had been produced for reasons of expediency, if not for purposes of downright deception. For that part of Jewry which was styled Liberal did not disown the Zionists as if they were not members of their race but rather as brother Jews who publicly professed their faith in an unpractical way, so as to create a danger for Jewry itself.

Thus there was no real rift in their internal solidarity.

This fictitious conflict between the Zionists and the Liberal Jews soon disgusted me; for it was false through and through and in direct contradiction to the moral dignity and immaculate character on which that race had always prided itself.

Cleanliness, whether moral or of another kind, had its own peculiar meaning for these people. That they were water-shy was obvious on looking at them and, unfortunately, very often also when not looking at them at all. The odour of those people in caftans often used to make me feel ill. Beyond that there were the unkempt clothes and the ignoble exterior.

All these details were certainly not attractive; but the revolting feature was that beneath their unclean exterior one suddenly perceived the moral mildew of the chosen race.

What soon gave me cause for very serious consideration were the activities of the Jews in certain branches of life, into the mystery of which I penetrated little by little. Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate? On putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden light.

In my eyes the charge against Judaism became a grave one the moment I discovered the

Jewish activities in the Press, in art, in literature and the theatre. All unctuous protests were now more or less futile. One needed only to look at the posters announcing the hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and study the names of the authors who were highly lauded there in order to become permanently adamant on Jewish questions. Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected. It was worse than the Black Plague of long ago. And in what mighty doses this poison was manufactured and distributed. Naturally, the lower the moral and intellectual level of such an author of artistic products the more inexhaustible his fecundity. Sometimes it went so far that one of these fellows, acting like a sewage pump, would shoot his filth directly in the face of other members of the human race. In this connection we must remember there is no limit to the number of such people. One ought to realize that for one, Goethe, Nature may bring into existence ten thousand such despoilers who act as the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls. It was a terrible thought, and yet it could not be avoided, that the greater number of the Jews seemed specially destined by Nature to play this shameful part.

And is it for this reason that they can be called the chosen people?

I began then to investigate carefully the names of all the fabricators of these unclean products in public cultural life. The result of that inquiry was still more disfavourable to the attitude which I had hitherto held in regard to the Jews. Though my feelings might rebel a thousand time, reason now had to draw its own conclusions.

The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the account of people who formed scarcely one per cent. of the nation--that fact could not be gainsaid. It was there, and had to be admitted. Then I began to examine my favourite 'World Press', with that fact before my mind.

The deeper my soundings went the lesser grew my respect for that Press which I formerly admired. Its style became still more repellent and I was forced to reject its ideas as entirely shallow and superficial. To claim that in the presentation of facts and views its attitude was impartial seemed to me to contain more falsehood than truth. The writers were--Jews.

Thousands of details that I had scarcely noticed before seemed to me now to deserve attention. I began to grasp and understand things which I had formerly looked at in a different light.

I saw the Liberal policy of that Press in another light. Its dignified tone in replying to the attacks of its adversaries and its dead silence in other cases now became clear to me as part of a cunning and despicable way of deceiving the readers. Its brilliant theatrical criticisms always praised the Jewish authors and its adverse, criticism was reserved exclusively for the Germans.

The light pin-pricks against William II showed the persistency of its policy, just as did its systematic commendation of French culture and civilization. The subject matter of the feuilletons was trivial and often pornographic. The language of this Press as a whole had the accent of a foreign people. The general tone was openly derogatory to the Germans and this must have been definitely intentional.

What were the interests that urged the Vienna Press to adopt such a policy? Or did they do so merely by chance? In attempting to find an answer to those questions I gradually became more and more dubious.

Then something happened which helped me to come to an early decision. I began to see through the meaning of a whole series of events that were taking place in other branches of Viennese life. All these were inspired by a general concept of manners and morals which was openly put into practice by a large section of the Jews and could be established as attributable to them. Here, again, the life which I observed on the streets taught me what evil really is.

The part which the Jews played in the social phenomenon of prostitution, and more especially in the white slave traffic, could be studied here better than in any other WestEuropean city, with the possible exception of certain ports in Southern France. Walking by night along the streets of the Leopoldstadt, almost at every turn whether one wished it or not, one witnessed certain happenings of whose existence the Germans knew nothing until the War made it possible and indeed inevitable for the soldiers to see such things on the Eastern front.

A cold shiver ran down my spine when I first ascertained that it was the same kind of cold-blooded, thick-skinned and shameless Jew who showed his consummate skill in conducting that revolting exploitation of the dregs of the big city. Then I became fired with wrath.

I had now no more hesitation about bringing the Jewish problem to light in all its details. No. Henceforth I was determined to do so. But as I learned to track down the Jew in all the different spheres of cultural and artistic life, and in the various manifestations of this life everywhere, I suddenly came upon him in a position where I had least expected to find him. I now realized that the Jews were the leaders of Social Democracy. In face of that revelation the scales fell from my eyes. My long inner struggle was at an end.

In my relations with my fellow workmen I was often astonished to find how easily and often they changed their opinions on the same questions, sometimes within a few days and sometimes even within the course of a few hours. I found it difficult to understand how men who always had reasonable ideas when they spoke as individuals with one another suddenly lost this reasonableness the moment they acted in the mass. That phenomenon often tempted one almost to despair. I used to dispute with them for hours and when I succeeded in bringing them to what I considered a reasonable way of thinking I rejoiced at my success. But next day I would find that it had been all in vain. It was saddening to think I had to begin it all over again. Like a pendulum in its eternal sway, they would fall back into their absurd opinions.

I was able to understand their position fully. They were dissatisfied with their lot and cursed the fate which had hit them so hard. They hated their employers, whom they looked upon as the heartless administrators of their cruel destiny. Often they used abusive language against the public officials, whom they accused of having no sympathy with the situation of the working people. They made public protests against the cost of living and paraded through the streets in defence of their claims. At least all this could be explained on reasonable grounds. But what was impossible to understand was the boundless hatred they expressed against their own fellow citizens, how they disparaged their own nation, mocked at its greatness, reviled its history and dragged the names of its most illustrious men in the gutter.

This hostility towards their own kith and kin, their own native land and home was as irrational as it was incomprehensible. It was against Nature.

One could cure that malady temporarily, but only for some days or at least some weeks. But on meeting those whom one believed to have been converted one found that they had become as they were before. That malady against Nature held them once again in its clutches.

I gradually discovered that the Social Democratic Press was predominantly controlled by Jews. But I did not attach special importance to this circumstance, for the same state of affairs existed also in other newspapers. But there was one striking fact in this connection. It was that there was not a single newspaper with which Jews were connected that could be spoken of as National, in the meaning that my education and convictions attached to that word.

Making an effort to overcome my natural reluctance, I tried to read articles of this nature published in the Marxist Press; but in doing so my aversion increased all the more. And then I set about learning something of the people who wrote and published this mischievous stuff. From the publisher downwards, all of them were Jews. I recalled to mind the names of the public leaders of Marxism, and then I realized that most of them belonged to the Chosen Race--the Social Democratic representatives in the Imperial Cabinet as well as the secretaries of the Trades Unions and the street agitators. Everywhere the same sinister picture presented itself. I shall never forget the row of names--Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, and others. One fact became quite evident to me. It was that this alien race held in its hands the leadership of that Social Democratic Party with whose minor representatives I had been disputing for months past. I was happy at last to know for certain that the Jew is not a German.

Thus I finally discovered who were the evil spirits leading our people astray. The sojourn in Vienna for one year had proved long enough to convince me that no worker is so rooted in his preconceived notions that he will not surrender them in face of better and clearer arguments and explanations. Gradually I became an expert in the doctrine of the Marxists and used this knowledge as an instrument to drive home my own firm convictions. I was successful in nearly every case. The great masses can be rescued, but a lot of time and a large share of human patience must be devoted to such work.

But a Jew can never be rescued from his fixed notions.

It was then simple enough to attempt to show them the absurdity of their teaching. Within my small circle I talked to them until my throat ached and my voice grew hoarse. I believed that I could finally convince them of the danger inherent in the Marxist follies. But I only achieved the contrary result. It seemed to me that immediately the disastrous effects of the Marxist Theory and its application in practice became evident, the stronger became their obstinacy.

The more I debated with them the more familiar I became with their argumentative tactics. At the outset they counted upon the stupidity of their opponents, but when they got so entangled that they could not find a way out they played the trick of acting as innocent simpletons. Should they fail, in spite of their tricks of logic, they acted as if they could not understand the counter arguments and bolted away to another field of discussion. They would lay down truisms and platitudes; and, if you accepted these, then they were applied to other problems and matters of an essentially different nature from the original theme. If you faced them with this point they would escape again, and you could not bring them to make any precise statement. Whenever one tried to get a firm grip on any of these apostles one's hand grasped only jelly and slime which slipped through the fingers and combined again into a solid mass a moment afterwards. If your adversary felt forced to give in to your argument, on account of the observers present, and if you then thought that at last you had gained ground, a surprise was in store for you on the following day. The Jew would be utterly oblivious to what had happened the day before, and he would start once again by repeating his former absurdities, as if nothing had happened. Should you become indignant and remind him of yesterday's defeat, he pretended astonishment and could not remember anything, except that on the previous day he had proved that his statements were correct. Sometimes I was dumbfounded. I do not know what amazed me the more--the abundance of their verbiage or the artful way in which they dressed up their falsehoods. I gradually came to hate them.

Yet all this had its good side; because the more I came to know the individual leaders, or at least the propagandists, of Social Democracy, my love for my own people increased correspondingly. Considering the Satanic skill which these evil counsellors displayed, how could their unfortunate victims be blamed? Indeed, I found it extremely difficult myself to be a match for the dialectical perfidy of that race. How futile it was to try to win over such people with argument, seeing that their very mouths distorted the truth, disowning the very words they had just used and adopting them again a few moments afterwards to serve their own ends in the argument! No. The more I came to know the Jew, the easier it was to excuse the workers.

In my opinion the most culpable were not to be found among the workers but rather among those who did not think it worth while to take the trouble to sympathize with their own kinsfolk and give to the hard-working son of the national family what was his by the iron logic of justice, while at the same time placing his seducer and corrupter against the wall.

Urged by my own daily experiences, I now began to investigate more thoroughly the sources of the Marxist teaching itself. Its effects were well known to me in detail. As a result of careful observation, its daily progress had become obvious to me. And one needed only a little imagination in order to be able to forecast the consequences which must result from it. The only question now was: Did the founders foresee the effects of their work in the form which those effects have shown themselves to-day, or were the founders themselves the victims of an error? To my mind both alternatives were possible.

If the second question must be answered in the affirmative, then it was the duty of every thinking person to oppose this sinister movement with a view to preventing it from producing its worst results. But if the first question must be answered in the affirmative, then it must be admitted that the original authors of this evil which has infected the nations were devils incarnate. For only in the brain of a monster, and not that of a man, could the plan of this organization take shape whose workings must finally bring about the collapse of human civilization and turn this world into a desert waste.

Such being the case the only alternative left was to fight, and in that fight to employ all the weapons which the human spirit and intellect and will could furnish leaving it to Fate to decide in whose favour the balance should fall.

And so I began to gather information about the authors of this teaching, with a view to studying the principles of the movement. The fact that I attained my object sooner than I could have anticipated was due to the deeper insight into the Jewish question which I then gained, my knowledge of this question being hitherto rather superficial. This newly acquired knowledge alone enabled me to make a practical comparison between the real content and the theoretical pretentiousness of the teaching laid down by the apostolic founders of Social Democracy; because I now understood the language of the Jew. I realized that the Jew uses language for the purpose of dissimulating his thought or at least veiling it, so that his real aim cannot be discovered by what he says but rather by reading between the lines. This knowledge was the occasion of the greatest inner revolution that I had yet experienced. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan I became an out-and-out anti-Semite.

Only on one further occasion, and that for the last time, did I give way to oppressing thoughts which caused me some moments of profound anxiety.

