The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The First Memoranda of July 1917

[ 1 ] The spokesmen of the Entente cite among the reasons why they must continue the war the fact that they have been invaded by Germany. They therefore claim that they must put Germany in such a position of powerlessness that from now on it is deprived of any possibility of carrying out an invasion. All other causes of this war are nebulously submerged in this form of moral accusation against Germany.

[ 2 ] It is undoubtedly the case that, in the face of this accusation, Germany is forced to explain in a completely unvarnished manner how it was driven into the war. Instead, we have so far only doctrinaire arguments about the causes of the war, which seem like the conclusions of a professor who does not recount what he has seen, but who explains from documents what he has learned about distant events. For this is also how all the statements of the German Chancellor about the events at the outbreak of war are presented. Such statements, however, are unsuitable for making an impression. One simply rejects them by countering them with unjustified or justified other things.

[ 3 ] If, on the other hand, one were simply to recount the facts, the following would emerge: 1. Germany was not prepared to take the initiative for war in the summer of 1914.

[ 4 ] 2. Austria-Hungary had long been compelled to do something to counteract the threat of being reduced in size by the union of the southern Slavs under the leadership of the non-Austrian Serbs from the south-east. It is easy to admit that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the whole ultimatum story were only an occasion. If this occasion had not been taken, another one would have had to be taken at the next opportunity. Austria could not have remained Austria if it had not done something to secure its south-eastern provinces, or if it had not been able to resolve the Slav question by some other generous act. However, Austrian policy had bled to death on this other action since 1879. Or rather, it had bled itself to death because this other action could not be found. The Slav question could not be mastered. As far as Austria-Hungary is considered to be responsible for the origin of the war, and thus also Germany, whose participation took place because it could not leave Austria-Hungary in the lurch without having to fear that it would face the Entente after a few years without Austria's alliance, it must be recognized that the Slav question contains the reason for the origin of this war. The "other action" is therefore the international solution of the Slav question It is demanded of Austria, not of Russia. For Russia will always be able to throw its basic Slavic character into the balance of the solution. Austria-Hungary can only counter this weight with that of the liberation of the Western Slavs. This liberation can only take place from the point of view of the autonomization of all branches of national life that concern national existence and everything connected with it. One must not shy away from complete freedom in the sense of the autonomization and federalization of national life. This federalization is prefigured in German federal life, which is to a certain extent the model prefigured by history for that which must be further developed in Central Europe up to the complete federalist-liberal shaping of all those living conditions which have their impulse in man himself, i.e. which are not directly dependent, like military-political conditions, on geographical conditions, and, like economic conditions, on geographical-opportunistic conditions. The shaping of these conditions will only take place in a healthy way if the national is released from freedom, not freedom from the national. If one strives for the former instead of the latter, one places oneself on the ground of world-historical becoming. If one wants the latter, one works against this becoming and lays the foundation for new conflicts and wars.

[ 5 ] To demand of Austria's leading statesmen that they should therefore have refrained from issuing the ultimatum to Serbia would be to demand of them that they should have acted against the interests of the country they lead. Theorists of any color can make such a demand. A man who reckons with the existing facts should not seriously speak of such a thing. For if the southern Slavs had achieved what the leading Great Heirs wanted, Austria could not have been preserved in the form in which it existed under the actions of the other Austrian Slavs. One could still imagine that Austria would then have taken on a different form. But can one expect a leading Austrian statesman to wait resignedly for such an outcome? Obviously, one could only do so if one were of the opinion that it was one of the absolute requirements of an Austrian statesman to be an absolute pacifist and to fatally await the fate of the empire. Under any other condition one must understand Austria's step with regard to the ultimatum.

[ 6 ] 3. Once Austria had issued the ultimatum, the further course of events could only be halted if Russia remained passive. As soon as Russia took an aggressive step, nothing could stop what followed.

