The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

I THE GERMAN SCENE

  Corruptio optimi pessima.

“We all love to stray along the edge of a precipice.”

— Krizhanitch.

WE WERE guided by various reasons in picking out the Germanies as a subject for a case history in our political cultural analysis. Germany is first of all as das Reich der Mitte (the central realm) truly central in a geographical sense; halfway between Paris and Moscow, Rome and Stockholm, London and Bucharest, Madrid and Helsingfors it is basically different from the marginal states in the European framework, as, for instance, Ireland, Portugal, Greece or Norway. The German people, not unlike the Russian, has furthermore the proclivity to think through to the bitter end every accepted thought, coming from within or without, and to deduct every ultimate conclusion from such an ideology. This at least is a fundamentally Catholic trait in the German character which values logical honesty higher than prudence. It similarly follows out the logic of its heresies. If we look therefore at the reductio ad absurdum of the great heresies in either the purely religious or the political sphere, we have to look at Germany.

But in order to understand the German scene more accurately we must go back in history as far as Christmas day of A.D. 800. On this feast Charlemagne, King of the Germanic Franks, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome. His realm included all nations of the Latin Rite, with the exception of the inhabitants of the British Isles. He was truly the ruler of the Occident and he planned, by marrying the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, to unite Christendom in East and West under one crown and one sword. His secular rule would have supplemented the spiritual rule of the Pope in Rome. The schism between East and West was at that time only a menace. The Millennium of Christendom seemed even then to be waiting “just around the corner.” But disillusionment was to come instead.

Two generations later we behold the Carolingian Empire consisting now of three parts: France, Germany, and a weird realm stretching from the mouths of the Rhine down to Naples, thus comprising the Netherlands, Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland and Italy. This “Lotharingian” Empire is next divided, twenty-seven years later, between the West Franks (French) and the East Franks (Germans), in such a way that the Germans receive control over Italy. This is the reason why the German and not the French rulers become Holy Roman Emperors, successors of Caesar and the Imperatores Augusti. Thus we see the Holy Roman Emperor as primus inter pares among the other European rulers; he was the Senior Monarch in Christendom and the worldly arm of the Papacy.

The German people shared with pride and pleasure this distinction bestowed upon its ruler. In spite of the frequent wars and altercations between Pope and Emperor, and the popular hatred between Germans and Italians, the position of the Emperor remained legally unchanged. There was nothing farcical about the institution of the Empire, as Voltaire would have it when he remarked that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. Even when its existence became fictional it still served the purpose of giving to its inhabitants an appeal to a spiritual mission and bestowing on them a certain supranational character which restrained them from making efforts to germanize the French of Lorraine or the Slavs of Bohemia and Lusatia. The name Germany (Germania) had almost disappeared from common usage and the word Deutschland, propagated by Luther, hardly became popular before the end of the First Reich (1806). There was a great diversity within the boundaries of the Empire, diversity of language, dialect, customs, dresses, and traditions. It was a world in itself; it was the heart of Europe and its most respected realm. The only fixed part of the Empire was Rome and the Urbs was also the metropolis of Christendom.

There was no political capital inside its borders; the emperors, who started out being hereditary rulers and later were elected in order to revert to the initial system, moved their residence from one place to another. We find them frequently in Vienna, but also in Prague, Innsbruck, and Ghent. They were crowned in Aix-la-Chapelle, in Rome, Bologna, and Frankfurt. They were buried in Speyer, Germersheim, Wiener-Neustadt, Utrecht, and Vienna. Constantin Frantz, the great German “Federalist” (i.e., Anti-Centralist) declared bluntly: “The very idea of a German capital has to be considered as thoroughly un-German” (Deutschland und der Föderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, p. 89).

A strong tribal sentiment prevented unification. The rise of a “national” sentiment as we witness it in the West is similarly a slow process. Yet the local dukes and princes, in the beginning pillars of a healthy federalism, became victims of separatistic tendencies. The reaction against this separatism ended under the influence of the French Revolution in the most morbid centralized national uniformity.

Keeping all that in mind we must again concentrate upon the complexities that involve the vaguest and least comprehensible thing in the world — the German mind, the German character.

First of all it must be remembered that the Catholic essence of the Germanies, due to their specific privileges and obligations, was extremely strong and is still far more potent than the outsider is inclined to believe. Heresy has reached the Reich only through the channel of Wycliffe and Hus. Even the character of the Germans, on account of their existence in the heart of Europe, was of a catholic, i.e., universal nature.1 (The meanings of the words “catholic” and “Catholic” will always be mutually inclusive.) There are only two peoples or nations with a naturally universal and cosmopolitan character; the Germans and the Jews. Both characters show the most incredible mosaic of national characteristics, both people were called for an eminent metaphysical mission and both experienced a fall which is comparable only to that of the Angels.2

A

  1. Dutch

  2. Flemings

  3. Friesians

  4. Danes

  5. Lithuanians

  6. Poles

  7. Czechs

  8. Slovaks

  9. Magyars

10. Slovenes

11. Italians

12. Rhaeto-Romans and Ladinians

13. French as well as French Swiss and Walloons

14. Lusatians

B

15. Latvians

16. Esthonians

17. Russians

18. Rumanians

19. Ukrainians

20. Croatians

21. Serbs

22. A great variety of minor groups in S.E. Russia and in the Caucasus.

In the multitude of forms of the different German tribal and individual characters we have to look for the reason of the puzzle of “Germany: Jekyll or Hyde?” The unification has thrown the most different tribal characters together and has brought chaos to the eternal German mosaic. The Christmas tree and Stille Nacht hardly harmonizes with the concentration camp. The Hofbräu of Munich is alien in spirit to the blueprint of a Messerschmitt. Yet “Germany” is a subcontinent like India where Ghandi’s campaign of nonviolence differs so radically from the memories of the terrible slaughter of Lucknow. . . .

This efficiency, of course, is apparent in every domain, and as the contact between the West and the German countries is made in the three most unpleasant aspects of human life — non-Catholic philosophies, commercial travelers,8 and mechanized soldiers — the world has begun to look at the war machinery and militarism as something typically German. Yet even such a bellicose state as Prussia fought only three consecutive wars in the 99 years from 1815 till 1914 and they all took place between 1863 and 1871, while England in her far-flung Empire was involved in eight wars of a larger scale, France in six, Russia in seven, and the United States in three such bloody enterprizes.9

We can experience this depth in so many of the great German Catholics, such as Meister Eckehardt, Suso, Tauler, Hildegarde von Bingen, Albertus Magnus, Guardini, Przywara. There is no doubt that their remoteness from Latin clarté harbors many dangers. Heretics in both the political and the religious sphere, have interpreted these masters in their own way. The German love for Mystery and the Mysterious — a sentiment so alien to ochlocratic culture — is in itself no evil. It may be even a promise for a better future.

The Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire were not infected with heretical thought before the fifteenth century. But John Wycliffe deeply influenced Jan Hus, professor at the oldest University of the Empire, with his ideas and thus Prague, for a long time Imperial Residence, became the center of revolutionary ideas. Hussitism comprised all elements which shaped the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelical skepticism, pragmatism, nationalism and later on ochlocratic and communist tendencies characterized this dangerous heresy, which was the sanguinary forerunner of all identitarian revolutions to come. This eruption of the Czech volcano10 could be crushed only with a maximum of force and the Hussite armies, under the leadership of Žižka, a Czech Cromwell, could be defeated only after his death. Catholicism was for the first time successfully challenged, and the issue was dragged into the political field. The poison of this heresy, suppressed only by force, continued to spread in secret. It was only a question of time when a new heresy would arise, ready to sweep over the endless northern plains as an enormous tidal wave. It came less than a hundred years later in the form of Lutheranism.

The time for its coming was propitious. The Papacy was weak and Humanism had prepared the ground for a nationalist movement. The dukes craved for greater independence from the Emperor, who, in a certain measure, was a Catholic executive. The knights were impoverished as a result of the rise of the commercial cities, and the patriarchal characteristics of serfdom were on the wane. The traders and bankers were weary of the ecclesiastical restrictions on interest.

It is true that it was Calvin who accelerated the rise of an urban, bourgeois culture in the West, in the Palatinate, in Switzerland, in France, in the Netherlands, and even beyond the seas — in Scotland, England, and in America. Luther on the other hand was more successful in de-Europeanizing the Germanies (a process which unfortunately is still continuing) and in undermining the unifying power of an emperor, who like Charles V, was equally interested in driving out the Turks from Hungary, fighting the Moors in Tunisia, getting crowned by the Pope in Bologna, studying the questions of native rights in Peru and Mexico, and evangelizing the islands in the Caribbean.

Within the Holy Roman Empire Lutheranism had far-reaching effects. The very essence of the empire, which was necessarily Catholic, was challenged. The spiritual link between the “Roman” emperor and the Protestant princes was naturally weakened and German federalism evolved slowly into separatism. Wars between the Sacra Maiestas Romana and rebellious princes increased in frequency. These provincial chieftains, after the loot of ecclesiastic property, were now considerably richer and more powerful than before, and so, too, their influence in their own countries had gained, thanks to their new role as “heads” of the evangelical churches. The rapid capitalistic development of the Protestant cities, due to the benevolent attitude of Lutheranism and Calvinism toward the taking of interests and dividends, resulted in a financial strengthening of the North and the Northeast. In consequence, defection from the Church came as a tidal wave. While the Catholic Church in England fought a long and hopeless war against the moneybag and the Whigs, lasting almost 150 years, the destruction of Catholicism in northern Germany took hardly two decades. Protestantism had swept the country like wildfire.

In the North, the Reformation had an asphyxiating effect on further cultural development. But while the South and the “Habsburg hereditary countries,” within and without the Empire, enjoyed the splendor of the Renaissance and the Baroque and the flourishing progress of all the arts under the banner of the Counter Reformation, the northeast section of the country focused its interest onto commerce and the military sciences. Yet the respect of the Germans for the Empire and the imperial idea, in spite even of the Reformation, was not entirely dead. It needed the cooperation of three powers to bring about the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich of the Germans. These powers were Sweden, France, and the traitor in the German midst: Prussia.

Yet the change of the social structure of Brandenburg was to come by the end of the seventeenth century and France was again instrumental in this evolution. Louis XIV gave every imaginable help to the rebellious North German Protestants, and mainly to the Electors of Brandenburg, in order to weaken his great hereditary enemy — the Emperor in Vienna. But in his French affairs he was of an uncompromising strictness in religious matters and his revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in a mass emigration of Huguenots. Some of them went to England, Holland, America, and South Africa, but the large bulk fled to Brandenburg where they were enthusiastically welcomed by Frederick William, the “Great Elector,” an uncle by marriage to William III of England.13

The Electors of Brandenburg not only owed fealty to the Emperor but were also vassals of the kings of Poland in their capacity of dukes of Prussia. They had inherited this duchy, which was to all practical purposes an oversea possession, from the last duke. The Teutonic knights and their grandmaster (a Hohenzollern) had apostasized by 1525, and the latter assumed the title of Duke of Prussia, after having married and founded a local dynasty. These dukes were as little independent of Poland as the grandmasters, and so when the Electors of Brandenburg inherited the duchy it still remained a Polish fief.

Yet the ambitions of Frederick III aimed higher than those of his father, the “Great Elector,” who had been content to be the tyrant of a semifeudal dependency of the empire. Frederick wanted to be a king. It was out of question that a local administrator of the Empire, however important or influential he might be, could assume the royal title which clearly indicated sovereignty of power. But one man found a way out of this dilemma and one order persuaded the Emperor to accept it; the man was Leibnitz and the order, the Society of Jesus.14 The solution was that the Margrave-Elector of Brandenburg became king in Prussia, thus unequivocally demonstrating the fact that this title had only a courtesy value within the borders of the Empire.

This new kingdom of Prussia not only shared in the general material “progress” of the Protestant North, but thanks to the proportionally large, ambitious, and puritanical middle class of Calvinistic character, it achieved a leading position. “The practical, the useful, and the necessary alone mattered,” said Constantin Frantz about this new “Prussia.” Frederick I (as Elector Frederick III) was succeeded by King Frederick William I who is generally considered to be the founder of the Prussian bureaucracy. His administration was still largely French. The estates of the nobility were taxed, the principle of obligatory education was layed down, the standing army (supplemented by press gangs) was increased, and the development of the country in the direction of a commercial and military bureaucracy of an industrial type gained momentum. France at this time was still the classical ally. “France is one of our most powerful allies,” wrote Frederick II in his Political Testament15 in the year 1752.

The Emperor, limited more and more to his “Hereditary countries,” even though frequently victorious in the numerous wars against Prussia, never definitely gained the upper hand. The Austrians had neither enough ambition nor sufficient grim determination to crush the pitiless enemy who adopted a purely Machiavellian and utilitarian policy. Under Frederick II (who was culturally all through his lifetime a Frenchman)16 the old alliance with France went on the rocks, the flow of subsidies stopped, and it was now England who continued to finance and to feed the viper on her bosom. It never pays to support traitors.

The Polish partitions had in the meantime secured for Prussia the province of Pomerelia (the so-called “Corridor”) and Danzig. Even prior to 1815, solid Prussian territory stretched from the river Elbe to the Lithuanian border. The army was enlarged by the adoption of general conscription, for the adulation of France and her institutions had obviously not ceased. But this army was neither as brilliant, nor as “Prussian,” as some people would have us believe. It was the Archduke Charles of Austria who finally succeeded in beating Napoleon for the first time (at Aspern) and the great “Prussian” military and civil leaders like Gneisenau, Scharnhorst Hardenberg, Blücher, and Stein were without exception non-Prussians. Gneisenau was of Austrian origin, Stein came from Nassau, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were Hanoverians, Blücher came from Mecklenburg and so did Moltke. The last named was originally a Dane, while Yorck was of English ancestry. Imagination and inventiveness were never great Prussian virtues.

The abdication of Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor, and his assumption of the title of an Austrian Emperor, fortified the Prussian position in spite of her great military defeats. At the Congress of Vienna Prussia was rewarded with the Catholic bishoprics on the Rhine and Austria finally renounced all rights to her possessions north of Switzerland in the vicinity of the French border. Thus the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, in place of the Habsburgs, became the new protectors of the Reich against French aggression. Their new duties involved new rights and aspirations.

