The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

III WORLD WAR I

Austria-Hungary remains the cornerstone of Europe. — Leroy-Beaulieu, in 1903.

BY 1914 we see two different types of monarchies in Europe. In some countries the king or emperor overshadows the parliament, in others again the parliament is in full control of the government and the crowned sovereign merely functions as a representative of the nation or as symbol of the state. These monarchies were to all practical purposes republics; some of them had a democratic, some an aristocratic or plutocratic character. It is important to note that it was not always the constitution which curtailed the rights and prerogatives of the monarch, but rather practice and usage. The Swedish constitution, for instance, gives more rights and powers to the king than the Belgian charter, but the king of the Belgians has far greater influence over the state affairs of his country and there is no doubt that he was, during the last war, the virtual dictator of his diminished realm.

Even Austria-Hungary was not a model Catholic state if one considers the fact that the Emperor-King Francis Joseph forced his officers to fight duels if their “honor” was attacked.4 The Church continued to punish this sometimes tragic and sometimes comical practice with excommunication all the same. Catholicism in Austria and Hungary often was supine and suffered from the burden of traditionalism. The middle class with its small but ambitious and headstrong Jewish and Protestant minorities was fully imbued with ideas derived directly or indirectly from the French Revolution and worked for the disruption of the Danubian monarchy. Gladstone, the great liberal, considered her to be a medieval “survival,” putting the realm of the Habsburgs on the same level as his other bête-noire — Turkey.

Austria-Hungary nevertheless was a great asset of the Catholic Church and the ultimate hope of all true “reactionaries,” as they were then considered. “Progressive” people from all parts of Europe felt their political herd instincts outraged and insulted by the mere existence of this irrational, national mosaic. Diversity was the keynote of Austria-Hungary. Twelve nationalities lived together in comparative harmony under a monarch who enjoyed such great moral prestige because he was (besides the Church) the truly uniting bond. It is hardly a question that this second largest European state would have survived to our very days if the World War had not offered an opportunity to the nationalistic middle classes to throw off the yoke of the benevolent Habsburgs with the help of the Allies, and to exchange it (after a short interlude) for the sweet yoke of another Austrian, a good deal less scrupulous in the methods of government.

The peasants, the aristocracy, the laboring classes, and the clergy had been perfectly happy under the old order; and they formed after all the overwhelming majority of the population. Against these historical classes remonstrated the urban populace, the semi-intellectuals, the lawyers, journalists, high school professors, gymnastic teachers, and white-collar workers. (Even the business world was rather divided.) These elements found their way to collaborate with the Allies, who helped them to break up the monarchy. In the delirium of victory few people were consciously aware of the disappearance of the Danubian monarchy. The Habsburgs themselves were of “unpleasant” memory for the progressives who felt haunted by the shadows of Philip II and the Armada, Charles V and his dreams of a universal monarchy, Ferdinand II, and Maximilian, the “Last Knight.” Austria stood in their eyes for “racial” persecution, for Metternich’s police system, the Counter Reformation, the Baroque style and the wars against Frederick II of Prussia.

But in general Austria-Hungary was not disliked. The hatred of the Seton-Watsons and Wickham Steeds was the sentiment of a powerful and influential but small group of people. Francis Joseph, the tragic old man, was more respected than William II. Places like the Tyrol and the Dolomites, old Prague, gay Vienna, Dalmatia, or the Hungarian Steppes had a slightly Ruritanian halo of glamor and romance which was remotely connected with Dracula’s castle in the Carpathians and the waltzes of Johann Strauss.

The war of 1914–1918 was not in the interests of Germany. Every territorial aggrandizement of the Second Reich would have been equivalent to an increase of her Catholic and non-Germanic population and therefore would have created an intolerable and dangerous situation in the eyes of all prussianized Protestant nationalists. Germany was then still a country partly ruled by a parliament, and an increase of Ultramontanes and Franco-Slavic opposition parties would have changed the character of the government and the administration seriously. There is not the slightest evidence that Germany coveted any particular part of any neighboring country previous to the outbreak of the war. No “movements” favoring an Anschluss of the adjacent regions were supported by the government of the Reich; a German “Irreddenta” did not exist and no responsible person inside and outside the government put forward territorial claims of any nature. There are neither maps nor pamphlets demanding the extension of German (or Austro-Hungarian) domination printed before 1914; they became indeed very numerous after Hitler’s advent to power but were unheard of under the imperial government.

On the other hand we had the Italia Irreddenta working feverishly in Triest and the Trentino. Italian geographers were expounding the theory that watersheds (continental divides) alone can be regarded as just and tenable borders.5 There was the south Slav movement directed toward a separation of the Croatian and Slovenian provinces from the dual monarchy. The Rumanian nationalists carried their propaganda to Transylvania and the Bukovina. The Panslavs stirred up the feeling in Bohemia, Slovakia, and among the Ruthenes of Galicia. Czech emigrants (Masaryk and Beneš among them), spoke about the establishment of a Russian imperial protectorate in their country. There were French claims for Alsace-Lorraine, Danish claims for Northern Slesvig, and Russian claims for eastern Germany. The material for these demands, aspirations, and desires could fill whole bookstores.

