Really, there is no need to refute the opinion that just because a fusion of Folks of different nationalities has taken place in the American Union, this must also be possible in Europe. The American Union, to be sure, has brought people of different nationalities together into a young nation. But closer scrutiny discloses that the overwhelming majority of these different ethnic groups racially belong to similar or at least related basic elements. For since the emigration process in Europe was a selection of the fittest, this fitness in all European Folks lying primarily in the Nordic admixture, the American Union, in fact, has drawn to itself the scattered Nordic elements from among Folks who were very different as such. If, in addition, we take into account that it involved people who were not the bearers of any kind of theory of government, and consequently were not burdened by any kind of tradition, and, further, the dimensions of the impact of the new world to which all people are more or less subject, it becomes understandable why a new nation, made up of peoples from all European countries, could arise in less than two hundred years. It must be considered, however, that already in the last century this fusion process became more difficult in proportion as, under the pressure of need, Europeans went to North America, who, as members of European national States, not only felt themselves united with them Folkishly for the future, but who particularly prized their national tradition more highly than citizenship in their new homeland. Moreover, even the American Union has not been able to fuse people of alien blood who are stamped with their own national feeling or race instinct. The American Union’s power of assimilation has failed vis-à-vis the Chinese as well as vis-à-vis the Japanese element. They also sense this well and know it, and therefore they would best prefer to exclude these alien bodies from immigration. But thereby American immigration policy itself confirms that the earlier fusion presupposed peoples of definite equal race foundations, and immediately miscarried as soon as it involved people who were fundamentally different. That the American Union itself feels itself to be a Nordic German State, and in no way an international mishmash of Folks, further emerges from the manner in which it allots immigration quotas to European nations.
Scandinavians, that is, Swedes, Norwegians, further Danes, then Englishmen, and finally Germans, are allotted the greatest contingents. Rumanians and Slavs very little, Japanese and Chinese they would prefer to exclude altogether. Consequently, it is a Utopia to oppose a European coalition or a Pan Europe, consisting of Mongols, Slavs, Germans, Latins, and so on, in which all others than Teutons would dominate, as a factor capable of resistance, to this racially dominant, Nordic State. A very dangerous Utopia, to be sure, if we consider that again countless Germans see a rosy future for which they will not have to make the most grievous sacrifices.
That this Utopia of all things came out of Austria is not without a certain comedy. For, after all, this State and its fate is the liveliest example of the enormous strength of structures artificially glued together but which are unnatural in themselves. It is the rootless spirit of the old imperial city of Vienna, that hybrid city of the Orient and the Occident, which thereby speaks to us.
Chapter 10
ON NECESSITY FOR AN ACTIVE FOREIGN POLICY
Summing up, therefore, it can be reiterated that our bourgeois national policy, the foreign policy aim of which is the restoration of the borders of the year 1914, is senseless and indeed catastrophic. It perforce brings us into conflict with all the States which took part in the World War. Thus it guarantees the continuance of the coalition of victors which is slowly choking us. It thereby always assures France a favourable official opinion in other parts of the world for her eternal proceedings against Germany. Even were it successful, it would signify nothing at all for Germany’s future in its results, and nevertheless compel us to fight with blood and steel. Further, it altogether prevents in particular any stability of German foreign policy.
It was characteristic of our pre War policy that it necessarily gave an outside observer the image of decisions often as wavering as they were incomprehensible. If we disregard the Triple Alliance, the maintenance of which could not be a foreign policy aim but only a means to such an aim, we can discover no stable idea in the leaders of our Folk’s fate in the pre War period. This is naturally incomprehensible. The moment the foreign policy aim no longer signified a struggle for the German Folk’s interests, but rather the preservation of world peace, we lost the ground under our feet. I can certainly outline a Folk’s interests, establish them, and, regardless of how the possibilities of their advocacy stand, I can nevertheless keep the great aim uninterruptedly in view. Gradually the rest of mankind will also acquire a general knowledge of a nation’s special, definite, chief foreign policy ideas.
This then offers the possibility of regulating mutual relations in a permanent way, either in the sense of an intended resistance against the known operation of such a power, or a reasonable awareness of it, or also in the sense of an understanding, since, perhaps, one’s own interests can be achieved along a common path.
This stability in foreign policy can be established with a whole series of European States. For long periods of her existence, Russia exhibited definite foreign policy aims which dominated her whole activity. In the course of the centuries, France has always represented the same foreign policy aims regardless who embodied political power in Paris at the moment. We may speak of England not only as a State with a traditional diplomacy, but above all as a State with a foreign policy idea become a tradition. With Germany, such an idea could be discerned only periodically in the Prussian State. We see Prussia fulfil her German mission in the short period of the Bismarckian statecraft, but thereafter any foreign policy aim staked out far in advance came to an end. The new German Reich, especially after Bismarck’s retirement, no longer had such an aim since the slogan of preserving peace, that is, of maintaining a given situation, does not possess any kind of stable content or character. Just as any passive slogan is doomed in reality to be the plaything of an aggressive will. Only he who himself wants to act can also determine his action according to his will. Hence the Triple Entente, which wanted to act, also had all the advantages which lie in the self determination of action, whereas the Triple Alliance through its contemplative tendency to preserve world peace was at a disadvantage to the same degree. Thus the timing and opening of a war was established by nations with a definite foreign policy aim, whereas, conversely, the Triple Alliance powers were surprised by it at an hour that was everything but favourable. If we in Germany ourselves had had even the slightest bellicose intention, it would have been possible through a number of measures, which could have been carried out without effort, to have given another face to the start of the War. But Germany never had a definite foreign policy aim in view, she never thought of any kind of aggressive steps for the realisation of this aim, and consequently events caught her by surprise.