Patriotic Politicians
PATRIOTIC POLITICIANS DR. JOHNSON'S well-known declaration that patriotism is the scoundrel's last ditch has often proved tragically apt, if given the political implication he intended. When...
...he should enter the trenches and wait till a bullet went through his head...
...We mistrust everything which acquires dignity through being patriotic, because we have seen so many patriots who are not dignified...
...He accepts existence as being one-half wurst and bread, and one-half altruistic intelligence...
...But of course the vices of democracy are not remedied thereby...
...If Senator Borah cannot arouse many voluntary thurifers to accompany his person, Mr...
...Scheidemann is laconic and final on the matter: "The emperor saw three courses before him...
...Make it appear that such a department will protect the flag and further argument is unnecessary...
...A certain rough, ready and semi-cynical familiarity with practical issues takes the place of more philosophic or idealistic considerations...
...What is more, he knows all this and likes it...
...This is a man who can speak, confer and act with a little more skill than others, but who remains essentially on a level with half the citizens of Kassel...
...But just as it was discovered by the reason, so also it must be tested by the reason...
...The average citizen is even so thoroughly committed to believing his political leaders intellectually and spiritually porous that he accepts endeavors to "debunk" worthies of the past as eminently natural...
...In every single department of contemporary German political expression one finds that the critical endeavor of a democracy which takes itself literally is blocking up every cranny through which a restoration of the old order might slip in...
...The answer surely is that during centuries governments ruled by a process of making themselves seem so august that any question about their sacredness was unthinkable...
...Behind every other appeal to the nation's eminence there lurks some bright scheme to acquire power or funds...
...The more important aspect of the book, however, is the manner in which Scheidemann typifies modern Germany...
...Realism has guided the renaissance of this vanquished people, step by step...
...A generation ago the Reich was a place wherein the trappings of royalty were all wheels of an alarm clock which announced that it was time for a salute...
...The demagogue is eternal and constantly gets his seat in popular assemblies...
...All during his life Scheidemann has been squarely a man of the laboring class in which he was born and the interests of which he struggled to further...
...Indeed, it seems quite clear that old-fashioned political greatness affects the modern era with nausea...
...One feels that the best way to guard against him is, after all, Scheidemann's...
...Realism saved the Germans from the tantrums of the Bolsheviki...
...He considered it possible, till General Groener told him that the army would go back home under its own generals in peace and order, but not under the leadership of His Majesty...
...Defense of human worth must not mean forgetfulness of human limitations...
...Those who talk-sometimes very logically indeed-about the downfall of democracy may well pause to consider this, the most gigantic test case in all history...
...That is why careful consideration of the German story is so profoundly instructive for us all...
...It is relatively a surprise to discover that politicians in one country are much like those in another -that the man who led the Social Democratic party and announced the coming of the republic after the kaiser had taken to his heels is, beneath the skin, a brother of whatever United States senator you care to mention...
...Criticism is thus the only possible substitute for revolution-in all forms of government...
...Some of us, it is true, are still a little affected by distance...
...Never was a people more committed to anti-democracy than the Germans, and never has a people been more thoroughly converted than the Germans...
...It is a geographical area which hedges in one's most vital interests and properties...
...General Groener, as everybody knows, and other superior officers advised the first...
...Since the bubble of Wilsonian grandeur was pierced, it has virtually become impossible for a President or his assistants to be more than executives subject to the judgment of the board of directors...
...Every phrase in the vocabulary of nationalism needs to be judged by that principle...
...William preferred what seemed to him the least dangerous course and the one best suited to his heroic nature-he bolted...
...Not a single illusion, not a bit of tinsel, has survived...
...For when this transfer of the real to the visionary is not the outgrowth of a humdrum hankering after some substantial privilege (the kaiser left behind an exceedingly well-stocked cellar) it may even be, more dangerously, a confusion of values, a blurring of realities, for which in the end we shall pay dearly...
...Is a group hankering after a bevy of nice and effective jobs in a projected federal department of education...
...MacDonald has been somewhat more fortunate here...
...More need not and cannot be said...
...These phrases summarize the conclusions arrived at by a people which is now perhaps the most realistic in the world...
...A country is a place where one belongs, and which one therefore loves...
...How transitory a matter human glory is could hardly be taught better than by contrasting what was said regarding the kaiser in 1910 and what was said about him in 1920...
...What, one may well wonder, has caused the public willingness to be drugged by patriotic oratory...
...We cannot have the old order because we have seen through it...
...Stresemann, whom his country has mourned with affecting unanimity, became a hero through the now dependable recipe of accomplishing what he said he would...
...The kaiser could have been the greatest man in the history of the Fatherland-if he had been what he professed to be...
...He puts himself frankly on record, first because he is interested in himself and secondly because he has no illusions about himself...
...Now awe is of course a necessary ingredient of good social relationships...
...Much educative value therefore lies in an attentive reading of the memoirs to which Herr Philipp Scheide-mann has given the title The Making of New Germany...
...The thing to do is to declare that the progress of the United States is due to the protective principle...
...This conclusion is steadily growing in popularity...
...The second course, which he had talked over with another general, was to lead his troops back to Berlin...
...It was too dangerous and he declined the proposal...
...Does somebody want to give his own little manufacturing plant a virtual monopoly...
...When stripped of every other mantle with which to cover his venality, ignorance or prejudice, your demagogue will promptly drape the flag about his loins...
...And we imagine that if Signor Mussolini deigned to appear in Gotham, the very elevated trains would probably make a perceptible effort to smother their raucousness...
...Satire is only rarely a great art, but it remains one of the best social disinfectants at the disposal of humanity...
...But when, under the spell of oratory or music, it moves off gracefully to the clouds and begins to acquire the tints of some unbelievably radiant landscape, it is time for us to be on our guard...
...Realism ended the Hohenzollern empire...
...Authority is obviously as sacred a principle as humanity has unearthed...
...Everybody prominently identified with the great war epic and its aftermath has told his story and that of others with a plainness which almost beggars description...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 10