Germany and Austria-Hungary were at the end of the nineteenth century already inseparable allies. The efforts of King Edward VII to lure Austria-Hungary away from Germany were doomed to failure because nationalism had already made such inroads into the political mentality of Central Europe that the very idea of a war between Germans and Germans (37 per cent of all Austrian citizens were Germans) was out of question. The fateful events of the year 1866 should never be repeated again.

Austria-Hungary had to stick to Germany, and for the Second Reich the Danubian monarchy was the only ally they could count upon. Neither was the linguistic national tie the only one between these two countries. They had a common tradition and a common heritage. The old capital of the First Reich was in Austria, the crown of the holy Roman emperors was in Vienna, the arms as well as the dynasty of the Sacrum Imperium continued their existence in Austria. The legal historical successor of the Caesars was in Vienna and not in Berlin. When Francis Joseph celebrated his diamond jubilee all German princes, headed by the king of Prussia, came to Vienna to pay homage to him. The old emperor emphasized in his thanks address that he considered himself to be a German sovereign — ein deutscher Fürst.

Most Austrians of German extraction considered themselves to be Germans. They rather looked down at the “Prussians” as non-Germans.

Germany was, of course, more industrialized than Austria and her population was accordingly larger. Yet territorially she was smaller than Austria-Hungary.

During World War I the Germans of the Second Reich bore the brunt of the attack, the defense, and the general hatred. The Austrians were only hated by their immediate neighbors and enemies. Thus most of the propaganda of the Allies was directed against Germany and not against Austria, which circumstance further helped to becloud the minds of many otherwise intelligent persons. It must be said in all candor that it is impossible to make a correct historical evaluation of World War I while disregarding the fact that Austria-Hungary began the war, that she was the real issue of the war, and that the most important result of the war is the new order in the Danubian area as established in 1919. Everybody who denies that the World War I is not “about” Austria-Hungary, understands neither history nor Europe.

Neither is it possible to continue the legend of German aggression in 1914. This legend has been thoroughly destroyed. The books of Sidney Fay, of H. E. Barnes, G. P. Gooch, Henri Pozzi, A. v. Wegerer, Bogičević, the publications of the German, Austrian, Russian archives and numerous memoirs have changed the picture completely in the eyes of everybody who has taken the time and energy to dig through these lengthy volumes.6 If there is any “war guilt” on the side of the Central Powers one must admit that it was Austria-Hungary which made the fatal, but unavoidable initial steps, the most decisive ones even, without concrete knowledge of the German government. G. P. Gooch wrote in an article in German Life and Letters (Vol. III): “Bismarck used to say that in concluding the alliance with Austria it was understood that Germany was the rider and Austria the horse. Since the coming of Aehrenthal in 1906 to the Ballhausplatz the roles have been reversed.” This remark is very much to the point.

Yet it is hopeless today, especially since September, 1939, when another Germany willfully started another war, to propagate the truth. It probably will take at least a full generation after this present struggle, decades of sobering up, thinking, reflecting, and investigating, until the wars of 1914 and 1939 will clearly be considered apart. There is little hope in the near future that the just accusations against the Germany of 1939 will not be automatically extended to the Germany of 1914. If we live by 1960 still in an ochlocratic age (i.e., in an age of mass emotions), no such distinctions will be either made or encouraged in spite of the fact that we can see now clearly the difference between a prepared and an unprepared Germany.7

The tragedy of 1914 could perhaps not have been averted. The Karagjorgjevics of Serbia, who were for three years not recognized by the British government because they had gained their throne by murder, set the fuse by profiting from a new murder. Russia regarded herself as compelled to stand by Serbia on account of the Panslavist sentiment, and the intrigues of the military clique checkmated every imperial peace effort coming either from Berlin or St. Petersburg. The French “liberal” republic, so liberal in her loans to the eastern autocracy, was bound to help her. England, tied to France by the secret Naval Agreement of 1907, was bound to assist the Franco-Russian Entente. Constitutional tradition in England made it impossible for the king, a first cousin of William II, to intervene effectively. Italy, who had given birth to a Machiavelli, swung from the Central Powers to the Allies, in spite of the fact that her former associates could promise her far greater profits.8 Yet the anti-Habsburg influences determined her to join the anti-Austrian and only accidentally anti-German bloc.

This war was clearly, if we exclude Russia, a war of the “modern” countries against the “survivals.” Even the Balkan states, in spite of their technical industrial “backwardness,” were deeply imbued with the ideas of the French Revolution. Neither Serbia nor Montenegro had a feudal background. The power of the Italian king was only nominal, and England, then liberal to the core, had an ineffective Conservative opposition. The Russian Revolution did not bring despair alone to London and Paris but also a sigh of relief. Now at last it was possible for the American Republic to join the crusade to make Europe safe for politicians, traders, and dictators. People spoke of a victory of the ideals of 1688, 1776, and 1789. Today these very ideals are effectively challenged by 1917, 1922, and 1933. It is London and Washington who are now the “survivals” with a conservative program against the revolutions.