The “Reich” had now ceased to exist, but the German League (an inter-German diet with its seat in Frankfort) still gave the impression of some sort of unity. Thirty-five sovereign princes and four imperial cities were represented in that assembly which met regularly under the presidency of the Austrian delegate, who alone had the privilege to smoke during the sessions. The hegemony of the Habsburgs and of Austria was gravely challenged but it was still a profound reality. The “progressive” elements of the Diet (with the exception of the extreme Left) expected the centralistic unification of the Germanies by Prussia and offered the Imperial Crown repeatedly (openly as well as in secret) to Frederick William III and Frederick William IV. The former expressed the view that he would consider it preposterous to accept the German crown (a Holy Roman crown was already out of question in that age of nationalism) as long as the Habsburgs resided in Vienna, and Frederick William IV replied to the delegation headed by Eduard von Simson, that he would accept the dignity only if it would be the expressed wish of the majority of sovereign princes.

The fundamental mistake of the national herdists was based upon a thorough misunderstanding of the nature and mission of the German people, whose function is to be just central European and not to form a “Nation” in the Western sense. The marginal races on the periphery may take on unequivocal forms of national existence (without, of course, becoming a prey to odious nationalism), but Germandom, just as the Church, must keep its catholic, universalist, and co-ordinating keynote. The “Prussians,” hardened into an egalitarian monolith, never understood the depth and fullness of the German mission properly, and it was therefore their sad task to distract the Germanies from their true destiny and to become the terrible instrument of the Great German Betrayal through National Socialism, for which the Germans as well as the rest of Europe are now paying so bitter a price.

The “German League” already was a step in the wrong direction. It was a definite break with the idea of the First Reich, yet even the Bund had its supranational aspects. The King of Great Britain was a member of the League due to the fact that he was also the King of Hanover; the Kings of Holland as sovereigns of Luxemburg and the kings of Denmark as dukes of Holstein and Lauenburg participated through their delegates in the activities of the Diet of Frankfort. But the Austrian Emperor as well as the King of Prussia had possessions which were not represented in the League such as Hungary, Galicia, Dalmatia, and on the other side, the two Prussias and Poznan.20

The struggle for supremacy — Austria in a defensive and Prussia in an offensive position — could only be decided through the sword. The fateful year of 1866 brought the decision which paved the way for the establishment of the Second Reich. The intolerable attitude of Prussia forced the German States to unite under Austrian leadership and to enact federal execution against Prussia which sabotaged the Diet of Frankfort. Yet it was the criminal, thanks to his superior armament, and not the legitimate contestant who won the engagements. Prussia defeated the Germanies, and that contrary to the Covenant of the Deutscher Bund, with the help of a foreign power — Italy. The Italians were beaten by the Austrians, yet the division of the Austrian armies as well as the inferiority of the Austrian muzzle loaders (in comparison to the Prussian breech loader) decided the war.

The Prussian army had, in 1866, already introduced the modern breech loader (the “needle rifle”), a technical step forward which the Austrian ministry of war had declined to adopt on account of the fact that the cartridges provided with a small ignition needle frequently exploded during practices. The Prussians, far too Machiavellian to be bothered with the injuries of innocent soldiers during maneuvers, saw the practical advantages only and as true discipline of Bentham provided their armies with this sensitive explosive. The rapid firing of the Prussian troops gave rise to the Austrian expression, So schnell schiessen die Preussen nicht! (“The Prussians do not shoot that fast!”), frequently used to disparage gross exaggerations.

The armies of the other German states (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Saxony, Hessen-Kassel, Hanover) were far too small to resist the Prussian Blitzkrieg. It was not the Prussian army as such which had won the war, but — as later on — the Prussian industrial armament. Austria lost the war largely for the reason of being predominantly an agrarian state. (Today an agrarian state has no chance whatsoever against an industrial state on the battlefield.) Hanover in that war had the same experience; the battle of Langensalza against the Prussians had been almost won when unfortunately her army ran short of ammunition. Modern wars are largely won by mechanics and engineers, not by generals and warriors.

This cultural sterility passed almost unnoticed on the part of the people who were busy admiring material “progress,” railway stations, bathtubs, and medical laboratories. The billion dollars paid by France to Germany after the war created a commercial boom without parallel. Capitalism begot socialism, a movement which fitted logically into the general picture of the Second Reich. Marx, together with Treitschke, was after all the logical child of Hegel, who in turn was an epigone of Kant and finally also of Descartes. But now we see an increasing worship for collective values. Nietzsche shouting himself hoarse in the solitude of Sils Maria could hardly bring relief nor start a counterrevolution.

Marxism and nationalism coexisted peacefully in the German countries and it was perhaps only a question of time and circumstances when these two ideologies with their fervent admiration for State and Society would merge into one, and National Socialism would arise as a bastard child of Marx and Wagner-Treitschke.

In spite of these efforts the federalistic character of the Imperial period of the Second Reich cannot be absolutely denied. The “German Emperor” was just a primus inter pares and soldiers swore allegiance to their respective kings or princes and not to the Emperor. Caricaturists could make fun of the Emperor in Bavaria or Baden, but not in Prussia where he was king. Bavaria as well as Württemberg and Baden also had their own stamps and for some time had a law which forbade the display of the former Imperial flag without the simultaneous display of the Bavarian colors. After 1919 the flying of the Reich flag was for a period altogether forbidden. The larger states (Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia) even had mutual diplomatic representation and this institution was only abolished by the furiously centralistic National Socialists.24

William II went to Holland in exile, his Jewish friend, Albert Ballin, committed suicide,25 but the commercial-financial-industrial character of the Reich was preserved. Centralism made further progress and it would have engulfed Germany completely, had not Alpine and royalist Bavaria defended her prerogatives most vigorously. In the cultural sense “Germany” was now most active, probably more so than any other European country at that time. But this postwar culture, a child of the inhuman suffering of the preceding years, was the most degenerate product of the large cities in the North, a real Asphaltkultur, as the Germans called it. This new culture and civilization, expressed in an architectonic style, in music, literature, films, plays, poems, essays and painting, was in itself a “perfect” thing. It could frequently boast of the highest artistic level. Whoever has seen the “Beggars Opera” (Dreigroschenoper) in the German film version or the “Blue Angel,” with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, knows, that these products of a strongly leftist culture were, in spite of their distorted ideological point of view, of the utmost perfection. The only consolation one could derive from this state of affairs was, that the Catholics were forced to abandon their traditional lethargy and to fight this really superb diabolism.

Yet from the first it was evident to everybody possessing a deeper insight that the great leftist Kultur of Berlin, Hamburg, and Breslau was condemned to death on account of its fundamental morbidity, its negative aspects and suicidal elements. Artistic importance alone cannot give moral justification to a culture; it has to stand for final moral and eternal values or will die. The sadness and despair of the Asphaltkultur was depressing to such a degree, that no popular enthusiasm could be aroused for this monstrous outgrowth from the depths of modern city life.

