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  Once the principle of the restoration of the borders of the year 1914 is laid down as the set goal of foreign policy, Germany will face a closed phalanx of her former enemies. Then any possibility is excluded of setting up another Army which serves our interests more, as against the one whose definite form was determined by the peace treaty. Hence the foreign policy slogan of restoration of the borders has become a mere phrase, because it can never be realised for the lack of the necessary strength for this.

  It is characteristic that precisely the so called German bourgeoisie, again headed by the patriotic leagues, has made its way to this most stupid foreign policy aim. They know that Germany is powerless. They know further that, wholly apart from our internal decline, military means would be required for the restoration of our borders, and they know further that we do not possess these means as a result of the peace treaty, and also that we cannot acquire them in consequence of the solid front of our enemies. But nevertheless they proclaim a foreign policy slogan which precisely because of its essential character forever removes the possibility of achieving those means of power which would be necessary in order to carry out the slogan.

  This is what is called bourgeois statesmanship, and in its fruits that we see before us it exhibits the incomparable spirit that dominates it.

  The Prussia of that time required only seven years, from 1806 to 1813, for her resurgence. In the same time bourgeois statesmanship, in union with Marxism, has led Germany up to Locarno. Which is a great success in the eyes of the present bourgeois Bismarck, Herr Stresemann, because it offers the possible, which even the above mentioned Herr Stresemann could achieve. And politics is the art of the possible. If Bismarck had ever imagined that fate would have damned him to endorse with this utterance the statesmanlike qualities of Herr Stresemann, he would have surely omitted the utterance, or in a very small note he would have denied Herr Stresemann the right to refer to it.

  Thus the slogan of the restoration of the German borders as an aim for the future is doubly stupid and dangerous, because, in reality, it in no way encompasses any useful aim worth striving for.

  The German borders of the year 1914 were borders which presented something incomplete in exactly the same way as the borders of all nations are at all times incomplete. The territorial distribution of the world at any time is the momentary result of a struggle and a development which by no means is concluded, but one which clearly continues further. It is stupid to take the border of any sample year in a nation’s history, and, offhand, to represent it as a political aim. We can, of course, present the border of the year 1648, or that of 1312, and so on, just as well as the border of the year 1914. This all the more so as indeed the border of the year 1914 was not satisfactory in a national, military or geopolitical sense. It was only the momentary situation in our Folk’s struggle for existence which has been going on for centuries. And even if the World War had not occurred, this struggle would not have had its end in 1914.

  If the German Folk had in fact achieved the restoration of the borders of the year 1914, the sacrifices of the World War would have been no less in vain. But also, there would not be the slightest gain for our Folk’s future in such a restoration. This purely formal border policy of our national bourgeoisie is just as unsatisfactory in its possible end result as it is intolerably dangerous. Indeed it need not even be covered by the dictum of the art of the possible, for this is, above all, only a theoretical phrase, which nevertheless seems suitable to destroy every practical possibility.

  As a matter of fact, such a foreign policy aim also cannot stand up to a real critical examination. Hence attempts are made to motivate it less on logical grounds than on grounds of national honour.

  National honour requires that we restore the borders of the year 1914. This is the tenor of the discussions at the beer evenings which the representatives of national honour hold on all sides.

  First of all, national honour has nothing to do with the obligation to conduct a stupid and impossible foreign policy. For the result of a bad foreign policy can be the loss of a Folk’s freedom, whose consequence is slavery, and which certainly cannot be viewed as a condition of national honour. To be sure a certain degree of national dignity and honour can still be preserved under oppression, but then this is not a question of shouting or national phrases, and so on, but, on the contrary, the expression which is to be found in the decorum with which a Folk bears its fate.

  Let there be no talk in presentday Germany, above all, of national honour, let no one try to make himself conspicuous, as though one could preserve the national honour outwardly by any kind of rhetorical barking. No, this cannot be done, and for the reason that it is no longer there. And by no means is it no longer there because we lost the War, or because the French occupied Alsace-Lorraine, or the Poles stole Upper Silesia, or the Italians took the Southern Tyrol. No, the national honour is no longer there because the German Folk, in the most difficult time of its struggle for existence, exposed to the light of day a lack of character, an unabashed servility, a dog like crawling fawning that can only be called shameless. For the reason that we subjected ourselves miserably without being forced to do so, indeed because the leaders of this Folk, against eternal historical truth and our own knowledge, themselves assumed the war guilt, and indeed burdened our whole Folk with it, because there was no oppression by the enemy which would have not found thousands of creatures as willing helpers among our Folk. Because, conversely, there were those who shamelessly reviled the time of the great deeds of our Folk, spat upon the most glorious flag of all times, indeed defiled it with dirt, tore the cockades from home coming soldiers before whom the world had trembled, pelted the flag with mud balls, ripped off ribbons and badges of honour, and degraded a thousandfold even the memory of Germany’s greatest period. No enemy had so reviled the German Army as it was defiled by the representatives of the November crime. No enemy had disputed the greatness of the Commanders of the German Army as much as they were calumniated by the scoundrelly representatives of the new idea of government. And which was more certain dishonour for our Folk: the occupation of German areas by the enemy, or the cowardice with which our bourgeoisie surrendered the German Reich to an organisation of pimps, pickpockets, deserters, black marketeers and hack journalists? Let not the gentlemen prattle now about German honour, as long as they bow under the rule of dishonour. They have no right to want to conduct a foreign policy in the name of national honour, if the domestic policy is one characterised by the most antinationalist shamelessness which has ever afflicted a great nation.