Hardly had the war begun when an immense propaganda of hatred and calumnies enveloped the more ochlocratically inclined countries of the world. Propaganda was used to a small extent in the “backward” countries like Russia, Turkey, Serbia, Austria-Hungary, and Rumania. In Germany, Italy, and certainly in France it was felt quite strongly. But England and the United States outdid them all. Propaganda had to arouse active hatred and indignation in order to keep the modern “fighting spirit” alive. The hinterland was soon more enraged and inflamed than the front, and the female element at home was in that respect far worse than any active combatant. The conception of traditional chivalry on the Western Front survived merely in the ci-devant individualistic weapon of the air force. Waves of soldiers, driven by sinister, teeth-gnashing sentiments, were hurled against each other; the more illiterates the armies contained, the lower the level of “popular education,” the smaller the percentage of city-bred population, the more human was the war.

The Russian soldiers who “attacked” the enemy forty-five lines deep in the Carpathians, the first fifteen lines equipped with prayer books instead of rifles, fought perhaps without “conviction,” but also without hatred. Yet from a higher point of view it is definitely better to die for “Holy Russia” and the “Little Father Czar” than in a crusade against “Huns.”

While English, French, and German shareholders of the flourishing Nobel dynamite factories discussed dividends and interests in peaceful Switzerland, and German soldiers on the western front were killed by weapons for which the Krupp works continued to receive royalties during the whole war, delegates of Charles I met the emperor’s brother-in-law on neutral soil. This young man, Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, thanks to the intervention of the queen of the Belgians, served in the Belgian army.10

Thus the war went on; the Allies had in the meantime given binding promises to the dissatisfied elements in the dual monarchy and President Wilson proclaimed pompously that he was not willing to deal with the representatives of the “German autocracy.” The hungry and desperate masses of the Central Powers revolted and exiled their monarchs in order to comply with Wilson’s demands, and the drama which found its climax on September 1, 1939, took its course.

One hears frequently the argument that the Central Powers would have treated the Allies brutally if they had won the war, and the treaties of Brest-Litovsk (Brześć nad Bugiem) and Bucharest are always cited as outstanding examples of a dictatorial peace arrangement and as logical forerunners of St. Germain and Trianon. Yet in connection with these two treaties one is tempted to repeat Bowie Haggart’s words in Barrie’s Auld Licht Idylls:

I am of opeenion that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency, I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion.

Yet it is true that the Treaty of Brest was not fair. The Central Powers were anxious to impress the world by their moderation and a weak effort was made to apply Wilson’s delirious proposal for “self-determination”; the result was a compromise in favor of the Russians. The Finns, Esthonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles were given borders which were far from meeting their just demands. Thus the Latvians of Latgalia were left under the communist regime. The district of Chelm, populated by Ukrainians with Polish sympathies, was given to the Ukraine and naturally the Poles were alienated in their sympathies from the Central Powers to such a degree that they instinctively turned to the Allies for help in the realization of their hopes. The Esthonians who had claims for the district of Petseri were no less disappointed than the Finns, who had expected to receive Karelia and Ingermanland. Without the possession of these two provinces they could never reasonably hope to stave off communist attacks in the future.11 The Ukraine became an independent country and even after the breakdown of Skoropadsky’s and Petlyura’s nationalist regimes and the subsequent victory of the Bolsheviks this country was never reincorporated into (Soviet) Russia, but became merely a member of the international Soviet Union.

Yet in spite of the actual intentions, the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was soon decried as the most brutal and dictatorial arrangement. The fact that the newly revived nations again had to resort to arms, immediately after the final defeat of the Central Powers, in order to conquer additional territories from the Soviet Union (to which they had perfect claims), proves the contrary. The Finns thus acquired Petsamo; the Latvians, Latgalia; the Esthonians, Petseri; the Poles got thousands of square miles; and even the Rumanians, the “gallant Allies in the East,” did not make the slightest move to return Bessarabia, to which they had a good right according to national statistics and historical tradition. This time no voice of protest was heard and the western statesmen considered it not a crime that as many square inches as possible should be wrenched from the destructive realm of the Red Czar. And this time they were (accidentally) right. (See map, Appendix V.)

The situation at the Treaty of Bucharest was not identical. Rumania was a monarchy and her ruler a relative of the other European dynasties.12 It must be remembered that the Soviet Union, although outside the category of traditional European states, was nevertheless treated as a diplomatic equal at Brest Litovsk. Its representatives, fresh from the Siberian prisons and the Ukrainian ghettos, dined solemnly with the prince regent of Bavaria, Count Czernin, General Hoffmann, and Herr von Kühlmann.13 Even Ludendorff, that Machiavellian and destructive militarist who had shipped Lenin to Russia, was present and hobnobbed with Trotzky, Radek, and Yoffe. The old tradition of sportsmanship still lingered on.14 And this tradition was even stronger in the Rumanian case. A group of Rumanian politicians (under Marghiloman) suggesting that their country should be included in an Austro-Hungarian federation and their royal house exiled was — in spite of William II’s wavering attitude — not listened to.

