Certainly if England is under no compulsion to maintain her wartime enmity toward Germany forever on grounds of principle, Italy has even less grounds to do so. Italy is the second State in Europe that must not be fundamentally hostile to Germany. Indeed, her foreign policy aims need not cross with Germany's at all. On the contrary, with no other State does Germany have perhaps more interests in common than precisely with Italy, and conversely.

At the same time that Germany tried to achieve a new national unification, the same process also took place in Italy. To be sure, the Italians lacked a central power of gradually growing, and ultimately towering, importance, such as Germany in the making possessed in Prussia. But as German unification was primarily opposed by France and Austria as true enemies, so likewise did the Italian unification movement also have to suffer most under these two powers. The chief cause, of course, lay with the Habsburg State which must have and did have a vital interest in the maintenance of Italy's internal dismemberment. Since a State of the size of Austria-Hungary is unthinkable without direct access to the sea, and the only territory which could be considered for this--at least in regard to its cities--was inhabited by Italians, Austria necessarily disapprovingly opposed the rise of a united Italian State for fear of the possible loss of this territory in case of the founding of an Italian national State. At that time even the boldest political aim of the Italian Voelk could lie only in its national unification. This then perforce also conditioned the foreign policy attitude. Hence as Italian unification [that through Savoys] slowly took shape, Cavour, its brilliant great statesman, utilized all possibilities which could serve this particular aim. Italy owes the possibility of her unification to an extraordinarily cleverly chosen alliance policy. Its aim was primarily to bring about the paralysis of the chief enemy of unification, Austria-Hungary, indeed finally to induce this State to leave the north Italian provinces. Withal, even after the conclusion of the provisional unification of Italy, there were more than 800000 Italians in Austria-Hungary alone. The national aim of the further unification of people of Italian nationality was at first bound to undergo a postponement when, for the first time, there began to arise the dangers of an Italian French estrangement. Italy decided to enter the Triple Alliance, chiefly in order to gain time for her inner consolidation.

The World War at last brought Italy into the camp of the Entente for reasons that I have already discussed. Thereby Italian unity had been carried a powerful step forward. Even today, however, it is not yet completed. For the Italian State, though, the great event was the elimination of the hated Habsburg empire. To be sure, its place was taken by a Southern Slav structure which already presented a danger hardly less great for Italy on the basis of general national viewpoints.

For just as little as the bourgeois national and purely border policy conception in Germany could in the long run satisfy our Voelk's vital needs, equally little could the purely bourgeois national unification policy of the Italian State satisfy the Italian Voelk.

Like the German Voelk, the Italian Voelk lives on a small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile. For centuries, indeed many centuries, this overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of people. Even though a great part of these emigrants, as seasonal laborers, return to Italy in order to live there on their savings, this leads more than ever to a further aggravation of the situation. Not only is the population problem not solved thereby, but it is sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of goods fell into a state of dependence on the ability, potentiality and willingness of other powers and countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly did Italy with her export of people. In both cases a closing of the receiving market, resulting from events of any kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic consequences within these countries.

Hence Italy's attempt to master the problem of sustenance through an increase of her industrial activity cannot lead to any ultimate success because, at the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the Italian Motherland robs her in great measure of the required ability to compete.

Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois national policy are being overcome and a Voelkish feeling of responsibility is taking its place, likewise will this State also be forced to deviate from its former political conceptions in order to turn to a territorial policy on a grand scale.

The shore basins of the Mediterranean Sea constitute, and hence remain, the natural area of Italian expansion. The more present-day Italy departs from her former unification policy and goes over to an imperialist policy, the more will she fall into the ways of ancient Rome, not out of any presumption to power, but out of deep, internal necessities. If today Germany seeks soil in Eastern Europe, this is not the sign of an extravagant hunger for power, but only the consequence of her need for territory. And if today Italy seeks to enlarge her influence on the shores of the Mediterranean basin and ultimately aims to establish colonies, it is also only the release ensuing from sheer necessity, out of a natural defense of interests. If the German pre War policy had not been struck with total blindness, it would necessarily have supported and fostered this development with every means. Not only because it would have meant a natural strengthening of an ally, but because it might perhaps have offered the only possibility of drawing Italian interests away from the Adriatic Sea and thereby lessened the sources of irritation with Austria-Hungary. Such a policy, in addition, would have stiffened the most natural enmity which can ever exist, namely that between Italy and France, the repercussions of which would have strengthened the Triple Alliance in a favorable sense.

It was Germany's misfortune that at that time not only did the Reich leadership flatly fail in this respect, but that, above all, public opinion--led on by insane German national patriots and foreign policy dreamers--took a stand against Italy. Especially, moreover, for the reason that Austria discovered something unfriendly about the Italian operation in Tripoli. At that time, however, it appertained to the political wisdom of our national bourgeoisie to back every stupidity or baseness of Viennese diplomacy, indeed if possible to undertake stupid and base acts itself, in order thereby to demonstrate the inner harmony and solidarity of this cordial alliance before the world in the best possible way.

Now Austria-Hungary is wiped out. But Germany has even less cause than before to regret a development of Italy which one day must necessarily proceed at the expense of France. For the more present-day Italy discovers her highest Voelkish tasks, and the more, accordingly, she goes over to a territorial policy conceived along Roman lines, the more must she run into the opposition of her greatest competitor in the Mediterranean Sea, France. France will never tolerate Italy's becoming the leading power in the Mediterranean. She will try to prevent this, either through her own strength, or through a system of alliances. France will lay obstacles in the path of Italy's development wherever possible, and finally she will not shrink from recourse to violence. Even the so-called kinship of these two Latin nations will change nothing on this score, for it is no closer than the kinship between England and Germany.

On top of that, in proportion as France declines in her own Voelk's power, this State proceeds to the opening up of her reservoir of ni**ers. Thus a danger of unimaginable proportions draws near for Europe. The idea of French ni**ers, who can contaminate white blood, on the Rhine as cultural guards against Germany, is so monstrous that it would have been regarded as completely impossible only a few decades ago. Surely France itself would suffer the greatest harm through this blood pollution, but only if the other European nations remain conscious of the value of their white race. Viewed in purely military terms, France can very well supplement her European formations, and, as the World War has shown, also commit them effectively. Finally, this completely non French ni**er army indeed vouchsafes a certain defense against communist demonstrations, since utter subordination in all situations will be easier to preserve in an army which is not at all linked by blood to the French Voelk. This development entails its greatest danger for Italy first of all. If the Italian Voelk wants to shape its future according to its own interests, it will ultimately have ni**er armies, mobilized by France, as its enemy. Thus it cannot in the least lie in Italy's interest to be in a state of enmity with Germany, something which even in the best of cases cannot make a profitable contribution to the shaping of Italian life in the future. On the contrary, if any State can finally bury war enmity, this State is Italy. Italy has no inherent interest in a further oppression of Germany if, for the future, both States want to attend to their most natural tasks. Bismarck had already perceived this fortunate circumstance. More than once did he confirm the complete parallel between German and Italian interests. It was he who even then pointed out that the Italy of the future must seek her development on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and it was he who further ascertained the harmony of German and Italian interests by stressing that only France could think of disturbing this shaping of Italian life, whereas Germany was bound to welcome it from her viewpoint. Actually in the whole future he sees no necessary cause for an estrangement, let alone enmity, between Italy and Germany. If Bismarck rather than Bethmann Hollweg had guided Germany's destiny before the World War, indeed, even this terrible enmity, incurred only on account of Austria, would never have come to pass.

Moreover, with Italy as with England, it is a positive fact that a continental expansion of Germany in Northern Europe is no threat, and thereby can give no cause for an estrangement by Italy against Germany. Conversely, for Italy the most natural interests speak against any further increase of French hegemony in Europe. Hence Italy, above all, would warrant consideration in terms of an alliance relation with Germany.

The enmity with France has already become obvious ever since Fascism in Italy brought a new idea of the State and with it a new will to the life of the Italian Voelk. Therefore France, through a whole system of alliances, is not only trying to strengthen herself for a possible conflict with Italy, but also to hamper and separate Italy's possible friends. The French aim is clear. A French system of States is to be built that reaches from Paris via Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, up to Belgrade. The attempt to draw Austria into this system is in no way as hopeless as it may seem at first sight. In view of the dominating character of the influence which Vienna with its two million inhabitants exerts over the rest of Austria, which encompasses only six million people, this country's policy will always be determined primarily by Vienna. The fact that an alliance with Paris is far more likely as such than one with Italy lies in the cosmopolitan nature of Vienna which has been revealed even more pointedly in the last decade. This was already taken care of by the manipulation of public opinion guaranteed by the Vienna press. But this activity threatens to become especially effective since this press, with the help of the clamor over the Southern Tyrol, has also succeeded in stirring up the completely clueless bourgeois national province against Italy. Thus a danger of an incommensurable extent draws near. For the Germans, more than any other Voelk, can be brought to the most incredible, in reality truly suicidal, decisions by the agitation press campaign conducted consistently over many years.

If, however, France succeeds in fitting Austria into the chain of her friendship, Italy one day will be forced into a two front war, or she must again renounce a real representation of the interests of the Italian Voelk. In both cases for Germany there is the danger that a possible German ally is finally excluded for an unpredictable period of time, and that France thus increasingly becomes the master of Europe's fate.

Let no one indulge in any illusions as to what this entails for Germany. Our bourgeois national border politicians and protesters from the patriotic leagues will then have their hands full in order again, in the name of national honor, to eliminate the traces of the mistreatments which they would have to endure from France, thanks to their farsighted policy.

