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parties which were responsible for the national betrayal are ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival, simply because they want to retain the positions they now hold. According to the laws that govern human history it is inconceivable that the German people could resume the place they formerly held without retaliating on those who were both cause and occasion of the collapse that involved the ruin of our State. Before the judgment seat of posterity November 1918 will not be regarded as a simple rebellion but as high treason against the country.
Therefore it is not possible to think of re-establishing German sovereignty and political independence without at the same time reconstructing a united front within the nation, by a peaceful conversion of the popular will.
Looked at from the standpoint of practical ways and means, it seems absurd to think of liberating Germany from foreign bondage as long as the masses of the people are not willing to support such an ideal of freedom. After carefully considering this problem from the purely military point of view, everybody, and in particular every officer, will agree that a war cannot be waged against an outside enemy by battalions of students; but that, together with the brains of the nation, the physical strength of the nation is also necessary. Furthermore it must be remembered that the nation would be robbed of its irreplaceable assets by a national defence in which only the intellectual circles, as they are called, were engaged. The young German intellectuals who joined the volunteer regiments and fell on the battlefields of Flanders in the autumn of 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the dearest treasure which the nation possessed and their loss could not be made good in the course of the war. And it is not only the struggle itself which could not be waged if the working masses of the nation did not join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations could not be made without a unified will and a common front within the nation itself. Our nation which has to exist disarmed, under the thousand eyes appointed by the Versailles Peace Treaty, cannot make any technical preparations for the recovery of its freedom and human independence until the whole army of spies employed within the country is cut down to those few whose inborn baseness would lead them to betray anything and everything for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver. But we can deal with such people. The millions, however, who are opposed to every kind of national revival simply because of their political opinions, constitute an insurmountable obstacle. At least the obstacle will remain insurmountable as long as the cause of their opposition, which is international Marxism, is not overcome and its teachings banished from both their hearts and heads.
From whatever point of view we may examine the possibility of recovering our independence as a State and a people, whether we consider the problem from the standpoint of technical rearmament or from that of the actual struggle itself, the necessary pre-requisite always remains the same. This pre-requisite is that the broad masses of the people must first be won over to accept the principle of our national independence.
If we do not regain our external freedom every step forward in domestic reform will at best be an augmentation of our productive powers for the benefit of those nations that look upon us as a colony to be exploited. The surplus produced by any so-called improvement would only go into the hands of our international controllers and any social betterment would at best increase the product of our labour in favour of those people. No cultural progress can be made by the German nation, because such progress is too much bound up with the political independence and dignity of a people.
Therefore, as we can find a satisfactory solution for the problem of Germany's future only by winning over the broad masses of our people for the support of the national idea, this work of education must be considered the highest and most important task to be accomplished by a movement which does not strive merely to satisfy the needs of the moment but considers itself bound to examine in the light of future results everything it decides to do or refrain from doing.
As early as 1919 we were convinced that the nationalization of the masses would