Rumania had to consent to a correction of her Hungarian border, involving the loss of a few hundred square miles of barren land in the Carpathians with a population of about 3000 people. She had also to cede 23,000 square kilometers in the southeast (the Dobrudja) to the Central Powers who turned over one third of this territory to Bulgaria.15 Rumania, on the other hand, was compensated for the loss of 800,000 inhabitants in the Dobrudja (a loss which was not final) with Bessarabia, a province of 44,000 square kilometers and almost 3,000,000 inhabitants. The “reactionary and feudal” Central Powers forced Rumania to grant full citizenship to its Jewish subjects.16 Thus Rumania emerged from her defeat with an actual gain. Yet this did not prevent her from declaring war on the Central Powers three hours prior to the armistice and to seize another gigantic piece of land equivalent to about 90 per cent of her own territory.

Such were these two treaties. It is interesting to note that there were few Englishmen or Americans who acclaimed the “liquidation” of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1940 with great enthusiasm. When Soviet Russia knifed Poland in the back supporting Nazi aggression and started to grab Bessarabia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia in order “to redress the wrongs of Brest Litovsk” (as their press wrote), the United States State Department and the Foreign Office protested against these actions. When Russia attacked Finland in 1939 in order to swallow her up, few “democrats” exulted with joy. Even moderate Socialists felt outraged about this unprovoked assault, and yet one wonders how many of them realize that Finland’s independence has been stipulated in Brest Litovsk and that her freedom was largely due to German armed intervention.

The affirmation that the Western Powers were fighting for “democracy” had gained more credibility by the end of 1917. Russia had become a “democracy” in March, but the Russian ochlocracy went through the stages of evolution quicker than even Plato had dared to dream. The young republic was already a tyranny in November, and Hungary achieved the same goal in an equally short time, while Germany, always slow and thorough, took fourteen fateful years.

The shortcomings of the suburban treaties of Paris — Versailles, Trianon, St. Germain, Neuilly, and Sevres — can be summed up as follows:

  1. The atmosphere of mass hatred under which these treaties were concluded. (Which is largely due to nationalism and democratism.)

  2. The lack of fraternal royal feeling which usually paralyzes the effects of general hatred.

  4. The complete failure of the economic “experts” in their estimates.

  5. The return to primitive “dictation” (Vae victis!) and the absence of the element of negotiation.

  6. The social treatment of the delegates of the former Central Powers.

  7. The application of impossible geopolitical dogmas.

  8. The breach of promises and disregard of the original program (14 points of Wilson) due to secret commitments.

  9. The humiliation inflicted through the war-guilt clauses.

This league of men who were neither noble, nor savage, nor anything else soon found its deserved end.

The Treaty of Versailles19 itself was not the great evil which finally brought the National Socialists into power. It is not difficult to vindicate the letter of Versailles; it is the spirit which makes it inexcusable. It is the spirit of Versailles which brought no material advantage whatsoever to the victors but gave the National Socialists a powerful weapon into their hands. Was it necessary to copy Herr von Bismarck’s bad dramatic taste in choosing the Mirror Hall of Versailles, birthplace of the Second Reich, as a stage for the scene where the German delegates were made to sign the fateful document? They signed the death warrant of the Second Reich which was a none too glorious period in German history but a mild one in comparison with the one bound to follow. Could not another day have been picked than the fifth anniversary of the assassination in Sarayevo and the four hundredth anniversary of the election of the greatest ruler of the First Reich — Charles V?20 Was it necessary to celebrate in such solemn form the fact that murder does pay?21 Could not Count Brockdorff-Rantzau be treated at least in the same way as Trotzki was treated in Brest Litovsk? Was it necessary to force the signature under the war guilt clause?22

Many similar questions could be asked in connection with that sad and silly Treaty of Versailles. But one thing can be mentioned in its defense and that is its factual content which was hard but not intolerable. The financial demands were anyhow so unreasonable that no intelligent person expected that the demands could be met. Yet the territorial arrangements gave sense. Alsace-Lorraine, as could be expected from French insistence, was detached from Germany. The Danes had a perfect right to northern Sleswig, and the Poles ought to have received more than they did. The plebiscites in the Upper Silesian and the East Prussian lands were unfortunately held at a much too early date. For these Reich citizens of Polish nationality the idea to join Poland was still identical with joining Russian Poland (“Congress Poland”) which was maladministrated under Muscovite rule. The plebiscites were therefore in favor of Germany and added to the friction. Another mistake was made in the case of Danzig, a mistake which caused endless complications. National (“racial”) borders in eastern Europe are utter nonsense; Danzig, together with all of Western Prussia (Pomorze), Posen, and Upper Silesia, should have been given to Poland. This would have included even more Germans, but from the point of view of a minority it is better to be numerous than to be suppressed as a negligible quantity which can offer no resistance. The more national minorities a state has, the less efficient, hopeful, and active will their suppression be. One has only to compare the desperate situation of the Austro-Germans in the South Tyrol, under Italian domination, with the Germans in Bohemia and Moravia under Czech rule.