There was something sinister and menacing about these plays, dealing with abortions, sexual aberrations, and suicides. Even the drawings in the funny papers, which all stood for a definite Weltanschauung, were incredibly foul in their human simplicity, cynicism, and sloppiness. A considerable sector of urban Germandom accepted Leftism with a fervor and grim determination which quickly reduced this ideology to absurdity. Yet it was all done with solemn bitterness and an almost religious conviction. The products of Anglo-Saxon parlor pinks are amusing and grotesque, but the student of German cultural Leftism loses rapidly his sense of humor when looking in that gorgonic mirror. One must remember that there was still the dark shadow of a war brooding over the German scene and the Left redrew and reinterpreted this war in the gloomiest colors. There was terror and uneasiness in the cities. And in the background there was the menace of communism made into a living reality by a truly class-conscious proletariat.

The conservative powers in the meantime were not entirely asleep. They felt subconsciously that they were fighting a losing battle against the collective tide. Their writers, essayists, and thinkers were frequently people of the highest order and their publications (today confiscated or nazified) were excellent.

Yet the German Right made the same mistake as most British Conservatives, i.e., they saw in nationalism (in any nationalism) a rightist movement. Another of their blunders was to accept militarism (and conscription) as conservative and laudible institutions, forgetful of the fact that such a great aristocrat and conservative as Leo XIII had attacked these institutions violently. The Prussian Junkers (landed gentry and aristocracy) who had provided the Prussian army with so many able officers had acted against the interests of their class, a mistake of which some of them became aware as late as 1938 or 1939.27 The Prussian army had only too often fought for the interests of merchants and traders, always eager for raw materials and customers, and the aspirations of the most bloodthirsty of all classes — the urban, lower middle class, the backbone of the negative “Modern State.” The Rightists are paying now, all over the world, the same heavy toll for their superstitious belief in nationalism and militarism as the liberal Leftists were paying for their blind belief in Moscow. Yet the mistake of the Rightists is more tragic because they represent the best European tradition whereas the liberal Leftists usually recruited themselves from the ranks of the “brilliant” half educated. (“Brilliancy” and half education are indeed the hall marks of our megalopolitan civilization.)

There is a great kernel of truth in what Peter Viereck says about the German reaction toward alien ideals: “The perennial German rebel against ‘French ideas’ unconsciously retains many of their essentials. When he fancies he is fighting them most fiercely, he often only readjusts them to German needs. The most unbeatable German reply to a western revolution has always been not conservatism but an even more radical German revolution.” (“Metapolitics.” New York, 1941, p. 56.)

One cannot close the chapter on the Second Reich without mentioning the German Jew. The world over, Hebrews have been portrayed by their enemies as monsters of diabolical shrewdness and perspicacity, and all through history they showed themselves to be experienced schemers and organizers of small plans and to have a great ability in the achievement of immediate ends. Yet they have always upset their many little gains by gigantic blunders. The farseeing Jew is almost as rare as the happy Jew. The greatest opportunity ever given to any nation by God they let go by. In propria venit et sui eum non receperunt, “He came unto His own and His own received Him not,” laments St. John the Evangelist.

The Jews practically always backed the wrong horse. The Jews of Russia who worked for the destruction of monarchy found themselves finally in the grips of a brutal religious persecution which hit them harder than the Christians.28 Their most brilliant exponents among the Communists were exiled, slaughtered, or assassinated in exile. The fate of Trotzki is symbolic for Russian Jewry. The Jews, with their ardent sympathies for the Soviet Union, had the same grim awakening when they learned of the Stalin Hitler pacts as the Spanish Jews who had backed the Moors instead of the Christians. Every great Jewish enterprise ended in tragedy, and they made a mistake of unparalleled magnitude when in their idealism they favored “democracy” in Central Europe after the breakdown of the Central Powers.

The Berliner Asphaltkultur, promoted by many Jews, could never have had a far-flung, popular appeal. Intellectualistic trends and ideologies without the simplicities and platitudes of an idée claire have few prospects in an ochlocracy which stands for the rule of the nonintellectual multitudes. The little bourgeoisie as well as the peasants disliked this new megalopolitan culture for different reasons. The hatred of the small bourgeoisie was even more intense because this layer had repeatedly to come into intimate contact with the culture of the Neue Sachlichkeit.32 They aimed at a herdism of a more suburban type.

When Marlene Dietrich sang her famous song, “Alone in a big city,” expressing the whole despair and loneliness of the godless straphanger, it was apparent that the old, déraciné Leftism of the Lonely Intellectuals had come to an end. The shadows of the Red Flag with Hammer and Sickle, which had menaced Berlin for such a long time, disappeared, and in its place rose the Red Flag with the Crooked Cross.

 

_____________

33Elections of the Holy Roman (i.e., German) Emperor were events of world-wide significance. See, for instance, Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, pages 202–203.

34Yet the Jewish fall seems to be rather of a spiritual-theological than of an intellectual-characteriological nature as in the case of the Germans.

35See also: What to Do With Germany, by Colonel T. H. Minshall (London, 1941), where we find an excellent revindication of the original universalist German character.

36Yiddish is nothing but a form of Medieval German with additional Hebrew, Slavic, and Latin words. It shares with German a great flexibility and inner freedom. German is not in vain the richest European language, a magnificent instrument of expression standing in its character nearest to Russian. Nothing is easier than translating from any European language into German, nothing more difficult than translating from a rich and personal German into another idiom.

37This explains the mutual dislike of certain Britishers and Americans. Similarity (caricature!) lies at the bottom of this antagonism.

38See the witty analysis of man and dog in Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class.”

39 The other part of the secret is the rare combination of imagination and organization.

40 The North German commercial traveler is indeed a highly unpleasant species of the homo germanicus. He displays a high-pressure salesmanship which beats even his American colleague. Max Scheler in his Über die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses, published in 1917, has a difficult job in defending the German commis voyageur.

41 Austria Hungary was engaged in seven “foreign” wars. If we do not count the War of Secession as a “war,” we must equally cancel the so-called Prusso-Austrian war of 1866 which was an inter-German war on the basis of a Federal Execution of practically all German states under Austrian leadership against rebellious Prussia on account of her defiance of the Frankfort Diet.

42 The Germans, who live in the Sudeten mountains and in the hills of the Böhmerwald, were not affected. The “racial” character of this Czech movement was very pronounced.

Hussitism celebrated its “revival” in October and November, 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian monarchy broke down. Czechs left the Catholic Church out of sheer patriotism and anti-Catholic propaganda had the full support of the Government. Almost half a million people joined the “democratic” Neo-Hussite Church. Even a statue of our Lady was demolished as “symbol of Austrian domination.” Catholicism was accused of being a Germanic religion!

It is in connection with Hussitism that the Adamites appeared on the scene in fifteenth-century Bohemia. They were strongly communistic, practised nudity and community of women. They became finally a menace to the Taborite wing of the Hussites and Žižka had to persecute them with the same brutality as he did the Catholics.

43 Luther, who seemed to be friendly toward the Jews in the earlier part of his life developed later an unmitigated antijudaism. The violence of his language reminds one strongly of Julius Streicher’s writings and pamphlets.

44 This has nothing to do with the Limes-theory of Mr. Hilaire Belloc or Professor Götz Briefs. The gist of this theory is roughly the following one: only countries that stood under Roman domination were able to withstand the seducing voice of the Reformers. Only the discipline of the Roman background was able to keep the flock in the sheepfold.