[ 7 ] 4. Just as true as all this is, it is equally true that everyone in Germany who reckoned with the facts had a vague feeling: once the implied entanglements reached a critical stage, there would be war. It would be impossible to escape this war. And responsible people were of the opinion that, if it became necessary, this war would have to be fought with all our might. Certainly no one in Germany had any serious intention of waging war on their own initiative. One can prove to the Entente that it had not the slightest reason to believe in a war of aggression on the part of Germany. It can be forced to admit that it believed that Germany would become so powerful without war that this power would be dangerous to the powers now united in the Entente. But it will be necessary to conduct such political evidence quite differently from what has hitherto been done; for this is not political evidence, but only the making of political assertions, which others may find brutal. The Entente Powers believed that if things went on like this, they could not know what would happen to Germany; therefore a war with Germany was inevitable. Germany could take the position: we do not need war; but without war we will gain what the Entente states will not let us have without war; therefore we must be ready for this war and, if it threatens, take it in such a way that we cannot be harmed by it. All this also applies to the Serbian question and Austria. Austria could no longer cope with Serbia in 1914 without war, at least that must have been the conviction of its statesmen.

[ 8 ] However, if the Entente had decided that Austria-Hungary could have dealt with Serbia alone, then the general war would not have been necessary. The real reason for the war must therefore not be sought in the Central Powers, but in the fact that the Entente did not want to leave these Central Powers as they were in their balance of power after 1914. However, if the "other action" referred to above had taken place before 1914, then the Serbs would not have developed any international opposition to Austria-Hungary, and both the ultimatum and Russia's interference would not have been possible. And if Russia had turned against Central Europe at any time purely for reasons of conquest, it could not have found England on its side. Since the submarine was purely a means of war until the war, but America absolutely could not have entered the war with the European Central Powers without this means of war, only England need be taken into account for the question of peace in the sense indicated.

[ 9 ] 5. What should now be communicated to the world is:

[ 10 ] a) that Germany, as far as the personalities who had to decide on the outbreak of war are concerned, was completely surprised by the events of July 1914, that nobody foresaw them. This applies in particular to the attitude of Russia;

[ 11 ] b) that the responsible thinker in Germany could not help but assume that if Russia attacked, France would do so too;

[ 12 ] c) that Germany had been preparing its two-front war for this eventuality for years and had no choice but to launch it in the face of precipitating events unless it received a certain guarantee from the Western powers that France would not attack. This guarantee could only come from England ;

[ 13 ] d) that if England had given this guarantee, Germany would only have gone to war against Russia;

[ 14 ] e) that German diplomacy had believed that, as a result of the relationship it had established with England in recent years, England would act in the sense of such a guarantee;

[ 15 ] f) that German diplomacy was completely mistaken with regard to England's forthcoming policy, and that under the impression of this deception the march through Belgium was set in motion, which would have been refrained from if England had given the implied guarantee. It should be announced to the world in no uncertain terms that the invasion of Belgium was only set in motion when German diplomacy was surprised by the King of England's announcement that it was mistaken in waiting for such a guarantee from England. It is incomprehensible why the German government did not do what it unambiguously could: namely, prove that it would not have undertaken the invasion of Belgium if the decisive telegram from the King of England had stated otherwise. The whole further course of the war really depended on this decisive turn of events, and nothing was done by Germany to bring this decisive fact to the general knowledge of the world. If one knew this fact correctly, one would have to say that English policy had been misjudged at the decisive points in Germany, but one could not fail to recognize that England was the decisive factor in the Belgian question. Such language on the part of Germany would, however, present a difficulty to Russia, because Russia would see from it what it owed to England for this war. This difficulty could only be overcome if it were possible to show Russia that she had less to expect from England's friendship than from Germany's. This, of course, cannot happen without Germany undertaking at the present moment, in conjunction with Austria-Hungary, to develop a generous policy by which Wilson's program, launched without knowledge of European conditions, will be defeated from the field.