As I critically reviewed the activities of the Jewish people throughout long periods of history I became anxious and asked myself whether for some inscrutable reasons beyond the comprehension of poor mortals such as ourselves, Destiny may not have irrevocably decreed that the final victory must go to this small nation? May it not be that this people which has lived only for the earth has been promised the earth as a recompense? is our right to struggle for our own self-preservation based on reality, or is it a merely subjective thing? Fate answered the question for me inasmuch as it led me to make a detached and exhaustive inquiry into the Marxist teaching and the activities of the Jewish people in connection with it.

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism repudiates the aristocratic principle of Nature and substitutes for it the eternal privilege of force and energy, numerical mass and its dead weight. Thus it denies the individual worth of the human personality, impugns the teaching that nationhood and race have a primary significance, and by doing this it takes away the very foundations of human existence and human civilization. If the Marxist teaching were to be accepted as the foundation of the life of the universe, it would lead to the disappearance of all order that is conceivable to the human mind. And thus the adoption of such a law would provoke chaos in the structure of the greatest organism that we know, with the result that the inhabitants of this earthly planet would finally disappear.

Should the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, triumph over the people of this world, his Crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind, and this planet will once again follow its orbit through ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago.

And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.

[Note 5. The Phaecians were a legendary people, mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. They were supposed to live on some unknown island in the Eastern Mediterranean, sometimes suggested to be Corcyra, the modern Corfu. They loved good living more than work, and so the name Phaecian has come to be a synonym for parasite.]

Chapter 3

Political Reflections Arising Out Of My Sojourn In Vienna

GENERALLY SPEAKING a man should not publicly take part in politics before he has reached the age of thirty, though, of course, exceptions must be made in the case of those who are naturally gifted with extraordinary political abilities. That at least is my opinion to-day. And the reason for it is that until he reaches his thirtieth year or thereabouts a man's mental development will mostly consist in acquiring and sifting such knowledge as is necessary for the groundwork of a general platform from which he can examine the different political problems that arise from day to day and be able to adopt a definite attitude towards each. A man must first acquire a fund of general ideas and fit them together so as to form an organic structure of personal thought or outlook on life--a WELTANSCHAUUNG. Then he will have that mental equipment without which he cannot form his own judgments on particular questions of the day, and he will have acquired those qualities that are necessary for consistency and steadfastness in the formation of political opinions. Such a man is now qualified, at least subjectively, to take his part in the political conduct of public affairs.

If these pre-requisite conditions are not fulfilled, and if a man should enter political life without this equipment, he will run a twofold risk. In the first place, he may find during the course of events that the stand which he originally took in regard to some essential question was wrong. He will now have to abandon his former position or else stick to it against his better knowledge and riper wisdom and after his reason and convictions have already proved it untenable. If he adopt the former line of action he will find himself in a difficult personal situation; because in giving up a position hitherto maintained he will appear inconsistent and will have no right to expect his followers to remain as loyal to his leadership as they were before. And, as regards the followers themselves, they may easily look upon their leader's change of policy as showing a lack of judgment inherent in his character. Moreover, the change must cause in them a certain feeling of discomfiture VIS-À-VIS those whom the leader formerly opposed.

If he adopts the second alternative--which so very frequently happens to-day--then public pronouncements of the leader have no longer his personal persuasion to support them. And the more that is the case the defence of his cause will be all the more hollow and superficial. He now descends to the adoption of vulgar means in his defence. While he himself no longer dreams seriously of standing by his political protestations to the last--for no man will die in defence of something in which he does not believe--he makes increasing demands on his followers. Indeed, the greater be the measure of his own insincerity, the more unfortunate and inconsiderate become his claims on his party adherents. Finally, he throws aside the last vestiges of true leadership and begins to play politics. This means that he becomes one of those whose only consistency is their inconsistency, associated with overbearing insolence and oftentimes an artful mendacity developed to a shamelessly high degree.

Should such a person, to the misfortune of all decent people, succeed in becoming a parliamentary deputy it will be clear from the outset that for him the essence of political activity consists in a heroic struggle to keep permanent hold on this milk-bottle as a source of livelihood for himself and his family. The more his wife and children are dependent on him, the more stubbornly will he fight to maintain for himself the representation of his parliamentary constituency. For that reason any other person who gives evidence of political capacity is his personal enemy. In every new movement he will apprehend the possible beginning of his own downfall. And everyone who is a better man than himself will appear to him in the light of a menace.

I shall subsequently deal more fully with the problem to which this kind of parliamentary vermin give rise.

When a man has reached his thirtieth year he has still a great deal to learn. That is obvious. But henceforward what he learns will principally be an amplification of his basic ideas; it will be fitted in with them organically so as to fill up the framework of the fundamental WELTANSCHAUUNG which he already possesses. What he learns anew will not imply the abandonment of principles already held, but rather a deeper knowledge of those principles. And thus his colleagues will never have the discomforting feeling that they have been hitherto falsely led by him. On the contrary, their confidence is increased when they perceive that their leader's qualities are steadily developing along the lines of an organic growth which results from the constant assimilation of new ideas; so that the followers look upon this process as signifying an enrichment of the doctrines in which they themselves believe, in their eyes every such development is a new witness to the correctness of that whole body of opinion which has hitherto been held.

A leader who has to abandon the platform founded on his general principles, because he recognizes the foundation as false, can act with honour only when he declares his readiness to accept the final consequences of his erroneous views. In such a case he ought to refrain from taking public part in any further political activity. Having once gone astray on essential things he may possibly go astray a second time. But, anyhow, he has no right whatsoever to expect or demand that his fellow citizens should continue to give him their support.

How little such a line of conduct commends itself to our public leaders nowadays is proved by the general corruption prevalent among the cabal which at the present moment feels itself called to political leadership. In the whole cabal there is scarcely one who is properly equipped for this task.

Although in those days I used to give more time than most others to the consideration of political question, yet I carefully refrained from taking an open part in politics. Only to a small circle did I speak of those things which agitated my mind or were the cause of constant preoccupation for me. The habit of discussing matters within such a restricted group had many advantages in itself. Rather than talk at them, I learned to feel my way into the modes of thought and views of those men around me. Oftentimes such ways of thinking and such views were quite primitive. Thus I took every possible occasion to increase my knowledge of men.

Nowhere among the German people was the opportunity for making such a study so favourable as in Vienna.

In the old Danubian Monarchy political thought was wider in its range and had a richer variety of interests than in the Germany of that epoch--excepting certain parts of Prussia, Hamburg and the districts bordering on the North Sea. When I speak of

Austria here I mean that part of the great Habsburg Empire which, by reason of its German population, furnished not only the historic basis for the formation of this State but whose population was for several centuries also the exclusive source of cultural life in that political system whose structure was so artificial. As time went on the stability of the Austrian State and the guarantee of its continued existence depended more and more on the maintenance of this germ-cell of that Habsburg Empire.

The hereditary imperial provinces constituted the heart of the Empire. And it was this heart that constantly sent the blood of life pulsating through the whole political and cultural system. Corresponding to the heart of the Empire, Vienna signified the brain and the will. At that time Vienna presented an appearance which made one think of her as an enthroned queen whose authoritative sway united the conglomeration of heterogenous nationalities that lived under the Habsburg sceptre. The radiant beauty of the capital city made one forget the sad symptoms of senile decay which the State manifested as a whole.

Though the Empire was internally rickety because of the terrific conflict going on between the various nationalities, the outside world--and Germany in particular--saw only that lovely picture of the city. The illusion was all the greater because at that time Vienna seemed to have risen to its highest pitch of splendour. Under a Mayor, who had the true stamp of administrative genius, the venerable residential City of the Emperors of the old Empire seemed to have the glory of its youth renewed. The last great German who sprang from the ranks of the people that had colonized the East Mark was not a 'statesman', in the official sense. This Dr. Luegar, however, in his rôle as Mayor of 'the Imperial Capital and Residential City', had achieved so much in almost all spheres of municipal activity, whether economic or cultural, that the heart of the whole Empire throbbed with renewed vigour. He thus proved himself a much greater statesman than the so-called 'diplomats' of that period.

The fact that this political system of heterogeneous races called AUSTRIA, finally broke down is no evidence whatsoever of political incapacity on the part of the German element in the old East Mark. The collapse was the inevitable result of an impossible situation. Ten million people cannot permanently hold together a State of fifty millions, composed of different and convicting nationalities, unless certain definite pre-requisite conditions are at hand while there is still time to avail of them.

The German-Austrian had very big ways of thinking. Accustomed to live in a great Empire, he had a keen sense of the obligations incumbent on him in such a situation. He was the only member of the Austrian State who looked beyond the borders of the narrow lands belonging to the Crown and took in all the frontiers of the Empire in the sweep of his mind. Indeed when destiny severed him from the common Fatherland he tried to master the tremendous task which was set before him as a consequence. This task was to maintain for the German-Austrians that patrimony which, through innumerable struggles, their ancestors had originally wrested from the East. It must be remembered that the German-Austrians could not put their undivided strength into this effort, because the hearts and minds of the best among them were constantly turning back towards their kinsfolk in the Motherland, so that only a fraction of their energy remained to be employed at home.

The mental horizon of the German-Austrian was comparatively broad. His commercial interests comprised almost every section of the heterogeneous Empire. The conduct of almost all important undertakings was in his hands. He provided the State, for the most part, with its leading technical experts and civil servants. He was responsible for carrying on the foreign trade of the country, as far as that sphere of activity was not under Jewish control, The German-Austrian exclusively represented the political cement that held the State together. His military duties carried him far beyond the narrow frontiers of his homeland. Though the recruit might join a regiment made up of the German element, the regiment itself might be stationed in Herzegovina as well as in Vienna or Galicia. The officers in the Habsburg armies were still Germans and so was the predominating element in the higher branches of the civil service. Art and science were in German hands. Apart from the new artistic trash, which might easily have been produced by a negro tribe, all genuine artistic inspiration came from the German section of the population. In music, architecture, sculpture and painting, Vienna abundantly supplied the entire Dual Monarchy. And the source never seemed to show signs of a possible exhaustion. Finally, it was the German element that determined the conduct of foreign policy, though a small number of Hungarians were also active in that field.

All efforts, however, to save the unity of the State were doomed to end in failure, because the essential pre-requisites were missing.

There was only one possible way to control and hold in check the centrifugal forces of the different and differing nationalities. This way was: to govern the Austrian State and organize it internally on the principle of centralization. In no other way imaginable could the existence of that State be assured.

Now and again there were lucid intervals in the higher ruling quarters when this truth was recognized. But it was soon forgotten again, or else deliberately ignored, because of the difficulties to be overcome in putting it into practice. Every project which aimed at giving the Empire a more federal shape was bound to be ineffective because there was no strong central authority which could exercise sufficient power within the State to hold the federal elements together. It must be remembered in this connection that conditions in Austria were quite different from those which characterized the German State as founded by Bismarck. Germany was faced with only one difficulty, which was that of transforming the purely political traditions, because throughout the whole of Bismarck's Germany there was a common cultural basis. The German Empire contained only members of one and the same racial or national stock, with the exception of a few minor foreign fragments.

Demographic conditions in Austria were quite the reverse. With the exception of Hungary there was no political tradition, coming down from a great past, in any of the various affiliated countries. If there had been, time had either wiped out all traces of it, or at least, rendered them obscure. Moreover, this was the epoch when the principle of nationality began to be in ascendant; and that phenomenon awakened the national instincts in the various countries affiliated under the Habsburg sceptre. It was difficult to control the action of these newly awakened national forces; because, adjacent to the frontiers of the Dual Monarchy, new national States were springing up whose people were of the same or kindred racial stock as the respective nationalities that constituted the Habsburg Empire. These new States were able to exercise a greater influence than the German element.

