German races, classes, and persons, of being responsible for the fate that has befallen every one of us, and bitterly and passionately reproach each other. In the first place, all accusations of this kind are for the most part unfair, unjust, and unfounded. The causes that have brought about Germany’s latest doom we have already indicated; these causes have for centuries been native to all German races without exception in the same way; the latest events are not the consequences of any particular error of any one race or its government; they have been in preparation long enough, and might just as well have happened to us long ago, if it had depended solely on the causes that lie within our own selves. In this matter the guilt or innocence of all is, one may say, equally great, and a reckoning is no longer possible. When the final result came about in haste, it was found that the separate German States did not even know themselves, their powers, and their true situation; how, then, could any one of them have the presumption to look beyond its own borders and pronounce upon the guilt of others a final judgment based on thorough knowledge?
208. It may be that in every race of the German fatherland the blame falls with more reason on one special class, not because it did not have more insight or greater ability than all the others, for in that respect all were equally to blame, but because it pretended that it had more insight and greater ability, and kept everyone else away from the work of administration in the various States. But, even if a reproach of this kind were well founded, who is to utter it, and why is it necessary to utter and discuss it, just at this moment, more loudly and more bitterly then ever? We see that men of letters are doing this. If they spoke just as they do now in the days when all power and all authority were in the hands of
