The attitude adopted by our bourgeoisie and the way they spared Marxism decided the fate of any attempt at active resistance in the Ruhr from the start. It was folly to try and fight France with that deadly enemy in our midst.
Even in the spring of 1923 it was easy to predict what would happen. It is useless to discuss whether there was or was not a chance of a military success against France. For if the result of German action in the matter of the Ruhr had been merely destruction of Marxism in Germany, the success would have been on our side. Germany, once freed from the deadly enemies of her life and future, would possess a force which no world could ever again strangle. On the day when Marxism is broken in Germany its bonds are broken in good truth.
For never in our history have we been conquered by the forces of our enemies, but rather by our own depravity and by the enemy in our own camp.
However, in a great moment of inspiration, Heaven made Germany a present of a great man, Herr Cuno, whose method of reasoning was as follows : ‘Trance is occupying the Ruhr ; what is there there ? Coal. Is France occupying the Ruhr for the sake of its coal ?” What could occur more obviously to Herr Cuno than the notion that a strike would deprive the French of the coal, and that they would then sooner or later clear out of the Ruhr, since the enterprise was not proving a paying one ? That was the train of thought of that “outstanding” “national” “statesman”.
For a strike they naturally needed the Marxists, for it concerned the workers in the first place. So it was essential to bring the worker (in the brain of a bourgeois statesman such as Cuno, he is synonymous with the Marxist) into line with all the other Germans on the united front. The Marxists quickly came in with the idea ; for the Marxist leaders needed