IV. DEMOCRAT

1

Democracy discloses whether a people knows its own mind or not.

After the Ninth of November German democracy was obliged to be of the same mind as our enemies. Such was the fate its own guilt brought down on it.

But will the German people continue to wish in the long run what its democracy wishes? Will this democracy be content to remain what it was yesterday and still is today: the fulfiller of the Treaty of Versailles? Will not the moment come when the people will protest? And will our democracy then take over the leadership and govern according to the people’s will, having so long governed as a tool according to the will of our enemies?

The justification of our democrats—the democrats of every party—depends on their answer: and on it depends also the fate of a nation responsible for and to itself.

2

The Revolution brought us no true democracy because the people came to power in such circumstances that we could neither respect ourselves nor command the respect of others.

A Revolution stands or falls by its ideals. The German Revolutionaries were determined to have a democratic Revolution. They began by promising the people a democracy. After the Ninth of November they accordingly set in motion all the machinery of democracy. They introduced all the apparatus, all the democratic inventions that liberals and socialists had thought out and foreseen: parliaments, the widest possible suffrage, the freest of all possible constitutions (as they called it). Their method sought to be very radical: it was at any rate very German. The constitution was thorough and doctrinaire, it was finicky and programme-ridden, it was literal and logical; we may think it ended by being rationalist, pettifogging, un-German—but at least it was democratic.

Nevertheless, within a few years we find that no ideal has worn so threadbare as the democratic. We must not be deceived by the fact that the masses still cling to their Republic. Whenever the republican constitution appears threatened, the proletariat rallies in its defence with unanimity, the only unanimity they have displayed since the Revolution, a unanimity which the nation so conspicuously lacked when faced by graver issues.

This attachment to the Republic has greater psychological than political significance. The people have long since recognized that their Revolution was a folly: the kind of folly only Germans would be guilty of! Germans admit this to each other when they are alone; pretty nearly everyone admits it, even those with the most radical leanings. At first everyone inclined to regard this folly with the usual superficial optimism. "We’ll soon be on top again all right!" and the like, were the phrases heard. But gradually it dawned on us all, that the folly into which we had been decoyed was more than one of our harmless Swabian blunders, it was a crisis of the utmost danger ushering in a long period of suffering; and no one can foresee when it will end, or be sure that it may not culminate in the nation’s ruin, dissolution, annihilation. People were reluctant to believe that all they had done had been in vain. They had thrown off their old form of government because they were told it must be changed. They had not foreseen the consequences, but had let the Revolution take its course. In a mood, compounded of more despair than is realized and of considerable dignity, they were determined to justify the Revolution, and make the best of the new constitution for which they had cast off the old. Hence their loyalty to the Republic.

This loyalty to the Republic has nothing to do with democracy. The people are perfectly aware that if "things" are ever to be "better," this can only be if individual leaders will show the masses the way to "better things." If once the people feel that they have found a real leader in the country, they will joyfully accept his leadership and send to the devil all the democratic and socialist party-leaders whose impotence and selfishness they have long suspected. So far, however, the people look for these individual leaders in vain. They feel deserted, leaderless, almost hopeless. They realize and admit that the path they entered on on the Ninth of November has proved a cul de sac. But might it not prove to be after all a way round? Meantime they continued to try the republican, the so-called democratic, road. The Republic seemed the only chance that remained; it seemed to promise at least a possibility of attaining political freedom at home, even if it did not guarantee political freedom abroad. The people considered the Republic as a framework which could be filled in later: perhaps with some totally different content. Meantime, since for the time being no other framework seems possible in Germany, we must make the best of the one we call the Republic.

This does not, however, alter the fact that the people may some day demand measures, republican measures, that will be totally undemocratic.

3

Democracy does not depend on the form of the state but on the share which the people take in the working of the state.

The German people feel today that they have been cheated of this share. They are beginning to distinguish between the Republic and democracy.

Apart from the insignificant group that calls themselves the "democratic party," apart from the democrats whom the socialists reckon in their ranks, the only people who avow themselves "democrats" are the political exploiters of our collapse. These types exist in all parties which admitted liberal elements. They are the people whom the Revolution brought to the top: the new rich, the opportunist parliamentarians, the party-leaders, the publicists. These are the people who acquiesce in the present state of affairs. After the War they abandoned all thought of Germany as a great and free Empire. They were ready for every renunciation except that of their own enjoyment. They worked to earn the cheap money which the democratic state was printing, and they upheld the state not because they honoured what it stood for, but because they wanted to keep their jobs.