Since the National Socialist Movement concerns itself with ideas of foreign policy, I have tried to educate it to become a bearer of a clear foreign policy aim by a consideration of all the arguments discussed. It is unjust to raise the reproach that this is primarily the task of the Government, in a State, first of all, the official governments of which come from the bosom of parties who neither have any cognizance of Germany nor want a happy future for this Germany. Since those who were responsible for arranging the November crime have become qualified to govern, it is no longer the interests of the German Nation which are represented, but instead those of the wrongly acting parties. In general we cannot very well expect the promotion of Germany's vital needs by people to whom the Fatherland and the Nation are but means to an end, and which, if necessary, they shamelessly sacrifice for their own interests. Indeed, the instinct of self preservation of these people and parties, so often visible, in truth by itself speaks against any resurgence of the German Nation, since the freedom struggle for German honor perforce would mobilize forces which must lead to the fall and destruction of the former defilers of German honor. There is no such thing as a struggle for freedom without a general national resurgence. But a resurgence of the national conscience and the national honor is unthinkable without first bringing those responsible for the previous degradation to justice. The naked instinct of self preservation will force these degenerate elements and their parties to thwart all steps that could lead to a real resurrection of our Voelk. And the seeming insanity of many acts of these Herostrats of our Voelk, once we properly gauge the inner motives, becomes a planned, adroit, albeit infamous and contemptible, action.

In a time such as this when public life acquires its shape from parties of this kind and is represented solely by people of inferior character, it is the duty of a national reform Movement to go its own way even in foreign policy which some day, according to all human prediction and reason, must lead to the success and happiness of the Fatherland. Hence, so far as the reproach of conducting a policy that does not correspond to official foreign policy comes from the Marxist democratic Center camp, it can be set aside with the contempt it deserves. But if bourgeois national and so called Fatherland circles raise it, this is really only the expression and the symbol of the state of mind of professional joiners which exerts itself only in protests, and simply cannot seriously grasp that another movement possesses the indestructible will ultimately to become a power, and that in a prevision of this fact it already undertakes the necessary education of this power.

Since the year 1920 I have tried with all means and most persistently to accustom the National Socialist Movement to the idea of an alliance among Germany, Italy and England. This was very difficult, especially in the first years after the War, since the God Punish England standpoint, first and foremost, still robbed our Voelk of any capacity for clear and sober thinking in the sphere of foreign policy, and continued to hold it prisoner.

The situation of the young Movement was infinitely difficult even vis-à-vis Italy, especially since an unprecedented reorganization of the Italian Voelk set in under the leadership of the brilliant statesman Benito Mussolini, which drew the protest of all the States directed by Freemasonry. For whereas up to the year 1922 the fabricators of official German opinion took altogether no notice of the sufferings of those parts of our Voelk severed from Germany through their crimes, they now suddenly began to honor the Southern Tyrol with their attention. With all the means of a cunning journalism and a mendacious dialectic, the Southern Tyrol problem was blown up into a question of extraordinary importance so that, in the end, Italy incurred a proscription in Germany and Austria conferred on none other of the victor States. If the National Socialist Movement honestly wanted to represent its foreign policy mission, sustained by the conviction of the unconditional necessity of the same, it could not draw back from the struggle against this system of lies and confusion. Thus at the same time it could not count on any allies, but instead had to be guided by the idea that one should sooner renounce a cheap popularity rather than act against a perceived truth, a necessity that lay before one, and the voice of one's conscience. And even if one would thereby be defeated, this would still be more honorable than to participate in a crime that had been seen through.

When in the year 1920 I pointed to the possibility of a later association with Italy, all the prerequisites thereto, at least at first, actually seemed to be lacking. Italy was in the circle of the victor States, and shared in the actual or merely presumed advantages of this situation. In the years 1919 and 1920 there seemed no prospect at all that the inner structure of the Entente would loosen in any predictable time. The powerful world coalition still placed a great value on showing that it was a self sufficient guarantor of the victory and thus also of the peace. The difficulties which had already come to light in connection with the drawing up of the peace treaties came all the less to the consciousness of a broad public opinion since the directors of an adroitly staged production knew how to preserve the impression of complete unity, at least outwardly. This common action was based just as much on the public opinion which had been created by a generally homogeneous war propaganda as it was on the still insecure fear of the German giant. Only slowly did the outside world get a glimpse of the dimensions of Germany's inner decay. A further reason contributed to the seemingly almost indissoluble solidarity of the victor States: the hope of the individual States that they would thus not be overlooked when the time came to share the spoils. Finally there was the further fear that if at that time a State should actually withdraw, Germany's fate, nevertheless, would have taken no other course, and then perhaps France alone would be the sole beneficiary of our collapse. For in Paris they naturally never gave a thought to bringing about a change in the attitude toward Germany which had been set in motion during the War. For me the peace is the continuation of the war. With this statement, white haired old Clemenceau expressed the French Voelk's real intentions.

The complete lack of planning of German intentions confronted this, at least seeming, inner solidity of the coalition of victors, the immovable aim of which, inspired by France, was the complete annihilation of Germany even after the event. Next to the contemptible villainy of those who in their country, against all truth and against their own conscience, put the blame for the war on Germany and insolently deduced a justification for the enemy's extortion’s therefrom, stood a partly intimidated, partly uncertain national side which believed that now after the ensuing collapse it could help matters by means of the most painful possible reconstruction of the nation's past. We lost the war in consequence of a lack of national passion against our enemies. The opinion in national circles was that we must replace this harmful deficiency and anchor this hatred against the former enemies in the peace. At the same time it was noteworthy that, from the start, this hatred was concentrated more against England, and later Italy, than against France. Against England because, thanks to the Bethmann Hollwegian soporific policy, nobody had believed in a war with England up to the last hour. Therefore her entry into the war was viewed as an extraordinarily shameful crime against loyalty and faith. In the case of Italy the hatred was even more understandable in view of the political thoughtlessness of our German Voelk. They had been so imprisoned in the mist and fog of the Triple Alliance by official government circles that even Italy's non-intervention for the benefit of Austria-Hungary and Germany was viewed as a breach of loyalty. And they saw a boundless perfidy in the later joining up of the Italian Voelk with our enemies. This accumulated hatred was discharged in the typically bourgeois national fulmination and battle cry: God Punish England. Since God is just as much on the side of the stronger and the more determined, as well as preferably on the side of those who are cleverer, he manifestly refused to inflict this punishment.

Nevertheless, at least during the war, whipping up of our national passion by every means was not only allowed but obviously called for. It was only a hindrance in that we were blinded by it to the real actualities, although the passion was never fanned too high among us. In politics there is no standpoint of contrariness, and therefore, even during the War, it was wrong to draw no other consequences, especially from Italy's entry into the world coalition, except those of a flaming anger and indignation. For, on the contrary, we should have had the duty then especially to keep on reexamining the possibilities of the situation in order to come to those decisions that might have warranted consideration for saving the threatened German Nation. For with Italy's entry into the front of the Entente, an extraordinary aggravation of the war situation was unavoidable, not only in consequence of the increase in terms of arms which the Entente acquired, but much more rather in consequence of the moral strengthening which necessarily lay in the emergence of such a power on the side of the world coalition being formed, especially for France. In terms of duty, the Nation's political leaders at that time perforce should have decided, cost what it may, to put an end to the two front and three front war. Germany was not responsible for the further maintenance of the corrupt, slovenly Austrian State. Nor did the German soldier fight for the family power policy of the hereditary House Of Habsburg. This at best lay in the mind of our non combatant hurrah!-shouters, but not in that of those at the front shedding their blood. The sufferings and hardships of the German musketeers were already immeasurable in the year 1915. These sufferings could be demanded for the future and the preservation of our German Voelk, but not for the salvation of the Habsburg big power megalomania. It was a monstrous idea to let millions of German soldiers bleed in a hopeless war only so that a dynasty could preserve a State, the most private dynastic interests of which for centuries had been anti German. This insanity will become completely understandable to us in its entirety only if we keep in view that the best German blood had to be shed so that, in the most favorable case, the Habsburgs might again have another chance to denationalize the German Voelk in peacetime. We not only had to undertake the most monstrous bloodshed on two fronts for this madness, which screamed to heaven, no, we were even duty bound again and again to fill the holes which treason and corruption had torn in our worthy ally's front with German flesh and blood. And thereby we made this sacrifice for a dynasty which itself was ready to leave its all sacrificing ally in the lurch at the first opportunity which offered itself. And who indeed later did just this. To be sure, our bourgeois national Fatherland patriots speak as little of the betrayal as they do of the continuous betrayal of the Austrian troops of Slavic nationality allied with us, who went over to the enemy's side in whole regiments and brigades, in order finally in their own legions to join the fight against those who had been dragged into this dreadful misfortune by the operations of their State. Moreover, by itself, Austria-Hungary would never have participated in a war which might have involved Germany. That here or there some perhaps really believed to gain protection from the Triple Alliance, grounded in reciprocity, can be ascribed only to the boundless ignorance of Austrian conditions which generally prevailed in Germany. The worst disappointment for Germany would have materialized had the World War broken out on account of Germany. The Austrian State, with its Slav majority and with its Habsburg Ruling House, fundamentally anti German and anti Reich oriented, would never have taken up arms to defend and assist Germany against all the rest of the world, as Germany stupidly did. As a matter of fact, vis-à-vis Austria-Hungary, Germany had but one duty to fulfil, namely: to save the German element of this State by all means, and to eliminate the most degenerate, most guilt laden dynasty that the German Voelk ever had to endure.

For Germany, Italy's entry into the World War perforce should have been the occasion for a fundamental revision of her attitude vis-à-vis Austria-Hungary. It is not a political act, let alone an expression of the sagacity and competence of political leaders, in such a case to find no other answer than sullen indignation and impotent rage. Such a thing is usually harmful even in private life, but in political life it is worse than a crime. It is an act of stupidity.

And even if this attempt at a change of the former German attitude had led to no success, it at least would have absolved the nation's political leadership from the guilt of not having tried it. In any case, after Italy's entry into the World War, Germany should have tried to put an end to the two front war. She should then have striven for a separate peace with Russia, not only on the basis of a renunciation of any utilization of the successes in the east already achieved by German arms, but even, if necessary, of a sacrifice of Austria-Hungary. Only the complete dissociation of German policy from the task of saving the Austrian State and its exclusive concentration on the task of helping the German Voelk could still afford a possibility of victory, according to human appraisals. Moreover, with the demolition of Austria-Hungary, the incorporation of nine million German Austrians into the Reich as such would have been a more worthwhile success before history and for our Voelk's future than the gain, doubtful in its consequences, of a few French coal and iron mines. But it must be stressed again and again that the task -- even of a German foreign policy that is only bourgeois national -- should not have been the preservation of the Habsburg State, but exclusively the salvation of the German Nation, including the nine million Germans in Austria. Otherwise nothing else at all, indeed absolutely nothing else.

