The Malady of the Century

by Max Simon Nordau

"Unwillingly, as you may well suppose. But I see nothing else for you."

"And how should I word such a petition? I could neither acknowledge a transgression in the past, nor promise amendment in the future."

"No, it would be of no use going into details. It would have to be a bald petition for pardon." And seeing Wilhelm recoil involuntarily, he added: "It does not do to be too proud in such a case. In the preposterously unequal struggle between the individual and the organized power of the State, it is no disgrace to declare yourself beaten and ask for quarter."

"A petition without any gush or protestations of loyalty, in which I would simply say: 'Please allow me to come back to Berlin, because I prefer it to any other place of residence,' would certainly be ineffectual, and I should only have humiliated myself for nothing."

"We must get somebody to take up your cause. I shall do all in my power to make the Oberburgermeister put in a good word for you."

"Would you yourself do what you are advising me to do?"

Schrotter was silent for a moment.

"I am not in the same case. If Berlin were as much a necessity to me as it is to you I would do it—most certainly."

Wilhelm looked as if he were swallowing a bitter draught. But Schrotter's strong hand lay tenderly on the dark head.

"Yes, friend Eynhardt," he said; "you will send in the petition, and it will, I hope, have the desired result. Do it for my sake. Yes, look at me; I have need of you. I miss you. I am getting to be an old man. At sixty years of age one does not make new friendships. All the more carefully does one keep those one has. Berlin has seemed to me a desert—almost unbearable, without you. You do not know how impossible things have become there. They are misusing, without one pang of conscience, the most touching and lovable characteristic of our people—its sense of gratitude, which it exaggerates to the point of weakness. They are doing all they can to bind Germany hand and foot, to gag her and drag her back into absolutism before her sentimentality will allow her to put herself on the defensive. They are pandering to the lowest instincts of the people, and enervating their manhood by every artifice in their power. Thus they have successfully achieved the introduction into Germany of that most degraded form of self-worship—Chauvinism. They poison her morality by wisely organizing that every conscience, every conviction, should have its price. They debase her ideals by decreeing that henceforth the officer is to be the national patron saint to whom the people are to offer up their devotion and worship. The press, literature, art, lecturing-room—all preach the same gospel, that the highest product of humanity is the officer, and that "soldierly discipline and smartness"—in other words, slavish submission, self-conceit, arrogance, and the upholding of mere brute force—are the noblest qualities of a man and a patriot. The army is taught to forget that it is the armed population of the country, and is trained to be a band of body servants. And even when the soldiers return to private life, the idea of servitude is carefully kept up, and he finds again in the military 'Verein' the beloved barrack life, with all its servile submissiveness and abnegation of free will. Whichever way I look, I am filled with horror. Everything is ground down, everything laid waste, the governing spirit has not left one stone standing upon another. Even our youth, with whom lies our hope for the future, is rotten in part. In many student circles I see a want of principle, a low cringing to success, a cowardly worship of animal strength, that is without its parallel in our history. Instinctively, this corrupt youth sides, in every question, with the strong against the weak, with the pursuer against the pursued, and that at the age when my generation exerted itself passionately, without a question as to right or wrong, for everyone oppressed against every oppressor. Of course we were simpletons, we of '48, and the golden youth of to-day scoffs superciliously at our naive ideals. In the present order of things everything has become a curse—even the parliamentary system. For that gives the people no means of making its will known, and has simply become a vehicle for general corruption at the elections. Our officials, on whose independence of spirit we used to pride ourselves so much, have sunk into mere electioneering agents, and unless they pursue, oppress, and grind the opponents of the government, have no chance of promotion. It is a Police State such as we have never known, not even before '48. For at least every man got his rights in those days, scanty as those rights may have been, and the official was not the enemy of the citizen, but his somewhat despotic guardian and protector. Shall I say all? The most consoling class to me in Germany to-day are the Social Democrats. They have independence of spirit, self-denial, character, and idealism. Their ideals are not my ideals—far from it—but what does that matter? It is relief enough to find people who have any ideals at all, and who are ready to suffer and die for them. I fear that not till this generation has passed away will the German people become once more the upright, true-hearted, incorruptible idealists they were, who, at every turning-point of their history, were ready to bleed to death for freedom of opinion, and other purely spiritual advantages. I take a very black view of things perhaps. If only the harm done is not permanent, if only Germany retains sufficient virile strength to throw off the poison instilled into her veins and recover her former health!"