Yet if we study the facts we see that this theory hardly holds good. There are the Catholic Highlanders in Scotland, the Catholic Irish, the Catholic Westphalians and Ermelanders, the Catholic Czechs, Slovakians, Transylvanian Magyars, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Latgalians, North Bavarians, and West Hanoverians. On the other hand we have the Protestant English, West and North Swiss, Wuerttembergians, the Mohammedan Albanians and Bosnians, the Huguenots, the Albigenses and Mohammedan North Africa.

** Cf. Rudolf Nadolny’s Germanisierung oder Slawisierung (Berlin, 1928). This author, a German diplomat, repeatedly defended the thesis that the difference between Prussians and Czechs is merely accidental (linguistic) and not “racial.”

45 The “Great Elector” had spent his youth in Holland and when William of Orange invaded England his uncle’s soldiers helped him to subdue that unfortunate island.

It is important to remember that France’s (and later on England’s) foreign help given to the traitorous Brandenburgians and Prussians is a matter which is not strongly emphasized in German textbooks. While English Catholics remained loyal to their non-Catholic ruler in the period of Spanish “aggression” the German Protestants never hesitated to make use of foreign assistance against their Emperor. Even the most nationalistic Protestants do not blush when they worship Gustavus Adolphus and the anniversary of his death is celebrated in Protestant Churches. On the tricentenary of the Battle of Lützen (1932) the German Army and German authorities commemorated the day of German defeat and Protestant victory in all solemnity. It would be interesting to see the reaction of the British public if Catholics would celebrate the coronation of Philip II! The popular forgery of English history is a pious little fraud in comparison to the gross, fantastic, and shameless misinterpretation — Umdeutung as they call it — of German history.

46 The Prussian Kings were grateful to the Jesuits for their intervention. Frederick II, as it appears from his Political Testament (page 32 of the 1920 edition by Dr. Volz), feared nevertheless the Jesuits, and considered them to be pro-Austrian. Yet noblesse oblige. When the order was dissolved in 1773 Prussia and Russia alone refused to proclaim the dissolution, and thus these two “provinces” of the Society were able to survive the interregnum. It was the privilege of the bourgeois parliamentarian German government of 1872 to exile the Jesuits. One sees that Royal Prussia was in some respects more liberal than England in the eighteenth century and the same can be said about the Russian autocracy.

47 Page 44, edition of 1920, edited by Dr. G. B. Volz.

48 Otto Forst de Battaglia in his Blut und Erbe shows that the overwhelming majority of Frederick’s ancestors were French. Frederick II never spoke German properly. He used either French or a lingua franca containing French and German elements. His German spelling was deplorable as it was fantastic. Like Friedrich Nietzsche he hated and despised Germans and worshiped everything French. Like Nietzsche he is also one of the great Nazi heroes. Carlyle admired him without reservation.

49 One witnessed frequently the most amazing reaction of “average” Anglo Saxons who were delighted by their political impressions collected in Germany. The gist of their experience was the cleanliness of public conveniences, the punctuality of trains and the quality of the super highways. French tourists who are more critical were less often fooled by the material aspects than certain American aeromechanics who cannot distinguish between material and moral issues.

Professor Brogan writes: “Britain has regarded the unification of Germany under Prussia (once it was achieved) with approval; it spread Protestant civilization over a wider area and was in tune with the spirit of the age. It was; but that spirit was already different from what the optimistic Victorians thought. As John Stuart Mill saw, the victory of Prussia was no matter for rejoicing among Liberals. But the illusions of 1866 were still lively in 1919.” (Italics ours.) France Under the Republic (1870-1939), New York 1940, page 556.

50 This Kingdom of Prussia was naturally rather Brandenburgian than Prussian, rather Berlinian than Königsbergian. The real Prussian (frequently a South German colonist) is far more attractive than the Berlinian petit bourgeois, who is one of the most evil representatives of Northern Germany. (The aborigenes of Prussia, on the other side, the Pruzzi, who worshiped their gods Pompillos and Perkunos and not Wotan or Donnar, were relatives of the Latvians and Lithuanians. Their language became extinct at about the same time as Cornish.)

If we refer from now on to Prussians or to the process of Prussianization we mention these terms only in connection with the Kingdom of Prussia as a whole. Protestantism, Militarism, Bourgeoisism, Democratism, Technicism are rather Berlinian and megalopolitan than East Prussian and agrarian — apart from the fact that the whole Ermeland in East Prussia is Catholic. So is one full third of Danzig.

51This is nothing else but the advertising and propagating character of Commercial Man who has something to sell.

52 The Eastern Borders of the German League were exactly those of the Holy Roman Empire.

53 Not every conservative and “Great German” was a Catholic. Saxony, Württemberg, and Hanover were more or less Protestant countries. The Royal House of Saxony is also Catholic although the country is 96 per cent Protestant.

54 A description of the highly social-minded character of the early German Conservative Party can be found in Dr. Oscar Stillich’s Die Politischen Parteien in Deutschland, “I. Die Konservativen,” pp. 111–125. Its great doctrinary leader in the sixties was a baptized Jew, Julius Stahl.

55 Richard Wagner as well as Cosima Wagner were both violently anti-Jewish. See Ernest Newman’s Wagner Biography. Vol. III, pp. 284–287. (New York, 1941.)

Wagner’s son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, was the greatest protagonist of antisemitism early in this century. (Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts). See also Richard Wagner’s Das Judentum in der Musik.

56 A fair evaluation of civil liberties in the Imperial Period of the Second Reich can be found in Alonzo Taylor’s Germany Past and Present (New York: Farrar and Rinehart), a useful small booklet. See also Martin Gumpert, Hölle im Paradies, Stockholm, 1939, pp. 79–80.

57 Whatever faults William II (or most other European monarchs) had, they could hardly be blamed with racial prejudices as our American middle class. Pushkin, who served in the Imperial guards as officer, would probably have been as a quarteroon a humble bootblack or a redcap in Pennsylvania station had he been born in the United States. Dumas Pére would have been in the same boat as his octoroon son.

58 Yet the Socialists and Communists considered the Weimar-Republic a good period of transition. They had not forgotten that it might provide them, as their ideologists expected, with a good framework for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Friedrich Engels had written in his Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich: “Die demokratische Republik ist die spezifische Form für die Diktatur des Proletariats.” The “usefulness” of the “democratic Republic” was emphasized in practically every Parteitag of the Socialists.

59 This optic delusion was also the reason for the disastrous cooperation between Conservatives (Deutschnationale) under Hugenberg and the National Socialist. Many of the former had to pay with their lives (like Edgar Jung) for their tragic mistake. Again we see here the pathetic error of the upper classes in accepting the role of clercs. Often it is better and nobler to decline to serve the General Will and to perish.

The most grotesque decision was probably made when the extreme right of the benches was allotted to the National Socialists in the Reichstag. They should have been seated between the Communists and the Independent Social Democrats.

60Orthodox Jews have an endless number of religious laws which renders their participation in modern, industrial life impossible without committing grave sins. Jews are forced in the USSR to eat nonkosher food in the factory canteens, to work on Saturdays, to touch money on Saturdays, etc.