As is known, the reaction of the Reich's leaders to the situation created by Italy's entry into the World War was quite different. They tried more than ever to save the Austrian State with its deserting Slavic brothers of the alliance by staking German blood in a still greater measure, and, in the homeland, by calling down heaven's revenge on the faithless erstwhile ally. In order to cut themselves off from any possibility of ending the two front war, they let the artful and cunning Vienna diplomacy induce them to found the Polish State. Thereby any hope of arriving at an understanding with Russia, which naturally could have been obtained at the expense of Austria-Hungary, was shrewdly prevented by the Habsburg’s. Thus the German soldier from Bavaria, Pomerania, Westphalia, Thuringia and East Prussia, from Brandenburg, Saxony and from the Rhine, was given the high honor, in the most terrible, bloody battles of world history, to sacrifice his life by the hundreds of thousands, not for the salvation [formation] of the German Nation, but for the formation of a Polish State to which, in case of a favorable outcome of the World War, the Habsburg’s would have given a representative, and which then would have been an eternal enemy for Germany.

Bourgeois national State policy. But if this reaction to the Italian step had already been an unforgivable absurdity during the War, the preservation of this emotional reaction to the Italian step after the War was a still greater, capital stupidity.

To be sure, Italy was in the coalition of victor States even after the War, and hence also on the side of France. But this was natural, for Italy had certainly not entered the War out of pro French feelings. The determining force which drove the Italian Voelk to it was exclusively the hatred against Austria and the visible possibility of being able to benefit their own Italian interests. This was the reason for the Italian step, and not any kind of fantastic emotional feeling for France. As a German one can be deeply pained that Italy took far reaching steps now that the collapse of her hated centuries old enemy has taken place, but one must not let it deprive his mind of sound reason. Fate had changed. Once Austria had more than 800000 Italians under her rule, and now 200000 Austrians fell under Italy's rule. The cause of our pain is that these 200000 who interest us are of German nationality.

Neither the future aims of a national nor of a Voelkishly conceived Italian policy are fulfilled by the elimination of the eternally latent Austrian Italian conflict. On the contrary, the enormous increase of the self consciousness and power consciousness of the Italian Voelk by the war, and especially by Fascism, will only increase its strength to pursue greater aims. Thus the natural conflicts of interest between Italy and France will increasingly appear. We could have counted on that and hoped for it as early as the year 1920. As a matter of fact, the first signs of an internal disharmony between the two States were already visible at that time. Whereas the Southern Slav instincts for a further curtailment of the Austrian German element were sure of France's undivided sympathy, the Italian attitude already at the time of the liberation of Carinthia from the Slavs was at least very well disposed toward the German element. This inner shift vis-à-vis Germany was also displayed in the attitude of the Italian commissions in Germany itself, most pointedly on the occasion of the struggles in Upper Silesia. At any rate, at that time one could already discern the beginning of an inner estrangement, albeit only faint at first, between the two Latin nations. According to all human logic and reason, and on the basis of all the experiences of history hitherto, this estrangement must increasingly deepen and one day end in an overt struggle. Whether she likes it or not, Italy will have to fight for her State's existence and future against France, just as Germany itself. It is not necessary for this that France always be in the foreground of operations. But she will pull the wires of those whom she has cleverly brought into a state of financial and military dependence on her, or with whom she seems to be linked by parallel interests. The Italian French conflict can just as well begin in the Balkans, as it may find its end on the lowlands of Lombardy.

In view of this compelling probability of a later enmity of Italy with France, already in the year 1920 this very State came under consideration primarily as a future ally for Germany. The probability increased to certainty when, with the victory of Fascism, the weak Italian Government, which ultimately was subject to international influences, was eliminated, and a regime took its place which had nailed the exclusive representation of Italian interests as a slogan on its banners. A weak Italian democratic bourgeois government, by disregarding Italy's real future tasks, could perhaps have maintained an artificial relation with France. But a nationally conscious and responsible Italian regime, never. The struggle of the Third Rome for the future of the Italian Voelk acquired its historic declaration on the day when the FASCES became the symbol of the Italian State. Thus one of the two Latin nations will have to leave its place in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the other will acquire supremacy as the prize of this struggle.

As a nationally conscious and rationally thinking German, I firmly hope and strongly wish that this State may be Italy and not France. Thereby my attitude toward Italy will be induced by motives of future expectations, and not by sterile reminiscences of the War. The standpoint, Declarations Of War Are Accepted Here, as an inscription on troop transports, was a good sign of the victorious confidence of the peerless Old Army. As a political proclamation, however, it is a mad stupidity. Today it is even more mad if one takes the position that, for Germany, no ally can warrant consideration which stood on the enemy's side in the World War and shared in the spoils of the World War at our expense. If Marxists, Democrats and Centrists raise such a thought to a leitmotif of their political activity, this is clearly for the reason that this most degenerate coalition does not desire a resurgence of the German Nation ever. But if national bourgeois and Fatherland circles take over such ideas, then that's the limit. For let one name any power at all which could possibly be an ally in Europe and which has not enriched itself territorially at our expense or that of our allies of that time. On the basis of this standpoint, France is excluded from the outset because she stole Alsace-Lorraine and wants to steal the Rhineland, Belgium because it possesses Eupen and Malmedy, England because, even if she does not possess our colonies, at least she administers them in large part. And any child knows what this means in the life of nations. Denmark is excluded because she took North Schleswig, Poland because she is in possession of West Prussia and Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia, Czechoslovakia because she oppresses almost four million Germans, Rumania because she likewise has annexed more than a million Germans, Yugoslavia because she has nearly 600000 Germans, and Italy because today she calls the Southern Tyrol her own.

Thus, for our national bourgeois and patriotic circles, the alliance possibilities are altogether impossible. But then they do not need them at all. For through the flood of their protests, and the rumble of their hurrahs, they will in part stifle the resistance of the other parts of the world, and in part overthrow it. And then, without any allies, indeed without any weapons, supported only by the paucity of their glib tongue, they will retrieve the stolen territories, let England subsequently still be punished by God, but chastise Italy and deliver her to the deserved contempt of the whole world--so far as up to this point they have not been hanged on lamp posts by their own momentary foreign policy allies, the Bolshevist and Marxist Jews.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that our national circles of bourgeois and patriotic origin never at all realize that the strongest proof of the fallacy of their attitude toward foreign policy lies in the concurrence of Marxists, Democrats and Centrists, above all especially in the concurrence of Jewry. But one must know our German bourgeoisie well in order immediately to know why this is so. They are all infinitely happy at least to have found an issue in which the presumed unity of the German Voelk seems to be effected. No matter if this concerns a stupidity. Despite this, it is infinitely comforting for a courageous bourgeois and Fatherland politician to be able to talk in tones of national struggle without receiving a punch on the jaw for it from the nearest communist. That they are spared this only for the reason that their political conception is just as sterile in national terms as it is valuable in Jewish Marxist terms, either does not occur to these people, or it is concealed in the deepest recesses of their being. The extent which the corruption of lies and cowardice has assumed among us is something unheard of. When in the year 1920 I undertook to orient the foreign policy position of the Movement toward Italy, I at first ran into complete incomprehension on the part of national circles, as well as in so called Fatherland circles. It was simply incomprehensible to these people how, contrary to the general duty of continual protests, one could formulate a political idea which--taken practically--signified the intrinsic liquidation of one of the enmities of the World War. In general, national circles found it beyond comprehension that I did not want to place the main weight of national activity on protests which were trumpeted to the skies in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, or somewhere else, now against Paris, then again against London or also against Rome, but wanted to place it instead on the elimination first within Germany of those responsible for the collapse. A flaming protest demonstration against Paris also took place in Munich on the occasion of the Paris diktat, which, to be sure, must have caused M. Clemenceau little worry. But it induced me to elaborate with all vigor the National Socialist attitude in opposition to this protest mania. France had only done what every German could know and perforce should have known. Were I myself a Frenchman I would have supported Clemenceau as a matter of course. To bark permanently at an overpowering adversary from a distance is as undignified as it is idiotic. On the contrary, the national opposition of the Fatherland circles should have bared its teeth at those in Berlin who were responsible for, and guilty of, the terrible catastrophe of our collapse. To be sure, it was more comfortable to scream against Paris curses which could not be actualized in view of the factual conditions, than to stand up against Berlin with deeds. This also applied especially to the representatives of that Bavarian government policy, who, to be sure, sufficiently exhibit the nature of their brilliance by the facts of their success up to now.

For the very men who continually asserted the desire to preserve Bavaria's sovereignty, and who at the same time also had in view maintenance of the right to conduct foreign policy, should primarily have been obliged to put forth a possible foreign policy of such sort that Bavaria, thereby, could of necessity have obtained leadership of a real national opposition in Germany conceived in its grand aspects. In view of the complete inconsistency of Reich policy or of the deliberate intention to ignore all real avenues of success, it is precisely the Bavarian State that should have risen to the role of spokesman for a foreign policy which, according to human prediction, might one day have brought an end to Germany's dreadful isolation. But even in these circles they confronted the foreign policy conception of an association with Italy, as espoused by me, with a complete and stupid thoughtlessness. Instead of thus rising in a bold way to the role of spokesmen and guardians of the highest national German interests for the future, they preferred, from time to time, with one eye blinking toward Paris while the other was raised up to heaven, to asseverate their loyalty to the Reich on the one hand, and on the other their determination nevertheless to save Bavaria by letting the fires of Bolshevism burn out in the north. Yes, indeed, the Bavarian State has entrusted the representation of its sovereign rights to intellectual characters of a wholly special greatness. In view of such a general mentality, it should surprise nobody that, from the very first day, my foreign policy conception encountered, if not direct rejection, at least a total lack of understanding. Frankly speaking, I expected nothing else at that time. I still took account of the general war psychosis, and strove only to instill a sober worldview of foreign policy into my own Movement.