Everywhere else—in conservative circles and amongst the proletarian masses—anger began to rise against democracy. However daring the idea of beginning all over again, however dark and uncertain the issue, the people began to clamour for a fresh start and an end to this whitewashing of democracy. Youth rightly craves for the romantic, and youth resented the banalities of democracy even more than its corruption. Youth’s judgments were passionate and stern. The working classes too—the other bulwark of our people—were disappointed at the course the Revolution had taken, and began to turn against democracy. The proletarian masses are socialist not democrat, even when they incline to imagine that socialism means democracy. They are never thinking of the democracy which we have got: they are dreaming of another, new, distant, future,—perhaps impossible—democracy. In every stratum of the people reaction against democracy began to set in, similar to the reaction which a man feels when in the cold light of day he contemplates what he committed overnight.

There is no use comparing what we were before 1914 with what we have been since 1918. These retrospective comparisons are prompted to a large extent by economic rather than political reflections. But beyond these practical preoccupations, retrospective thought posed other questions: about the meaning of this great historical experience we had lived through, about the honour, the conduct, the destiny of a nation. The German people learnt at last—they learnt very slow, but they did learn—to grasp the causes and the effects of the fate that had overtaken them. They learned to despise other peoples who had posed as democrats and had betrayed German democracy. The point of view thus arrived at ultimately led the people to take stock of the democracy which had become their own form of government.

Who, in the name of . . . constituted this democracy? Ye gods! They were the liberals. Of course they were not so rash to call themselves liberals. In Germany they now styled themselves progressives. Liberalism had promised both freedom and progress. Germany now had neither: but Germany had a democracy. The question is: who has this democracy? When the people came to look into the matter they realized that there existed between the people and the state a stratum of persons not the bureaucrats of the old system (though these remained) but a new stratum of persons who now constituted the state, who formed the government and staffed the offices, the press and the organizations: persons who professed to act for the people, but who kept the people at arm’s length. It is true that since 1918 the people themselves had elected these persons, the people in the widest sense—men, women and half-grown adolescents—this was a revolutionary procedure and was supposed to be very democratic. But this "electing business" seemed to crown the people’s dissatisfaction with a state of affairs that was even less to their mind than the old. The people’s understanding told them that it was humbug to assure the individual elector that the vote which he cast gave him a voice in the history of his country. His voting had no influence on the results of the election which produced a number of unknown representatives, each of them tied down from the start by allegiance to his party, and provided with rule-of-thumb instructions for any contingency. This parliamentary business fettered a nation’s policy. The people did not theorize about it: but they were perfectly aware that it was humbug.

The Reichstag has always been despised in Germany. People remembered Bismarck the statesman, who accomplished what other people only talked about, and was more often than not opposed by the Reichstag. Under William II the Reichstag exercised very sparingly such controlling powers as it possessed, and then for the most part obstructively. The revolutionary parliaments, however, which the Weimar Constitution gave us after the Ninth of November are even more heartily despised than the old Reichstag. They may pass laws or reject laws; the people pay not the slightest attention. Their debates awaken no interest. The people expect nothing from them; they have lost all faith.

How complete the divorce is between the life of the parliaments and the life of the people, is clear from the contrast that is constantly observable between the party-leader and the elector. When an elector is asked his opinion, it often appears that this is the opposite of the policy his party is voting for. And the parties on their side often vote one way and think another. The whole thing is humbug; some are dupers, some are dupes, but in the end it is always the people who are sacrificed. Only when a party is in opposition does it acquire unity and a will. Only the fighting parties, whether of the Right or of the Left, have any convictions. Only they have any driving power.

But these are the parties that oppose parliaments—and democracy.

4

Who is the liberal chameleon: democracy?

Who is this moloch who devours the masses and the classes and the trades and the professions and all human distinctions?

Who is this Leviathan? We must not let either the rhetoric or the bonhomie of the democrat deceive us about the true nature of the monster.

