large political journals should, in the interests of the moment, be well
supplied with news, but that the views of the Government should find
comprehensive expression in the local Press. It would be an advantage,
in my opinion, were all newspapers compelled to print certain
announcements of the Government, in order that the reader might not have
such a one-sided account of public affairs as the party Press supplies.
It would be a measure of public moral and intellectual hygiene, as
justifiable as compulsory regulations in the interests of public health.
Epidemics of ideas and opinions are in our old Europe more dangerous and
damaging than bodily illnesses, and it is the duty of the State to
preserve the moral healthiness of the nation.

More important, perhaps, than teaching and enlightenment by the Press is
the _propaganda of action._ Nothing controls the spirit of the multitude
so effectually as energetic, deliberate, and successful action conceived
in a broad-minded, statesmanlike sense. Such education by a powerful
policy is an absolute necessity for the German people. This nation
possesses an excess of vigour, enterprise, idealism, and spiritual
energy, which qualifies it for the highest place; but a malignant fairy
laid on its cradle the most petty theoretical dogmatism. In addition to
this, an unhappy historical development which shattered the national and
religious unity of the nation created in the system of small States and
in confessionalism a fertile soil for the natural tendency to
particularism, on which it flourished luxuriantly as soon as the nation
was no longer inspired with great and unifying thoughts. Yet the heart
of this people can always be won for great and noble aims, even though
such aims can only be attended by danger. We must not be misled in this
respect by the Press, which often represents a most one-sided,
self-interested view, and sometimes follows international or even
Anti-German lines rather than national. The soul of our nation is not