At that time, I did not yet have to endure any kind of overt attacks on account of my Italian policy. The reason for this probably lay, on the one hand, in the fact that for the moment it was held to be completely devoid of danger, and on the other that Italy herself likewise had a government subject to international influences. Indeed, in the background it was perhaps even hoped that this Italy could succumb to the Bolshevist plague, and then she would be highly welcome as an ally, at least for our Left circles.

Besides, on the Left at that time, one could not very well take a position against the elimination of war enmity, since in this very camp they were anyhow making constant efforts to extirpate the hateful, demeaning, and--for Germany--so unjustified feeling of hatred born of the War. It would not have been easy to launch a criticism against me from these circles over a foreign policy conception, which, as a prerequisite for its realization, would after all have caused at least the removal of the war hatred between Germany and Italy.

I must, however, stress once more that perhaps the main reason why I found so little positive resistance lay for my enemies in the presumed harmlessness, and thereby also the non dangerous character of my action.

This situation changed almost in one stroke when Mussolini had begun the March on Rome. As if by a magic word, the running fire of poisoning and slander against Italy by the entire Jewish press began from this hour on. And only after the year 1922 was the Southern Tyrol question raised and made into a pivotal point of German Italian relations, whether the Southern Tyrolean’s themselves wanted it so or not. It did not take long before even Marxists became the representatives of a national opposition. And now one could experience the unique spectacle of Jews and Voelkish Germans, Social Democrats and members of the Patriotic Leagues, communists and national bourgeois, arm in arm, spiritually marching across the Brenner in order to carry out the re-conquest of this territory in mighty battles but, to be sure, without the shedding of blood. A charm of a wholly special character was further added to this bold national front by the fact that even those out and out Bavarian particularistic representatives of Bavarian sovereign rights, whose spiritual forefathers over a hundred years before had surrendered the good Andreas Hofer to the French and let him be shot, also vigorously interested themselves in the freedom struggle for the country of Andreas Hofer.

Since the influence of the Jewish press gang, and the national bourgeois and patriotic dunderheads who run after them, has really succeeded in blowing up the Southern Tyrol problem to the dimensions of a vital question of the German Nation, I see myself induced to take a detailed position toward it.

As has already been emphasized, the old Austrian State had over 850000 Italians within its borders. Incidentally, the data on nationalities as established by the Austrian census was not wholly accurate. Namely, the count was not made according to the nationality of the individual, but rather according to the language he specified as spoken. Obviously this could not give a completely clear picture, but it is in the nature of the weakness of the national bourgeoisie gladly to deceive itself over the real situation. If one does not learn of a matter, or at least if it is not talked about openly, then it also does not exist. Ascertained on the basis of such a procedure, the Italians, or better, the people who spoke Italian, in large measure lived in the Tyrol. According to the census figures of the year 1910 the Tyrol had .......... inhabitants, of whom .......... percent were counted as speaking the Italian language, while the rest were counted as German or in part also Latin. Consequently around .......... Italians were in the Arch Duchy of Tyrol. Since this whole number is allotted to the territory occupied today by Italians, the ratio of Germans to Italians in the whole part of the territory of the Tyrol occupied by Italians consequently is one of .......... Germans to .......... Italians.

It is necessary to establish this because not a few people in Germany, thanks to the mendacity of our press, have no idea at all that, in the area understood by the concept Southern Tyrol, actually two thirds of the inhabitants living there are Italians, and one third German. Thus, whoever seriously advocates the re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol would bring about a change of things only to the extent that instead of having 200000 Germans under Italian rule, he would bring 400000 Italians under German rule.

To be sure, the German element in the Southern Tyrol is now concentrated primarily in the northern part, whereas the Italian element inhabits the south. Thus if someone would find a solution that is just in a national sense, he must first of all completely exclude the concept Southern Tyrol from the general discussion. For one cannot war on the Italians on moral grounds because they have taken an area in which 200000 Germans live next to 400000 Italians if we ourselves, conversely, want to win this territory again for Germany as a redress of this injustice, that is, if we want to commit a still greater injustice than is the case with Italy.

Thus the call for a re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol will have the same moral faults in it which we now discover in the Italian rule in the Southern Tyrol. Hence this call also loses its moral justification. With this still other viewpoints can be asserted, which then must speak for a regaining of the whole Southern Tyrol. Thus on the basis of morally justified feelings we can, at most, advocate the regaining of that part which is actually inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Germans. This is a spatially limited area of .......... square kilometers. Even in this, however, there are around 190000 Germans, 64000 Italians and Latinos, and 24000 other aliens, so that the completely German territory encompasses hardly 160000 Germans.

At the present time there is hardly a border which does not cut Germans off from the Motherland just as in the Southern Tyrol. Indeed, in Europe alone, not less than .......... million Germans all told are separated from the Reich. Of these, .......... million live under out and out alien rule, and only .......... million in German Austria and Switzerland, though under conditions that at least for the moment pose no threat to the nationality. At the same time, here are a whole series of cases involving aggregates of a quite different numerical character as compared to our Voelkdom in the Southern Tyrol. As terrible as this fact is for our Voelk, just so guilty of it are those who today raise their hue and cry over the Southern Tyrol. Just as little, at any rate, can we make the fate of all the rest of the Reich dependent simply on the interests of these lost territories, let alone on the wishes of one of them, even by taking over a purely bourgeois border policy.

For one thing must first of all be rejected most sharply: there is no Holy German Voelk in the Southern Tyrol, as the Patriotic Leaguers foolishly prattle. Rather, all who must be reckoned as belonging to German Voelkdom must be equally holy to it. It won't do to appraise a Southern Tyrolean higher than a Silesian, East Prussian or West Prussian who is enslaved under Polish rule. It also won't do to regard a German in Czechoslovakia as more worthwhile than a German in the Saar territory or also in Alsace-Lorraine. The right to grade the German element of the severed territories according to special values could, at best, grow out of an analytical examination of their specific decisive and dominant fundamental racial values. But this is the very measure which the protest groups against Italy apply least of all. For the Tyroleans in the territories now separated too, it could yield no higher credit factor than, let's say, for an East or a West Prussian.

Now the foreign policy task of the German Reich as such cannot be determined by the interests of the parts split off from the Reich. For in reality these interests will not be served thereby, since practical help indeed presupposes the regained power of the Motherland. Hence the sole viewpoint that warrants consideration in regard to the foreign policy position can be only that of the fastest and earliest restoration of the independence and freedom of the remaining part of the Nation united under a Government. In other words, this means that even if a German foreign policy were cognizant of no aim other than the salvation of the Holy Voelk In Southern Tyrol, that is, the 190000 Germans who can really come under consideration, first the prerequisite thereto would be the achievement of Germany's political independence as well as means of military power. For it should be rather clear, after all, that the Austrian protest State will not wrest the Southern Tyrol from the Italians. But it must be equally clear that even if German foreign policy knew no aim other than the actual liberation of the Southern Tyrol, its actions must especially then be determined by such viewpoints and factors which guarantee the regaining of the means of political and military power. Thus we should surely not place the Southern Tyrol in the focal point of foreign policy considerations, but, on the contrary, especially then must we be dominated and guided by those ideas which in fact allow us to smash the existing world coalition directed against Germany. For ultimately, even through Germany, the Southern Tyrol will not be restored to the German element by the droning of a Tibetan prayer wheel of protests and indignation, but by the commitment of the sword.

Thus, if Germany herself were to have this aim, she must nevertheless ever and again look first of all for an ally who would furnish help for the gaining of German power. Now one can say that France could be considered in this case. As a National Socialist, I however oppose this most sharply.

It may well be that France would declare herself ready to allow Germany to march with her as an ally against Italy. Indeed, it can even be that, in gracious recognition of our blood sacrifice, and as meager bandages for our wounds, they would award the Southern Tyrol to us. But what would such a victory mean for Germany? Could our Nation, for instance, live then because it possesses 200000 more Southern Tyroleans? Or does one not believe that France, once she has defeated her Latin competitor in the Mediterranean with German military help, would surely turn once more against Germany? Or in any case that she would surely pursue her old political aim of the liquidation of Germany?

No, if for Germany there remains any choice between France and Italy, then, according to all human reason, Italy alone warrants consideration for Germany. For a victory with France over Italy will bring us the Southern Tyrol and a stronger France to boot as a subsequent enemy. A victory over France with Italy's help will bring us Alsace-Lorraine at the least, and at most, the freedom to carry out a genuine large scale territorial policy. And in the long run it is through this alone that Germany can live in the future, and not through Southern Tyrol. Nor will it do to choose one among all the severed territories, and indeed the one most unimportant to us in a vital sense, and to stake the total interests of a nation of 70000000 people, actually to renounce its future, just so that wretched fantastic German hurrah!-patriots can obtain a momentary gratification. And all this on account of a sheer phantom, for in reality the Southern Tyrol would be as little helped thereby as it is now.