Democracy exists where the people take a share in determining their own fate. And the fate of the people is the people’s affair—at least so one would imagine. The question is: how is it possible for the people to take a share?

Nations like individuals make their own fate. But in the case of minors someone else must make decisions for them. There is a great difference between nations; some attain maturity early, some late, some never attain it at all. Some again achieve only an apparent maturity, and allow themselves to be lured into democracy not for sound political reasons but by their literati, their theorists, their demagogues; and find in democracy their undoing.

None of these cases entirely covers ours. We lack the basis of democracy. No inner craving for democracy has run like a guiding thread through the course of our history. We cannot contend that only in democracy can our history find its fulfilment. For many a long day we left "democracy" alone. Fate was kind and favourable; our government had many constitutional features, but monarchy seemed our fore-ordained destiny for the future as for the past. Only the political opposition wasted time on barren conjectures as to whether our monarchy should not adopt a more democratic form, and ultimately perhaps merge in a democracy. The whole question of German democracy is a tangled one and to unravel it we must hark back to its distant origin.

We were originally a democratic people. When we first stepped out of the twilight of prehistory we had already solved the question of how a people can take a share in its own government. The answer had nothing to do with the theoretic rights of man; it was utterly simple: the democracy was the people. There was no social contract, but there was the bond of blood. The unit of society was the family, on this rested the constitution of the tribes, on the tribes rested the community of the people. Confederations of the tribes held the people together, they enjoyed the comradeship of their fields in peace and of their tents in war. The democracy of those days was the self-government of the people in a manner suited to the conditions of their life. The distribution of rights and duties implied by these conditions, which was a feature of the law of the confederations, was based on the practice of self-government. This law recognized the right of the tribes to assert their power inside or outside the tribe, as might seem necessary to them for their own self-preservation. This was the origin of leadership: the free choice of free men who chose them a "duke" to conduct their forces to victory. As the various German races distributed themselves over a larger and larger area, the next step was to elect themselves a king to secure a consistent and continuous policy, and to this end it was natural that the office of king should be vested in one particular and well-tried stock. All this was democracy pure. The people in their confederations established the law; and the leader, whoever he might be, put the law into effect as executor of the people’s will. The German state was the commonwealth of the people, and its unwritten constitution—if we may be allowed the world in so early a context—was the sum of the people’s habits, morals and customs: traditionally expressed in the popular assemblies in which every member of the nation appeared in person and took his share in the decisions that determined his fate.

The unity of the German state was based on the divisions of races and tribes, and the subdivisions of clan and family: in contrast to the states of antiquity which were based on power and law and state-right. German democracy had been begotten and conceived, born and reared. It formed a body, all members of which stood in vital relation to each other, and none thought of disputing its own position or its own function. This unity in diversity gave the state the firm foundation it preserved into historic times, until that greatest of periods when the idea of an empire arose, and the narrow domain of national policy was exchanged for the wider domain of international policy.

A danger, however, was inherent in this diversity. As the various members became more widely divided in space they tended to become less and less conscious of their essential unity, and more and more inclined to seek independence. The tribal constitution had all along been one centrifugal factor. Another was added when the knightly order began to claim precedence over the other estates. In the original feudal organization the leader and the led were bound together in mutual loyalty, but gradually the greater nobility began to differentiate itself from the lesser nobility, and both left out of their calculations the peasant population who had originally constituted the democratic power of the nation. The peasantry were despised, ill-treated, poor and impotent. This neglect led to the reactions of the Peasants’ War. These internal dissensions would have had no more than a domestic importance, if they had not resulted in external weakness. As early as the Middle Ages the German people had shown how un-politically-minded they were, when confronted with problems of foreign politics. They had put power into the hands of the kind, but had given him no means of supporting that power. The kings, who were destined later to be the emperors, had no alternative but to build up private power and private estates of their own. Even this expedient did not prevent the loss of Italy, of Switzerland, of Holland, and ultimately of Alsace: it did not prevent the empire having the greatest difficulty in defending itself against the Turks, and finally the story of the private Habsburg patrimony ends with the dissolution of the Austrian Empire.