The total loss of colonies was definitely a breach of promise but practically no financial loss to Germany. In view of all these facts it is not an exaggeration to believe that, in spite of the factual arrangements of Versailles, the rise and victory of National Socialism has little connection with the treaty itself. The circumstances of the signing, the accusations, humiliations, discriminations are of a more serious nature. Yet the real root of all evil was the nature of the events of 1918–1919: the Weimar Constitution, the flight of William II to Holland, the increased centralization, socialism and socialization, the whole impetus which ochlocracy and materialism gained, thanks to the victory of the Allies. Versailles has as much to do with the reasons for the existence of National Socialism as the Boston Tea Party with American Independence. Both events were symptoms and not causes.

Germany lost the war technically on November 11, 1918, when she sued for an armistice, but she won it “back,” in spite of Versailles (even materially) when Austria had to consent to the breaking up of her territory in the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye a few months later. This treaty was supplemented a year later with the Diktat of Trianon between Hungary and the Allies.

To illustrate the situation better one might visualize a cage (Central Europe) containing a lion and a tiger, Austria and Germany. The Allies killed the lion, carved him up, broiled his slices, and left these on a platter. Then they humiliated the tiger beyond words, clipped his tail and ears, cut his claws, wounded his back, starved him, and locked the cage. Our “democratic” simpletons were highly astonished when the tiger started to eat the remains of his former cage mate once he had finished with the job of licking his wounds.

These new states were nationalistic states with enormous minorities. Czechoslovakia had 52 per cent of non-Czechs,24 Yugoslavia, 60 per cent non-Serbs,25 Rumania, 25 per cent non-Rumanians. These new countries insisted from time to time, not without deeper justification, on being called “democracies.” If their “dominating race” formed more than 50 per cent of the population or provided more than half the deputies in their parliaments, then the minorities had no hope for a revindication of their rights. Their treatment usually varied from suspicion and fiscal vexation to brutal persecution, mass execution, torture and exile. After all, they disturbed the uniform monotony of the herd, and were thus eo ipso troublemakers.

A rigorous application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination is, of course, equally hopeless. The masses generally do not know what is best for themselves or the community of states. This principle, if sincerely invoked, produced such monstrosities as the Czech-German border after the Munich Conference, this sublime triumph of Wilsonism.26 The National Socialists, with their spasmodically manifested respect for the general will, have invoked this principle very successfully when it fitted in with their plans.

It is the nationalistic uniformistic spirit which lies at the bottom of these evils. The problem will only be solved if people are able to get back to their natural delight for a diversity of languages, customs, dresses, and habits. The alternative is rather simple; it is either return or suicide.

Rump Austria was governed most of the time by a Catholic party which frequently had to compromise with a huge Socialist minority exercising an absolutistic rule over the city of Vienna. This metropolis harbored one third of the population of the small Alpine republic, which tended to become a “second Switzerland.” Yet while ochlocratic and socialist influences made Vienna the heart and brain of the Second Internationale, the Alpine districts under Catholic influence developed an ardent hatred against Vienna.

Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania installed an ochlocratic and bureaucratic rule with oligarchic tendencies. Officialdom is for the etatistic bourgeois the same thing as the clergy for the people of the Middle Ages. A soulless, inorganic bureaucracy, centralizing tendencies, the middle classes, state omnipotency, and uniformity all go very well together.

Hungary after a short communist reign of terror became in name a monarchy again. In practice it is a republic run by the Calvinist gentry as the most powerful class. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were both predominantly Catholic (Hungary, 67 per cent, the Czechoslovak Republic, 78 per cent in 1937) yet most of their high officials were non-Catholic if not anti-Catholic. The Regent Horthy of Hungary, the Prime Ministers Bethlen and Gömbös, the Presidents Masaryk and Beneš of Czechoslovakia were Protestants, Agnostics, or Neo-Hussites. In spite of the hatred and tension between Hungary and Czechoslovakia the Hungarian Calvinists unceasingly cooperated with M. Beneš in his efforts to thwart a Habsburg restoration. As a rule the non-Catholic elements always were bitterly anti-Habsburg. The Neo-Hussites in Bohemia, the Moravian Brethren in Moravia, the Lutherans in Slovakia, the Calvinists in Hungary, the Schismatics as well as the “Old Catholics” in Transylvania and Croatia opposed the Habsburgs, Vienna and Austria with the despair of hatred. The Jews were frequently in the same boat and only after the rise of National Socialism in Germany did they change their direction.27 Yet men like Beneš persevered. “I rather want to see the Nazis in Prague than the Habsburgs in Vienna,” he had declared in 1934. There is little evidence of an organized conspiracy; the anti-Habsburg sentiment of the evangelical and agnostic groups was an instinctive resentment28 and paved Germany’s way to the Balkans in the last years.

