These addresses adjure you, Germans as a whole, whatever position
you may take in society, that each one among you who can think, think
first of all upon the theme that has been suggested, and that each one
do for it exactly what in his own place lies nearest to him.
Your forefathers unite with these addresses and adjure you. Imagine
that in my voice are mingled the voices of your ancestors from dim
antiquity, who with their bodies opposed the on-rushing dominion of
the world-power of Rome, who with their blood won the independence of
the mountains, plains, and streams which, under your governance, have
become the booty of the stranger. They call to you: Represent us;
transmit to posterity our memory honorable and blameless as it came
to you, and as you have boasted of it and of descent from us. Thus far
our resistance has been held to be noble and great and wise; we seemed
to be initiated into the secrets of the divine plan of the universe.
If our race terminates with you, our honor is turned to shame and our
wisdom to folly. For if the German stock was some time to be merged
into that of Rome, it was better that this had been into the old Rome
than into a new. We faced the former and conquered it; before the
latter you have been scattered like the dust. Now, however, since
affairs are as they are, you are not to conquer them with physical
weapons; only your spirit is to rise and stand upright over against
them.
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