The development of these private demesnes led also to disastrous rivalries amongst the princes, to the conception of territorial states, and finally, during the period of absolutism, to the establishment of small independent kingdoms. Despite all these developments, however, the idea of national unity was never wholly lost. The towns which were becoming more and more the centres of German culture owed their wonderful mediaeval achievements to its unifying influence. The idea of unity led to associations amongst the towns by which the citizens sought to assure for themselves the power and security which the weakness of the empire denied them. Thus arose the Swabian and the Hanseatic Leagues. Even under absolutism the idea of unity was not dead; if it did not survive in governments, it was cherished by individuals. Prussia was much more democratic than the reputation of its rulers would imply. With sword and scaffold the Prussian kings put an end to the feudal system; the only duty of the nobility was towards the crown: but through the crown towards the people also. The royal motto "ich dien" (I serve) indicates the attitude of these Prussian monarchs to their people, in striking contrast to the divine pretensions of the kings of France: it represents an attempt to restore through a human intermediary the vital bond between state and people which absolutism had severed.

Such was the course we pursued in Germany, but not thoroughly or logically enough. We did not sufficiently strengthen the foundations of the empire. We failed adequately to support the admirable project of Freiherr von Stein to make the foundation of the state at once conservative and democratic, unified by a wide system of self-government.

Bismarck had to fight his whole life against the consequences of this failure, and his work was finally wrecked on the same rock. We failed to think our most characteristic thoughts to their final conclusion; instead, we welcomed other people’s most foreign thoughts. Instead of a state built up on estates, we based our state on a parliament, which was a conception imported from the west. The parliamentary state in England had always remained a state built on the three estates; it was an aristocratic creation of the great families, who had devised it in a period when their monarchs were ineffective in order to protect their own power and therewith the power of the people. Montesquieu, who somewhat indiscriminately admired this tyrannical and corrupt institution, recognized its essentially Germanic quality, and said that this "beautiful system," as he called it, had "been evolved in the forests." He seized on the idea of "representation," and recognized as the chief advantage of the system the fact that the representatives were "qualified to discuss affairs of state," while the great drawback to democracy was that the people were quite unqualified to do so. Rousseau was the first to teach that all power emanated from the people. He strove unsuccessfully to distinguish between "the general will" and "the will of all." The conception of the state as the result of a Contrat Social was characteristic of an age when the peoples had lost touch with that "nature" which was talked so much about. It was characteristic of such an age that the state was to depend on a mere counting of heads amongst an electorate that had lost all roots, and that such a state should be called a democracy. The English and the French, however, were quick in their different ways to discover protective measures against the dangers of such a system. The English invented the cabinet and the prime minister, to whom they gave precedence over their lower house, and to whom they equipped with almost sovereign powers. The French invented the political clique which manipulated the chambers for its own private ends, which were, however, also the ends of France. It was reserved for the Germans to interpret parliamentism literally, to endow parliament with real powers of control which it then exercised only negatively and obstructively. Görres was still able to say that German had now become "one body in all its members," but we did not even seriously attempt to build up the state on the basis of its component members by following out Stein’s scheme of self-government for town and country, from which a representative system could have been developed that would have enabled us as a nation to select our best in the political field. We based our state on a mechanical counting of votes, instead of an organic union of its members. We spent a century over the discussion of various suffrage systems. We wanted votes merely for the sake of having votes. We thought we had found a mean between the two principles of monarchy and democracy: we had found only mediocrity. The vigorous economic life of the nation ran parallel to its political life, as if there were no connection between the two. This was one fatal fact; another was that under William II the monarchy ultimately lost all touch with the people; in view of the kind of people who sat in the parliaments and the kind of man who sat on the throne this was inevitable. The political parties took over the function of the estates, but the parties suffered, like the parliaments, from complete lack of inspiration. The subdivision of the nation into political parties had become a system, and the parliaments—in particular the Reichstag, which is obviously the foremost of the representative bodies—became merely institutions for the public dissemination of political platitudes. Wisdom based on inheritance, knowledge of men, personal experience, were only to be found in the upper houses which still remained the preserves of one estate. The intellectual representatives of the nation, the great capitalists and employers of labour, all who were in any way creatively active, realized that the nation’s salvation did not lie in debating-matches, and consequently held more and more aloof from parliaments. Thus the parliaments fell deeper into disrepute and people went about their daily business ignoring them. Party programmes, in spite of all the care given to formulating them, never contained an ideal capable of inspiring the people. We need scarcely add that at a time when the course of world history looked most ominous, matters of foreign politics received consideration only in so far as they might have a bearing on internal party politics. This must be emphasized. Much has changed in Germany, but in one thing our fate remains unchanged: our national vice is our exclusive preoccupation with domestic politics.

