been able to feel the present conditions as really catastrophic, whereas others have considered these conditions as the fulfilment of what they had looked forward to and hitherto silently wished.
distress and the results that have followed therefrom. Almost everyone has to carry his share of this burden, and that is why each one looks on the economic catastrophe as the cause of the present deplorable state of affairs. The broad masses of the people see little of the cultural, political, and moral background of this collapse. Many of them completely lack both the necessary feeling and powers of understanding for it.
That the masses of the people should thus estimate the causes of Germany's downfall is quite understandable. But the fact that intelligent sections of the community regard the German collapse primarily as an economic catastrophe, and consequently think that a cure for it may be found in an economic solution, seems to me to be the reason why hitherto no improvement has been brought about. No improvement can be brought about until it be understood that economics play only a second or third role, while the main part is played by political, moral and racial factors. Only when this is understood will it be possible to understand the causes of the present evil and consequently to find the ways and means of remedying them.
Therefore the question of why Germany really collapsed is one of the most urgent significance, especially for a political movement which aims at overcoming this disaster.
In scrutinizing the past with a view to discovering the causes of the German break-up, it is necessary to be careful lest we may be unduly impressed by external results that readily strike the eye and thus ignore the less manifest causes of these results.
The most facile, and therefore the most generally accepted, way of accounting for the present misfortune is to say that it is the result of a lost war, and that this is the real cause of the present misfortune. Probably there are many who honestly believe in this absurd explanation but there are many more in whose mouths it is a deliberate and conscious falsehood. This applies to all those who are now feeding at the Government troughs. For the prophets of the Revolution again and again declared to the people that it would be immaterial to the great masses what the result of the War might be. On the contrary, they solemnly assured the public that it was High Finance which was principally interested in a victorious outcome of this gigantic struggle among the nations but that the German people and the German workers had no
interest whatsoever in such an outcome. Indeed the apostles of world conciliation habitually asserted that, far from any German downfall, the opposite was bound to take place--namely, the resurgence of the German people--once 'militarism' had been crushed. Did not these self-same circles sing the praises of the Entente and did they not also lay the whole blame for the sanguinary struggle on the shoulders of Germany? Without this explanation, would they have been able to put forward the theory that a military defeat would have no political consequences for the German people? Was not the whole Revolution dressed up in gala colours as blocking the victorious advance of the German banners and that thus the German people would be assured its liberty both at home and abroad?