History shows that it was Germanization of the land, which our forefathers won with the sword, which brought profit, for it was colonized with German agri¬ culturists. Whenever foreign blood has been intro¬ duced into the body of our nation, its unhappy effect has been to break up our national character.
The main principle which we must observe is that the State is not an end but a means. It is the founda¬ tion on which higher human culture is to rest, but it does not originate it. It is rather the presence of a race endowed with capabilities for civilization which is able to do this. There might be hundreds of model States in the world, and yet, if the Aryan conserverof culture died out, there would be in existence no culture on an intellectual level with that of the highest nations of to-day. We may go still farther and say that the fact that men form States would in no way cut out the possibility of the human race disappearing, supposing superior intellectual capacity and adaptibility became lost owing to lack of a race to conserve them.
The State as such does not create a definite cul¬ tural standard ; it can merely include the race which decides it.
Hence the necessary condition for producing a higher humanity is not the State, but the race which possesses the essential qualities for it.
Nations, or better still, races, possessing cultural and creative talent have these useful qualities latent in them, even though outside circumstances, being unfav¬ ourable at a given moment, may prohibit development MY STRUGGLE !55 of them. Thus, it is outrageous to represent the Ger¬ manic peoples of the pre-Christian era as cultureless barbarians. That they never were. The harsh climate of their northern home forced them to exist under con¬ ditions which prevented their creative qualities from developing. If there had been no classic antique world, and if they had come to the more favourable southern lands and had obtained the