Our collapse, therefore, which brought us "the freest of republics" brought also the purest form of parliamentism. The pair of them together we call our "Democracy": and many still call this "progress." We must discuss parliamentism in relation to our democracy, not because the two are identical, but because they are erroneously supposed to be so. Mommsen’s observation about ancient Rome appears to be justified: "Democracy has brought about its own destruction, by pursuing its own principle to extremes,"—which, however, did not prevent Mommsen as a German from being a democrat. The reaction against parliamentism that set in immediately after the Revolution, seems, however, of greater moment than even the self-destructive power of the democratic principle. Throughout the length and breadth of the land we see the German races stirring; they want to preserve the Empire, they want it more consciously, more passionately, than ever before, but they cannot believe that its unity will be secured by the sixty million atoms of the population. They believe this unity must be based on the independence of the individual kingdoms, united in their feelings of mutual loyalty and of loyalty to the whole, through some kind of centralisation or federalisation. A similar development is taking place in the economic sphere. Karl Renner, himself a Marxist, was led by the outcome of the War to examine anew the postulates of Marxism; he has evolved the idea of economic spheres. We have been further reflecting on the relation between "community and society" and attempting to construct the state and constitution on the corporative principle which Max Hilderbert Boehm has set forth in: The Corporative Body and the Commonwealth (Körperschaft und Gemeinwesen).

It was only to be expected that the attack on parliamentism should be led by two sides: by the revolutionaries with their ideal of councils, by the conservatives with their ideal of estates of the realm. The idea of "estates" is the idea of an organic structure completely incompatible with the idea of "party." The conservative’s object then is to bring the estates to their rights again, not as romantic historical conceptions but as active, modern bodies with definite political rights and duties which should entitle them to claim incorporation in state and constitution. Economics was again the starting-point of a new line of thought, leading from the idea of economic self-government to that of productive communities which Brauweiler developed out of the "productive family." Corporative and syndicalist ideas were taken into account and councils were not forgotten in thinking out the plan of a state based on estates. This by no means excludes the ideas of popular representation, but it keeps at bay the party system which reduced the monarchy to being the mere plaything of political parties. It would put an end to the humbug by which a German, by the mere casting of a vote, deprives himself for a long series of years of all political freedom; the nonsense which gives a party or coalition government the formal right until the next elections to decide all questions on which the fate of the country depends, even if in the meantime new circumstances have arisen which had not been foreseen at the time of the last election. In such a case the only possibility is the referendum for which the Constitution of Weimar made provision, but which the parties in Weimar later found to be highly inconvenient because it was "an unparliamentary expedient"—and thoroughly democratic. But even the referendum, if applied, could only supply an immediate, and no permanent solution, of an individual question. We need a representation of the people which shall remain in constant touch with the people, by being part of its natural organic structure and not a mere mechanical device; we need a system of representation based on the estates which shall assure us security and permanence; we need a system by which we can stand and not fall.

The feeling that some such system is necessary has gradually become widespread, not only among conservatives but amongst the public at large. It is not only communists who declaim against the tutelage of a so-called democracy that keeps the people in leading-strings. A socialist paper recently asked: "Why had the parliamentary system failed?" "We are living," it said, "in a state of transition. The Revolution gave us what is legally and technically a democracy, but we lack the democratic spirit, the devotion to and interest in the state that is the essence of true democracy."