[ 16 ] It may seem practical to say that it is of no value today to talk about the causes of the war. But it is the most impractical thing imaginable in relation to the actual circumstances. For in fact the Entente has been waging war for a long time with its presentation of the causes of the war. It owes the situation it has created for itself to the fact that its presentation is believed for the reason that it has not yet been answered by Germany with anything effective. While Germany could show that it contributed nothing to the outbreak of war, that it was driven into the breach of neutrality towards Belgium only by England's behavior, Germany's official statements are still made in such a way that no one living outside Germany is prevented from forming the opinion that it was in Germany's hands not to start the war. It is not enough to compile the documents as they have been. For this compilation results in something that can be doubted by anyone, whereas the unvarnished presentation of the facts should in fact prove Germany's innocence. Anyone with an understanding of such things will know that the speeches made by the responsible men in Germany are not understood at all by the psyches of the people in the enemy countries and also in the neutral countries and are therefore only taken as a cover-up of the truth. To say that it would help nothing to speak differently in the face of the hatred of the enemy would only be justified if one had even made the attempt to really speak differently. One should not bring this hatred into the field at all, because this is simply naive; for this hatred is only the drapery of war, is only the slime of those who want or have to accompany the unspeakably sad events with their speeches, or of those who seek an effective means of achieving this or that by inciting this hatred. The war is being waged by France and Russia for reasons that are well known. And it is being waged by England merely as an economic war; but as an economic war which is the result of everything that has long been in preparation in England. To speak of the encirclement by King Edward and similar trifles in the face of the realities of English policy is like seeing a boy run away from a peg which afterwards falls over, and then saying that the boy caused the peg to fall because he shook it a little, when in fact the peg had long been so damaged that it needed only a slight impulse on the part of the boy to cause it to fall. The truth is that for many years England has understood how to pursue a policy based on the real conditions of Europe in a sense that seemed favorable to her, which was like a scientific exploitation of the existing forces of nations and states. Nowhere except in England did politics have a completely objective, coherent character. Take the popular forces at work in the Balkans, take what was going on in Austria, and from there look at the political formulas that existed in England among the initiated circles. These formulas always included: This and that will happen in the Balkans; England has to do this. And events moved in the direction indicated, and English policy moved in parallel. In England one could find phrases incorporated into such formulas as this: The Russian Empire will perish in its present form so that the Russian people may live. And the conditions of this people are such that it will be possible to carry out socialist experiments there, for which there is no possibility in Western Europe. Anyone who follows England's policy can see that it has always been designed on a grand scale to turn all such and many other points of view in England's favor. And in this it benefited from the fact that in Europe it proceeded solely from such points of view and thereby made its diplomatic advantages possible. Its policy always worked in the interests of the real forces of the people and the state, and it endeavored to make these forces serve its economic advantage. It worked to its advantage. Others do that too, of course. But England also worked in the direction of what could be realized by the forces within herself, while others did not engage in the observation of such forces, indeed would only have smiled nobly if they had been told of such forces. England's whole state structure is geared to such truly practical work. Others will only be able to develop an art of statecraft equal to that of England when what has been indicated will no longer be an English secret, but when it will be common property. Just think how infinitely naïve it was to believe that the Baghdad Railway problem could be tackled from Germany, because from there this problem was approached as if it were only necessary to tackle something like the construction of a road that had been agreed upon with one's neighbors. Or, to speak of something even more far-reaching, how did Austria think of organizing its relationship with the Balkans without bringing forces into play which, conceived from the popular and national forces of the Balkans, could paralyse England's trump cards? England not only did this and that at a given point in time, but also directed international forces in such a way that they ran in its direction at the right moment. In order to do this, one must firstly know these forces and secondly develop within oneself what is in the interests of these forces. Austria-Hungary should therefore have acted at the right time to bring the Southern Slav forces in the Austrian direction; Germany should have brought the Baghdad Railway interests in the direction of the economic-opportunistic forces, instead of the former turning into the Russian and thus into the Russian-English line, the latter into the English line.

[ 17 ] The war must lead Central Europe to become aware of what exists in the life of nations, states and economies. This alone can force England not to continue to behave towards the other states by way of superior diplomacy, but to negotiate with them as equals about what is to be negotiated between European human communities. Without the fulfillment of this condition, all imitation of English parliamentarianism in Central Europe is nothing more than a means of throwing sand in one's own eyes. In England a few people will always find ways and means of having their real policy carried out by their parliament, whereas German and Austrian action will not become a clever one merely because it is decided by an assembly of about 500 deputies instead of a few statesmen. One can hardly imagine anything more unfortunate than the superstition that it will work a magic spell if one adds to the rest of what one has put up with from England the fact that one allows the democratic template to be imposed by it. This is not to say that Central Europe should not experience a further development in the sense of an internal political organization, but such a development must not be an imitation of Western European so-called democratism, but it must bring precisely that which this democratism would prevent in Central Europe because of its special circumstances. For this so-called democratism is only suited to making the people of Central Europe a part of Anglo-American world domination, and if one were also to become involved in the so-called intergovernmental organization of the present internationalists, then one would have the good prospect of always being outvoted as a Central European within this intergovernmental organization.

