Mein Kampf
the cruel Goddess of Privation or by the torch of words hurled among the masses. They are not the lemonade outpourings of aesthetic-talking literati and parlor heroes.
Only a storm of hot passion can change the fate of peoples; and passion can be aroused only by a man who himself bears it within. Passion alone can give to its chosen vehicle the words which like hammer-blows will open the gates to a people’s heart.
But a man whom passion fails, and whose mouth is closed, has not been chosen by Heaven as a messenger of its will.
Let writers stick to their ink-pots to do “theoretical” work, if their intelligence and ability will let them; for leaders they are neither born nor chosen.
A movement with great aims must, therefore, be anxiously alert to keep its connection with the common people. Every question must be considered from that standpoint and decided with that view.
Furthermore it must avoid anything which might reduce or even slightly weaken its ability to influence the masses, not for any “demagogic” reason, but because of the simple fact that without the mighty force of a people’s masses no great idea, however noble and exalted, can possibly be realized.
Harsh reality alone must determine the path to the goal; unwillingness to go by disagreeable roads in this world only too often means abandoning the goal; this one may or may not be willing to do.
When by its parliamentary direction the Pan-German movement threw the emphasis in its activity not upon the people but upon Parliament, it lost the future, and in its place won cheap successes of the moment. It chose the easier battle, and so was not worthy of the final victory.
I thought these particular questions through very thoroughly in Vienna, and in the failure to understand them I saw one of the chief causes of the collapse of the movement which at that time I supposed was destined to assume the leadership of Germanity.
The first two mistakes which wrecked the Pan-German move-
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