"Why have we," it went on to ask, no "politically active proletariat?" Why have we not "the right sort of men" to give us a "better selection"? Why do the "party members," the socialist critic continued, show no "understanding of the nature and duties of a parliamentary system"? The answer is simple: Because in Germany the parliamentary system has no tradition! The German social-democrat betrays how backward, how inadequate, how politically uneducated he is, by the way he shies off at the mere sound of the word "tradition." "Tradition" for him means reaction, the old system, the accursed past: everything with which he wants to break for good and all. But tradition is in actual fact the security guaranteed by the past political experience of a people. The memory of the German Reichstag is associated with no great events in which it bore a part; but the memory of its blunders is inexhaustible. It is impotent because it is despised. Our friend the socialist, already quoted, asked: "May not a day be coming when the people will have lost faith in parliaments?" The day has long since come. There is not a man in the country who does not call parliament "the chatter-house." The feeling is universal that no help is to be found there. Our socialist opined that "every people has the parliamentary system it deserves." True. But our conclusion differs from his. We believe that the day of parliaments is over. We believe that Germany will lead the way in thought and deed. The parliamentary system has failed more gravely in Germany than in any other country; we have therefore greater reason than any other country to cast it from us and to create a new, worthier, more suitable form of government representative of the people. Let us rejoice that Germany has proved TOO GOOD for parliaments.

The German people took historically the opposite course from the peoples of the west. France and England began as national states, they progressed as monarchies and after they had by their Revolution got rid of, or limited their monarchies, they established their parliamentary system which they called democracy and which served as a cover for their nationalism. We on the other hand began as a democratic people, maintained ourselves by our monarchy and finally broke our history off with a Revolution which was not so much a national revolution as an international revolution, supposed to be aiming at universal brotherhood and eternal peace.

Our international hopes were deceived. The democrats of the west had no mind to show mercy, still less justice, to the young democracy of our Empire. German democracy is thrown back on her own resources, and if she wants to maintain herself in Germany and vis-à-vis the outside world she must tread the same path as all western democracies have trodden: she must become a nation. She must fling all the ideological rubbish and pacifist assurances on the same dustheap as all the other catchwords that were scrapped at Versailles.

Democracy is the political self-consciousness of a people: and its self-assertion as a nation.

Democracy is the expression of a people’s self-respect—or it is no democracy at all.

5

The question of democracy is not the question of the Republic.

It would from a historical point of view be quite conceivable that Germany was now entering its republican era. It depends however, on how the democracy as a Republic lends itself to nationalization, whether the Republic will last or not, or whether it would be succeeded by a dictatorship, or by an imperial or some variety of monarchical state.

We were well served by our monarchy for centuries. That made us a monarchical people. Then came a generation in which we were ill served by our monarchy. That made us democratic. The change had no logic in it; it was merely a reaction—from one mood into its opposite. Another change would now be possible; having experiment with democracy, we might now change back to monarchy again, reflecting that the good experience of it in the past should carry more weight than the bad, and that many centuries rightly outweigh a couple of decades.

A revolution never remains revolutionary; it has a tendency to become conservative. If there was less confusion of political ideals, the conception of a conservative democracy would be familiar. A democracy would be perfectly conceivable in Germany if its first aim was to shield the life of the people, to root the Republic in the characteristic conditions of the country, to base it on the differences of the component races and the acquiescence of the people. Democracy does not consist in the form of government but in the spirit of the citizens; its foundation is the people.

The German democracy which received its constitution in Weimar is slow to recognize that it can only win a right to endure if it is able to make itself the continuation of the monarchy, not its negation. We repeat: it can only survive if it succeeds in being for the nation what the monarchy was of old: a democracy with a leader—not parliamentism.

The reactionary, of course, sees things differently. He has been untouched by revolutionary thought. For him the age of William II was faultlessly splendid; he thinks that on principle a monarchy is the best of all possible forms of government.

The conservative on the other hand studies the relation of cause and effect; he is not afraid to state that the monarchy itself was the cause of its own downfall. We must explain:

The monarchy has always acted for the people. It took over this duty when the German nation had lost its mediaeval maturity. Nothing but the absolute monarchy saved the German people from the extreme weakness that resulted from the Thirty Years’ War. Without the absolute monarchy there would have been no power to represent the Empire in the eyes of Europe; the Empire would have fallen to pieces. The monarchy saved the nation, and the people loyally followed their dynasties in Austria and Prussia. A patriarchal relationship existed between princes and people. The great princes of the eighteenth century lived for the fame of the German nation; they had the strength of the people behind them and thus foreign politics were possible for them.

