There is no doubt that the national power of resist¬ ance of the Catholic priesthood of German nationality in all questions affecting the German race was inferior to that of their non-German brethren, especially the Czechs. Whereas the Czech clergy treated their own race subjectively, and the Church merely objectively, the German priests’ devotion to the Church was sub¬ jective, and it was objective as regards the German race.
Compare the attitude, which our official class, for instance, is adopting towards a movement for a national re-birth with that which would be adopted by the official class of any other nation under similar circum¬ stances. Or do we imagine that the corps of officers anywhere else in the world would dismiss national demands with the phrase “State authority”, as hap¬ pened with us five years ago ; it was held up as being perfectly natural, nay highly meritorious !
Do not both our creeds to-day assume an attitude with regard to the Jewish question which is in harmony neither with the nation’s importance nor with the requirements of religion ? And yet compare the atti¬ tude of any Jewish Rabbi in all questions of even minor importance to Jewry as a race with that of our clergy of both Christian creeds towards the German race.
That is what always happens with us if ever it is a matter of defending an abstract idea.
“State authority”, “Democracy”, “Pacifism”, “International Solidarity”, etc., are merely ideas with us, which we always convert into fixed and purely doctrinaire conceptions, so that all matters of urgent national necessity are judged from that point of view.