Causes of the Collapse
most despicably left in the lurch at the critical moment only a few years ago—and to decry as a bad German anyone who refuses to join in their lying outpourings. And yet as a matter of fact these are the very same chicken-hearts that scattered and fled in 1918 before any red arm-band, let their King look out for himself, hastily exchanged the pike for a walking stick, put on neutral neckties, and vanished without a trace as peaceable “civilians.” In an instant they were gone, these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary hurricane had begun to die down enough again (thanks to the activity of others) so that one could bellow his “Hail to the King, all Hail” to the breezes did these “servants and counsellors” of the Crown begin to make a cautious appearance once more. Now they are all here again, gazing back longingly at the fleshpots of Egypt; they can scarcely contain themselves for energy and devotion to their King—until some day the first red arm-band appears again, and the whole ghostly crew of profiters from the old Monarchy will once more take to its heels like mice before the cat!
If the monarchs were not themselves responsible for these things, we could only pity them heartily for their defenders at the present day. But they may be quite sure that thrones can be lost with such knights as these, but no crowns won.
Such servility was a weakness of our whole system of education, whose results in this particular were especially disastrous. For thanks to it these sorry figures could maintain themselves at all the courts, and gradually undermine the foundation of the Monarchy. When at last the structure began to rock, they were gone with the wind. Naturally—crawlers and lickspittles are not going to be killed for their master. That monarchs never know this, and, almost as a matter of principle, never learn it, has always been their ruin.
One of the worst signs of decadence was the growing cowardice in the face of responsibility as well as the resulting supineness in all things.
It is true that in our case the source of this epidemic is quite
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