These advantages were counterbalanced by a disadvantage which became more evident as time went on. The monarchy taught the people to look to the state to act on their behalf; and the people became unaccustomed to act for themselves. In time monarchy and nation ceased to form a unity, and in moments of danger and years of trial this unity had to be restored by the people’s initiative. This was evident during the Wars of Liberation; and when the Second German Empire was being founded Bismarck had to act as intermediary now on behalf of the monarchy, now on behalf of the people. In the days of William II the bonds between ruler and ruled grew looser and looser, though the pretence of unity was still kept up, by tradition, by convention, by a disciplined patriotism.

The revolutionaries imagined that their intention of ending the war would best be fulfilled by sacrificing the idea of nationality. They maintained that the introduction of democracy would by itself suffice to ensure the benevolence of our enemies. They gave up territory; they struck the imperial flag; they renounced the union of Austria and Germany; they signed a Peace Treaty in which against their conscience they acknowledged Germany’s guilt in causing the World War.

Our present democracy is no longer the democracy of the revolution. We have long since realized that our enemies have betrayed us, and in betraying us have betrayed their own democracy. But our present democracy has one feature in common with the democracy of the revolution: it is equally incapable of taking really democratic decisions—of acting for the people.

Liberalism was the ruin of the German democrat, as a man and as a democrat. If we wish to rescue democracy for Germany, we must turn to quarters where uncorrupted men and Germans are still to be found: we must look to the people. Perhaps we shall be able some day to declare once more our faith in German democracy—some day: when there are no more "democrats."

There have been peoples who flourished under democracy; there have been peoples who perished under democracy. Democracy may imply stoicism, republicanism and inexorable severity; or it may imply liberalism, parliamentary chatter and self-indulgence. Were the German democrats never seized by a paralysing fear that a liberal democracy might be the fateful instrument of the German people’s ruin?

6

We have explained what we mean by democracy: the share of the people in determining its own fate.

German democracy attempted at first to withhold this share from the people and demanded their approval when she "acted" on their behalf: by inaction. The people woke up to realize that the reward their revolution had brought them was to work unremittingly to satisfy the terms of the Peace Treaty which their pacifist and liberal and democratic illusions had fastened on them.

German democracy will plead in excuse that she was only the heir of the Revolution, that fate and circumstances tied her hands, that she was compelled to barter concessions on every side in exchange for the possibility of mere existence. Only the invertebrate pleads force of circumstances; only the fatalist talks of fate. We can imagine a democracy who seeing that good behaviour resulted only in ill-treatment, and finding her back against the wall, would have set about defending with all the power of sixty million people behind her. Our democracy could have called these sixty millions to her aid, an immense, dangerous, threatening force: but she never did.

There is only one way of salvation for the sixty million. The man-power of sixty millions must be transformed into the will-power of sixty millions and the people must make a first and last and only effort at self-defence. This will is the only thing we can surely count on; it is a matter of complete indifference whether this will is called democratic or not, so long as the whole people is behind it. It is, however, vital that it should be a national will: the will of a nation that knows what it wants, and does what it must, to regain its freedom.

Looking back we can see the sequence of cause and effect; we can see that even the democratic policy of inaction is a necessary link in the chain. It makes a great difference whether the MUST of things leaves men unmoved, or impels them to original and creative effort. The imperative must not hold us back; the imperative must set us free. If salvation does not come from democracy, it will come catastrophically from the people.

The German people have often in the past been wellnigh imprisoned in despair. They have never found a way out except through their proverbial furor: perhaps it has sometimes been a barbaric way—perhaps it will tomorrow be a proletarian way.

7

The Ninth of November was not the only consequence of the First of August. It was preceded by that disastrous day on which in the middle of the World War the Reichstag broke the will of the people.

It is possible that we have other disastrous days ahead, days on which German from weakness will again give way to self-deception and deceive the people with false hopes; days on which parties will again fail us and parliaments stood to negotiations which our politically-stronger enemies force on us against the better judgment of the people, negotiations which prevent us from making a clean sweep of the slavery of Versailles, smashing it and ending it once for all.

But we can hope for better things. For in such a case our democracy will not only have the Right against it this time, but will have the Left against it as well: the same proletariat, which at that time made the Revolution: not only the conservatives this time, but this time the classes, the masses, THE PEOPLE.