THE SHAM OF FEDERALISM IN the winter of 1919, and still more in the spring and summer of 1920, the young Party was obliged to adopt an attitude towards a question which had become important even during the War. In a previous chapter I described shortly the signs, visible to myself, of the menace of Germany’s collapse, with special reference to the system of propaganda directed by the English, and also the French, towards widening the old rift between the North and South of Germany.
It was in the spring of 1915 that the system of articles and leaflets against Prussia, as being the sole cause of the War, first appeared. Up to 1918 it was developed and perfected in a cunning and shameful manner. They counted on the lowest instincts of mankind and began exciting the South German against the North German, and the fruits of the agitation soon made their appearance. The leaders, both in the Government and in the Army (especially the Bavarian Army) may be well reproached ; they cannot escape blame for failing, with criminal blindness and laxity, to take action against it with proper determination. Nothing was done ! On the contrary, some of them seemed to see it with no great displeasure, and were perhaps unintelligent enough to imagine that such propaganda might not only add a bolt in the unification of the German nation, but might even automatically strengthen the forces of Federation. Hardly ever in history has such wicked neglect received heavier punishment. The enfeeblement which Prussia suffered by it attacked the whole of Germany. It hastened the collapse, which ruined not Germany alone, but much more certainly the individual States themselves.
In the town, in which the artificially excited hatred against Prussia raged most violently, the revolt against the reigning House was the start of the Revolution.