[ 18 ] What is important is to show from Central European life the impulses which really lie here, and which the Western opponents, when they are pointed out, will see that they will have to bleed to death from them if the war continues. Against pretensions to power, the opponents can and will use their power as long as they remain pretensions. They will take up arms against real forces of power. Wilson's so effective manifestations must be countered by what can really be done in Central Europe to liberate the lives of the peoples, while his words can give them nothing but Anglo-American world domination. Agreement with Russia need not be seeked by a Central European program of reality; for this is self-evident. Such a Central European program must not contain anything that is merely an internal matter of state, but only that which has something to do with external relations. But of course it must be seen properly in this direction; for whether a person can think well is certainly a matter of his internal organization, but whether he acts outwardly in this or that direction through this good thinking is not an internal matter.

[ 19 ] Therefore, only a Central European program can beat the Wilsonian, which is real, that is, which does not emphasize this or that desirable thing, but which is simply a paraphrase of what Central Europe can do, because it has the forces within itself to do so.

[ 20 ] This includes:

[ 21 ] 1. that one should realize that the subject of a democratic representation of the people can only be purely political, military and police matters. These are only possible on the basis of the historically formed background. If they are represented in a people's representation and administered by a civil service responsible to this people's representation, they necessarily develop conservatively. An external proof of this is that since the outbreak of war even the Social Democracy has become conservative in these matters. And it will become even more so the more it is forced to think sensibly and objectively by the fact that only political, military and police matters can really be the subject of the people's representations. Within such an institution, German individualism can also unfold with its federal system, which is not an accidental thing, but is inherent in the German national character.

[ 22 ] 2. all economic affairs shall be organized in a special economic parliament. When this parliament is relieved of all political and military matters, it will conduct its affairs purely in a manner appropriate to them, namely opportunistically. The administrative officials of these economic affairs, within whose area also lies the entire customs legislation, are directly responsible only to the economic parliament.

[ 23 ] 3. All legal, educational and intellectual matters shall be left to the freedom of the individual. In this field the state has only the police power, not the initiative. What is meant here is only apparently radical. In reality, only those who do not want to face the facts impartially can be offended by what is meant here. The state leaves it up to the corporations of the subject, the profession and the people to establish their courts, their schools, their churches and so on, and it leaves it up to the individual to choose his school, his church, his judge. Not from case to case, of course, but for a certain period of time. In the beginning, this will probably have to be limited by territorial borders, but it carries the possibility of peacefully reconciling national differences, including other differences. It even carries the possibility of creating something real in place of the shadowy arbitration of states. National or other agitators are thus completely deprived of their powers. No Italian in Trieste would find supporters in this city if everyone could develop his national forces in it, even though, for obvious opportunistic reasons, his economic interests are organized in Vienna, and even though his gendarme is paid from Vienna.

[ 24 ] The political entities of Europe could thus develop on the basis of a healthy conservatism, which can never be concerned with the dismemberment of Austria, but at most with its expansion.

[ 25 ] The economic entities would develop in an opportunistically healthy manner; for no one can want Trieste in an economic entity in which it must perish economically, if the economic entity does not prevent him from doing what he wants ecclesiastically, nationally and so on.

[ 26 ] Cultural affairs will be freed from the pressure exerted on them by economic and political matters, and they will cease to exert any pressure on them. All these cultural affairs will be kept in constant healthy motion. A kind of senate, elected from the three bodies responsible for the organization of politico-military, economic and legal-educational affairs, takes care of the common affairs, including, for example, the common finances.

[ 27 ] No one who thinks in terms of the actual conditions in Central Europe will doubt the feasibility of what is stated in this description. For nothing at all is demanded here that is to be carried out, but only what wants to be carried out is shown, and what succeeds at the same moment that it is given free rein.

