Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

only forum to which they really spoke consisted of five hundred parliamentarians, and that is
enough said.
But the worst was the following:
The Pan-German movement could count on success only if it realized from the very first day
that what was required was not a new party, but a new philosophy. Only the latter could
produce the inward power to fight this gigantic struggle to its end. And for this, only the very
best and courageous minds can serve as leaders.
If the struggle for a philosophy is not lead by heroes prepared to make sacrifices, there will,
in a short time, cease to be any warriors willing to die. The man who is fighting for his own
existence cannot have much left over for the community.
In order to maintain this requirement, every man must know that the new movement can
offer the present nothing but honor and fame in posterity. The more easily attainable posts
and offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end
these political hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest
fighter of former days no longer recognizes the old movement and the new arrivals definitely
reject him as an unwelcome intruder. When this happens, the 'mission' of such a movement
is done for.
As soon as the Pan-German movement sold its soul to parlia-ment, it attracted
'parliamentarians' instead of leaders and fighters.
Thus it sank to the level of the ordinary political parties of the day and lost the strength to
oppose a catastrophic destiny with the defiance of martyrdom. Instead of fighting, it now
learned to
make speeches and 'negotiate.' And in a short time the new parliamentarian found it a more
attractive, because less dangerous, duty to fight for the new philosophy with the 'spiritual'
weapons of parliamentary eloquence, than to risk his own life, if necessary, by throwing
himself into a struggle whose issue was uncertain and which in any case could bring him no
profit.
Once they had members in parliament, the supporters outside began to hope and wait for
miracles which, of course, did not occur and could not occur. For this reason they soon
became impatient, for even what they heard from their own deputies was by no means up to
the expectations of the voters. This was perfectly natural, since the hostile press took good
care not to give the people any faithful picture of the work of the Pan-German deputies.
The more the new representatives of the people developed a taste for the somewhat gentler
variety of 'revolutionary' struggle in parliament and the provincial diets, the less prepared
they were to return to the more dangerous work of enlightening the broad masses of the
people. The mass meeting, the only way to exert a truly effective, because personal, influence
on large sections of the people and thus possibly to win them, was thrust more and more into
the background.
Once the platform of parliament was definitely substituted for the beer table of the meeting
hall, and from this forum speeches were poured, not into the people, but on the heads of
their so called 'elect,' the Pan-German movement ceased to be a movement of the people and
in a short time dwindled into an academic discussion club to be taken more or less seriously.
Consequently, the bad impression transmitted by the press was in no way corrected by
personal agitation at meetings by the individual gentlemen, with the result that finally the
word 'PanGerman' began to have a very bad sound in the ears of the broad masses.
For let it be said to all our present-day fops and knights of the pen: the greatest revolutions
in this world have never been directed by a goose-quill!
No, to the pen it has always been reserved to provide their theoretical foundations.
But the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in
history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and that
alone.