an from one end of the country to the other who
stands revealed as a beast of prey that the firm will of our planet
finally repudiates. We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a
tyrant King who alone is responsible. Nations have the Government they
deserve, or rather the Government they have is truly no more than a
magnified public projection of the private morality and mentality of the
nation.

If eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness
and superficiality of their innocence--and it is a monster they maintain
at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature, because
it is he who represents the eternal aspirations of their race, which lie
far deeper than their apparent transient virtues--let there be no
suggestion of error, of intelligent people having been tricked and
misled. No nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived. It
is not intelligence that Germany lacks. In the sphere of intellect such
things are not possible, nor in the region of the enlightened,
reflecting will. No nation permits herself to be coerced into the one
crime man cannot pardon. It is of her own accord she hastens toward it.
Her chief has no need to persuade. It is she who urges him on.

We have forces here quite different from those on the surface--forces
that are secret, irresistible, profound. It is these we must judge, must
crush under heel once for all, for they are the only ones that will not
be improved, softened or brought into line by experience, progress, or
even the bitterest lesson. They are unalterable, immovable. Their
springs lie far beneath hope or influence. They must be destroyed as we
destroy a nest of wasps, since we know these never can change into a
nest of bees.

Even though individually and singly Germans are all innocent and merely
led astray, they are none the less guilty in mass. This is the guilt
that counts--that alone is actual and real, because it lays bare
underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of
all. No influence can prevail on the unconscious or subconscious. It
never evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilization, a
thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements, art, and
education, the German spirit which is its underlying element will remain
absolutely the same as today and would declare itself when the
opportunity came under the same aspect with the same infamy.

Through the whole course of histo