The new order — i.e., the “liberation of small oppressed nations” — found approval in the leftist circles of Paris as well as in British nonconformity. Mr. Wickham Steed and Mr. Seton-Watson (Scotus Viator) saw their dreams come true. The light of progress had finally come to the Danubian area which British and American29 liberalism had always considered the darkest part of Europe with the possible exception of Turkey.

The man to avenge the easy murder of Austria was an Austrian who got hold for this purpose of the most deadly and precise instrument in Europe — the German people. At one time he had turned his eye south of the Alps, as all Germans traditionally do. A superficial glance seemed enough. And then he started to create a superochlocratic, superidentitarian, monotonous, and monolithic state which was a synthesis of all ideas sprung from the French Revolution, a veritable reductio ad absurdum of “progressive” thought, a gorgonic mirror to the West. This man is Adolf Hitler.

Involuntarily Virgil’s immortal hexameter comes into one’s mind: Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!30 This avenger from the bones of dead Austria has come.

The fatal thing which happened twenty-two years ago was the victory of the principles of national, identitarian, ochlocracy and a spurious concept of “democracy” in Central and Eastern Europe.32 There is only a very short step from national majoritarianism to National Socialism, a step as short as that from mortal disease to death.

________________

33 The general European interpretation of the American political traditions and values was, needless to say, far off the mark.

34 France re-established diplomatic relations after the war. Latvia with 400,000 Catholics was represented at the Vatican. Even Britain with barely 7 per cent Catholics has an envoy. The United States with twenty-two million Catholics still preserves her “splendid isolation” unlike pagan Japan and China and Lutheran Finland.

35 It was imperial Germany which readmitted the Jesuits in 1917. The Jesuits are still debarred from “democratic” Switzerland (and Norway).

36 The Emperor-King Charles abolished this regulation immediately after the death of Francis Joseph.

37 This theory supported Italy’s claim for the Brenner border which finally put 250,000 German Austrians into Fascist servitude. Professor A. Penck, the well-known geographer wrote the best treatise against the watershed theory.

38 The French have never published their archives.

39 One frequently hears the talk of “well-informed historians” maintaining that Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium which she had solemnly pledged to respect. Yet Germany never signed the Belgian Neutrality Pact for the simple reason that she did not exist in the years between 1806 and 1871. The Belgian neutrality was actually violated by Austria-Hungary (who was a signatory) by sending their heavy artillery, which alone was able to crack the heavy fortifications, to Belgium in August-September, 1914.

Neither were all Englishmen so sure whether they had to defend the neutrality of Belgium prior to the secret Anglo-French “naval” alliance of 1907. During the Boulangist crisis in 1887 several papers published letters and editorials urging nonintervention in the case of French or German violation of Belgium independence. The Standard, semiofficial English paper, brought a letter of “Diplomaticus” on February 2 which was followed by an editorial on the fourth. There was an editorial the same day with the same tendency by Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette and an article representing a similar view by Sir Charles Dilke in a June number of the Fortnightly Review. The text of the treaty (confirmed by Prussia, Austria, England, and Russia) was actually not clear and the secret clause about the fortresses actually permitted occupation of the Belgian fortresses by a large power other than France. This secret clause was never formally abrogated but it can be maintained that it had lost its object by the passing of the Napoleonic danger.

The famous Belgian jurist, professor Ernest Nys, a member of the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague wrote in 1912 in his monumental work: Le droit international, les principes, les théories, les faits (Bruxelles, 1912, I, p. 424): “In reality Belgium obtained the guarantees of neutrality, but the Five Powers did not give her a guarantee of the integrity and inviolability of her territory. . . . This is a situation quite different from that of Switzerland.”

There is no doubt that the attack on a peaceful country is not a commendable deed. But the attack on Greece by the Allies in 1917 was morally as condemnable as Germany’s attack of Belgium in 1914—not less and not more so. Germany’s assault on Belgium in 1940 on the other hand was a far greater crime than either forementioned cases; it happened almost immediately after a solemn declaration of nonintervention.

Says Guglielmo Ferrero: “The Allies tore up two treaties—the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909—which limited the right of blockade to material strictly necessary for armies and warfare. The nations who blockaded the central empires do not yet realize that in 1914 the wholesale blockade, as the Allies applied it, was a measure of warfare quite as expressly prohibited by treaty as the invasion of Belgium.”—Peace and War. Trans, by Bertha Pritchard, London, 1933, p. 59.

40 Austria was ready to cede to Italy all the Italian-speaking part of the South Tyrol as well as territories near Triest, which should receive the status of a free city. In the case of a victory of the Central Powers Italy could expect the return of Corsica, Nizza, Savoy, and the annexation of Tunisia in addition to the districts blackmailed from Austria.

