Adolf

37 Pages 9315 Words

not be due to the failure or to the will of individuals. The reasons went deeper. The German form of government, certainly, could not have been the cause of that war, for Germany was a democracy already-and what a democracy! Strictly copied from the western countries, it was compromise between monarchy and parliamentary leadership. On account of its form of government then, this State could certainly not be the cause of the war waged by the democracies against the Reich as it was then. Germany, considered as a political factor in the world, was much more of a cause, for after centuries of disruption and ensuing weakness, the German tribes and states had at last combined into a new State which naturally introduced a new element into the so-called Balance of Power, an element which was regarded as an alien body by others. Even more potent, perhaps was dislike of the Reich as an economic factor. After Germany had tried for centuries to remedy her economic distress by letting people gradually starve or forcing them to emigrate, the increasing consolidation of the, political power of the Reich gave rise to a development of economic power. Germany began to export commodities rather than men, thereby securing the necessary markets in the world, a process, natural and just from our point of view, but others regarded it as encroachment into their most sacred domains.
Here we come to the State which regarded this encroachment as intolerable-England.
Three hundred years earlier England had gradually built her Empire, not perhaps through the free will or the unanimous demonstrations of those affected, but for 300 years this World Empire was welded together solely by force. War followed war. One nation after another was robbed of its freedom-one state after another was shattered so that the structure which calls itself the British Empire might arise. Democracy was nothing but a mask covering subjugation and the oppression of nations and individua...