Mein Kampf
truthless fashion; he will most urgently warn His Majesty, the wearer of the Crown, and try to convince him. In doing so he will not and must not take the standpoint that His Majesty is then still free to act as he pleases after all, even when such action must plainly be disastrous; on the contrary, he will be forced in that case to protect the Monarchy against the Monarch at any risk. If the value of the institution were in the person of the Monarch of the moment, no worse institution could be conceived; for rarely indeed are monarchs the flower of wisdom and reason, or even of character, that people like to pretend. Only the professional sycophants and skulkers believe this, but upright men—and they after all are the ones most valuable to the State—can not but feel themselves repelled by attempts to assert such nonsense. For them history is history, and truth truth, even in dealing with monarchs. No, the peoples are so seldom fortunate enough to have a great man as a great monarch that they must think themselves lucky if the malice of Fate spares them absolute miscarriage.
Thus the value and meaning of the monarchical idea cannot lie in the person of the monarch himself, unless Heaven decides to put the crown upon the brow of such an inspired hero as Frederick the Great or such a wise character as William I. This may happen once in centuries, seldom oftener. Otherwise, however, the idea is above the person, and the meaning of the system resides solely in the institution as such. This means the monarch himself is one of those who must serve. He too is but a wheel in the machinery, and as such has his duty to it. He too must fall in with the higher purpose, and hence the “monarchist” is not the man who silently allows the wearer of the crown to desecrate it, but he who prevents this. If the meaning were not in the idea, but in the “sacred” person at all costs, even the deposition of an obviously insane prince could never be undertaken.
It is necessary to lay this down as a fact because lately those figures whose sorry attitude was not the least among the causes of the Monarchy’s collapse have begun to come out of hiding again. With a certain naive brazenness these people have once more begun to talk only of “their King”—whom, however, they
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