41 It must be stated here in all fairness that the German emperor, who was never a bigoted anti-Catholic, received the papal peace proposals with great sympathy. Michaelis’ boycott of the peace plan is splendidly described in Friedrich Ritter von Lama’s Die Friendensvermittlung Papst Benedikt XV (Munich, 1932).

The president of the German Protestant Union, Count Stolberg-Wernigerode wrote a flaming manifesto declaring that “the glittering, victorious sword is going to decide the issue and not dark papal intrigue,” which sounds amusing in the light of the outcome of the war. Yet the funniest part of his open letter lies in his accusation that the pope purposely made his efforts in the year when all “Germany celebrated the four-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation” (1517–1917).

42 As a descendant of the Bourbons, who after all had some merits in regard to France, the egalitarian French Republic, did not permit him to join the French forces. Later, as a special privilege, he was allowed to reside in France.

43 There is little doubt that Finland in the possession of Ingermanland and Karelia would have been in the position militarily to take care of herself in 1939–1940. The Nyeva River, Lake Ladoga, the Zvir River, Lake Onyega, and the White Sea would have given her a perfect system of defense. In addition she would have received a Finnish-speaking population of 600,000 people.

44 It is psychologically not easy for a monarchy to consider a republic as an “equal,” just as there was a marked difference between a country inside and outside of the League of Nations. To have a Christian monarch was equivalent to belong to a definite covenant to which the outsider had no claim.

The supporters of the League regarded the very existence of countries outside the League as undesirable. Monarchs considered for similar reasons the existence of republics in Europe as something negative. Switzerland was always treated as an exception because of her self-declared neutrality. Her neutrality was therefore a declaration to keep out of European politics, to keep out of the whole game of alliances, treaties, wars, and diplomatic intrigues.

45 See the amusing descriptions in J. Wheeler-Bennett’s, The Forgotten Peace, Brest-Litovsk, pp. 113–115 (New York, 1939).

46 If one compares this attitude with the behavior of the Allies toward the delegates of the democratic Weimar Republic, who were kept behind barbed wire, one is able to make an estimate of Europe’s decline since 1815. The delegates of Austria and of Hungary were similarly treated like criminals.

47 Rumania gained the Southern Dobrudja in a most peculiar way. When Bulgaria was overwhelmed in the Second Balkan War by a coalition of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Turkey the Rumanians appeared on the scene and occupied the defenseless Southern Dobrudja.

Bulgaria coveted, after the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, also the central and northern part of the Dobrudja (which is largely populated by non-Rumanians) but Austria-Hungary and Germany were determined to return this region to Rumania after the war. This produced a similar result as the cessation of Chelm to the Ukrainians. The Bulgarians cooled down in their enthusiasm for the Central Powers and concluded an early, separate armistice with the Allies after the first big reverses in autumn, 1918.

48Cf. the curious protest of D. Iancovici in La Paix de Bucharest, Paris, 1918, p. 201 and Texts of the Rumanian Peace, Washington, D. C., 1918, pp. 28–29.

49 The Catholic population of the European Continent is roughly 210 millions, the Protestant, 65 millions. The Catholic birth rate lies on the average 65 per cent higher than the Protestant.

50 About the superficiality of European “Liberalism,” see Eugene M. Anderson’s excellent article in Social Education, May, 1938.

51 The reader is reminded that the Treaty of Versailles was concluded between the Allies and Germany only. As a treaty, that of Versailles is much less important than the treaties of St. Germain (Austria) and Trianon (Hungary and the Allies), treaties which changed the map of Europe more fundamentally than Versailles.

52 The date was June 28. There is, of course, a possibility (taking the poor educational background of the delegates into consideration) that they were not intentionally mischievous.

53 The Serbs erected promptly a monument for the murderer Gavrilo Prinćip. The National Socialist also found great delight in the idea of assassin worship and named many places after the murderer of Dollfuss (Planetta). The Italians preceded this noble cult by having many Piazza Oberdan(k) in their country. Oberdank was an Italian of German ancestry who attempted to assassinate Emperor Francis Joseph. Planetta (Pianetta) was probably of Italian descent. It is possible that foreign names incite individuals to a greater racial “self-assertion.” (Earlier another man, with the Czech name of Drtil, tried to assassinate Dollfuss.)

54 The reason given for the war guilt clause is that it would be impossible to make Germany pay without a “moral” justification. Neither is it moral to force a signature. If the Germans would have been told that the whole war was a mistake from both sides, that great damage was done, and that in a bout it is always the loser (not the “scoundrel”) who pays the bill, much trouble could have been avoided.

55 The countries of the oldest “national” continuity in Europe are Bulgaria, Croatia, and Hungary. Of these the Hungarians and Croats alone can claim also an unbroken continuity of statehood which is the more interesting because the Hungarians are not Europeans, but of Mongoloid, Finnish-Turkish descent.

56 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.