61 One should really speak in that connection of Anti-Judaism rather than of Anti-semitism. Anti-Judaism was religious and not racial. Its roots may be found in Rome, Vienna, and Paris. Antisemitism which is “racial” emanates from Berlin, Nuremberg, and New York. As a biological tendency it is far more fatal and final. Like every other materialistic view its logical conclusion is extermination and not conversion.

62 Franz Neuman affirms rightly in his Behemoth (New York, 1942, p. 121) that the Germans are the least antisemitic of all people. Martin Gumperts (Hölle im Paradies, Stockholm, 1939, p. 38) shares his views. All this in spite of Luthers viciously antisemitic pamphlets.

63 A non-Jew like Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi prophesied that they would be the future aristocracy of Pan-Europe but intelligent Jews like Uriel Birnbaum saw clearly the coming catastrophe.

64 The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Matter of Factness) was the self-arrogated name of the Modern German Republic Culture. It postulated that modern man live a life of simplicity. He should act according to the principles of usefulness. His existence should be carefully planned, but be neither ornamental nor romantic. Everything done should serve a definite material purpose. Neither emotions nor the supernatural should guide the “individual” who is definitely a mere fragment of the masses.

The Neue Sachlichkeit as well as national socialism have Jeremiah Bentham as a common ancestor. Yet while the Neue Sachlichkeit fought every sentimentality in the name of utilitarianism we see national socialism putting sentimental values into the service of utilitarian actions as a means to an end.