[ 28 ] If one recognizes this, then it becomes clear above all why we have this war and why, under the false flag of the liberation of nations, it is a war for the suppression of the German people, in the broader sense for the suppression of all independent national life in Central Europe. If one strips the Wilsonian program, which is the latest paraphrase of the Entente's cover programs, one comes to the conclusion that its implementation would mean nothing other than the destruction of this Central European freedom. This is not hindered by the fact that Wilson speaks of the freedom of nations; for the world is not judged by words, but by facts which follow from the realization of these words. Central Europe needs real freedom, but Wilson is not talking about real freedom at all. The entire Western world has no concept at all of the real freedom that Central Europe needs. They talk about the freedom of nations and do not mean the real freedom of the people, but a fictitious collective freedom of human associations, as they have developed in the Western European states and in America. According to the special conditions of Central Europe, this collective freedom cannot result from international conditions, so it can never be the subject of an international agreement such as can form the basis of a peace treaty. In Central Europe the collective freedom of the peoples must result from general human freedom, and it will result if a clear path is created for it by the separation of all circles of life that do not belong to purely political, military and economic life. It is quite natural that those who always reckon only with their ideas, not with reality, should raise such objections to such a detachment as can be found in a recently published book, namely in Krieck's "Die deutsche Staatsidee" on page 167 f.: "Occasionally, among others by E. von Hartmann, the demand for an economic parliament alongside the representation of the people was raised. The idea lies entirely in the direction of economic and social development. But apart from the fact that a new large wheel would increase the already abundant awkwardness and friction of the machine, it would be impossible to delimit the responsibilities of two parliaments against each other." With this idea it should be observed that it must be admitted here that it arises from the real conditions of development, must therefore be carried out and must not be rejected against development because its realization is difficult to find. For if one stops short of such difficulties in reality, one creates entanglements which later discharge themselves violently, and ultimately this war, in the peculiarity in which it is lived out, is the discharge of difficulties which one has neglected to clear away by the right, different path while there was still time to do so.

[ 29 ] The Wilsonian program assumes to make impossible in the world what is the legitimate task and the condition of life of the Central European states. It must be countered with what will happen in Central Europe if this event is not disrupted by the violent destruction of Central European life. He must be shown what only Central Europe can do on the basis of what has happened here historically, if it does not join forces with the Entente, which can have no interest at all in leading Central Europe towards its natural development.

[ 30 ] As things stand today, Germany and Austria only have the choice between the following three things:

[ 31 ] 1. to wait under all circumstances for a victory of their weapons, and to hope from it the possibility of being able to carry out their Central European task.

[ 32 ] 2. to enter into peace with the Entente on the basis of its present program and thus to approach its certain destruction.

[ 33 ] 3. to say what they will regard as the result of peace in terms of real conditions, and thus to present the world with the opportunity, after clear insight into the conditions and the will of Central Europe, to let the peoples choose between a real program that brings real freedom to the European people and thus quite naturally the freedom of the peoples, or the sham programs of the West and America, which speak of freedom but in reality bring the impossibility of life for all of Europe. For the time being, we in Central Europe give the impression that we are afraid to tell the West what we must want, while the West simply showers us with the manifestations of its will. In this way the West creates the impression that it alone wants something for the salvation of mankind, and that we are only anxious to disturb these laudable endeavors by all sorts of things like militarism, while in truth it is the creator of our militarism, because it has long set itself up to turn us into shadow people and wants to do so even better. Certainly, such and similar things have often been said, but the important thing is not that they are said by this or that person, but that they really become the leitmotif of Central European action, and that the world learns to recognize that it has no other action to expect from Central Europe than one that must take up the sword when the others force this sword into its hands. What the Western peoples now call German militarism, they have forged over centuries of development, and it can only be up to them, not to Germany, to deprive it of its meaning for Central Europe. But it is up to Central Europe to make its will for freedom clear, a will that cannot be built on programs in the Wilsonian manner, but on the reality of human existence.