The National Socialist Movement as such must educate the German Voelk to the effect that it must not shrink from staking its blood for the sake of shaping its life. But, likewise, our Voelk must be educated to the effect that such a staking of their blood, at least in future history, must never again take place for the sake of phantoms. Let our protest patriots and Fatherland Leaguers for once please say how they envisage the re-conquest of the Southern Tyrol other than by military violence. Let them, for once, summon up the honesty to avow, if they seriously believe it, that one day Italy--made mellow simply by their verbiage and heated protests--will hand over the Southern Tyrol, or whether they are not also convinced that a State with some existing national consciousness will give up a territory for which it had fought for four long years only under the compulsion of a military decision. Let them not always prattle that we, or I, had renounced the Southern Tyrol. These infamous liars know very well that, at least as far as regards my own person, I fought at the Front at the time when the fate of the Southern Tyrol was being decided, something which not a few of the present-day meeting protesters neglected to do at that time. And that at the same time, however, the forces with which our Patriotic Leaguers and National bourgeoisie make a common foreign policy and agitate against Italy, sabotaged the victory with every means, that international Marxism, democracy and the Center even in peacetime neglected nothing in order to weaken and paralyze the military power of our Voelk, and that finally they organized a revolution during the War which necessarily led to the collapse of the German Homeland and with it of the German Army. The Southern Tyrol was also lost to the German Voelk through the activity of these people, and the accursed weakness and impotence of our present-day bourgeois manic protesters. It is a contemptible falsification on the part of these so called national patriots if today they talk about a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol. No, dear gentlemen, don't twist and squirm in such a cowardly way over the right word. Don't be too cowardly to come right out and say that today it could only be a question of the conquest of the Southern Tyrol. For the renunciation, gentlemen of the National Leagues, was effected by your worthy present-day allies, the one time Marxist betrayers of their country, with all legal governmental forms. And the only ones who had the courage to take an open position against this crime at that time were not you, esteemed National Leaguers and bourgeois diplomatists, but rather the small National Socialist Movement and primarily myself.

Indeed, sirs, when you were so quiet that nobody in Germany had an idea of your existence, so deeply had you crawled off into your mouse holes, it was then in the years 1919 and 1920 that I came forth against the shame of signing the peace treaties--and not secretly, behind four walls, but publicly. At that time, however, you were still so cowardly that never once did you dare to come to one of our meetings for fear of being cudgeled by your present foreign policy allies, the Marxist street tramps. The men who signed the Peace Treaty Of Saint Germain were as little National Socialists as the signers of the Peace Treaty Of Versailles. They were the members of the parties who, by this signing, merely capped their decades long betrayal of their country. Whoever today wants to change the fate of the Southern Tyrol in any way cannot renounce anything that was already renounced in all forms by the present-day protesters. At most he can only re-conquer it.

I am most fanatically opposed to this, to be sure, and I announce the most extreme resistance to this endeavor, and I shall fight with the utmost fanaticism against the men who are trying to drive our Voelk into this adventure, as bloody as it is insane. I did not learn about the War at a restaurant table reserved for regular customers. Nor was I, in this War, one of those who had to give orders or to command. I was an ordinary soldier who was given orders for four and a half years, and who nevertheless honorably and truly fulfilled his duty. But I thereby had the good fortune to know war as it is, and not as one would like to see it. As a simple soldier, who had known only its dark sides, I was for this war up to the last hour because I was convinced that the salvation of our Voelk could lie only in victory. Since, however, there is now a peace which others have perpetrated, I fight to the utmost against a war which would not benefit the German Voelk, but instead only those who once before sacrilegiously traded the blood sacrifice of our Voelk for their interests. I am of the conviction that one day I will not be lacking in the determination, to bear the responsibility even, if necessary, of staking the blood of the German Voelk. But I fight against even a single German being dragged off to a battlefield, for fools or criminals to nourish their plans on his blood. Whoever reflects on the unprecedented horror and the frightful misery of a modern war, or considers the boundless demands on the nervous stamina of a Voelk, must take fright at the idea that such a sacrifice could be demanded for a success which in the most favourable case could never be consonant with this enormous effort. And I also know that if today the people of the Southern Tyrol, so far as it thinks along exclusively German lines, were gathered in one front and the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dead which our Nation would have to lay down in a struggle for their sake were to appear before these spectators, 300000 hands would rise protectively toward heaven, and the foreign policy of the National Socialists would be justified.

What is most terrible about all this is that they play with this dreadful possibility without ever giving a thought to really wanting to help the Southern Tyroleans.

Since the struggle over the Southern Tyrol is being waged today by those who once surrendered all Germany to ruin, even the Southern Tyrol is to them only a means to an end which they use with ice cold unscrupulousness in order to be able to gratify their infamous anti German--in the most extreme sense of the word--instincts. It is the hate against the present-day nationally conscious Italy, and it is above all a hatred of the new political idea of this country, and most of all hatred against the towering Italian statesman, which induces them to stir up German public opinion with the help of the Southern Tyrol. For, in reality, how indifferent after all are these elements to the German Voelk. While they lament the Southern Tyrol's fate with crocodile tears in their eyes, they are driving all Germany toward a fate that is worse than that of the partitioned territory. While they protest against Italy in the name of national culture, they pollute the culture of the German nation within, destroy our whole cultural sensibility, poison the instinct of our Voelk, and annihilate even the accomplishments of earlier times. Does an age which inside the country has depressed our whole theatre, our literature, our plastic arts to the level of swine, have the right to step forth against present-day Italy, or to protect German culture from her in the name of culture? The gentlemen of the Bavarian People's Party, the German Nationalists, and even the Marxist defilers of culture, are concerned about the German culture of the Southern Tyrol, but, undisturbed, they let the culture of the Homeland be insulted by the most wretched bungling works, and surrender the German stage to the race shame of a Jonny Spielt Auf. And, hypocritically, they lament the oppression of German cultural life in the Southern Tyrol, while they themselves most cruelly persecute those in the Homeland who want to protect German culture from a deliberate and intentional destruction. Here the Bavarian People's Party incites the State power against those who raise a protest against the infamous defilement of our Voelk's culture. What do these solicitous protectors of German culture in the Southern Tyrol do in Germany itself for the defense of German culture? They have let the theatre sink to the level of a brothel, into sites of demonstrated race defilement, and destroyed all the foundations of our Voelk Life with movies holding honesty and morality up to ridicule; they connive at the cubist and dadaists infatuation of our plastic art, they themselves protect the fabricators of this base deception or madness, they let German literature sink into mud and filth, and surrender the whole intellectual life of our Voelk to international Jewry. And the same contemptible pack is so brazen faced as to stand up for German culture in the Southern Tyrol, whereby the only aim they have in mind, naturally, is to incite two cultured Voelks against each other so that in the end they can all the more easily reduce them to the level of their own cultural wretchedness.

Thus is it in everything, however.

They complain about the persecution of the Germans in the Southern Tyrol, and they are the same people who in Germany most cruelly wage war on anyone who understands being national as something other than defenselessly surrendering his Voelk to syphilization by Jews and Negroes. The same people who call for the freedom of conscience of Germans in the Southern Tyrol oppress it in Germany itself in the meanest way. Never before has the freedom of expression of one's national outlook in Germany been so muzzled as under the rule of these mendacious party riffraff who presume to break a lance for the rights of conscience and national freedoms, of all things, in the Southern Tyrol. They wail over every injustice that is inflicted on a German in the Southern Tyrol, but they are silent about the murders that these Marxist street tramps commit from month to month in Germany against national elements. And the whole fine national bourgeoisie including the Fatherland protesters shares their silence. In a single year--that is to say, only five months of this year have gone by--nine men from the ranks of the National Socialist Movement alone were murdered under circumstances that in part were bestial, and over six hundred wounded. This entire mendacious brood is silent about this, but how they would roar if Fascism committed only one such deed against the German element in the Southern Tyrol. How they would summon the whole world to revolt if only one German in the Southern Tyrol were slaughtered by Fascists under conditions similar to those which the Marxist murder riffraff employs in Germany, without this calling forth the indignation of this fine phalanx for the salvation of the German Voelk. And how indeed these same people, who solemnly protest against the government persecution of the German element in the Southern Tyrol, persecute the Germans who inconvenience them in Germany itself. Beginning with the U-boat heroes up to the saviors of Upper Silesia, the men who first staked their blood for Germany--how they dragged them in chains before the courts and finally sentenced them to the penitentiary, all because they had sacrificed their lives hundreds upon hundreds of times out of a fervent love for the Fatherland, whereas this contemptible riffraff of protesters had crawled off somewhere where they could not be found. Let them total the sentences that have been imposed in Germany for acts which in a national conscious State would be rewarded with the highest decorations. If Italy today puts a German in the Southern Tyrol in jail, the whole German national and Marxist newspaper pack straightaway screams bloody murder. But they completely overlook that in Germany one can go to jail for months merely on the basis of a denunciation, that house searches, violation of the mails, telephone tapping--that is, sheer anti-constitutional deprivation of the personal freedoms guaranteed by the civil rights of this State--are the order of the day. And let not our so called national parties say that this is possible only in Marxist Prussia. First of all, they fraternize arm in arm with these same Marxists in regard to foreign policy, and, second, they have taken the same part in the oppression of a real, self conscious nationalism. In national Bavaria they placed the mortally ill Dietrich Eckart [note 12] in so called protective custody, despite the available medical testimony, without even the trace of any wrongdoing on his part save, at most, that of his incorruptible national outlook. And he was kept in such custody for so long that he finally collapsed, and died two days after his release. Moreover, he was Bavaria's greatest poet. Of course he was a national German and had not perpetrated any Jonny Spielt Auf, and in consequence he did not exist for these fighters for the national culture. Just as these national patriots first murdered him, likewise did they kill his work with silence, for after all he was a German and a good Bavarian in addition, and no international Jew polluter of Germany. In that case he would have been holy to this league of patriots, but here they acted in accordance with their national bourgeois outlook, and the open statement in the Munich police administration: Croak, national pig! But these are the same German conscious elements who mobilize the indignation of the world when someone in Italy stupidly does no more than throw a German in jail.