Even Vienna could not hold out for a lengthy period in this conflict. When Budapest had developed into a metropolis a rival had grown up whose mission was, not to help in holding together the various divergent parts of the Empire, but rather to strengthen one part. Within a short time Prague followed the example of Budapest; and later on came Lemberg, Laibach and others. By raising these places which had formerly been provincial towns to the rank of national cities, rallying centres were provided for an independent cultural life. Through this the local national instincts acquired a spiritual foundation and therewith gained a more profound hold on the people. The time was bound to come when the particularist interests of those various countries would become stronger than their common imperial interests. Once that stage had been reached, Austria's doom was sealed.

The course of this development was clearly perceptible since the death of Joseph II. Its rapidity depended on a number of factors, some of which had their source in the Monarchy itself; while others resulted from the position which the Empire had taken in foreign politics.

It was impossible to make anything like a successful effort for the permanent consolidation of the Austrian State unless a firm and persistent policy of centralization were put into force. Before everything else the principle should have been adopted that only one common language could be used as the official language of the State. Thus it would be possible to emphasize the formal unity of that imperial commonwealth. And thus the administration would have in its hands a technical instrument without which the State could not endure as a political unity. In the same way the school and other forms of education should have been used to inculcate a feeling of common citizenship. Such an objective could not be reached within ten or twenty years. The effort would have to be envisaged in terms of centuries; just as in all problems of colonization, steady perseverance is a far more important element than the output of energetic effort at the moment.

It goes without saying that in such circumstances the country must be governed and administered by strictly adhering to the principle of uniformity.

For me it was quite instructive to discover why this did not take place, or rather why it was not done. Those who were guilty of the omission must be held responsible for the break-up of the Habsburg Empire.

More than any other State, the existence of the old Austria depended on a strong and capable Government. The Habsburg Empire lacked ethnical uniformity, which constitutes the fundamental basis of a national State and will preserve the existence of such a State even though the ruling power should be grossly inefficient. When a State is composed of a homogeneous population, the natural inertia of such a population will hold the Stage together and maintain its existence through astonishingly long periods of misgovernment and maladministration. It may often seem as if the principle of life had died out in such a body-politic; but a time comes when the apparent corpse rises up and displays before the world an astonishing manifestation of its indestructible vitality.

But the situation is utterly different in a country where the population is not homogeneous, where there is no bond of common blood but only that of one ruling hand. Should the ruling hand show signs of weakness in such a State the result will not be to cause a kind of hibernation of the State but rather to awaken the individualist instincts which are slumbering in the ethnological groups. These instincts do not make themselves felt as long as these groups are dominated by a strong central will-togovern. The danger which exists in these slumbering separatist instincts can be rendered more or less innocuous only through centuries of common education, common traditions and common interests. The younger such States are, the more their existence will depend on the ability and strength of the central government. If their foundation was due only to the work of a strong personality or a leader who is a man of genius, in many cases they will break up as soon as the founder disappears; because, though great, he stood alone. But even after centuries of a common education and experiences these separatist instincts I have spoken of are not always completely overcome. They may be only dormant and may suddenly awaken when the central government shows weakness and the force of a common education as well as the prestige of a common tradition prove unable to withstand the vital energies of separatist nationalities forging ahead towards the shaping of their own individual existence.

The failure to see the truth of all this constituted what may be called the tragic crime of the Habsburg rulers.

Only before the eyes of one Habsburg ruler, and that for the last time, did the hand of Destiny hold aloft the torch that threw light on the future of his country. But the torch was then extinguished for ever.

Joseph II, Roman Emperor of the German nation, was filled with a growing anxiety when he realized the fact that his House was removed to an outlying frontier of his Empire and that the time would soon be at hand when it would be overturned and engulfed in the whirlpool caused by that Babylon of nationalities, unless something was done at the eleventh hour to overcome the dire consequences resulting from the negligence of his ancestors. With superhuman energy this 'Friend of Mankind' made every possible effort to counteract the effects of the carelessness and thoughtlessness of his predecessors. Within one decade he strove to repair the damage that had been done through centuries. If Destiny had only granted him forty years for his labours, and if only two generations had carried on the work which he had started, the miracle might have been performed. But when he died, broken in body and spirit after ten years of rulership, his work sank with him into the grave and rests with him there in the Capucin Crypt, sleeping its eternal sleep, having never again showed signs of awakening.

His successors had neither the ability nor the will-power necessary for the task they had to face.

When the first signs of a new revolutionary epoch appeared in Europe they gradually scattered the fire throughout Austria. And when the fire began to glow steadily it was fed and fanned not by the social or political conditions but by forces that had their origin in the nationalist yearnings of the various ethnic groups.

The European revolutionary movement of 1848 primarily took the form of a class conflict in almost every other country, but in Austria it took the form of a new racial struggle. In so far as the German-Austrians there forgot the origins of the movement, or perhaps had failed to recognize them at the start and consequently took part in the revolutionary uprising, they sealed their own fate. For they thus helped to awaken the spirit of Western Democracy which, within a short while, shattered the foundations of their own existence.

The setting up of a representative parliamentary body, without insisting on the preliminary that only one language should be used in all public intercourse under the State, was the first great blow to the predominance of the German element in the Dual Monarchy. From that moment the State was also doomed to collapse sooner or later. All that followed was nothing but the historical liquidation of an Empire.

To watch that process of progressive disintegration was a tragic and at the same time an instructive experience. The execution of history's decree was carried out in thousands of details. The fact that great numbers of people went about blindfolded amid the manifest signs of dissolution only proves that the gods had decreed the destruction of Austria.

I do not wish to dwell on details because that would lie outside the scope of this book. I want to treat in detail only those events which are typical among the causes that lead to the decline of nations and States and which are therefore of importance to our present age. Moreover, the study of these events helped to furnish the basis of my own political outlook.

Among the institutions which most clearly manifested unmistakable signs of decay, even to the weak-sighted Philistine, was that which, of all the institutions of State, ought to have been the most firmly founded--I mean the Parliament, or the Reichsrat (Imperial Council) as it was called in Austria.

The pattern for this corporate body was obviously that which existed in England, the land of classic democracy. The whole of that excellent organization was bodily transferred to Austria with as little alteration as possible.

As the Austrian counterpart to the British two-chamber system a Chamber of Deputies and a House of Lords (HERRENHAUS) were established in Vienna. The Houses themselves, considered as buildings were somewhat different. When Barry built his palaces, or, as we say the Houses of Parliament, on the shore of the Thames, he could look to the history of the British Empire for the inspiration of his work. In that history he found sufficient material to fill and decorate the 1,200 niches, brackets, and pillars of his magnificent edifice. His statues and paintings made the House of Lords and the House of Commons temples dedicated to the glory of the nation.

There it was that Vienna encountered the first difficulty. When Hansen, the Danish architect, had completed the last gable of the marble palace in which the new body of popular representatives was to be housed he had to turn to the ancient classical world for subjects to fill out his decorative plan. This theatrical shrine of 'Western Democracy' was adorned with the statues and portraits of Greek and Roman statesmen and philosophers. As if it were meant for a symbol of irony, the horses of the quadriga that surmounts the two Houses are pulling apart from one another towards all four quarters of the globe. There could be no better symbol for the kind of activity going on within the walls of that same building.

The 'nationalities' were opposed to any kind of glorification of Austrian history in the decoration of this building, insisting that such would constitute an offence to them and a provocation. Much the same happened in Germany, where the Reich-stag, built by Wallot, was not dedicated to the German people until the cannons were thundering in the World War. And then it was dedicated by an inscription.

I was not yet twenty years of age when I first entered the Palace on the Franzens-ring to watch and listen in the Chamber of Deputies. That first experience aroused in me a profound feeling of repugnance.

I had always hated the Parliament, but not as an institution in itself. Quite the contrary. As one who cherished ideals of political freedom I could not even imagine any other form of government. In the light of my attitude towards the House of Habsburg I should then have considered it a crime against liberty and reason to think of any kind of dictatorship as a possible form of government.

A certain admiration which I had for the British Parliament contributed towards the formation of this opinion. I became imbued with that feeling of admiration almost without my being conscious of the effect of it through so much reading of newspapers while I was yet quite young. I could not discard that admiration all in a moment. The dignified way in which the British House of Commons fulfilled its function impressed me greatly, thanks largely to the glowing terms in which the Austrian Press reported these events. I used to ask myself whether there could be any nobler form of government than self-government by the people.

But these considerations furnished the very motives of my hostility to the Austrian

Parliament. The form in which parliamentary government was here represented

seemed unworthy of its great prototype. The following considerations also influenced my attitude:

The fate of the German element in the Austrian State depended on its position in

Parliament. Up to the time that universal suffrage by secret ballot was introduced the German representatives had a majority in the Parliament, though that majority was not a very substantial one. This situation gave cause for anxiety because the SocialDemocratic fraction of the German element could not be relied upon when national questions were at stake. In matters that were of critical concern for the German element, the Social-Democrats always took up an anti-German stand because they were afraid of losing their followers among the other national groups. Already at that time--before the introduction of universal suffrage--the Social-Democratic Party could no longer be considered as a German Party. The introduction of universal suffrage put an end even to the purely numerical predominance of the German element. The way was now clear for the further 'de-Germanization' of the Austrian State.

The national instinct of self-preservation made it impossible for me to welcome a representative system in which the German element was not really represented as such, but always betrayed by the Social-Democratic fraction. Yet all these, and many others, were defects which could not be attributed to the parliamentary system as such, but rather to the Austrian State in particular. I still believed that if the German majority could be restored in the representative body there would be no occasion to oppose such a system as long as the old Austrian State continued to exist.

Such was my general attitude at the time when I first entered those sacred and contentious halls. For me they were sacred only because of the radiant beauty of that majestic edifice. A Greek wonder on German soil.

But I soon became enraged by the hideous spectacle that met my eyes. Several hundred representatives were there to discuss a problem of great economical importance and each representative had the right to have his say.

That experience of a day was enough to supply me with food for thought during several weeks afterwards.

The intellectual level of the debate was quite low. Some times the debaters did not make themselves intelligible at all. Several of those present did not speak German but only their Slav vernaculars or dialects. Thus I had the opportunity of hearing with my own ears what I had been hitherto acquainted with only through reading the newspapers. A turbulent mass of people, all gesticulating and bawling against one another, with a pathetic old man shaking his bell and making frantic efforts to call the House to a sense of its dignity by friendly appeals, exhortations, and grave warnings.

I could not refrain from laughing.

Several weeks later I paid a second visit. This time the House presented an entirely different picture, so much so that one could hardly recognize it as the same place. The hall was practically empty. They were sleeping in the other rooms below. Only a few deputies were in their places, yawning in each other's faces. One was speechifying. A deputy speaker was in the chair. When he looked round it was quite plain that he felt bored.

Then I began to reflect seriously on the whole thing. I went to the Parliament whenever I had any time to spare and watched the spectacle silently but attentively. I listened to the debates, as far as they could be understood, and I studied the more or less intelligent features of those 'elect' representatives of the various nationalities which composed that motley State. Gradually I formed my own ideas about what I saw.

A year of such quiet observation was sufficient to transform or completely destroy my former convictions as to the character of this parliamentary institution. I no longer opposed merely the perverted form which the principle of parliamentary representation had assumed in Austria. No. It had become impossible for me to accept the system in itself. Up to that time I had believed that the disastrous deficiencies of the Austrian Parliament were due to the lack of a German majority, but now I recognized that the institution itself was wrong in its very essence and form.

A number of problems presented themselves before my mind. I studied more closely the democratic principle of 'decision by the majority vote', and I scrutinized no less carefully the intellectual and moral worth of the gentlemen who, as the chosen representatives of the nation, were entrusted with the task of making this institution function.

Thus it happened that at one and the same time I came to know the institution itself and those of whom it was composed. And it was thus that, within the course of a few years, I came to form a clear and vivid picture of the average type of that most lightly worshipped phenomenon of our time--the parliamentary deputy. The picture of him which I then formed became deeply engraved on my mind and I have never altered it since, at least as far as essentials go.

Once again these object-lessons taken from real life saved me from getting firmly entangled by a theory which at first sight seems so alluring to many people, though that theory itself is a symptom of human decadence.