• 1* See the letter of Mr. William S. Bennet, prominently displayed in the New York Times, Apr. 5, 1942.
• 2* Apart from the fact that we rather borrow our terminology from the Fathers of the Constitution than from radio commentators or the speakers at women’s clubs.
• 8* Cf. Stringfellow Barr’s article “Ourselves Again” in Tomorrow, Oct., 1942. Condensed reprint in the Catholic Digest, Nov., 1942. This essay of the president of St. John’s, Annapolis, not only evaluates democracy correctly, but also gives an outline of Hitler’s democratic background.
• 9* Democratic rights for school children have been postulated by the disciples of John Dewey, while David Lloyd George demanded in all earnestness plebiscites for the Central African jungles (in a public speech on Jan. 5, 1918).
• 10* About the problem of “democracy” in relation to the popular representation in the United States. See pp. 247–248.
• 13* By federalism we clearly understand a tendency which is the very opposite of federalism in the American sense. We have to distinguish between centralism, federalism, and separatism; centralism wants the whole concentration of power in a single body, federalism demands a division of power with a marked influence of local administration, separatism recognizes local power only and stands thus clearly for the dissolution of the state into independent parts.
• 14** This idea has been well developed in Josef Leo Seifert’s brilliant work Die Weltrevolutionäre (Von Bogumil über Hus zu Lenin), Vienna, 1930. This work is based on P. Wilhelm Schmidt’s and Gräbner’s Kulturkreislehre. It is also symptomatic that the leaders of the republican movements of Italy, Hungary, and Austria are all titled; Count Sforza, Count Ferdinand Czernin and Count Michael Károlyi. A scion of the princely family Löwenstein represents German republicanism in the United States. (The reader is warned that the terms “First Estate” and “Second Estate” for the Nobility and Clergy are interchangeable as they are not really historical. Only the term “Third Estate” is unequivocal.)
• 15* Montesquieu expressed in his De l’espirit des lots (Livre XI, Ch. IV) the belief that neither the aristocratic nor the democratic form of government are “free” by nature. See also the criticisms of Vilfredo Pareto in his The Mind and Society, §§ 1608, 1609, New York, 1935. The urge for uniformity in his Trattato Della Sociologia is discussed, §§1115–1130.
• 16*It is interesting to note that the Austrian Social Democratic Party used the red flag as their party banner, a practice which was genuinely abhorred by their German colleagues who stuck to the colors of the Weimar Republic—black, red, and gold.
• 20**Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.
• 24* The Slovaks speak a language which is almost identical with Czech but their history, tradition, and character marks them out as a totally different people.
• 25** The Serbs cynically listed in their statistics every Bulgarian as “Yugoslav.” Neither was a difference made in their census between Serb, Croat, and Slovene.
• 27* The first sign of a change of mind was Philipp Menczel’s book Trügerische Lösungen which was published in the early thirties. Herr Mènczel is a zionistic Jew from Czernowitz in the Bukovina (then under Rumanian rule).
• 28* This resentment is little justified. The German line of the Habsburgs never permitted the Inquisition to work in their hereditary countries and while Protestants did suffer disadvantages (outside of Hungary) these were never of a penal character as for instance those imposed upon British Catholics.
• 32* The treaties of 1919 and 1920 were, significantly enough, the first major pacts between Christian powers which omitted the invocation of the Holy Trinity.
• 33TO PUT in its right light and scientific context the technical word democracy is naturally our first task. Representative government as established in the United States is not synonymous with democracy. The Founding Fathers established a republic (res publica, politéia), not a democracy. And many of the Founders of the Constitution of this country have repeatedly emphasized this fact in so many words. Some of the best American minds have again and again called attention to this important fact and have protested loudly against the use of the term democracy for the fundamental laws of their country, which they respect and by which they abide.*
• 34We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democracy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term “democracy” in any other sense than in the classical and universal one.* We may well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mispresented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now reached its climax.
• 35Today democracy is confused with liberalism,* freedom, and prosperity alike.
• 36“Democracy” as an ideal of the Founding Fathers is equally denied by W. H. Hamilton and D. Adair in The Power to Govern (New York, 1937, p. 158). It must also be borne in mind that the protest against calling the Constitution democratic comes from historians of all groups, yet while Rightists praise lack of “democracy” in the Constitution, “Leftists” like Charles Beard* and H. Rugg are prone to condemn it outright.
• 37We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive “self-realization” has favored the increased use of wrong labels. It is deplorable that even Catholics have become victims of this chaos in verbiage. They have naturally “their” democracy, the Leftists have “another one,”* and even Conservatives indulge in the worship of a thing called “democracy” with a thoroughly different content. The only way out would be to discard the label completely, restore it brutally to its pristine meaning, and to call the things hitherto covered by the label with their proper names.
• 38In order to denote the classical interpretation of democracy as well as its cultural concomitant we have chosen to use the word ochlocracy and — as its adjective — ochlocratic.* The Greeks used this expression strictly in the sense of mob rule, regardless whether these mobs created majorities or minorities. The selection is not a very happy one, and the reader is reminded that we understand under “mob” not the “lower classes,” but just the vast masses of inferior people which can be found everywhere; these products of a soulless culture and civilization who in their terrifying mediocrity are neither fish nor flesh, have neither face nor expression, neither wisdom nor knowledge, piety nor enthusiasm, faith nor charity, hatred nor love, those who go neither with the angels nor the devils and because of their lukewarmness will be spat out by our Lord on the day of reckoning.
• 39It is almost in the strictly classical sense of the Greek word ochlocracy, to which reference has just been made, that the United States Army Military Manual* defines democracy in Section IX, Lesson 9, on “Representative Government.” Having first described autocracy as resulting in “arbitrariness, tyranny, and oppression,” it goes on to what it considers the opposite extreme:
• 40While many may consider the government established by the Founding Fathers as a constitutional democracy, it is clear that no such idea entered into the mind of those from whom Americans derive their form of government, nor did these men give coloring to such an interpretation by their own actions.*
• 41We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category. Dostoyevski, in his Possessed, has predicted accurately how an egalitarian superdemocracy would function. The Soviets have fulfilled this prophecy to the letter.
• 42The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 43The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunderstood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings! Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he proposed to use the expression Unité du genre humain. Gustave Thibon has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality — and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. These are then usually the “traitors” who do not “play the game” and must be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler.
• 44It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be established by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be assembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will result in chaos and not in melody. Human society presupposes such an inequality and unity. Thibon has seen very clearly this issue which can only be solved in the sign of love.
• 45“It consists in purifying and organizing the inequalities from the point of view of a deeper equality, or, to put it more precisely, in making inequality serve unity. But this unity, what else is it but love and what is love without God.”
• 46This clarification is quite necessary because many a good Christian — and that holds true for most of those living in the Western Hemisphere — has an unclear notion about human equality. The American Declaration of Independence mentions the fact that the human beings are “created equal.”* This is true in the theological sense, and in the theological sense only. Two newly born babes are equal before God whether their parents are white or colored, American or foreign, registered in the Virginia Blue Book or in the rogues gallery. This theological equality continues until the time comes when they commit morally responsible acts. Judas Iscariot and St. John the Evangelist were equally conceived in original sin and free from personal sin, but how different their end! Heaven and hell are not identical. It is actually the privilege of our environmental determinists to discard the terms “saint” and “sinner” and to supplant them by pragmatic expressions like “social-unsocial” or “adapted-unadapted.” Dostoyevski prophesied this moral relativism in his chapter on the Grand Inquisitor (Brothers Karamazov), where he sees humanity declaring through the mouth of its science that there are no trespasses and no sinners but only “hungry people.”
• 47Apparently a great deal of misinterpretation is floating about concerning the interpretation of the American Declaration of Independence. The signers would certainly have been the worst hypocrites had they given to their document the same interpretation that so many give to it today. We can understand their attitude only if we remember the fact that the basis of the American Republic is an aristocratic whiggish one, which largely lacked that deeper “democratic” element in social relations as we find it in southern and eastern Europe, and perhaps in South America.
• 48Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 49Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.’ It puts us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flocking to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed without free will! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that “democracy stands for equality before the law,” whereas the law is largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. There is, of course, one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Determinism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy.
• 50The second attack against integral Christendom, gaining momentum right now, comes from the nonuniversal herdists. They put the human beings into watertight hierarchic categories frequently of a racial nature. This new racial determinism, creating racial aristocracies, responsible to a collective “race” but not to a personal God, and racial proletariats with no hope of an earthly salvation, is not less a danger than the classic panherdism. The desire for racial purity in order to achieve the perfectly uniform herd leads to brutal persecution and finally to the strictest imaginable uniformism. The Germanies without the Jews will be an even more monotonous place than the Germanies with persecuted Jews. We will experience in Central Europe the integral boredom which Myerezhkovski considers to be the fatal characteristic of the Realm of the Antichrist.
• 51We should always bear in mind that the Church and ochlocracy cooperated badly in Europe, that the forces inimical to the Church always fostered ochlocratic tendencies. One cannot dismiss the latter fact as purely accidental. Of course there is no incompatibility on dogmatic grounds. The question moves on a plain where in dubiis libertas is written in flaming letters: “In doubtful matters, liberty.” Yet the atmosphere, the parfum of the Church and that of “democracy,” when blended in the political and cultural sphere, emits a bad stench. A parallel reading of the works of our authoritative “democratic” essayists, poets, and other creative writers (from the Leaves of Grass to the City of Man) with the encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX would give a mortal shock to many “progressive” Catholics who think that the Church ought to come to terms with the spirit of our time . . . (which may, overnight, become the spirit of yesterday). These encyclicals at least express the spirit and policy of the Church in unmistakable directness and clearness.
