THE JACKBOOT RULES GERMANY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 12 January 1944, Page 4

THE JACKBOOT RULES GERMANY

How is it possible that the same j 5 country and the same people that j created Goethe and Beethoven and 2 Kant should always fall back into a \ period of barbarism and wars? The ; \ reason is that state and mind, intelli- \ gence and government have been sep- j 5 arated for the last 500 years in Ger- \ many, and never did work together as f in other countries. The Junkers for the last 300 years have held the leading posts in the military field and in \ the State. The common people were | excluded from government and also | barred Trom commanding military positions. Accordingly they went into j business and also entered the field of science or philosophy. And the inter- j esting point is that these common peo- , pie, or “bourgeois.” did not resent the , arrangement. That is the reason why Germany j has not had a successful revolution i in all her history. The two men of j culture during the last 200 years who j tried their hand in government—Goethe and W. von. Humboldt —gave it up as a bad job. They saw that it was impossible to govern Germany by intelli- j gence and culture. It must be done by J guns and the compulsion of obedience. The uniform is the adored symbol. You may recall that when von Bethmann Hollweg was required by his official duty to declare war in August, 1914. it was necessary for him to be made a colonel overnight so that he could appear before the Reichstag in uniform.— (Emil Ludwig, German writer antd historian, now in U.S.A.)