Democracy, as practised in Western Europe to-day, is the fore-runner of Marxism. In fact, the latter would not be conceivable without the former. Democracy is the breedingground in which the bacilli of the Marxist world pest can grow and spread. By the introduction of parliamentarianism, democracy produced an abortion of filth and fire (Note 6), the creative fire of which, however, seems to have died out.

I am more than grateful to Fate that this problem came to my notice when I was still in Vienna; for if I had been in Germany at that time I might easily have found only a superficial solution. If I had been in Berlin when I first discovered what an illogical thing this institution is which we call Parliament, I might easily have gone to the other extreme and believed--as many people believed, and apparently not without good reason--that the salvation of the people and the Empire could be secured only by restrengthening the principle of imperial authority. Those who had this belief did not discern the tendencies of their time and were blind to the aspirations of the people.

In Austria one could not be so easily misled. There it was impossible to fall from one error into another. If the Parliament were worthless, the Habsburgs were worse; or at least not in the slightest degree better. The problem was not solved by rejecting the parliamentary system. Immediately the question arose: What then? To repudiate and abolish the Vienna Parliament would have resulted in leaving all power in the hands of the Habsburgs. For me, especially, that idea was impossible.

Since this problem was specially difficult in regard to Austria, I was forced while still quite young to go into the essentials of the whole question more thoroughly than I otherwise should have done.

The aspect of the situation that first made the most striking impression on me and gave me grounds for serious reflection was the manifest lack of any individual responsibility in the representative body.

The parliament passes some acts or decree which may have the most devastating consequences, yet nobody bears the responsibility for it. Nobody can be called to account. For surely one cannot say that a Cabinet discharges its responsibility when it retires after having brought about a catastrophe. Or can we say that the responsibility is fully discharged when a new coalition is formed or parliament dissolved? Can the principle of responsibility mean anything else than the responsibility of a definite person?

Is it at all possible actually to call to account the leaders of a parliamentary government for any kind of action which originated in the wishes of the whole multitude of deputies and was carried out under their orders or sanction? Instead of developing constructive ideas and plans, does the business of a statesman consist in the art of making a whole pack of blockheads understand his projects? Is it his business to entreat and coach them so that they will grant him their generous consent?

Is it an indispensable quality in a statesman that he should possess a gift of persuasion commensurate with the statesman's ability to conceive great political measures and carry them through into practice?

Does it really prove that a statesman is incompetent if he should fail to win over a majority of votes to support his policy in an assembly which has been called together as the chance result of an electoral system that is not always honestly administered.

Has there ever been a case where such an assembly has worthily appraised a great political concept before that concept was put into practice and its greatness openly demonstrated through its success?

In this world is not the creative act of the genius always a protest against the inertia of the mass?

What shall the statesman do if he does not succeed in coaxing the parliamentary multitude to give its consent to his policy? Shall he purchase that consent for some sort of consideration?

Or, when confronted with the obstinate stupidity of his fellow citizens, should he then refrain from pushing forward the measures which he deems to be of vital necessity to the life of the nation? Should he retire or remain in power?

In such circumstances does not a man of character find himself face to face with an insoluble contradiction between his own political insight on the one hand and, on the other, his moral integrity, or, better still, his sense of honesty?

Where can we draw the line between public duty and personal honour?

Must not every genuine leader renounce the idea of degrading himself to the level of a political jobber?

And, on the other hand, does not every jobber feel the itch to 'play politics', seeing that the final responsibility will never rest with him personally but with an anonymous mass which can never be called to account for their deeds?

Must not our parliamentary principle of government by numerical majority necessarily lead to the destruction of the principle of leadership?

Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the individual personality?

Or may it be presumed that for the future human civilization will be able to dispense with this as a condition of its existence?

But may it not be that, to-day, more than ever before, the creative brain of the individual is indispensable?

The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristrocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature; but, of course, we must remember that in this decadent era of ours the aristrocratic principle need not be thought of as incorporated in the upper ten thousand.

The devastating influence of this parliamentary institution might not easily be recognized by those who read the Jewish Press, unless the reader has learned how to think independently and examine the facts for himself. This institution is primarily responsible for the crowded inrush of mediocre people into the field of politics. Confronted with such a phenomenon, a man who is endowed with real qualities of leadership will be tempted to refrain from taking part in political life; because under these circumstances the situation does not call for a man who has a capacity for constructive statesmanship but rather for a man who is capable of bargaining for the favour of the majority. Thus the situation will appeal to small minds and will attract them accordingly.

The narrower the mental outlook and the more meagre the amount of knowledge in a political jobber, the more accurate is his estimate of his own political stock, and thus he will be all the more inclined to appreciate a system which does not demand creative genius or even high-class talent; but rather that crafty kind of sagacity which makes an efficient town clerk. Indeed, he values this kind of small craftiness more than the political genius of a Pericles. Such a mediocrity does not even have to worry about responsibility for what he does. From the beginning he knows that whatever be the results of his 'statesmanship' his end is already prescribed by the stars; he will one day have to clear out and make room for another who is of similar mental calibre. For it is another sign of our decadent times that the number of eminent statesmen grows according as the calibre of individual personality dwindles. That calibre will become smaller and smaller the more the individual politician has to depend upon

parliamentary majorities. A man of real political ability will refuse to be the beadle for a bevy of footling cacklers; and they in their turn, being the representatives of the majority--which means the dunder-headed multitude--hate nothing so much as a superior brain.

For footling deputies it is always quite a consolation to be led by a person whose intellectual stature is on a level with their own. Thus each one may have the opportunity to shine in debate among such compeers and, above all, each one feels that he may one day rise to the top. If Peter be boss to-day, then why not Paul tomorrow?

This new invention of democracy is very closely connected with a peculiar phenomenon which has recently spread to a pernicious extent, namely the cowardice of a large section of our so-called political leaders. Whenever important decisions have to be made they always find themselves fortunate in being able to hide behind the backs of what they call the majority.

In observing one of these political manipulators one notices how he wheedles the majority in order to get their sanction for whatever action he takes. He has to have accomplices in order to be able to shift responsibility to other shoulders whenever it is opportune to do so. That is the main reason why this kind of political activity is abhorrent to men of character and courage, while at the same time it attracts inferior types; for a person who is not willing to accept responsibility for his own actions, but is always seeking to be covered by something, must be classed among the knaves and the rascals. If a national leader should come from that lower class of politicians the evil consequences will soon manifest themselves. Nobody will then have the courage to take a decisive step. They will submit to abuse and defamation rather than pluck up courage to take a definite stand. And thus nobody is left who is willing to risk his position and his career, if needs be, in support of a determined line of policy.

One truth which must always be borne in mind is that the majority can never replace the man. The majority represents not only ignorance but also cowardice. And just as a hundred blockheads do not equal one man of wisdom, so a hundred poltroons are incapable of any political line of action that requires moral strength and fortitude.

The lighter the burden of responsibility on each individual leader, the greater will be the number of those who, in spite of their sorry mediocrity, will feel the call to place their immortal energies at the disposal of the nation. They are so much on the tip-toe of expectation that they find it hard to wait their turn. They stand in a long queue, painfully and sadly counting the number of those ahead of them and calculating the hours until they may eventually come forward. They watch every change that takes place in the personnel of the office towards which their hopes are directed, and they are grateful for every scandal which removes one of the aspirants waiting ahead of them in the queue. If somebody sticks too long to his office stool they consider this as almost a breach of a sacred understanding based on their mutual solidarity. They grow furious and give no peace until that inconsiderate person is finally driven out and forced to hand over his cosy berth for public disposal. After that he will have little chance of getting another opportunity. Usually those placemen who have been forced to give up their posts push themselves again into the waiting queue unless they are hounded away by the protestations of the other aspirants.

The result of all this is that, in such a State, the succession of sudden changes in public positions and public offices has a very disquieting effect in general, which may easily lead to disaster when an adverse crisis arises. It is not only the ignorant and the incompetent person who may fall victim to those parliamentary conditions, for the genuine leader may be affected just as much as the others, if not more so, whenever Fate has chanced to place a capable man in the position of leader. Let the superior quality of such a leader be once recognized and the result will be that a joint front will be organized against him, particularly if that leader, though not coming from their ranks, should fall into the habit of intermingling with these illustrious nincompoops on their own level. They want to have only their own company and will quickly take a hostile attitude towards any man who might show himself obviously above and beyond them when he mingles in their ranks. Their instinct, which is so blind in other directions, is very sharp in this particular.

The inevitable result is that the intellectual level of the ruling class sinks steadily. One can easily forecast how much the nation and State are bound to suffer from such a condition of affairs, provided one does not belong to that same class of 'leaders'.

The parliamentary régime in the old Austria was the very archetype of the institution as I have described it.

Though the Austrian Prime Minister was appointed by the King-Emperor, this act of appointment merely gave practical effect to the will of the parliament. The huckstering and bargaining that went on in regard to every ministerial position showed all the typical marks of Western Democracy. The results that followed were in keeping with the principles applied. The intervals between the replacement of one person by another gradually became shorter, finally ending up in a wild relay chase. With each change the quality of the 'statesman' in question deteriorated, until finally only the petty type of political huckster remained. In such people the qualities of statesmanship were measured and valued according to the adroitness with which they pieced together one coalition after another; in other words, their craftiness in manipulating the pettiest political transactions, which is the only kind of practical activity suited to the aptitudes of these representatives.

In this sphere Vienna was the school which offered the most impressive examples.

Another feature that engaged my attention quite as much as the features I have already spoken of was the contrast between the talents and knowledge of these representatives of the people on the one hand and, on the other, the nature of the tasks they had to face. Willingly or unwillingly, one could not help thinking seriously of the narrow intellectual outlook of these chosen representatives of the various constituent nationalities, and one could not avoid pondering on the methods through which these noble figures in our public life were first discovered.

It was worth while to make a thorough study and examination of the way in which the real talents of these gentlemen were devoted to the service of their country; in other words, to analyse thoroughly the technical procedure of their activities.

The whole spectacle of parliamentary life became more and more desolate the more one penetrated into its intimate structure and studied the persons and principles of the system in a spirit of ruthless objectivity. Indeed, it is very necessary to be strictly objective in the study of the institution whose sponsors talk of 'objectivity' in every other sentence as the only fair basis of examination and judgment. If one studied these gentlemen and the laws of their strenuous existence the results were surprising.

There is no other principle which turns out to be quite so ill-conceived as the parliamentary principle, if we examine it objectively.

In our examination of it we may pass over the methods according to which the election of the representatives takes place, as well as the ways which bring them into office and bestow new titles on them. It is quite evident that only to a tiny degree are public wishes or public necessities satisfied by the manner in which an election takes place; for everybody who properly estimates the political intelligence of the masses can easily see that this is not sufficiently developed to enable them to form general political judgments on their own account, or to select the men who might be competent to carry out their ideas in practice.

Whatever definition we may give of the term 'public opinion', only a very small part of it originates from personal experience or individual insight. The greater portion of it results from the manner in which public matters have been presented to the people through an overwhelmingly impressive and persistent system of 'information'.

In the religious sphere the profession of a denominational belief is largely the result of education, while the religious yearning itself slumbers in the soul; so too the political opinions of the masses are the final result of influences systematically operating on human sentiment and intelligence in virtue of a method which is applied sometimes with almost-incredible thoroughness and perseverance.

By far the most effective branch of political education, which in this connection is best expressed by the word 'propaganda', is carried on by the Press. The Press is the chief means employed in the process of political 'enlightenment'. It represents a kind of school for adults. This educational activity, however, is not in the hands of the State but in the clutches of powers which are partly of a very inferior character. While still a young man in Vienna I had excellent opportunities for coming to know the men who owned this machine for mass instruction, as well as those who supplied it with the ideas it distributed. At first I was quite surprised when I realized how little time was necessary for this dangerous Great Power within the State to produce a certain belief among the public; and in doing so the genuine will and convictions of the public were often completely misconstrued. It took the Press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance, while vital problems were completely ignored or filched and hidden away from public attention.