When a few Germans were expelled from the Southern Tyrol, these people again summoned the German Voelk to blazing indignation. They forgot only to add, however, that the greatest incitement was being directed against Germans in Germany itself. Under a bourgeois national government, national Bavaria has expelled dozens and dozens of Germans, and all only because they did not politically suit the corrupt ruling bourgeois stratum in consequence of their uncompromising nationalism. Suddenly one no longer took cognizance of the clan brotherhood with German Austria, but only of the foreigner. But it was not at all limited to the expulsion of so called alien Germans. No, these same bourgeois national hypocrites who hurl flaming protests against Italy because a German is expelled from the Southern Tyrol and packed off to another province, have expelled from Bavaria dozens and dozens of Germans with German citizenship who fought for Germany in the German Army for four and a half years, and who had been severely wounded, and won the highest decorations. Indeed, this is how these bourgeois national hypocrites look who now bluster indignantly against Italy, whereas they themselves have burdened themselves with shame upon shame among their own Voelk. They moan over the denationalization in Italy, and at the same time they denationalize the German Voelk in their own Homeland. They fight against anyone who opposes poisoning of our Voelk with regard to blood, indeed they persecute every German who does battle against the de Germanization, Negrification, and Judaisation of our Voelk in the big cities, which they themselves instigate and sponsor, and in the most shameless and ruthless way. And by means of the mendacious allegation of a danger to religious establishments, they try to send them to jail.

When an overexcited Italian in Merano damaged the Empress Elizabeth's Monument there, they raised a wild clamor, and could not be pacified even though an Italian court punished the culprit with two months in prison. That the monuments and mementos of the past greatness of our Voelk are uninterruptedly defiled in Germany itself, interests them not at all. That France has almost entirely destroyed all monuments recalling Germany in Alsace-Lorraine is a matter of indifference to them. It does not excite them that the Poles systematically lay waste to everything that even reminds one of the name of Germany. Indeed, they do not get excited over the fact that this very month in Bromberg the Bismarck Tower was officially demolished by the Government--all this leaves these champions of the national honor of our Voelk cold. Woe, however, if something like this were the case in the Southern Tyrol. For this has suddenly become a Holy Land for them. But the Fatherland itself, the Homeland, it can go to hell.

Certainly, on the Italian side, more than one unwise action has taken place in the Southern Tyrol, and the attempt to denationalize the German element systematically is just as impolitic as its result is questionable. But those who are in part guilty of all this and who, as a matter of fact, know nothing of a national honor of their Voelk, have no right to protest against this. Instead, this right belongs only to those who up to now really fought for German interests and German honor. In Germany this was exclusively the National Socialist Movement.

The whole inner mendacity of the agitation against Italy becomes apparent if the actions of the Italians are compared with the actions that the French, Poles, Belgians, Czechs, Rumanians and Southern Slavs have perpetrated against the German element. That France has expelled more than a quarter million Germans altogether from Alsace-Lorraine, that is, more people than the Southern Tyrol numbers as inhabitants, means not a rap to them. And that the French today are trying to extirpate every trace of German nationality in Alsace-Lorraine does not prevent them from fraternizing with France, even when continuous blows on the jaw are the answer from Paris. That the Belgians persecute the German element with a matchless fanaticism; that the Poles have massacred over 17000 Germans, in part under downright bestial attendant circumstances, gives them no cause for excitement; that they, finally, expelled tens of thousands from house and home, with hardly a shirt on their backs, and drove them across the border, are things that cannot make our bourgeois and Fatherland protest swindlers fly into a passion. Indeed, whoever wants to know the real disposition of this pack must only recall the way and manner in which the refugees were welcomed even then. Their hearts, at that time, bled as little as they do now when those tens of thousands of unfortunate expellees again found themselves on the soil of their dear Homeland, in part in veritable concentration camps, and were being shunted from place to place like Gypsies. In my mind's eye I still see before me the time when the first Ruhr refugees came to Germany, and then were shunted from police administration to police administration as if they were hardened criminals. No, then the hearts of these representatives and defenders of the national element in the Southern Tyrol did not bleed. But if a single German in the Southern Tyrol itself is expelled by the Italians, or some other injustice is inflicted on him, they tremble with righteous resentment and indignation over this unexampled crime against culture and over this greatest barbarism that the world has ever seen. How they say then: Never before and nowhere else before has the German element been so oppressed with such terrible and tyrannical methods as in this country. Indeed, but only with one exception, that is, namely, Germany itself, through your own tyranny.

The Southern Tyrol, or better, the German element in the Southern Tyrol, must remain preserved for the German Voelk, but in Germany itself, through their insane policy of non national dishonorableness, of general corruption, and of obsequiousness to the international financial lords, they murder more than double the people that the Southern Tyrol numbers as German inhabitants. They are silent about the 17,000-22,000 people driven to suicide yearly on average in recent years by their catastrophic policies, although this number, with children included, likewise amounts in ten years alone, to more than the Southern Tyrol numbers in German inhabitants. They foster emigration, and Herr Stresemann's national bourgeoisie characterizes the increase of the emigration quota as an enormous foreign policy success. And yet this means that every four years Germany loses more people than the Southern Tyrol numbers as inhabitants of German nationality. But in abortions and birth control, year for year, they murder almost double the number of people of German nationality in the Southern Tyrol all together. And this pack arrogates to itself the moral right to speak on behalf of the interests of the German element abroad.

Or this national official Germany wails over the denationalization of our language in the Southern Tyrol, but in Germany itself they de Germanize the German names in Czechoslovakia, in Alsace-Lorraine, and so on, in all official ways and manners. Indeed, official travel guides are published in which even the German names of cities in Germany are Czechized for the sake of the Czechs. This is all in order. Only when the Italians changed the holy name Brenner into Brennero was this an occasion to demand the most fervent resistance. And it is a spectacle not to be missed when such a bourgeois patriot begins to blaze with indignation, when one knows well that it is all a comedy. To simulate national passion suits our passionless, putrefied bourgeoisie as exactly as when an old whore mimics love. It is all only an artificial sham, and at its worst this is proved most correctly if such an excitement has its homeland in Austria. The black-gold legitimistic element, to whom formerly the German element in the Tyrol was completely a matter of indifference, now joins in a holy national indignation. Something of this kind electrifies all petty bourgeois associations, especially if they then hear that the Jews are also cooperating. This means that they themselves protest because they know that this time, exceptionally for once, they are permitted to shout their national feelings out loud--without being done in by the press Jews. On the contrary: it is after all fine for an upright national bourgeois man to appeal for a national struggle, and at the same time even be praised by Moses Israel Abrahamson. Indeed, even more. The Jewish gazettes scream along with them, and with this for the first time the real bourgeois national German unity front is established, from Krotoschin via Vienna up to Innsbruck, and our German Voelk, so politically stupid, lets itself be taken in by this show exactly as once before German diplomacy and our German Voelk let themselves be duped and misused by the Habsburg’s.

Germany once before had let her foreign policy be determined exclusively by Austrian interests. The punishment for this was something terrible. Woe, if the young German nationalism lets its future policy be determined by the theatrical babblers of the putrid bourgeois elements, or indeed by the Marxist enemies of Germany. And woe if, at the same time, in complete misunderstanding of the real driving forces of the Austrian State in Vienna, it again receives its directives from there. It will be the task of the National Socialist Movement to prepare an end to this theatrical hue and cry, and to choose sober reason as the ruler of future German foreign policy. To be sure, Italy also bears guilt for this whole development. I would view it as stupid and politically childish to rebuke the Italian State for the fact that it pushed its borders up to the Brenner on the occasion of the Austrian collapse. The motives that dominated it at that time were no more base than the motives which once determined bourgeois annexations politicians, including Herr Stresemann and Herr Erzberger, to prop the German borders against the Belgian Meuse fortresses. At all times a responsible, thinking and acting government will make an effort to find strategically natural and secure frontiers. Surely, Italy did not annex the Southern Tyrol in order thus to come into possession of a couple of hundred thousand Germans, and surely the Italians would have preferred it if only Italians lived in this territory in place of these Germans. For, as a matter of fact, it was never strategic considerations primarily which induced them to place the borders over the Brenner. But no State would have acted differently in a similar situation. Hence it is aimless to criticize this shaping of the borders as such, since ultimately every State must determine its natural borders according to its own interests and not others. To the extent that the possession of the Brenner may serve military interests and strategic purposes, it is irrelevant whether or not 200000 Germans live within this strategically established and secured border as such, if the population of the country encompasses 42 million people, and a militarily effective adversary on this very border does not come in for consideration. It would have been wiser to have spared these 200000 Germans any compulsion, rather than to have forcibly tried to instill an outlook the result of which, according to experience, is generally without value. Also a Voelkdom cannot be extirpated in twenty or thirty years, regardless of the methods employed, and whether one wants or does not want this. On the Italian side, one can answer with a certain appearance of right that this was not intended at first, and that it developed necessarily by itself as a consequence of the provocative attempts at a continuous interference in domestic Italian affairs on the part of Austrian and German external forces, and of the repercussions evoked therefrom on the Southern Tyroleans themselves. This is correct, for, as a matter of fact, the Italians at first welcomed the German element in the Southern Tyrol very honestly and loyally. But as soon as Fascism arose in Italy, the agitation against Italy in Germany and Austria began on grounds of principle, and now led to an increasing heightening of mutual irritability which in the Southern Tyrol finally had to lead to consequences we see today. Most unfortunate in this was the influence of the Andreas Hofer Association which, instead of strongly recommending sagacity to the Germans in the Southern Tyrol, and making it clear to them that their mission was to build a bridge between Germany and Italy, aroused hopes in the Southern Tyroleans beyond any possibility of realization, but which, however, were bound to lead to incitements and thereby to rash steps. It is primarily the fault of this Association if conditions were carried to an extreme. Whoever like myself had many opportunities to know important members of this Association personally as well must be amazed over the irresponsibility with which an Association with so little real active strength could do so much damage. For when I see the different leading figures in my mind's eye, and think of one of them in particular who had his office in the Munich police administration, then I grow angry at the thought that men who would never bring their own blood and skins to the market occasioned a development which in its ultimate consequence must end with a bloody conflict.

