Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

are the very same poltroons who in 1919 scattered and ran from every red armband,
abandoned their King, in a twinkling exchanged the halberd for the walking stick, put on
noncommittal neckties, and vanished without trace as peaceful ' citizens.' At one stroke they
were gone, these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary storm, thanks to the
activity of others, had subsided enough so that a man could again roar his 'Hail, hail to the
King' into the breezes, these 'servants and counselors' of the crown began again cautiously to
emerge. And now they are all here again, looking back longingly to the fieshpots of Egypt;
they can hardly restrain themselves in their loyalty to the King and their urge to do great
things, until the day when again the first red arm-band will appear, and the whole gang of
ghosts profiting from the old monarchy will again vanish like mice at the sight of a cat!
If the monarchs were not themselves to blame for these things, they could be most heartily
pitied because of their present defenders. In any case, they might as well know that with
such knights a crown can be lost, but no crowns gained.
This servility, however, was a flaw in our whole education, for which we suffered most terribly
in this connection. For, as its consequence, these wretched creatures were able to maintain
themselves at all the courts and gradually undermine the foundations of the monarchy. And
when the structure finally began to totter, they evaporated. Naturally: cringers and
lickspittles do not let themselves be knocked dead for their master. That monarchs never
know this and fail to learn it almost on principle has from time immemorial been their
undoing.
One of the worst symptoms of decay was Mate increasing cowardice in the face of
responsibility, as well as the resultant halfheartedness in all things.
To be sure, the starting point of this plague in our country lies in large part in the
parliamentary institution in which irresponsibility of the purest breed is cultivated.
Unfortunately, this plague slowly spread to all other domains of life, most strongly to state
life. Everywhere responsibility was evaded and inadequate half-measures were preferred as a
result; for in the use of such measures personal responsibility seems reduced to the smallest
dimensions.
Just examine the attitude of the various governments toward a number of truly injurious
manifestations of our public life, and you will easily recognize the terrible significance of this
general half-heartedness and cowardice in the face of responsibility.
I shall take only a few cases from the mass of existing examples:
Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a 'great power' in the state. As a
matter of fact, its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press
really continues education in adulthood.
Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:
First, into those who believe everything they read;
second, into those who have ceased to believe anything;
third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people
and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in
terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who
have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity
and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white.
To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer
mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the
modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with all
these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous.