forthcoming election, that of a world theory is equivalent to a declaration of war on the existing order of things, in fact, against an accepted view of life It is not necessary for every single fighter to be granted full insight into and exact knowledge of the latest ideas and mental processes of the leaders of the Movement.
An army would not be much good if all the fighting men were generals, and a political Movement would not be much good in defending a world theory if it consisted merely of a collection of “intellectuals’5. No, it needs the primitive fighting man as well, for there can be no internal discipline without him.
By its very nature an organization cannot stand unless leaders of high intellect are served by a large mass of men inspired by sentiment. It would be harder to maintain discipline in a company of two hundred men, all equally gifted intellectually, than in one containing one hundred and ninety less gifted and ten with higher intellects.
The organization of Social Democracy is a case in point ; its army consists of officers and men. The German worker, disbanded from the Army, is the private soldier ; the Jewish intellectual is the officer.
In order that the national idea may emerge out of the vague desire of the present day and succeed in producing clear thought, it must select certain definite leading sentences from the mass of broad conceptions.
With this in view the programme of the new Move¬ ment was drawn up in the form of a limited number of leading sentences, twenty-five in all. Their object is, first of all, to give the man in the street a rough picture of the intentions of the Movement. To some extent they are a confession of political faith, partly for the advantage of the cause and partly with the purpose of binding and fusing together its members by an engagement recognized in common by all.