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.This uncertainty showed itself when the great questions of the time had to be considered one afteranother and a decisive policy adopted towards them.This lack is also accountable for the habit of doingeverything by halves, beginning with the educational system, the shilly-shally, the reluctance to undertakeresponsibilites and, finally, the cowardly tolerance of evils that were even admitted to be destructive.Visionary humanitarianisms became the fashion.In weakly submitting to these aberrations and sparing thefeelings of the individual, the future of millions of human beings was sacrificed.An examination of the religious situation before the War shows that the general process of disruption hadextended to this sphere also.A great part of the nation itself had for a long time already ceased to have anyconvictions of a uniform and practical character in their ideological outlook on life.In this matter the point ofprimary importance was by no means the number of people who renounced their church membership butrather the widespread indifference.While the two Christian denominations maintained missions in Asia andAfrica, for the purpose of securing new adherents to the Faith, these same denominations were losingmillions and millions of their adherents at home in Europe.These former adherents either gave up religionwholly as a directive force in their lives or they adopted their own interpretation of it.The consequences ofthis were specially felt in the moral life of the country.In parenthesis it may be remarked that the progressmade by the missions in spreading the Christian Faith abroad was only quite modest in comparison with thespread of Mohammedanism.It must be noted too that the attack on the dogmatic principles underlying ecclesiastical teaching increasedsteadily in violence.And yet this human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existenceof a religious belief.The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers.For the masses of thepeople, especially faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life.The various substitutes thathave been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us in thinking that they might usefullyreplace the existing denominations.But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by thebroad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be thefoundation of all practical effort.There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can livewisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but themillions of others cannot do so.Now the place which general custom fills in everyday life corresponds to thatof general laws in the State and dogma in religion.The purely spiritual idea is of itself a changeable thing thatmay be subjected to endless interpretations.It is only through dogma that it is given a precise and concreteform without which it could not become a living faith.Otherwise the spiritual idea would never becomeanything more than a mere metaphysical concept, or rather a philosophical opinion.Accordingly the attackagainst dogma is comparable to an attack against the general laws on which the State is founded.And so thisattack would finally lead to complete political anarchy if it were successful, just as the attack on religionwould lead to a worthless religious nihilism.The political leader should not estimate the worth of a religion by taking some of its shortcomings intoaccount, but he should ask himself whether there be any practical substitute in a view which is demonstrablybetter.Until such a substitute be available only fools and criminals would think of abolishing the existingreligion.146 Mein KampfUndoubtedly no small amount of blame for the present unsatisfactory religious situation must be attributed tothose who have encumbered the ideal of religion with purely material accessories and have thus given rise toan utterly futile conflict between religion and science.In this conflict victory will nearly always be on theside of science, even though after a bitter struggle, while religion will suffer heavily in the eyes of those whocannot penetrate beneath the mere superficial aspects of science.But the greatest damage of all has come from the practice of debasing religion as a means that can beexploited to serve political interests, or rather commercial interests.The impudent and loud-mouthed liarswho do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortalsmay hear  not that they are ready to die for it if necessary but rather that they may live all the better.Theyare ready to sell their faith for any political quid pro quo.For ten parliamentary mandates they would allythemselves with the Marxists, who are the mortal foes of all religion.And for a seat in the Cabinet theywould go the length of wedlock with the devil, if the latter had not still retained some traces of decency.If religious life in pre-war Germany had a disagreeable savour for the mouths of many people this wasbecause Christianity had been lowered to base uses by political parties that called themselves Christian andbecause of the shameful way in which they tried to identify the Catholic Faith with a political party.This substitution was fatal.It procured some worthless parliamentary mandates for the party in question, butthe Church suffered damage thereby.The consequences of that situation had to be borne by the whole nation; for the laxity that resulted inreligious life set in at a juncture when everything was beginning to lose hold and vacillate and the traditionalfoundations of custom and of morality were threatening to fall asunder.Yet all those cracks and clefts in the social organism might not have been dangerous if no grave burdens hadbeen laid upon it; but they became disastrous when the internal solidarity of the nation was the mostimportant factor in withstanding the storm of big events.In the political field also observant eyes might have noticed certain anomalies of the Reich which foretolddisaster unless some alteration and correction took place in time.The lack of orientation in German policy,both domestic and foreign, was obvious to everyone who was not purposely blind.The best thing that couldbe said about the practice of making compromises is that it seemed outwardly to be in harmony withBismarck s axiom that  politics is the art of the possible.But Bismarck was a slightly different man from theChancellors who followed him.This difference allowed the former to apply that formula to the very essenceof his policy, while in the mouths of the others it took on an utterly different significance.When he utteredthat phrase Bismarck meant to say that in order to attain a definite political end all possible means should beemployed or at least that all possibilities should be tried.But his successors see in that phrase only a solemndeclaration that one is not necessarily bound to have political principles or any definite political aims at all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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