It is also correct that no understanding at all over the Southern Tyrol can exist with the real wire-puller’s of this agitation against Italy, since to these elements the Southern Tyrol as such is a matter of indifference as much as is the German Nation in general. Indeed it is only a question of a suitable means for sowing confusion and stirring up public opinion, especially in Germany, against Italy. For this is what concerns these gentlemen. Hence there is a certain ground for justification in the Italian objection that, regardless of what the treatment of Germans in the Southern Tyrol may be, these people will always find something suitable for their agitation, because they want precisely this. But for the very reason that in Germany today, exactly as in Italy, certain elements have an interest in thwarting an understanding between both Nations with all means, it would be the duty of wisdom to remove these means from them as far as possible, even despite the danger that they will try further. The opposite would make sense only if there were altogether nobody in Germany who had the courage to speak for an understanding in opposition to this agitation. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the more present-day Italy by itself seeks to avoid impolitic incidents, the easier will it become for Italy's friends in Germany to expose the hate inciters, to unmask the sanctimoniousness of their reasons, and to put a stop to their Voelk poisoning activity. But if in Italy they really believe that they cannot compromise in some way, in view of all the clamor and the demands of foreign organizations, without this looking like a capitulation rather, and possibly further increasing the arrogance of these elements, then ways could be found. Indeed such an obligingness could be fundamentally ascribed to those who not only are not involved in this agitation but, on the contrary, are the friends of an understanding with Italy and Germany, and themselves lead the sharpest struggle against the poisoner’s of public opinion in Germany.

The foreign policy aim of the National Socialist Movement has nothing to do either with an economic or bourgeois border policy. Our Voelkish territorial aim, in the future as well, will assign the German Voelk a development that need never bring it into conflict with Italy. We will also never sacrifice the blood of our Voelk in order to bring about small border rectifications, but only for territory in order to win a further expansion and sustenance for our Voelk. This aim drives us eastward. The east coasts of the Baltic Sea are for Germany what the Mediterranean Sea is to Italy. Germany's mortal enemy for any further development, indeed even for the mere maintenance of the unity of our Reich, is France, exactly as she is for Italy. The National Socialist Movement will never fall into a superficial insipid hurrah! cry. It will not rattle the sword. Its leaders, almost without exception, have learned about war as it is in reality and truth. Therefore, it will never shed blood for any other aims save those that are serviceable to the whole future development of our Voelk. Hence it also refuses to provoke a war with Italy for the sake of a border rectification, which is laughable in view of the German fragmentation in Europe. On the contrary, it wants to put an end for all the future to these unfortunate Teutonic marches to the south, and wants the advocacy of our interests to take place in a direction which makes the elimination of its need for territory appear possible to our Voelk. By thus delivering Germany from the period of her present enslavement and servitude, we also fight above all for her restoration and thus in the interest of German honor. If present-day Italy believes that a change in various measures in the Southern Tyrol would be viewed as a capitulation before foreign interference, without in the end leading to the desired understanding, then let her undertake this shift exclusively for the sake of those in Germany who themselves are for an understanding with Italians--thereby openly justifying them--and who not only reject being identified with the agitators against it, but who, indeed, have fought the sharpest struggle against these elements for years and who recognize the sovereign rights of the Italian State as existing, as a matter of course.

It is just as little a matter of indifference to Germany whether she keeps Italy as a friend, as it also is to Italy. Just as Fascism has given the Italian Voelk a new value, likewise the value of the German Voelk must not be estimated for the future on the basis of its momentary life expression, but according to the forces which it has so often shown in its former history and which, perhaps, it can again show tomorrow.

Thus, just as Italy's friendship is worth a sacrifice on Germany's part, German friendship is worth just as much to Italy. It would be a good fortune for both Voelks if those forces in both countries who are the bearers of this knowledge could come to an understanding. Thus, as much as the agitation against Italy in Germany is responsible for the unfortunate enmity, just as much guilt lies on Italy's side if, in view of the fact that there is a struggle in Germany itself against this agitation, she herself as far as possible does not wrest the means from their hands.

If the sagacity of the Fascist regime one day succeeds in making 65 million Germans into friends of Italy, this will be worth more than if it educates 200000 into becoming bad Italians.

Likewise unsound was the Italian stand prohibiting the union of Austria with Germany. The very fact that France primarily espoused this prohibition perforce should have led Rome to take an opposite position. For France itself did not take this step in order to benefit Italy, but much more rather in the hope of being able to inflict harm on her thereby. There are primarily two reasons which induced France to push through the prohibition of the union: first, because thereby she wanted to prevent a strengthening of Germany, and second, because she is convinced that some day she can, in the Austrian State, acquire a member for the French European alliance. So Rome should not deceive itself that French influence in Vienna is considerably more decisive even than the German, not to speak of the Italian. The French attempt to transfer the League Of Nations to Vienna, if possible, stems only from the intention to strengthen the cosmopolitan character of this city as such, and to bring it into contact with a country whose character and culture finds a stronger response in the present-day Viennese atmosphere than does that of the German Reich.

As seriously intended as are the tendencies toward a union in the Austrian provinces as such, just as little are they taken seriously in Vienna. On the contrary, if in Vienna they really operate with the idea of a union, it is always only in order to extricate themselves from some financial difficulty, since France then is always sooner ready to lend a hand to the creditor State. Gradually, however, this very idea of a union will dry up in proportion as an inner consolidation of the Austrian federation occurs and Vienna regains its full dominating position. On top of this, the political development in Vienna assumes an increasingly anti-Italian and especially anti Fascist character, whereas Austrian Marxism has at all times made no bones about its strong sympathy for France. Thus the fact that at that time the union fortunately was prevented, and in part with Italian help, will some day lead to the insertion of the missing link between Prague and Yugoslavia into the French alliance system.

For Italy, however, the prevention of the Austrian union with Germany had been wrong even on psychological grounds. The smaller the fragmented Austrian State remained, the more limited naturally also were its foreign policy aims. A foreign policy goal, conceived on a grand scale, could not be expected from a State structure which has scarcely .......... square kilometers of territory, and hardly .......... million inhabitants. If German Austria had been annexed to Germany in the year 1919-1920, the tendency of her political thought would gradually have been determined by the great political aims of Germany, which were at least possible, that is, for a nation of almost 70,000,000. Preventing this at that time removed foreign policy thinking from greater aims, and limited it to small old Austrian reconstruction ideas. Only thus was it possible that the Southern Tyrol question could have at all grown to such an importance. For as small as the Austrian State was as such, it was at least large enough to be the bearer of a foreign policy idea which was in keeping with its smallness, just as, conversely, it could slowly poison the political thinking of all Germany. The more limited the political ideas of the Austrian State become in consequence of its territorial limitation, the more will they sprout into problems which can certainly have an importance for this State, but which cannot be viewed as decisive for the shaping of a German foreign policy for the German Nation.

Italy should espouse a union of Austria with Germany if for no other reason than to cut across the French alliance system in Europe. She should further also do this, however, in order to present other tasks to the German border policy germinated in consequence of her incorporation in a great Reich.

Moreover, the reasons which once induced Italy to take a stand against the union are not quite clear. Neither present-day Austria nor present-day Germany can be considered a military adversary of Italy for the time being. But if France succeeds in bringing a general alliance in Europe into being against Italy, in which Austria and Germany take part, the military situation as such will not at all change whether Austria is independent or whether she is with Germany. Moreover one cannot actually speak of a real independence with so small a structure anyhow. They [Austria] will always hang on to the strings of a large power of some kind. Switzerland cannot in the least prove the opposite, since as a State she possesses her own possibilities of existence, even if on the basis of tourist traffic. For Austria this is already impossible in consequence of the disproportion of the capital of this country to the size of the whole population. Regardless, however, what attitude Austria itself assumes toward Italy, in the very fact of her existence there already lies an easing of the military strategic position of Czechoslovakia which one day, one way or another, can make itself noticeable vis-à-vis Italy's natural ally as such, Hungary.

For the Italians, military and political reasons would speak in favor of regarding prohibition of the union as at least without importance, if not as something which answers the purpose. I cannot conclude this chapter without establishing in detail who in fact bears the guilt that a Southern Tyrol question exists altogether.

For us National Socialists, politically, the decision has been reached. And at least I--who am most violently opposed to millions of Germans being dragged to a battlefield on which to bleed to death for the interests of France without a gain thereby accruing to Germany which would in some way be consonant with the blood sacrifice--I also refuse to recognize the standpoint of national honor as being decisive here. For on the basis of this viewpoint I would sooner have to march against France, which by her whole conduct has offended German honor in quite a different way, than Italy. I have already enlarged in the introduction to this book on the possibility of formulating a foreign policy on the basis of national honor, so there is no further need to take a position toward it. If now the attempt is made in our protest groups to present this attitude of ours as a betrayal or a renunciation of the Southern Tyrol, this can only be correct if, without our attitude, Southern Tyrol would either have not been lost altogether, or were about to return to the other Tyrol in the predictable future.

Therefore I see myself forced once more to establish in this exposition precisely who it was that betrayed the Southern Tyrol, and through whose measures it was lost to Germany.

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those parties who, in long work for peace, weakened, or completely refused, the armament to the German Voelk which it needed to assert itself in Europe, and by so doing robbed the German Voelk of the necessary power for victory and thereby of the preservation of the Southern Tyrol at the critical hour.

Those parties who, in long work for peace, undermined the moral and ethical foundation of our Voelk and, above all, destroyed faith in the right to self defense.

Thus the Southern Tyrol was also betrayed by those parties, which as so called State-preserving and national parties, looked on this activity with indifference or, at least, without opposing a serious resistance. Albeit indirectly, they too are accessories to the weakening of our Voelk's armament.

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the activity of those political parties who reduced the German Voelk to being the stooge of the Habsburg big power idea. And who, instead of setting before German foreign policy the aim of the national unification of our Voelk, viewed the preservation of the Austrian State as the mission of the German nation. Who, therefore, also in peacetime, for decades merely looked on as the Habsburg’s systematically carried out their work of de Germanization, indeed furnishing them assistance. Thereby they are co-responsible for neglecting the solution of the Austrian question by Germany itself, or at least by the decisive cooperation of Germany. In such a case the Southern Tyrol could have certainly been preserved for the German Voelk.

The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the general aimlessness and lack of planning of German foreign policy which in the year 1914 extended also to the establishment of reasonable war aims, or prevented this.