  Whoever wants to act in the name of German honour today must first launch a merciless war against the infernal defilers of German honour. They are not the enemies of yore, but they are the representatives of the November crime. That collection of Marxist, democratic pacifistic, destructive traitors of our country who pushed our Folk into its present state of powerlessness.

  To revile former enemies in the name of national honour and recognise the shameless allies of this enemy as the rulers within their own country — that suits the national dignity of this presentday so called national bourgeoisie.

  I frankly confess that I could reconcile myself to any of the former enemy, but that my hatred against the betrayers of our own Folk in our ranks is and remains irreconcilable.

  What the enemy inflicted on us is grievous and deeply humiliating to us, but the wrong committed by the men of the November crime is the most dishonourable, the basest crime of all times. I am helping to make amends for German honour by striving to bring about a situation in which these creatures will some day be called to account.

  I must, however, reject the idea that any other grounds could be a standard for the ordering of foreign policy save that of the responsibility of securing the freedom and the future of the life of our Folk.

  The whole senselessness of the patriotic national bourgeois border policy shows itself on the basis of the following consideration:

  If the avowal of German
as the mother tongue is used as a basis, the German nation numbers ……… Folk.

  Of this figure, ……… millions are in the mother country.

  In which …… Consequently, of all the Germans in the world, there are only ……… millions within the present Reich territory, who represent ……… percent of the total number of our Folk altogether.

  Chapter 9

  HOPELESSNESS OF AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION

  Of the Germans not united with the motherland, in consequence of the slow loss of dedicated racial comrades, the following must be regarded, that is, a total number of approximately ……… million Germans find themselves in a situation which, in all human probability, will one day cause their de-Germanisation. In no case, however, will they be able to take further part in the motherland’s fateful struggle in any kind of decisive form, and just as little, too, in the cultural development of their Folk. Whatever the German element individually accomplishes in North America, it will not be reckoned to the benefit of the German Folk as such, but adds to the cultural aggregate of the American Union. Here the Germans are really only the cultural fertilisers for other Folks. Indeed, in reality, the greatness of these nations is, in general, not seldom to be ascribed to the high percentage of German contributions and accomplishments.

  Once we keep the size of this constant loss of people in view, we will immediately be able to estimate the slight importance of the border policy sponsored by the bourgeois world.

  Even if a German foreign policy were to restore the borders of the year 1914, the percentage of Germans living within the Reich territory, that is, belonging to our nation, would rise despite this only, from ……… percent to ……… percent. Thus the possibility of enlarging this percentage considerably could hardly be in question any more.

  If, notwithstanding, the German element abroad wants to remain true to the nation, this can at the outset be only a question of a language and cultural loyalty, in that the more it rises to a consciously manifested feeling of belongingness, the more does the motherland of the German nation honour the German name in the dignity of her representatives.

  Thus the more Germany as a Reich transmits a mark of the greatness of the German Folk to the world, the more will the German element conclusively lost to the State receive a stimulus at least to take pride in belonging spiritually to this Folk. On the other hand, the more wretchedly the motherland herself attends to her interests, and accordingly transmits a bad impression abroad, the weaker will the inner inducement be felt to belong to such a Folk.

  Since the German Folk does not consist of Jews, the German element, especially in Anglosaxon countries, nevertheless and unfortunately will increasingly be anglicised and presumably likewise be lost to our Folk, spiritually and ideologically as well. Just as its practical work accomplishments are already lost to them.

  Insofar, however, as it is a matter of the fate of those Germans who were broken off from the German Nation by the events of the World War and the peace treaty, it must be said that their fate and future is a question of regaining the motherland’s political power.

  Lost territories will not be retrieved by protest actions, but rather by a victorious sword. Thus, whoever today desires the liberation of any territory whatsoever in the name of national honour must also be ready to stake all, with iron and blood, for the liberation, otherwise such a chatterbox should keep his mouth shut. Along with this, to be sure, follows the duty also of carefully considering whether we possess the power to carry out such a struggle, and secondly whether the blood risked leads, or can lead, to the desired success, and thirdly, whether the success achieved matches the blood that must be staked.