• 52If there were nothing else than the final and inevitable development of political ochlocracy into the modern party dictatorships it ought to be enough to make the Catholics more skeptical toward this governmental tendency and its ultimate consequences. (We refer here also to the demand of “more democracy!”) It is not a good counterargument to state that everything is evil in a state of exaggeration. Herdism is essentially a “low” sentiment. As nucleus and carrying power of a philosophy of earthly existence it becomes definitely an evil. A real good on the other hand can never be exaggerated enough. There can never be, in human society, enough of the acceptance of the Cross and of charity, never enough loving differentiation and hierarchy, never enough of the spirit of Maundy Thursday when our Lord, the pope, the emperors, kings, and bishops knelt down to wash the feet of twelve Apostles or of twelve beggars. Nor is the custom discontinued in our day. This is hierarchy and charity, order and love.
• 53Yet the great impulse for our modern ochlocracy and democratism comes from France. The French Revolutionaries have tried to copy antique forerunners, but they were not very lucky in their efforts. There is a certain Swiss influence connected with this revolution, yet this element has nothing to do with the democratic peasant spirit of the Original Cantons. It emanates from the eighteenth-century enlightenment which has a strong Swiss, or rather Genevan background. This French town, acquired by the Swiss at a later period of their existence, had already produced its famous two Johns: Jehan Cauvin (from Noyon) and Jean Jacques Rousseau. M. Dunan’s humanitarian Red Cross, the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, the League of Nations, and the socialism of M. Nicole were scheduled to follow.
• 54This pagan geocentrism has changed the very content of our culture. The “happy end” of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its ultimate conclusion here on earth. The Calvinists in their materialism took a similar attitude. The more subtle Atheist, of greater experience, has contempt for the “happy end” and substitutes for it a stubborn heroical pessimism which comes pretty near to integral despair. The modern Catholic French writers like Mauriac and Bernanos avoid the happy end in relation to this life. Paul Claudel, in L’Ôtage, expresses his disbelief in earthly justice by punishing the people of good will and rewarding the villains in the last scene of this play. For the Christian the earth is essentially a “vale of tears.”
• 55It is important to remember that Christianity had not abolished slavery. Neither had the Church ever praised this institution, like Calhoun, because the whole relationship of master to slave was not important enough in the light of a life eternal to be combated with furious indignation apart from the fact that even a slave had every protection in a truly Christian society. But now the servant was an “eternal” servant, the master an “eternal” master, and the rich man possibly all through his assumed existence a rich man; thus the hatred of the lower classes now became wide awake. The employees had during the Middle Ages a knowing smile for those in the higher stations of life; they knew it could easily happen that a rich prince might suffer agonies in hell while a leprous beggar sat in the immediate nearness of God’s throne.
• 56Yet the conquest of time and space is only partially a final aim and ultimate goal of a herdist society. Every ideology visualizes a certain end and ochlocracy is no exception of the rule; the end is not as clearly formulated as in communism and one can say that it has been agreed upon by some sort of general consent. But even in spite of the fact that this ultimate aim is not of such a teleological nature as that of the proletarian Millennium of Karl Marx,** it is nonetheless chiliastic; the democratic middle class of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always believed in some sort of “endless progress.” “Progress” is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudo-religious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells’s, “Of Things to Come,” the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy. This identity of teleological outlooks explains the mutual admiration of certain déraciné Americans and Soviet-Russians for their respective fatherlands.*
• 57Yet the conquest of time and space is only partially a final aim and ultimate goal of a herdist society. Every ideology visualizes a certain end and ochlocracy is no exception of the rule; the end is not as clearly formulated as in communism and one can say that it has been agreed upon by some sort of general consent. But even in spite of the fact that this ultimate aim is not of such a teleological nature as that of the proletarian Millennium of Karl Marx,** it is nonetheless chiliastic; the democratic middle class of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always believed in some sort of “endless progress.” “Progress” is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudo-religious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells’s, “Of Things to Come,” the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy. This identity of teleological outlooks explains the mutual admiration of certain déraciné Americans and Soviet-Russians for their respective fatherlands.*
• 58Yet while civilization is basically lack of friction, smoothness, comfort, and material enjoyment we have to look at traditional Christianity — with its violent opposition to euthanasia, abortion, contraception, pacifism, and individualism — as being something “uncomfortable.” Christianity is after all the only great religion which does not content itself with preaching indifference toward suffering, like the Stoa or Buddhism, but actually sees in suffering, sustained in the right spirit, a positive value. And just because Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, are neither keen on mere “beauty” or “comfort” but stand for magnificence (Grandeur, Grossartigkeit) they reject naked aestheticism or civilization if not in the letter at least in the spirit. It is difficult to project into the frame of a comfortistic civilization* the picture of Christ, hanging on the cross with a body convulsed by pain, the palms torn to shreds by the heavy nails, the hairs glued to the scalp by sweat and coagulated blood. It ought to be repeated again that culture is always “magnificent.” Pure, uprooted l’art pour l’art civilization, on the other side, is always practical and utilitarian and thus is bound to enter into conflict with integral Christianity and every true culture, because neither culture nor the Church are ever “practical”; they are — in a bourgeois, not a cosmic sense — highly unpractical. No wonder therefore that integral Christianity is more at home in those parts of the world where culture is predominant and civilization at a low ebb. Southern India is thus a more favorable soil for the Church than Pittsburgh or Detroit. Civilization is geocentric comfort. But culture, which must be bought by bitter suffering (there is neither art nor sanctity without suffering), points always toward heaven. And the ochlocratic millennium hell bent upon avoiding suffering will turn its back toward heaven.
• 59Yet ochlocrats who never tired of accusing conservatives and Catholics of superstition, illogical traditionalism, and “unscientific” procedure make an act of faith in the inner illumination of the individual and the infallibility of numerical majorities. Phrases like “forty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong” display, nevertheless, a gross misunderstanding of logic; never in history has there been a more farcical and insipid amalgamation of Lutheran and Rousseauan confusion than in the interpretations underlying elections and the general franchise. Luther already was certain that everybody ought to be his own Pope by making use of his own wits in a private interpretation of the bible after dispensing with expert theological judgment; every interpretation was more or less right and had to be tolerated provided it did not conflict with the general line of the Reformers’ intention, and provided — last not least — that it did not lead back to Rome. The ochlocratic “liberal” is indeed in a difficult position toward the followers of terroristic heresies and his belief that “truth stands by itself” has often proved to be suicidal. He is therefore inclined to abandon his liberalism and to turn ochlocracy into a brutal totalitarianism. Luther with his ducal and baronial disciples was followed by terrorists of the type of Calvin, Thomas Münzer or Jan van Leyden, just as Robespierre succeeded Mirabeau and Noailles.
• 60But still, the political franchise is not given to minors and there is little doubt that by this fact the democratic principles are already violated. The Utopia runs into troubled waters. If neither knowledge, nor work, experience, sex, or taxes make any difference, why then, we ask ourselves, should age be taken so seriously? One could imagine that a European university student at the age of nineteen is more intelligent than a street cleaner at the age of thirty, or that a wounded young soldier at the age of twenty has merited more of his country than a prostitute at the age of forty-five. Even if one lowers the age limit there will always be some who are younger and who will complain that they are tyrannized over by a gerontocracy, a rule of old men.* Pure “democracy” is for this and other reasons a political impossiblity and we have to ask ourselves whether it is prudent to adopt such a form of political existence which defies all efforts to make it work without a tremendous amount of alloys. Utopias never mature over a certain transitory stage in which they insure their survival by endless compromising. “Democracy” under present conditions is bound to compromise with political elements taken from aristocratic and monarchical forms of government. A parliament is always a compromise with the former and a president a compromise with the latter political ideology. Aristocracy and monarchy — both taken in a literal, not a traditional sense — are essential and indispensable political elements; there is even “government” in the case of the population being entirely passive. We have to face the bitter fact that the (inner) consent of those governed is under modern conditions rather an accidental than an essential of government. There may be even a good government without popularity and a bad government enthusiastically supported by the “howling mob.” Not even the moral question is solved by the presence or absence of support, and there will be few political casuists who will argue that the people have an inherent right to wickedness which may be enforced against a good but unpopular government.*
• 61It is certain that worship of quantity is one of the most important characteristics of modern democratism, a characteristic which finds its living expression in the increasing interest for the comparison of physical units in the form of statistics. This ochlocratic quantitativism fosters also the belief that the mathematically larger part of the nation has the right to transform its theories into practice. There is nevertheless another element which ought not be overlooked; the element of compromise. The voter in every country has first to make a compromise between his own views and those of the local candidate, who in turn has to compromise with his party. In countries without the two-party system the compromise is extended to one between the parties for the sake of coalitions. The coalitions in their turn compromise with “reality.”
• 62It is certain that worship of quantity is one of the most important characteristics of modern democratism, a characteristic which finds its living expression in the increasing interest for the comparison of physical units in the form of statistics. This ochlocratic quantitativism fosters also the belief that the mathematically larger part of the nation has the right to transform its theories into practice. There is nevertheless another element which ought not be overlooked; the element of compromise. The voter in every country has first to make a compromise between his own views and those of the local candidate, who in turn has to compromise with his party. In countries without the two-party system the compromise is extended to one between the parties for the sake of coalitions. The coalitions in their turn compromise with “reality.”
• 63Yet the question may be raised whether “democratic” states are not far more conscious of civil liberties as regards private or public opinion. It must be remembered in that connection that liberty and democracy are not synonymous in spite of the fact that these two terms are frequently confounded in “democracies” with an aristocratic-liberal historical background. Numerical majorities are not necessarily keen to preserve civil liberties; the demand for civil liberties (and privileges) always arose from select minorities. Genuinely “democratic” societies can be brutally cruel to those who dare to be “different” in an unconventional way.
• 64Yet the question may be raised whether “democratic” states are not far more conscious of civil liberties as regards private or public opinion. It must be remembered in that connection that liberty and democracy are not synonymous in spite of the fact that these two terms are frequently confounded in “democracies” with an aristocratic-liberal historical background. Numerical majorities are not necessarily keen to preserve civil liberties; the demand for civil liberties (and privileges) always arose from select minorities. Genuinely “democratic” societies can be brutally cruel to those who dare to be “different” in an unconventional way.