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed by all those who, during the course of the War, did not cooperate to the utmost in strengthening German resistance and aggressive power. As well as by the parties which deliberately paralyzed the German power of resistance, as well as those who tolerated this paralysis.

The Southern Tyrol was lost in consequence of the inability, even during the War, to undertake a new orientation of German foreign policy and to save the German element of the Austrian State by renouncing the maintenance of the Habsburg great power State. The Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the activity of those who, during the War, by raising the sham hope of a peace without victory, broke the German Voelk's moral power of resistance, and who instead of a manifestation of the will to wage the War, brought about a peace resolution that was catastrophic for Germany.

The Southern Tyrol was lost by the betrayal of those parties and men who even during the War lied to the German Voelk about the non existence of Entente imperialistic aims, and thereby duped our Voelk, estranged it from the unconditional necessity of resistance, and ultimately induced it to believe the Entente more than those who raised their voices in warning at home.

The Southern Tyrol was further lost by the grinding down of the Front, attended to by the Homeland, and by the infection of German thinking by the fraudulent declarations of Woodrow Wilson. The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and was lost by the activity of parties and men who, beginning with conscientious objection to military service up to the organization of munitions strikes, robbed the Army of the feeling of the incontestable necessity of its struggle and victory.

The Southern Tyrol was betrayed and lost by the organization and the execution of the November crime, as well as by the contemptible and cowardly tolerance of this ignominy by the so called State-preserving national forces.

The Southern Tyrol was lost and betrayed by the shameless acts of the men and parties who, after the collapse, defiled Germany's honor, destroyed the esteem of our Voelk before the world, and only thereby encouraged our adversaries to the enormity of their demands. It was further lost by the contemptible cowardice of the national bourgeois parties and patriotic leagues who dishonorably capitulated everywhere before the terror of baseness and villainy. The Southern Tyrol was finally lost and betrayed by the signing of the peace treaties, and with this by the legal recognition of the loss also of this area.

All the German parties together are guilty of all this. Some have knowingly and intentionally destroyed Germany, and others in their proverbial incapacity and in their cowardice, which cries out to heaven, not only did nothing to stop the destroyers of Germany's future, but, on the contrary, they actually played into the hands of these enemies of our Voelk by the incapacity of their direction of domestic and foreign policy. Never before has a Voelk been driven, like the German Voelk, to ruin by such a marriage of baseness, villainy, cowardice and stupidity.

In these days we have been afforded a glimpse into the activities and effectiveness of this old Germany in the field of foreign policy by the publication of the War Memoirs of the head of the American intelligence service, Mister Flynn.

I let a bourgeois democratic organ speak on this matter only for the purpose of a broader understanding.

(26th Of June, 1928) - How America Entered The War

Flynn Writes About The Diplomatic Secret Service - By F. W. Elven, Correspondent Of The Munich Latest News -- Cincinnati, Mid June William J. Flynn has published a part of his War Memoirs in the weekly Liberty, which is much read here. During the war, Flynn was the Head Of The United States Secret Service. The Service encompasses the whole country, and is brilliantly organized. In peacetime it primarily provides for the personal security of the President. Its attention is enjoyed by whatever else in the national capital is in need of protection, or thinks it needs so. It keeps under surveillance all doubtful elements somehow suspected of connections with political tendencies hostile to the government and its spokesmen. During the war its principal task was to keep an eye on those who more or less loudly had made themselves noticeable in opposition to the war, or who merely were suspected of not being in agreement with the Wilsonian war policy. Germans also enjoyed its special care, and at that time many fell into the traps which had been laid everywhere by the Federal Secret Service.

From Flynn's memoirs, however, we learn that the Secret Service had been assigned an important mission even before our entry into the war. In the year 1915, a full two years before the declaration of war, the most efficient telephone expert was summoned to Washington and assigned the task of arranging the leading telephone wires to the German and Austrian embassies in such a way that Secret Service officials could tap every conversation from any source that was held between the ambassadors and their personnel, as well as every conversation emanating from the embassy offices. A room was set up with which all the wires were linked in such an ingenious way that not even a single conversation could be missed. Service men sat in this room day and night, dictating the overheard conversations to the stenographers seated beside them. Every night the head of the Secret Service Bureau, that is, the author of the article in Liberty, received a stenographic report of all the conversations held in the preceding twenty four hours, so that on the very same evening he was able to communicate everything important to the State Department and to President Wilson.

Let us bear in mind the time this installation was created, at the beginning of the year 1915, that is, at the time when the United States still lived in peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Wilson never tired of giving assurances that he harbored no hostile intentions against Germany. It was also the time when the German Ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, neglected no opportunity to show due appreciation of Wilson's friendly disposition and feelings for Germany and the German Voelk. It was also the time when Wilson gave his confidant Baruch instructions to begin the gradual mobilization of industry for war; also the time in which it became increasingly obvious, as the American historian Harry Elmer Barnes also sets forth in his book On The Origins Of The Great War, that Wilson was firmly decided to enter the war, and postponed the execution of his bellicose plans only because public opinion first had to be won over for these plans.

Flynn's memoirs must finally remove the ground from the foolish chatter that Wilson was pushed into the war against his will by German submarine warfare. The tapping of the telephone wires leading to the German embassy took place with his knowledge. We also learn this from Flynn's memoirs. The author adds that the material thus gathered against Germany contributed considerably to the eventual break. This can prove only that this put means in Wilson's hands to win public opinion for the war long planned by him. And in fact this material was wholly and ideally suited for it. The Memoirs confirm to the fullest extent what unfortunately must still be said, that Germany at that time was represented in Washington in a downright incredibly incompetent and incredibly unworthy way. If we hear that in one passage Flynn writes that the stenographic reports prepared for him daily contained enough material to keep a divorce lawyer busy for months on end, then we get a general idea of what went on. The Secret Service maintained women agents in Washington and New York whose job it was to sound out the members of the German Embassy, Bernstorff included, whenever anything important happened. One of these woman agents kept a better class apartment in Washington in which the gentlemen met their ladies, and where occasionally even Secretary Of State Lansing dropped in to hear what was new. On New Year's Day, 1916, when the news of the sinking of the liner Persia became known in the national capital, Bernstorff telephoned five women one after the other in order to make sweet compliments to them and to receive similar compliments in return, although in view of the mood which news of the sinking of the Persia had left behind in the State Department and the White House, he really could not have been lacking in more serious pursuits.

One of the ladies complimented Bernstorff on the fact that he was a great lover, and always would be, even were he a hundred years old. The rest of the gentlemen of the embassy were not differently built. One, whom Flynn designates as the best diplomatic aide in the embassy, had a lady friend in New York, a married woman, with whom he had a daily telephone conversation which each time cost the German Reich twenty dollars, and whom he visited frequently. He told her about everything that happened, and she then took care to bring this information to the right places. Even quite vulgar remarks about Wilson and his consort were made during the telephone conversations, and thus we can without difficulty imagine that thereby the mood of the White House vis-à-vis Germany did not get any friendlier. From the conversation held at the beginning of March, 1916, we learn how little the embassy knew about the country and the Voelk, and with what childish plans it concerned itself. At that time a bill introduced by Senator Gore lay before Congress to the effect that a proclamation be issued warning the American Voelk not to use armed commercial vessels. President Wilson most bitterly fought against the proposal. He needed the loss of American lives in order to incite feelings against Germany. People in the German embassy knew that the prospects of the bill were not favorable, so they earnestly concerned themselves with plans to buy Congress. Only at first they did not know where to get the money. On March 3rd, the Senate decided to postpone the Gore Bill provisionally. The vote in the House was supposed to follow a few days later. So the plan first to buy the House was further eagerly pursued, but in this case at least Bernstorff was reasonable enough to advise against the plan decisively.

The reading of the Flynn article must leave a feeling of deep indignation in the veins of every man of healthy German blood, not only over Wilson's treacherous policy, but rather, and especially, over the incredible stupidity with which the German Embassy played into the hands of this policy. Wilson duped Bernstorff more and more from day to day. When Colonel House, his adviser, returned from his European journey in May, 1916, Bernstorff traveled to New York to meet him there. Wilson, however, who vis-à-vis Bernstorff had acted as though he had no objections to this meeting, secretly instructed House not to have anything to do with the Count, and to avoid him at all events. Thus it happened. Bernstorff waited in New York in vain. Then he went to a nearby beach and let himself be photographed in a bathing suit with two lady friends in a very intimate position. The photo accompanies Flynn's article. At that time it fell into the hands of the Russian Ambassador Bakhmateff, who had it enlarged and sent it to London, where it was published in the newspapers under the caption, The Dignified Ambassador, and it rendered a capital service to Allied propaganda.

This is what the Munich Latest News writes now. The man thus characterized, however, was a typical representative of German foreign policy before the War, just as he is also the typical representative of the German foreign policy of the Republic. This fellow, who would have been sentenced to hanging by a political tribunal in any other State, is the German representative at the League Of Nations in Geneva.

These men bear the guilt and the responsibility for Germany's collapse, and, therefore, also for the loss of the Southern Tyrol. And with them the guilt falls on all parties and men who either caused such conditions, or covered them up, or also tacitly countenanced them or did not fight against them in the sharpest manner.

The men, however, who today brazenly try to deceive public opinion anew, and would like to aver that others are guilty of the loss of the Southern Tyrol, must first give a detailed accounting of what they have done for its preservation. As for my person, at any rate, I can proudly declare that, since the time that I became a man, I have always been for the strengthening of my Voelk. And when the War came, I fought on the German Western Front for four and a half years, and since its end I have been fighting against the corrupt creatures whom Germany can thank for this disaster. Since that time I have entered into no compromise with the betrayers of the German Fatherland, either in domestic or foreign policy matters, but immovably proclaim their destruction one day as the aim of my life's work, and the mission of the National Socialist Movement.

I can all the more calmly endure the yelping of the cowardly bourgeois curs as well as that of the Patriotic Leaguers, as I know the average poltroon of these creatures, for me unspeakably contemptible, all too well. That they also know me is the reason for their hue and cry.