The Press succeeded in the magical art of producing names from nowhere within the course of a few weeks. They made it appear that the great hopes of the masses were bound up with those names. And so they made those names more popular than any man of real ability could ever hope to be in a long lifetime. All this was done, despite the fact that such names were utterly unknown and indeed had never been heard of even up to a month before the Press publicly emblazoned them. At the same time old and tried figures in the political and other spheres of life quickly faded from the public memory and were forgotten as if they were dead, though still healthy and in the enjoyment of their full viguour. Or sometimes such men were so vilely abused that it looked as if their names would soon stand as permanent symbols of the worst kind of baseness. In order to estimate properly the really pernicious influence which the Press can exercise one had to study this infamous Jewish method whereby honourable and decent people were besmirched with mud and filth, in the form of low abuse and slander, from hundreds and hundreds of quarters simultaneously, as if commanded by some magic formula.

These highway robbers would grab at anything which might serve their evil ends.

They would poke their noses into the most intimate family affairs and would not rest until they had sniffed out some petty item which could be used to destroy the reputation of their victim. But if the result of all this sniffing should be that nothing derogatory was discovered in the private or public life of the victim, they continued to hurl abuse at him, in the belief that some of their animadversions would stick even though refuted a thousand times. In most cases it finally turned out impossible for the victim to continue his defence, because the accuser worked together with so many accomplices that his slanders were re-echoed interminably. But these slanderers would never own that they were acting from motives which influence the common run of humanity or are understood by them. Oh, no. The scoundrel who defamed his contemporaries in this villainous way would crown himself with a halo of heroic probity fashioned of unctuous phraseology and twaddle about his 'duties as a journalist' and other mouldy nonsense of that kind. When these cuttle-fishes gathered together in large shoals at meetings and congresses they would give out a lot of slimy talk about a special kind of honour which they called the professional honour of the journalist. Then the assembled species would bow their respects to one another.

These are the kind of beings that fabricate more than two-thirds of what is called public opinion, from the foam of which the parliamentary Aphrodite eventually arises.

Several volumes would be needed if one were to give an adequate account of the whole procedure and fully describe all its hollow fallacies. But if we pass over the details and look at the product itself while it is in operation I think this alone will be sufficient to open the eyes of even the most innocent and credulous person, so that he may recognize the absurdity of this institution by looking at it objectively.

In order to realize how this human aberration is as harmful as it is absurd, the test and easiest method is to compare democratic parliamentarianism with a genuine German democracy.

The remarkable characteristic of the parliamentary form of democracy is the fact that a number of persons, let us say five hundred--including, in recent time, women also--are elected to parliament and invested with authority to give final judgment on anything and everything. In practice they alone are the governing body; for although they may appoint a Cabinet, which seems outwardly to direct the affairs of state, this Cabinet has not a real existence of its own. In reality the so-called Government cannot do anything against the will of the assembly. It can never be called to account for anything, since the right of decision is not vested in the Cabinet but in the parliamentary majority. The Cabinet always functions only as the executor of the will of the majority. Its political ability can be judged only according to how far it succeeds in adjusting itself to the will of the majority or in persuading the majority to agree to its proposals. But this means that it must descend from the level of a real governing power to that of a mendicant who has to beg the approval of a majority that may be got together for the time being. Indeed, the chief preoccupation of the Cabinet must be to secure for itself, in the case of' each individual measure, the favour of the majority then in power or, failing that, to form a new majority that will be more favourably disposed. If it should succeed in either of these efforts it may go on 'governing' for a little while. If it should fail to win or form a majority it must retire. The question whether its policy as such has been right or wrong does not matter at all.

Thereby all responsibility is abolished in practice. To what consequences such a state of affairs can lead may easily be understood from the following simple considerations:

Those five hundred deputies who have been elected by the people come from various dissimilar callings in life and show very varying degrees of political capacity, with the result that the whole combination is disjointed and sometimes presents quite a sorry picture. Surely nobody believes that these chosen representatives of the nation are the choice spirits or first-class intellects. Nobody, I hope, is foolish enough to pretend that hundreds of statesmen can emerge from papers placed in the ballot box by electors who are anything else but averagely intelligent. The absurd notion that men of genius are born out of universal suffrage cannot be too strongly repudiated. In the first place, those times may be really called blessed when one genuine statesman makes his appearance among a people. Such statesmen do not appear all at once in hundreds or more. Secondly, among the broad masses there is instinctively a definite antipathy towards every outstanding genius. There is a better chance of seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle than of seeing a really great man 'discovered' through an election.

Whatever has happened in history above the level of the average of the broad public has mostly been due to the driving force of an individual personality.

But here five hundred persons of less than modest intellectual qualities pass judgment on the most important problems affecting the nation. They form governments which in turn learn to win the approval of the illustrious assembly for every legislative step that may be taken, which means that the policy to be carried out is actually the policy of the five hundred.

And indeed, generally speaking, the policy bears the stamp of its origin.

But let us pass over the intellectual qualities of these representatives and ask what is the nature of the task set before them. If we consider the fact that the problems which have to be discussed and solved belong to the most varied and diverse fields we can very well realize how inefficient a governing system must be which entrusts the right of decision to a mass assembly in which only very few possess the knowledge and experience such as would qualify them to deal with the matters that have to be settled. The most important economic measures are submitted to a tribunal in which not more than one-tenth of the members have studied the elements of economics. This means that final authority is vested in men who are utterly devoid of any preparatory training which might make them competent to decide on the questions at issue.

The same holds true of every other problem. It is always a majority of ignorant and incompetent people who decide on each measure; for the composition of the institution does not vary, while the problems to be dealt with come from the most varied spheres of public life. An intelligent judgment would be possible only if different deputies had the authority to deal with different issues. It is out of the question to think that the same people are fitted to decide on transport questions as well as, let us say, on questions of foreign policy, unless each of them be a universal genius. But scarcely more than one genius appears in a century. Here we are scarcely ever dealing with real brains, but only with dilettanti who are as narrow-minded as they are conceited and arrogant, intellectual DEMI-MONDES of the worst kind. This is why these honourable gentlemen show such astonishing levity in discussing and deciding on matters that would demand the most painstaking consideration even from great minds. Measures of momentous importance for the future existence of the State are framed and discussed in an atmosphere more suited to the card-table. Indeed the latter suggests a much more fitting occupation for these gentlemen than that of deciding the destinies of a people.

Of course it would be unfair to assume that each member in such a parliament was endowed by nature with such a small sense of responsibility. That is out of the question.

But this system, by forcing the individual to pass judgment on questions for which he is not competent gradually debases his moral character. Nobody will have the courage to say: "Gentlemen, I am afraid we know nothing about what we are talking about. I for one have no competency in the matter at all." Anyhow if such a declaration were made it would not change matters very much; for such outspoken honesty would not be understood. The person who made the declaration would be deemed an honourable ass who ought not to be allowed to spoil the game. Those who have a knowledge of human nature know that nobody likes to be considered a fool among his associates; and in certain circles honesty is taken as an index of stupidity.

Thus it happens that a naturally upright man, once he finds himself elected to parliament, may eventually be induced by the force of circumstances to acquiesce in a general line of conduct which is base in itself and amounts to a betrayal of the public trust. That feeling that if the individual refrained from taking part in a certain decision his attitude would not alter the situation in the least, destroys every real sense of honour which might occasionally arouse the conscience of one person or another.

Finally, the otherwise upright deputy will succeed in persuading himself that he is by no means the worst of the lot and that by taking part in a certain line of action he may prevent something worse from happening.

A counter argument may be put forward here. It may be said that of course the individual member may not have the knowledge which is requisite for the treatment of this or that question, yet his attitude towards it is taken on the advice of his Party as the guiding authority in each political matter; and it may further be said that the Party sets up special committees of experts who have even more than the requisite knowledge for dealing with the questions placed before them.

At first sight, that argument seems sound. But then another question arises--namely, why are five hundred persons elected if only a few have the wisdom which is required to deal with the more important problems?

It is not the aim of our modern democratic parliamentary system to bring together an assembly of intelligent and well-informed deputies. Not at all. The aim rather is to bring together a group of nonentities who are dependent on others for their views and who can be all the more easily led, the narrower the mental outlook of each individual is. That is the only way in which a party policy, according to the evil meaning it has today, can be put into effect. And by this method alone it is possible for the wirepuller, who exercises the real control, to remain in the dark, so that personally he can never be brought to account for his actions. For under such circumstances none of the decisions taken, no matter how disastrous they may turn out for the nation as a whole, can be laid at the door of the individual whom everybody knows to be the evil genius responsible for the whole affair. All responsibility is shifted to the shoulders of the Party as a whole.

In practice no actual responsibility remains. For responsibility arises only from personal duty and not from the obligations that rest with a parliamentary assembly of empty talkers.

The parliamentary institution attracts people of the badger type, who do not like the open light. No upright man, who is ready to accept personal responsibility for his acts, will be attracted to such an institution.

That is the reason why this brand of democracy has become a tool in the hand of that race which, because of the inner purposes it wishes to attain, must shun the open light, as it has always done and always will do. Only a Jew can praise an institution which is as corrupt and false as himself.

As a contrast to this kind of democracy we have the German democracy, which is a true democracy; for here the leader is freely chosen and is obliged to accept full responsibility for all his actions and omissions. The problems to be dealt with are not put to the vote of the majority; but they are decided upon by the individual, and as a guarantee of responsibility for those decisions he pledges all he has in the world and even his life.

The objection may be raised here that under such conditions it would be very difficult to find a man who would be ready to devote himself to so fateful a task. The answer to that objection is as follows:

We thank God that the inner spirit of our German democracy will of itself prevent the chance careerist, who may be intellectually worthless and a moral twister, from coming by devious ways to a position in which he may govern his fellow-citizens. The fear of undertaking such far-reaching responsibilities, under German democracy, will scare off the ignorant and the feckless.

But should it happen that such a person might creep in surreptitiously it will be easy enough to identify him and apostrophize him ruthlessly. somewhat thus: "Be off, you scoundrel. Don't soil these steps with your feet; because these are the steps that lead to the portals of the Pantheon of History, and they are not meant for place-hunters but for men of noble character."

Such were the views I formed after two years of attendance at the sessions of the Viennese Parliament. Then I went there no more.

The parliamentary regime became one of the causes why the strength of the Habsburg State steadily declined during the last years of its existence. The more the predominance of the German element was whittled away through parliamentary procedure, the more prominent became the system of playing off one of the various constituent nationalities against the other. In the Imperial Parliament it was always the German element that suffered through the system, which meant that the results were detrimental to the Empire as a whole; for at the close of the century even the most simple-minded people could recognize that the cohesive forces within the Dual Monarchy no longer sufficed to counterbalance the separatist tendencies of the provincial nationalities. On the contrary!

The measures which the State adopted for its own maintenance became more and more mean spirited and in a like degree the general disrespect for the State increased. Not only Hungary but also the various Slav provinces gradually ceased to identify themselves with the monarchy which embraced them all, and accordingly they did not feel its weakness as in any way detrimental to themselves. They rather welcomed those manifestations of senile decay. They looked forward to the final dissolution of the State, and not to its recovery.

The complete collapse was still forestalled in Parliament by the humiliating concessions that were made to every kind of importunate demands, at the cost of the German element. Throughout the country the defence of the State rested on playing off the various nationalities against one another. But the general trend of this development was directed against the Germans. Especially since the right of succession to the throne conferred certain influence on the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the policy of increasing the power of the Czechs was carried out systematically from the upper grades of the administration down to the lower. With all the means at his command the heir to the Dual Monarchy personally furthered the policy that aimed at eliminating the influence of the German element, or at least he acted as protector of that policy. By the use of State officials as tools, purely German districts were gradually but decisively brought within the danger zone of the mixed languages. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make headway with a constantly increasing tempo and Vienna was looked upon by the Czechs as their biggest city.