57 The Serbs cynically listed in their statistics every Bulgarian as “Yugoslav.” Neither was a difference made in their census between Serb, Croat, and Slovene.

58 Another attempt to create a “linguistic” frontier was made in the case of the new (1940) border between Rumania and Hungary which clearly shows that the National Socialist genius is always able to beat the “democratic” mind in its own game, be that even the noble competition in absolute stupidity.

These new borders fit national-socialist purposes admirably. It will help to keep Central Europe full of frictions, suspicions, and hatred. It will prevent the establishment of any state which is strong enough to serve as a crystallizing point and thus might antagonize Germany. Divide et Impera! has been the great catchword since 1919.

59 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).

60 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.

61 Theodore Roosevelt, not less than Mr. Wilson, was in favor of a partition of “that survival.” The anti-Habsburgian tradition in the United States dates from the great Kossuth reception in New York. Yet one might doubt whether the American public would have been so overenthusiastic had it known the truth about M. Kossuth’s political views, mainly in regard to national minorities.

62 Aeneas IV, 625.

63 The main pillar of this ludicrous “order” was besides the League of Nation the so-called “Little Entente,” consisting of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, who had replaced the “ramshackle” Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the task of this combination of Ruritanian “democracies” to prevent Germany’s expansion toward the East. The total incongruity of their own power in relation to this task was manifest when we remember that the main activity of this trio consisted in securing their problematic survival. This they could only hope to carry out successfully by preserving the status quo — in Austria and Hungary. Neither country was permitted to restore the Habsburgs to their throne, and Budapest and Vienna were repeatedly warned that such an action would constitute a casus belli. (Hungarian revisionism constituted another “danger.”)

Yet it must be conceded that the states of the Little Entente were so weak and artificial that a restoration in Vienna and Budapest would have made them melt away like the snow in the sun. The only crystallizing factor in the Danubian area were the Habsburgs and the Czech. Serb and Rumanian politicians were stupid enough to let themselves be used by Hitler as stooges. When the day of reckoning came Czechoslovakia and Rumania surrendered without fighting a shot. Yugoslavia almost immediately lost two thirds of her army which went over to the German side. Only the disillusioned, but brave Serbs fought on. Yet the “ramshackle” Danubian monarchy fought valiantly for four and a half years.

Today certain Czechs are agitating again for the status quo in Central Europe. Yet if the Danubian area should be solidified into a harmonious whole then Austria and Hungary must have the right to choose their rulers after their own heart. If self-determination were again to be called a casus belli then one can safely deduct that a restoration of “Czechoslovakia” or “Yugoslavia” in its pristine form and its previous structure must be all means be avoided. In Central Europe only solidly founded states have a right to exist, not provisional establishments which crumble at the first opportunity and serve as steppingstones to German expansion.

64 The treaties of 1919 and 1920 were, significantly enough, the first major pacts between Christian powers which omitted the invocation of the Holy Trinity.

• 4* Charles A. and Mary R. Beard wrote: “As was said afterwards, the founders of the Republic in general, whether Federalist or Republican, feared democracy more than they feared original sin.” (America in Midpassage, New York, 1939, Vol. III, p. 922.) About the use of the word democratic between 1865 and the close of the century, see p. 923 of the same book.
• 5* Mob democracy is, needless to say, nearest to the concepts of St. Thomas. Thus by a play of circumstances their terminology is more accurate than that of some lowbrow Catholics.
• 6* The expression democracy in the notes, Appendix I, as used by American and foreign authorities, has its classical, standard meaning and is equivalent to the term ochlocracy in the text.
• 7* Military Manual published in 1928 and in use for the succeeding four years. (TM 2000–25)
• 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.
• 10* About the problem of “democracy” in relation to the popular representation in the United States. See pp. 247–248.
• 11* While man living in the old, traditional form of culture is a dreamer, modern, ochlocratic man is frequently the victim of illusions.
• 12* Cf. Bernard Fay’s excellent Freemasonry and Revolution. (Boston, 1935.)
• 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.
• 19*Rather typical is the Polish proverb: “Cudzych królów gromić, a grozić swojemu”—“Subjugate foreign kings and defy your own!” It breathes a thoroughly “whiggish” spirit.
• 20**Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.
• 21***The years 1917, 1922, 1923 mark the last stages of this drama.
• 22*Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a very strong point of this fact.
• 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.
• 26*** Another attempt to create a “linguistic” frontier was made in the case of the new (1940) border between Rumania and Hungary which clearly shows that the National Socialist genius is always able to beat the “democratic” mind in its own game, be that even the noble competition in absolute stupidity.
• 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.
• 29** Theodore Roosevelt, not less than Mr. Wilson, was in favor of a partition of “that survival.” The anti-Habsburgian tradition in the United States dates from the great Kossuth reception in New York. Yet one might doubt whether the American public would have been so overenthusiastic had it known the truth about M. Kossuth’s political views, mainly in regard to national minorities.
• 30*** Aeneas IV, 625.
• 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.