Then
examine yourselves and see that it is you who can release the age from
the errors of ancient times, and that, if only you will permit it,
your own eyes can be cleared of the mist that covers them; learn, too,
that it has been vouchsafed to you, as to no generation before you, to
undo what has been done and to efface the dishonorable interval from
the annals of the German nation.
Let the various conditions among which you must choose pass before
you. If you drift along in your torpor and your heedlessness, all the
evils of slavery await you--deprivations, humiliations, the scorn and
arrogance of the conqueror; you will be pushed about from pillar to
post, because you have never found your proper niche, until, through
the sacrifice of your nationality and of your language, you slip into
some subordinate place where your nation shall sink its identity. If,
on the other hand, you rouse yourselves, you will find, first of all,
an enduring and honorable existence, and will behold a flourishing
generation which promises to you and to the Germans the most glorious
and lasting memory. Through the instrumentality of this new generation
you will see in spirit the German name exalted to the most glorious
among all nations; you will discern in this nation the regenerator and
restorer of the world.
It depends upon you whether you will be the last of a dishonorable
race, even more surely despised by posterity than it deserves, and in
whose history--if there can be any history in the barbarism which will
then begin--succeeding generations will rejoice when it perishes and
will praise fate that it is just; or whether you will be the beginning
and the point of development of a new age which will be glorious
beyond all your expectations, and become those from whom posterity
will date the year of their salvation.
Pages:
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141