The result of it all is the terrific speed of the changes in the most important positions and offices in a State such as ours, a fact which is unfavourable in any case and which frequently works with absolutely catastrophic effects ; for not only the stupid and inefficient fall victims to these methods of procedure, but the true leaders even more so, if and whenever fate manages to set such a character in that position.
So the result will ever increasingly be a spiritual impoverishment of the leading classes. Anyone may judge what the result will be for the nation and the State.
Our ordinary conception of the expression, “public opinion”, depends only in a very small measure in our own personal experiences or knowledge, but mainly, on the other hand, on what we are told ; and this is presented to us in the form of so-called “enlightenment”, persistent and emphatic. The political vision of the mass perceives the final result only of what has frequently been a tough and searching struggle of the soul and intellect.
Far the most effective share in the political “educa¬ tion”, which in this case is very appropriately named “propaganda”, is that which falls to the Press, which takes on itself the “work of enlightenment” and thus sets up a kind of school for grown-ups, as it were. This instruction is, however, not in the hands of the State, but is gripped by forces for the most part very inferior in character. As a young man in Vienna, I had the best opportunities for getting a knowledge of the owners and clever craftsmen of that machine for mass education. At the start I could but wonder at the short time it had taken for that evil power in the State successfully to create a definite public opinion, in spite of the fact that it might involve a deceitful reversal of the public’s real desires and views. In a few days this absurdity became a State act of great consequence, whilst at the same time essential problems fell into general oblivion, or rather they were stolen away from the memory and attention of the masses.