In the family circle of this new Habsburger the Czech language was favoured. The wife of the Archduke had formerly been a Czech Countess and was wedded to the Prince by a morganatic marriage. She came from an environment where hostility to the Germans had been traditional. The leading idea in the mind of the Archduke was to establish a Slav State in Central Europe, which was to be constructed on a purely Catholic basis, so as to serve as a bulwark against Orthodox Russia.

As had happened often in Habsburg history, religion was thus exploited to serve a purely political policy, and in this case a fatal policy, at least as far as German interests were concerned. The result was lamentable in many respects.

Neither the House of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church received the reward which they expected. Habsburg lost the throne and the Church lost a great State. By employing religious motives in the service of politics, a spirit was aroused which the instigators of that policy had never thought possible.

From the attempt to exterminate Germanism in the old monarchy by every available means arose the Pan-German Movement in Austria, as a response.

In the 'eighties of the last century Manchester Liberalism, which was Jewish in its fundamental ideas, had reached the zenith of its influence in the Dual Monarchy, or had already passed that point. The reaction which set in did not arise from social but from nationalistic tendencies, as was always the case in the old Austria. The instinct of selfpreservation drove the German element to defend itself energetically. Economic considerations only slowly began to gain an important influence; but they were of secondary concern. But of the general political chaos two party organizations emerged. The one was more of a national, and the other more of a social, character; but both were highly interesting and instructive for the future.

After the war of 1866, which had resulted in the humiliation of Austria, the House of

Habsburg contemplated a REVANCHE on the battlefield. Only the tragic end of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico prevented a still closer collaboration with France. The chief blame for Maximilian's disastrous expedition was attributed to Napoleon III and the fact that the Frenchman left him in the lurch aroused a general feeling of indignation. Yet the Habsburgs were still lying in wait for their opportunity. If the war of 1870-71 had not been such a singular triumph, the Viennese Court might have chanced the game of blood in order to get its revenge for Sadowa. But when the first reports arrived from the Franco-German battlefield, which, though true, seemed miraculous and almost incredible, the 'most wise' of all monarchs recognized that the moment was inopportune and tried to accept the unfavourable situation with as good a grace as possible.

The heroic conflict of those two years (1870-71) produced a still greater miracle; for with the Habsburgs the change of attitude never came from an inner heartfelt urge but only from the pressure of circumstances. The German people of the East Mark, however, were entranced by the triumphant glory of the newly established German Empire and were profoundly moved when they saw the dream of their fathers resurgent in a magnificent reality.

For--let us make no mistake about it--the true German-Austrian realized from this time onward, that Königgrätz was the tragic, though necessary, pre-condition for the reestablishment of an Empire which should no longer be burdened with the palsy of the old alliance and which indeed had no share in that morbid decay. Above all, the German-Austrian had come to feel in the very depths of his own being that the historical mission of the House of Habsburg had come to an end and that the new Empire could choose only an Emperor who was of heroic mould and was therefore worthy to wear the 'Crown of the Rhine'. It was right and just that Destiny should be praised for having chosen a scion of that House of which Frederick the Great had in past times given the nation an elevated and resplendent symbol for all time to come.

After the great war of 1870-71 the House of Habsburg set to work with all its determination to exterminate the dangerous German element--about whose inner feelings and attitude there could be no doubt--slowly but deliberately. I use the word exterminate, because that alone expresses what must have been the final result of the Slavophile policy. Then it was that the fire of rebellion blazed up among the people whose extermination had been decreed. That fire was such as had never been witnessed in modern German history.

For the first time nationalists and patriots were transformed into rebels.

Not rebels against the nation or the State as such but rebels against that form of government which they were convinced, would inevitably bring about the ruin of their own people. For the first time in modern history the traditional dynastic patriotism and national love of fatherland and people were in open conflict.

It was to the merit of the Pan-German movement in Austria during the closing decade of the last century that it pointed out clearly and unequivocally that a State is entitled to demand respect and protection for its authority only when such authority is administered in accordance with the interests of the nation, or at least not in a manner detrimental to those interests.

The authority of the State can never be an end in itself; for, if that were so, any kind of tyranny would be inviolable and sacred.

If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen.

The question of whether and when such a situation exists cannot be answered by theoretical dissertations but only by the exercise of force, and it is success that decides the issue.

Every government, even though it may be the worst possible and even though it may have betrayed the nation's trust in thousands of ways, will claim that its duty is to uphold the authority of the State. Its adversaries, who are fighting for national selfpreservation, must use the same weapons which the government uses if they are to prevail against such a rule and secure their own freedom and independence. Therefore the conflict will be fought out with 'legal' means as long as the power which is to be overthrown uses them; but the insurgents will not hesitate to apply illegal means if the oppressor himself employs them.

Generally speaking, we must not forget that the highest aim of human existence is not the maintenance of a State of Government but rather the conservation of the race.

If the race is in danger of being oppressed or even exterminated the question of legality is only of secondary importance. The established power may in such a case employ only those means which are recognized as 'legal'. yet the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the oppressed will always justify, to the highest degree, the employment of all possible resources.

Only on the recognition of this principle was it possible for those struggles to be carried through, of which history furnishes magnificent examples in abundance, against foreign bondage or oppression at home.

Human rights are above the rights of the State. But if a people be defeated in the struggle for its human rights this means that its weight has proved too light in the scale of Destiny to have the luck of being able to endure in this terrestrial world.

The world is not there to be possessed by the faint-hearted races.     Austria affords a very clear and striking example of how easy it is for tyranny to hide its head under the cloak of what is called 'legality'.

The legal exercise of power in the Habsburg State was then based on the anti-German attitude of the parliament, with its non-German majorities, and on the dynastic House, which was also hostile to the German element. The whole authority of the State was incorporated in these two factors. To attempt to alter the lot of the German element through these two factors would have been senseless. Those who advised the 'legal' way as the only possible way, and also obedience to the State authority, could offer no resistance; because a policy of resistance could not have been put into effect through legal measures. To follow the advice of the legalist counsellors would have meant the inevitable ruin of the German element within the Monarchy, and this disaster would not have taken long to come. The German element has actually been saved only because the State as such collapsed.

The spectacled theorist would have given his life for his doctrine rather than for his people.

Because man has made laws he subsequently comes to think that he exists for the sake of the laws.

A great service rendered by the pan-German movement then was that it abolished all such nonsense, though the doctrinaire theorists and other fetish worshippers were shocked.

When the Habsburgs attempted to come to close quarters with the German element, by the employment of all the means of attack which they had at their command, the PanGerman Party hit out ruthlessly against the 'illustrious' dynasty. This Party was the first to probe into and expose the corrupt condition of the State; and in doing so they opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands. To have liberated the high ideal of love for one's country from the embrace of this deplorable dynasty was one of the great services rendered by the Pan-German movement.

When that Party first made its appearance it secured a large following--indeed, the movement threatened to become almost an avalanche. But the first successes were not maintained. At the time I came to Vienna the pan-German Party had been eclipsed by the Christian-Socialist Party, which had come into power in the meantime. Indeed, the Pan-German Party had sunk to a level of almost complete insignificance.

The rise and decline of the Pan-German movement on the one hand and the marvellous progress of the Christian-Socialist Party on the other, became a classic object of study for me, and as such they played an important part in the development of my own views.

When I came to Vienna all my sympathies were exclusively with the Pan-German Movement.

I was just as much impressed by the fact that they had the courage to shout HEIL HOHENZOLLERN as I rejoiced at their determination to consider themselves an integral part of the German Empire, from which they were separated only provisionally. They never missed an opportunity to explain their attitude in public, which raised my enthusiasm and confidence. To avow one's principles publicly on every problem that concerned Germanism, and never to make any compromises, seemed to me the only way of saving our people. What I could not understand was how this movement broke down so soon after such a magnificent start; and it was no less incomprehensible that the Christian-Socialists should gain such tremendous power within such a short time. They had just reached the pinnacle of their popularity.

When I began to compare those two movements Fate placed before me the best means of understanding the causes of this puzzling problem. The action of Fate in this case was hastened by my own straitened circumstances.

I shall begin my analysis with an account of the two men who must be regarded as the founders and leaders of the two movements. These were George von Schönerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.

As far as personality goes, both were far above the level and stature of the so-called parliamentary figures. They lived lives of immaculate and irreproachable probity amidst the miasma of all-round political corruption. Personally I first liked the PanGerman representative, Schönerer, and it was only afterwards and gradually that I felt an equal liking for the Christian-Socialist leader.

When I compared their respective abilities Schönerer seemed to me a better and more profound thinker on fundamental problems. He foresaw the inevitable downfall of the Austrian State more clearly and accurately than anyone else. If this warning in regard to the Habsburg Empire had been heeded in Germany the disastrous world war, which involved Germany against the whole of Europe, would never have taken place.

But though Schönerer succeeded in penetrating to the essentials of a problem he was very often much mistaken in his judgment of men.

And herein lay Dr. Lueger's special talent. He had a rare gift of insight into human nature and he was very careful not to take men as something better than they were in reality. He based his plans on the practical possibilities which human life offered him, whereas Schönerer had only little discrimination in that respect. All ideas that this PanGerman had were right in the abstract, but he did not have the forcefulness or understanding necessary to put his ideas across to the broad masses. He was not able to formulate them so that they could be easily grasped by the masses, whose powers of comprehension are limited and will always remain so. Therefore all Schönerer's knowledge was only the wisdom of a prophet and he never could succeed in having it put into practice.

This lack of insight into human nature led him to form a wrong estimate of the forces behind certain movements and the inherent strength of old institutions.

Schönerer indeed realized that the problems he had to deal with were in the nature of a WELTANSCHAUUNG; but he did not understand that only the broad masses of a nation can make such convictions prevail, which are almost of a religious nature.

Unfortunately he understood only very imperfectly how feeble is the fighting spirit of the so-called bourgeoisie. That weakness is due to their business interests, which individuals are too much afraid of risking and which therefore deter them from taking action. And, generally speaking, a WELTANSCHAUUNG can have no prospect of success unless the broad masses declare themselves ready to act as its standard-bearers and to fight on its behalf wherever and to whatever extent that may be necessary.

This failure to understand the importance of the lower strata of the population resulted in a very inadequate concept of the social problem.

In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schönerer. His profound knowledge of human nature enabled him to form a correct estimate of the various social forces and it saved him from under-rating the power of existing institutions. And it was perhaps this very quality which enabled him to utilize those institutions as a means to serve the purposes of his policy.

He saw only too clearly that, in our epoch, the political fighting power of the upper classes is quite insignificant and not at all capable of fighting for a great new movement until the triumph of that movement be secured. Thus he devoted the greatest part of his political activity to the task of winning over those sections of the population whose existence was in danger and fostering the militant spirit in them rather than attempting to paralyse it. He was also quick to adopt all available means for winning the support of long-established institutions, so as to be able to derive the greatest possible advantage for his movement from those old sources of power.

Thus it was that, first of all, he chose as the social basis of his new Party that middle class which was threatened with extinction. In this way he secured a solid following which was willing to make great sacrifices and had good fighting stamina. His extremely wise attitude towards the Catholic Church rapidly won over the younger clergy in such large numbers that the old Clerical Party was forced to retire from the field of action or else, which was the wiser course, join the new Party, in the hope of gradually winning back one position after another.

But it would be a serious injustice to the man if we were to regard this as his essential characteristic. For he possessed the qualities of an able tactician, and had the true genius of a great reformer; but all these were limited by his exact perception of the possibilities at hand and also of his own capabilities.

The aims which this really eminent man decided to pursue were intensely practical. He wished to conquer Vienna, the heart of the Monarchy. It was from Vienna that the last pulses of life beat through the diseased and worn-out body of the decrepit Empire. If the heart could be made healthier the others parts of the body were bound to revive. That idea was correct in principle; but the time within which it could be applied in practice was strictly limited. And that was the man's weak point.

His achievements as Burgomaster of the City of Vienna are immortal, in the best sense of the word. But all that could not save the Monarchy. It came too late.