  I most solemnly protest against the claim that a duty of national honour exists which compels us to have two million men bleed to death on the battlefield in order that, under the most favourable result, we may be able to enter a total of a quarter million men, women and children on our books. This is not national honour that is made manifest here, but rather a lack of principle, or madness. It is no national honour, however, for a Folk to be ruled by madmen.

  Certainly a great Folk will protect even its last citizen with collective action. But it is an error to impute this to sentiment to honour, rather than primarily to a sagacious insight and human experience. As long as a nation tolerates an injustice that is inflicted on some of its citizens, it will slowly but increasingly weaken its own position, since such a tolerance would serve the inner strengthening of an aggressive minded enemy just as it grinds down trust in the strength of one’s own State. We know all too well what the consequences are in history of a constant yielding in little things, not to know how to be able to judge the necessary consequences in big things. Hence a solicitous State leadership will all the more preferably attend to the interests of its citizens in the smallest things, as with that the risk of its own commitment is reduced in proportion as that of the adversary rises. If today in any State an injustice is committed against an English citizen, and England undertakes her citizen’s defence, the danger of England being involved in a war on account of this one Englishman is no greater for England than for the other State, which inflicts the injustice. Hence the firm action of a government respected as such in defence of even a single person is altogether not an unbearable risk, since indeed the other State will have just as little interest in starting a war on account of a trifling injustice that may have been inflicted on a single person. A general conception of honour has been formulated on the basis of this knowledge and the thousand year old application of this principle, namely, that a powerful State take every individual citizen under its protection and defend him with all its might.

  Further, through the nature of European hegemony, a certain practice has been developed in the course of time to demonstrate this conception of honour in more or less cheap examples, so as to raise the prestige of individual European States, or at least to give it a certain stability. As soon as an alleged, or even faked, injustice was committed against a Frenchman or an Englishman in certain countries that were weak and less powerful militarily, this subject’s defence with armed power was undertaken. That is to say, a couple of warships put on a military demonstration, which in the worst cases was firing practice with live ammunition, or an expeditionary force of some kind was landed with which the power to be punished was to be chastised. Not seldom, at the same time, the wish that thus an excuse for intervention might be obtained, was father to the thought.

  It would probably never occur to the English even to exchange a note with North America on account of a trifling incident for which they would take bloody revenge on Liberia.

  Thus, the more the defence of the individual citizen is undertaken on grounds of pure expediency and with every means in a strong State, the less can a Reich, made completely defenceless and powerless, be expected to undertake a foreign policy step on the grounds of so called national honour, which perforce must lead, after all, to the destruction of its last prospects for the future. For if the German Folk justifies its present border policy, espoused in the so called national circles, by the necessity of representing German honour, the result will not be the redemption of German honour, but rather the externalisation of German dishonour. That is to say, it is not at all dishonourable to have lost territories, but it is dishonourable to conduct a policy which must needs lead to a complete enslavement of one’s own Folk. And all this only so as to be able to give vent to just ugly talk and to avoid action. For this is just a question of empty talk. If we really wanted to establish a policy having national honour as its goal, then we must at least entrust this policy to persons worthy of esteem according to all common notions of honour. As long, however, as German domestic and foreign policy is conducted by forces which, with cynical smirks, proclaim in the Reich Parliament that for them there exists no Fatherland called Germany, for just so long will it be the first task of these national bourgeois and patriotic phrase mongering heroes merely to secure the simplest recognition of the idea of nat
ional honour in Germany through their domestic policy. But why do they not do it; indeed, on the contrary, why do they enter coalitions with avowed betrayers of the country at the expense of this so called national honour? Because otherwise a difficult struggle would be necessary, whose outcome they view with small confidence, and which, indeed, could lead to the destruction of their own existence. To be sure, this private existence of theirs is holier than the defence of national honour within the country. Yet they gladly risk the nation’s future existence for a couple of phrases.

  The national border policy becomes downright senseless if we look beyond both the afflictions and tasks of the present to the necessity of shaping a life for our Folk in the future.

  Hence the border policy of our bourgeois patriotic Fatherland circles is especially senseless because it requires the greatest blood stakes, and yet contains the smallest prospects for our Folk’s future.

  The German Nation is less in a position today than in the years of peace to nourish itself on its own territory.

  All the attempts — either through increasing land yields as such, or by cultivating the last fallow lands — to bring about an increase of the German production of foodstuffs, did not enable our Folk to nourish itself from its own soil. In fact, the Folk mass now living in Germany can no longer be satisfied with the yield of our soil.