[ 34 ] There is therefore only one peace program for Central Europe, and that is: to let the world know that peace is immediately possible if the Entente replaces its present, untrue peace program with one that is true, because in its realization it will not bring about the downfall but the possibility of life for Central Europe. All other questions that can become the subject of peace efforts will be resolved if they are tackled on the basis of these premises. Peace is impossible on the basis now offered to us by the Entente and accepted by Wilson. If no other is substituted, the German people could only be brought to accept this program by force, and the further course of European history would prove the correctness of what has been said here, for if Wilson's program is realized, the European peoples will perish. In Central Europe we must face without illusion what those personalities have believed for many years, which they regard from their point of view as the law of world development: that the future of world development belongs to the Anglo-American race, and that it must take over the inheritance of the Latin-Roman race and the education of Russianness. When this world-political formula is invoked by an Englishman or American who thinks himself initiated, it is always remarked that the German element has no say in the ordering of the world because of its insignificance in world-political matters, that the Romanic element need not be taken into consideration because it is dying out anyway, and that the Russian element has the one who makes himself its far-historical educator. One might think little of such a creed if it lived in the minds of a few people who were susceptible to political fantasies or Utopias, but English policy uses innumerable ways to make this program the practical content of its real world policy, and from England's point of view the present coalition in which she finds herself could not be more favorable than it is when it comes to the realization of this program. But there is nothing that Central Europe can oppose to this but a truly human liberating program, which can become a reality at any moment if human will is committed to its realization. One can perhaps think that peace will be a long time in coming, even if the program meant here is presented to the European peoples, since it cannot be carried out during the war and, moreover, would be presented as such by the Entente peoples, as if it had been presented by the leaders of Central Europe only to deceive the peoples, while after the war what the Entente leaders present as the terrible thing they had to eliminate from the world for moral reasons in a "struggle for freedom and justice of the peoples" would simply happen again. But anyone who judges the world correctly according to the facts, not according to his favorite opinions, can know that everything that corresponds to reality has a completely different persuasive value than that which comes from mere arbitrariness. And we can wait and see what will become apparent to those who will realize that with the Central European programme the peoples of the Entente will only lose the possibility of destroying Central Europe, but nothing will flow from it that would be incompatible with any real life impulse of the Entente peoples. As long as we remain in the realm of masked aspirations, understanding will be impossible; as soon as the realities behind the masks are revealed, not only militarily but also politically, the present events will take on a completely different form. The world has come to know the weapons of Central Europe for the salvation of this Central Europe; the political will, as far as Central Europe is concerned, is a closed book to the world. But every day the world is presented with a horrifying picture of what a terrible thing this Central Europe actually is, worthy of destruction. And it looks to the world as if Central Europe only has to remain silent about this horror, which of course must appear to the world like a yes to it.

[ 35 ] It is quite natural that innumerable misgivings arise in everyone's mind when he wants to think about how what is indicated here should be carried out in detail, but such misgivings would only come into consideration if what is presented were conceived as a program which an individual or a society should go about realizing. But that is not how it is conceived; indeed, it would refute itself if it were conceived that way. It is intended as an expression of what the peoples of Central Europe will do when governments set themselves the task of recognizing and releasing the forces of the people. What will happen in detail will always become apparent when such things are put into practice. For they are not prescriptions about what has to happen, but predictions of what will happen if things are allowed to take the course demanded by their own reality. And this own reality prescribes, with regard to all religious and spiritual-cultural matters, to which the national also belongs, administration by corporations, to which the individual person professes of his own free will, and which are administered in their parliaments as corporations, so that this parliament has to do only with the corporation in question, but never with the relationship of this corporation to the individual person. And never may a corporation deal with a person belonging to another corporation from the same point of view. Such corporations are admitted to the circle of parliament when they unite a certain number of persons. Until then, they remain a private matter in which no authority or representative body has the right to interfere. For those for whom it is a sour apple that from such points of view all intellectual cultural matters must in future be deprived of privileges, they will have to bite into this sour apple for the salvation of the people's existence. As people become more and more accustomed to this privilege, it will be difficult to realize in many circles that we must return to the good old, ancient principle of free corporatization by way of privileging the intellectual professions in particular. And that the corporation should make a person capable in his profession, but that the exercise of this profession should not be privileged, but left to free competition and free human choice. This will be difficult to understand for those who like to say that people are not ready for this or that. In reality, this objection will not come into consideration anyway, because with the exception of the necessarily free professions, the choice of the petitioners will be decided by the corporation.

[ 36 ] Neither can difficulties arise with regard to the political and the economic, which could not be remedied in reality by realizing what is intended. How, for example, pedagogical institutions must come about, which in their guidelines touch on the two representations that do not include the actual pedagogy itself, is a matter for the higher senate.