His rival, Schönerer, saw this more clearly. What Dr. Lueger undertook to put into practice turned out marvellously successful. But the results which he expected to follow these achievements did not come. Schönerer did not attain the ends he had proposed to himself; but his fears were realized, alas, in a terrible fashion. Thus both these men failed to attain their further objectives. Lueger could not save Austria and Schönerer could not prevent the downfall of the German people in Austria.

To study the causes of failure in the case of these two parties is to learn a lesson that is highly instructive for our own epoch. This is specially useful for my friends, because in many points the circumstances of our own day are similar to those of that time. Therefore such a lesson may help us to guard against the mistakes which brought one of those movements to an end and rendered the other barren of results.

In my opinion, the wreck of the Pan-German Movement in Austria must be attributed to three causes.

The first of these consisted in the fact that the leaders did not have a clear concept of the importance of the social problem, particularly for a new movement which had an essentially revolutionary character. Schönerer and his followers directed their attention principally to the bourgeois classes. For that reason their movement was bound to turn out mediocre and tame. The German bourgeoisie, especially in its upper circles, is pacifist even to the point of complete self-abnegation--though the individual may not be aware of this--wherever the internal affairs of the nation or State are concerned. In good times, which in this case means times of good government, such a psychological attitude makes this social layer extraordinarily valuable to the State. But when there is a bad government, such a quality has a destructive effect. In order to assure the possibility of carrying through a really strenuous struggle, the Pan-German Movement should have devoted its efforts to winning over the masses. The failure to do this left the movement from the very beginning without the elementary impulse which such a wave needs if it is not to ebb within a short while.

In failing to see the truth of this principle clearly at the very outset of the movement and in neglecting to put it into practice the new Party made an initial mistake which could not possibly be rectified afterwards. For the numerous moderate bourgeois elements admitted into the movements increasingly determined its internal orientation and thus forestalled all further prospects of gaining any appreciable support among the masses of the people. Under such conditions such a movement could not get beyond mere discussion and criticism. Quasi-religious faith and the spirit of sacrifice were not to be found in the movement any more. Their place was taken by the effort towards 'positive' collaboration, which in this case meant the acknowledgment of the existing state of affairs, gradually whittling away the rough corners of the questions in dispute, and ending up with the making of a dishonourable peace.

Such was the fate of the Pan-German Movement, because at the start the leaders did not realize that the most important condition of success was that they should recruit their following from the broad masses of the people. The Movement thus became bourgeois and respectable and radical only in moderation.

From this failure resulted the second cause of its rapid decline.

The position of the Germans in Austria was already desperate when Pan-Germanism arose. Year after year Parliament was being used more and more as an instrument for the gradual extinction of the German-Austrian population. The only hope for any eleventh-hour effort to save it lay in the overthrow of the parliamentary system; but there was very little prospect of this happening.

Therewith the Pan-German Movement was confronted with a question of primary importance.

To overthrow the Parliament, should the Pan-Germanists have entered it 'to undermine it from within', as the current phrase was? Or should they have assailed the institution as such from the outside?

They entered the Parliament and came out defeated. But they had found themselves obliged to enter.

For in order to wage an effective war against such a power from the outside, indomitable courage and a ready spirit of sacrifice were necessary weapons. In such cases the bull must be seized by the horns. Furious drives may bring the assailant to the ground again and again; but if he has a stout heart he will stand up, even though some bones may be broken, and only after a long and tough struggle will he achieve his triumph. New champions are attracted to a cause by the appeal of great sacrifices made for its sake, until that indomitable spirit is finally crowned with success.

For such a result, however, the children of the people from the great masses are necessary. They alone have the requisite determination and tenacity to fight a sanguinary issue through to the end. But the Pan-German Movement did not have these broad masses as its champions, and so no other means of solution could be tried out except that of entering Parliamcnt.

It would be a mistake to think that this decision resulted from a long series of internal hesitations of a moral kind, or that it was the outcome of careful calculation. No. They did not even think of another solution. Those who participated in this blunder were actuated by general considerations and vague notions as to what would be the significance and effect of taking part in such a special way in that institution which they had condemned on principle. In general they hoped that they would thus have the means of expounding their cause to the great masses of the people, because they would be able to speak before 'the forum of the whole nation'. Also, it seemed reasonable to believe that by attacking the evil in the root they would be more effective than if the attack came from outside. They believed that, if protected by the immunity of Parliament, the position of the individual protagonists would be strengthened and that thus the force of their attacks would be enhanced.

In reality everything turned out quite otherwise.

The Forum before which the Pan-German representatives spoke had not grown greater, but had actually become smaller; for each spoke only to the circle that was ready to listen to him or could read the report of his speech in the newspapers.

But the greater forum of immediate listeners is not the parliamentary auditorium: it is the large public meeting. For here alone will there be thousands of men who have come simply to hear what a speaker has to say, whereas in the parliamentary sittings only a few hundred are present; and for the most part these are there only to earn their daily allowance for attendance and not to be enlightened by the wisdom of one or other of the 'representatives of the people'.

The most important consideration is that the same public is always present and that this public does not wish to learn anything new; because, setting aside the question of its intelligence, it lacks even that modest quantum of will-power which is necessary for the effort of learning.

Not one of the representatives of the people will pay homage to a superior truth and devote himself to its service. No. Not one of these gentry will act thus, except he has grounds for hoping that by such a conversion he may be able to retain the representation of his constituency in the coming legislature. Therefore, only when it becomes quite clear that the old party is likely to have a bad time of it at the forthcoming elections--only then will those models of manly virtue set out in search of a new party or a new policy which may have better electoral prospects; but of course this change of position will be accompanied by a veritable deluge of high moral motives to justify it. And thus it always happens that when an existing Party has incurred such general disfavour among the public that it is threatened with the probability of a crushing defeat, then a great migration commences. The parliamentary rats leave the Party ship.

All this happens not because the individuals in the case have become better informed on the questions at issue and have resolved to act accordingly. These changes of front are evidence only of that gift of clairvoyance which warns the parliamentary flea at the right moment and enables him to hop into another warm Party bed.

To speak before such a forum signifies casting pearls before certain animals.

Verily it does not repay the pains taken; for the result must always be negative.

And that is actually what happened. The Pan-German representatives might have talked themselves hoarse, but to no effect whatsoever.

The Press either ignored them totally or so mutilated their speeches that the logical consistency was destroyed or the meaning twisted round in such a way that the public got only a very wrong impression regarding the aims of the new movement. What the individual members said was not of importance. The important matter was what people read as coming from them. This consisted of mere extracts which had been torn out of the context of the speeches and gave an impression of incoherent nonsense, which indeed was purposely meant. Thus the only public before which they really spoke consisted merely of five hundred parliamentarians; and that says enough.

The worst was the following:

The Pan-German Movement could hope for success only if the leaders realized from the very first moment that here there was no question so much of a new Party as of a new WELTANSCHAUUNG. This alone could arouse the inner moral forces that were necessary for such a gigantic struggle. And for this struggle the leaders must be men of first-class brains and indomitable courage. If the struggle on behalf of a

WELTANSCHAUUNG is not conducted by men of heroic spirit who are ready to sacrifice, everything, within a short while it will become impossible to find real fighting followers who are ready to lay down their lives for the cause. A man who fights only for his own existence has not much left over for the service of the community.

In order to secure the conditions that are necessary for success, everybody concerned must be made to understand that the new movement looks to posterity for its honour and glory but that it has no recompense to offer to the present-day members. If a movement should offer a large number of positions and offices that are easily accessible the number of unworthy candidates admitted to membership will be constantly on the increase and eventually a day will come when there will be such a preponderance of political profiteers among the membership of a successful Party that the combatants who bore the brunt of the battle in the earlier stages of the movement can now scarcely recognize their own Party and may be ejected by the later arrivals as unwanted ballast. Therewith the movement will no longer have a mission to fulfil.

Once the Pan-Germanists decided to collaborate with Parliament they were no longer leaders and combatants in a popular movement, but merely parliamentarians. Thus the Movement sank to the common political party level of the day and no longer had the strength to face a hostile fate and defy the risk of martyrdom. Instead of fighting, the Pan-German leaders fell into the habit of talking and negotiating. The new parliamentarians soon found that it was a more satisfactory, because less risky, way of fulfilling their task if they would defend the new WELTANSCHAUUNG with the spiritual weapon of parliamentary rhetoric rather than take up a fight in which they placed their lives in danger, the outcome of which also was uncertain and even at the best could offer no prospect of personal gain for themselves.

When they had taken their seats in Parliament their adherents outside hoped and waited for miracles to happen. Naturally no such miracles happened or could happen. Whereupon the adherents of the movement soon grew impatient, because reports they read about their own deputies did not in the least come up to what had been expected when they voted for these deputies at the elections. The reason for this was not far to seek. It was due to the fact that an unfriendly Press refrained from giving a true account of what the Pan-German representatives of the people were actually doing.

According as the new deputies got to like this mild form of 'revolutionary' struggle in Parliament and in the provincial diets they gradually became reluctant to resume the more hazardous work of expounding the principles of the movement before the broad masses of the people.

Mass meetings in public became more and more rare, though these are the only means of exercising a really effective influence on the people; because here the influence comes from direct personal contact and in this way the support of large sections of the people can be obtained.

When the tables on which the speakers used to stand in the great beer-halls, addressing an assembly of thousands, were deserted for the parliamentary tribune and the speeches were no longer addressed to the people directly but to the so-called 'chosen' representatives, the Pan-German Movement lost its popular character and in a little while degenerated to the level of a more or less serious club where problems of the day are discussed academically.

The wrong impression created by the Press was no longer corrected by personal contact with the people through public meetings, whereby the individual representatives might have given a true account of their activities. The final result of this neglect was that the word 'Pan-German' came to have an unpleasant sound in the ears of the masses.

The knights of the pen and the literary snobs of to-day should be made to realize that the great transformations which have taken place in this world were never conducted by a goosequill. No. The task of the pen must always be that of presenting the theoretical concepts which motivate such changes. The force which has ever and always set in motion great historical avalanches of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken word.

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people. In no case have great movements been set afoot by the syrupy effusions of aesthetic littérateurs and drawing-room heroes.

The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of glowing passion; but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others. It is only through the capacity for passionate feeling that chosen leaders can wield the power of the word which, like hammer blows, will open the door to the hearts of the people.

He who is not capable of passionate feeling and speech was never chosen by Providence to be the herald of its will. Therefore a writer should stick to his ink-bottle and busy himself with theoretical questions if he has the requisite ability and knowledge. He has not been born or chosen to be a leader.

A movement which has great ends to achieve must carefully guard against the danger of losing contact with the masses of the people. Every problem encountered must be examined from this viewpoint first of all and the decision to be made must always be in harmony with this principle.

The movement must avoid everything which might lessen or weaken its power of influencing the masses; not from demagogical motives but because of the simple fact that no great idea, no matter how sublime and exalted it may appear, can be realized in practice without the effective power which resides in the popular masses. Stern reality alone must mark the way to the goal. To be unwilling to walk the road of hardship means, only too often in this world, the total renunciation of our aims and purposes, whether that renunciation be consciously willed or not.

The moment the Pan-German leaders, in virtue of their acceptance of the parliamentary principle, moved the centre of their activities away from the people and into

Parliament, in that moment they sacrificed the future for the sake of a cheap momentary success. They chose the easier way in the struggle and in doing so rendered themselves unworthy of the final victory.

While in Vienna I used to ponder seriously over these two questions, and I saw that the main reason for the collapse of the Pan-German Movement lay in the fact that these very questions were not rightly appreciated. To my mind at that time the Movement seemed chosen to take in its hands the leadership of the German element in Austria.

These first two blunders which led to the downfall of the Pan-German Movement were very closely connected with one another. Faulty recognition of the inner driving forces that urge great movements forward led to an inadequate appreciation of the part which the broad masses play in bringing about such changes. The result was that too little attention was given to the social problem and that the attempts made by the movement to capture the minds of the lower classes were too few and too weak. Another result was the acceptance of the parliamentary policy, which had a similar effect in regard to the importance of the masses.

If there had been a proper appreciation of the tremendous powers of endurance always shown by the masses in revolutionary movements a different attitude towards the social problem would have been taken, and also a different policy in the matter of propaganda. Then the centre of gravity of the movement would not have been transferred to the Parliament but would have remained in the workshops and in the streets.

There was a third mistake, which also had its roots in the failure to understand the worth of the masses. The masses are first set in motion, along a definite direction, by men of superior talents; but then these masses once in motion are like a flywheel inasmuch as they sustain the momentum and steady balance of the offensive.

The policy of the Pan-German leaders in deciding to carry through a difficult fight against the Catholic Church can be explained only by attributing it to an inadequate understanding of the spiritual character of the people.

The reasons why the new Party engaged in a violent campaign against Rome were as follows:

As soon as the House of Habsburg had definitely decided to transform Austria into a Slav State all sorts of means were adopted which seemed in any way serviceable for that purpose. The Habsburg rulers had no scruples of conscience about exploiting even religious institutions in the service of this new 'State Idea'. One of the many methods thus employed was the use of Czech parishes and their clergy as instruments for spreading Slav hegemony throughout Austria. This proceeding was carried out as follows:

Parish priests of Czech nationality were appointed in purely German districts. Gradually but steadily pushing forward the interests of the Czech people before those of the Church, the parishes and their priests became generative cells in the process of de-Germanization.

Unfortunately the German-Austrian clergy completely failed to counter this procedure. Not only were they incapable of taking a similar initiative on the German side, but they showed themselves unable to meet the Czech offensive with adequate resistance. The German element was accordingly pushed backwards, slowly but steadily, through the perversion of religious belief for political ends on the one side, and the Jack of proper resistance on the other side. Such were the tactics used in dealing with the smaller problems; but those used in dealing with the larger problems were not very different.

The anti-German aims pursued by the Habsburgs, especially through the instrumentality of the higher clergy, did not meet with any vigorous resistance, while the clerical representatives of the German interests withdrew completely to the rear. The general impression created could not be other than that the Catholic clergy as such were grossly neglecting the rights of the German population.

Therefore it looked as if the Catholic Church was not in sympathy with the German people but that it unjustly supported their adversaries. The root of the whole evil, especially according to Schönerer's opinion, lay in the fact that the leadership of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that this fact alone was sufficient reason for the hostile attitude of the Church towards the demands of our people.

The so-called cultural problem receded almost completely into the background, as was generally the case everywhere throughout Austria at that time. In assuming a hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church, the Pan-German leaders were influenced not so much by the Church's position in questions of science but principally by the fact that the Church did not defend German rights, as it should have done, but always supported those who encroached on these rights, especially then Slavs.

George Schönerer was not a man who did things by halves. He went into battle against the Church because he was convinced that this was the only way in which the German people could be saved. The LOS-VON-ROM (Away from Rome) Movement seemed the most formidable, but at the same time most difficult, method of attacking and destroying the adversary's citadel. Schönerer believed that if this movement could be carried through successfully the unfortunate division between the two great religious denominations in Germany would be wiped out and that the inner forces of the German Empire and Nation would be enormously enhanced by such a victory.

But the premises as well as the conclusions in this case were both erroneous.

It was undoubtedly true that the national powers of resistance, in everything concerning Germanism as such, were much weaker among the German Catholic clergy than among their non-German confrères, especially the Czechs. And only an ignorant person could be unaware of the fact that it scarcely ever entered the mind of the German clergy to take the offensive on behalf of German interests.

But at the same time everybody who is not blind to facts must admit that all this should be attributed to a characteristic under which we Germans have all been doomed to suffer. This characteristic shows itself in our objective way of regarding our own nationality, as if it were something that lay outside of us.

While the Czech priest adopted a subjective attitude towards his own people and only an objective attitude towards the Church, the German parish priest showed a subjective devotion to his Church and remained objective in regard to his nation. It is a phenomenon which, unfortunately for us, can be observed occurring in exactly the same way in thousands of other cases.

It is by no means a peculiar inheritance from Catholicism; but it is something in us which does not take long to gnaw the vitals of almost every institution, especially institutions of State and those which have ideal aims. Take, for example, the attitude of our State officials in regard to the efforts made for bringing about a national resurgence and compare that attitude with the stand which the public officials of any other nation would have taken in such a case. Or is it to be believed that the military officers of any other country in the world would refuse to come forward on behalf of the national aspirations, but would rather hide behind the phrase 'Authority of the State', as has been the case in our country during the last five years and has even been deemed a meritorious attitude? Or let us take another example. In regard to the Jewish problem, do not the two Christian denominations take up a standpoint to-day which does not respond to the national exigencies or even the interests of religion? Consider the attitude of a Jewish Rabbi towards any question, even one of quite insignificant importance, concerning the Jews as a race, and compare his attitude with that of the majority of our clergy, whether Catholic or Protestant.

We observe the same phenomenon wherever it is a matter of standing up for some abstract idea.

'Authority of the State', 'Democracy', 'Pacifism', 'International Solidarity', etc., all such notions become rigid, dogmatic concepts with us; and the more vital the general necessities of the nation, the more will they be judged exclusively in the light of those concepts.

This unfortunate habit of looking at all national demands from the viewpoint of a preconceived notion makes it impossible for us to see the subjective side of a thing which objectively contradicts one's own doctrine. It finally leads to a complete reversion in the relation of means to an end. Any attempt at a national revival will be opposed if the preliminary condition of such a revival be that a bad and pernicious regime must first of all be overthrown; because such an action will be considered as a violation of the 'Authority of the State'. In the eyes of those who take that standpoint, the 'Authority of the State' is not a means which is there to serve an end but rather, to the mind of the dogmatic believer in objectivity, it is an end in itself; and he looks upon that as sufficient apology for his own miserable existence. Such people would raise an outcry, if, for instance, anyone should attempt to set up a dictatorship, even though the man responsible for it were Frederick the Great and even though the politicians for the time being, who constituted the parliamentary majority, were small and incompetent men or maybe even on a lower grade of inferiority; because to such sticklers for abstract principles the law of democracy is more sacred than the welfare of the nation. In accordance with his principles, one of these gentry will defend the worst kind of tyranny, though it may be leading a people to ruin, because it is the fleeting embodiment of the 'Authority of the State', and another will reject even a highly beneficent government if it should happen not to be in accord with his notion of 'democracy'.

In the same way our German pacifist will remain silent while the nation is groaning under an oppression which is being exercised by a sanguinary military power, when this state of affairs gives rise to active resistance; because such resistance means the employment of physical force, which is against the spirit of the pacifist associations. The German International Socialist may be rooked and plundered by his comrades in all the other countries of the world in the name of 'solidarity', but he responds with fraternal kindness and never thinks of trying to get his own back, or even of defending himself. And why? Because he is a--German.

It may be unpleasant to dwell on such truths, but if something is to be changed we must start by diagnosing the disease.

The phenomenon which I have just described also accounts for the feeble manner in which German interests are promoted and defended by a section of the clergy.

Such conduct is not the manifestation of a malicious intent, nor is it the outcome of orders given from 'above', as we say; but such a lack of national grit and determination is due to defects in our educational system. For, instead of inculcating in the youth a lively sense of their German nationality, the aim of the educational system is to make the youth prostrate themselves in homage to the idea, as if the idea were an idol.

The education which makes them the devotees of such abstract notions as 'Democracy', 'International Socialism', 'Pacifism', etc., is so hard-and-fast and exclusive and, operating as it does from within outwards, is so purely subjective that in forming their general picture of outside life as a whole they are fundamentally influenced by these A PRIORI notions. But, on the other hand, the attitude towards their own German nationality has been very objective from youth upwards. The Pacifist--in so far as he is a German--who surrenders himself subjectively, body and soul, to the dictates of his dogmatic principles, will always first consider the objective right or wrong of a situation when danger threatens his own people, even though that danger be grave and unjustly wrought from outside. But he will never take his stand in the ranks of his own people and fight for and with them from the sheer instinct of self-preservation.

Another example may further illustrate how far this applies to the different religious denominations. In so far as its origin and tradition are based on German ideals, Protestantism of itself defends those ideals better. But it fails the moment it is called upon to defend national interests which do not belong to the sphere of its ideals and traditional development, or which, for some reason or other, may be rejected by that sphere.

Therefore Protestantism will always take its part in promoting German ideals as far as concerns moral integrity or national education, when the German spiritual being or language or spiritual freedom are to be defended: because these represent the principles on which Protestantism itself is grounded. But this same Protestantism violently opposes every attempt to rescue the nation from the clutches of its mortal enemy; because the Protestant attitude towards the Jews is more or less rigidly and dogmatically fixed. And yet this is the first problem which has to be solved, unless all attempts to bring about a German resurgence or to raise the level of the nation's standing are doomed to turn out nonsensical and impossible.

During my sojourn in Vienna I had ample leisure and opportunity to study this problem without allowing any prejudices to intervene; and in my daily intercourse with people I was able to establish the correctness of the opinion I formed by the test of thousands of instances.

In this focus where the greatest varieties of nationality had converged it was quite clear and open to everybody to see that the German pacifist was always and exclusively the one who tried to consider the interests of his own nation objectively; but you could never find a Jew who took a similar attitude towards his own race. Furthermore, I found that only the German Socialist is 'international' in the sense that he feels himself obliged not to demand justice for his own people in any other manner than by whining and wailing to his international comrades. Nobody could ever reproach Czechs or Poles or other nations with such conduct. In short, even at that time, already I recognized that this evil is only partly a result of the doctrines taught by Socialism, Pacifism, etc., but mainly the result of our totally inadequate system of education, the defects of which are responsible for the lack of devotion to our own national ideals.

Therefore the first theoretical argument advanced by the Pan-German leaders as the basis of their offensive against Catholicism was quite entenable.

The only way to remedy the evil I have been speaking of is to train the Germans from youth upwards to an absolute recognition of the rights of their own people, instead of poisoning their minds, while they are still only children, with the virus of this curbed 'objectivity', even in matters concerning the very maintenance of our own existence. The result of this would be that the Catholic in Germany, just as in Ireland, Poland or France, will be a German first and foremost. But all this presupposes a radical change in the national government.

The strongest proof in support of my contention is furnished by what took place at that historical juncture when our people were called for the last time before the tribunal of History to defend their own existence, in a life-or-death struggle.

As long as there was no lack of leadership in the higher circles, the people fulfilled their duty and obligations to an overwhelming extent. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, each did his very utmost in helping our powers of resistance to hold out, not only in the trenches but also, and even more so, at home. During those years, and especially during the first outburst of enthusiasm, in both religious camps there was one undivided and sacred German Empire for whose preservation and future existence they all prayed to Heaven.

The Pan-German Movement in Austria ought to have asked itself this one question: Is the maintenance of the German element in Austria possible or not, as long as that element remains within the fold of the Catholic Faith? If that question should have been answered in the affirmative, then the political Party should not have meddled in religious and denominational questions. But if the question had to be answered in the negative, then a religious reformation should have been started and not a political party movement.

Anyone who believes that a religious reformation can be achieved through the agency of a political organization shows that he has no idea of the development of religious conceptions and doctrines of faith and how these are given practical effect by the Church.

No man can serve two masters. And I hold that the foundation or overthrow of a religion has far greater consequences than the foundation or overthrow of a State, to say nothing of a Party.

It is no argument to the contrary to say that the attacks were only defensive measures against attacks from the other side.

Undoubtedly there have always been unscrupulous rogues who did not hesitate to degrade religion to the base uses of politics. Nearly always such a people had nothing else in their minds except to make a business of religions and politics. But on the other hand it would be wrong to hold religion itself, or a religious denomination, responsible for a number of rascals who exploit the Church for their own base interests just as they would exploit anything else in which they had a part.

Nothing could be more to the taste of one of these parliamentary loungers and tricksters than to be able to find a%2