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one of the most destructive intellectual phenomena that appearedin Europe. Socialism and even syndicalism, with all its renunciationsof commonplace morality, made a body of beliefs that could be defendedas coherent and logical systems. But when the socialist and,even more, the syndicalist, began to propose his nostrums as medicinefor the capitalist system, there appeared a diseased and corruptedform of socialism which found its neophytes in the oddestquarters. The famous Dr. Stöcker, the Kaiser's court preacher, becamethe center of one of these hybrid schools of imperial socialism,and his equally famous disciple, Friedrich Naumann, tried his handat establishing a party on these theories which, oddly enough, hecalled the National Socialist party. Walter Rathenau, a leading industrialist,played with these alluring theories too. Naumann, in aburst of spiritual elation at the universal appeal of his philosophy,said: "We hardly knew that fundamentally we all wanted the samething: the regulated labor of the second capitalistic period, whichcan be described as the transition from private capitalism to socialismprovided only that the word socialism is not taken to mean thephenomenon of purely proletarian big business, but is broadlyunderstood as folk-ordering with the object of increasing thecommon profit of all for all." 2Mixed up with all this was a concept of government equally decadent,since it represented the struggle of the baffled capitalistpragmatist to save a part of his capitalist target by amalgamatingit with the socialist torpedo. Just as the pinks attempted to unitesocialism and capitalism in a companionate marriage, men likeWalter Rathenau, Foreign Minister in the republican government,toyed with the idea of uniting autocracy and democracy. There mustbe a democratic base to society. That is, somewhere down at thebottom, spread out as the ultimate but remote power, is the people.But the superstructure of government built on this proletarian massmust be an autocratic administration, built on the principle ofhierarchy. The instrument of this aristocratic autocracy would bean elite. Rathenau had undoubtedly been fiddling with Pareto's ideaof the circulating elite. The elite would run the show—supply theofficers of the social hierarchy as it did to the military hierarchy.*Roots of National Socialism, by Rohan D'O. Butler, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1942.Ill