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had declined among our so-called diplomats in Germany even before the War. These diplomatists did not have the slightest notion of what that force was which brought men to face death of their own free will and determination.

As long as the German people, in the War of 1914, continued to believe that they were fighting for ideals they stood firm. As soon as they were told that they were fighting only for their daily bread they began to give up the struggle.

Our clever 'statesmen' were greatly amazed at this change of feeling. They never understood that as soon as man is called upon to struggle for purely material causes he will avoid death as best he can; for death and the enjoyment of the material fruits of a victory are quite incompatible concepts. The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.

The following may be proclaimed as a truth that always holds good:

A State has never arisen from commercial causes for the purpose of peacefully serving commercial ends; but States have always arisen from the instinct to maintain the racial group, whether this instinct manifest itself in the heroic sphere or in the sphere of cunning and chicanery. In the first case we have the Aryan States, based on the principles of work and cultural development. In the second case we have the Jewish parasitic colonies. But as soon as economic interests begin to predominate over the racial and cultural instincts in a people or a State, these economic interests unloose the causes that lead to subjugation and oppression.

The belief, which prevailed in Germany before the War, that the world could be opened up and even conquered for Germany through a system of peaceful commercial penetration and a colonial policy was a typical symptom which indicated the decline of those real qualities whereby States are created and preserved, and indicated also the decline of that insight, will-power and practical determination which belong to those qualities. The World War with its consequences, was the natural liquidation of that decline.

To anyone who had not thought over the matter deeply, this attitude of the German people--which was quite general--must have seemed an insoluble enigma. After all, Germany herself was a magnificent example of an empire that had been built up purely by a policy of power. Prussia, which was the generative cell of the German Empire, had been created by brilliant heroic deeds and not by a financial or commercial compact. And the Empire itself was but the magnificent recompense for a leadership that had been conducted on a policy of power and military valour.

How then did it happen that the political instincts of this very same German people became so degenerate? For it was not merely one isolated phenomenon which pointed to this decadence, but morbid symptoms which appeared in alarming numbers, now all over the body politic, or eating into the body of the nation like a gangrenous ulcer. It seemed as if some all-pervading poisonous fluid had been injected by some mysterious hand into the bloodstream of this once heroic body, bringing about a creeping paralysis that affected the reason and the elementary instinct of self-preservation.

During the years 1912-1914 I used to ponder perpetually on those problems which related to the policy of the Triple Alliance and the economic policy then being pursued by the German Empire. Once again I came to the conclusion that the only explanation of this enigma lay in the operation of that force which I had already become acquainted with in Vienna, though from a different angle of vision. The force to which I refer was the Marxist teaching and Weltanschauung and its organized action throughout the nation.

For the second time in my life I plunged deep into the study of that destructive teaching. This time, however, I was not urged by the study of the question by the impressions and influences of my daily environment, but directed rather by the observation of general phenomena in the political life of Germany. In delving again into the theoretical literature of this new world and endeavouring to get a