I expect this to be lost to the mods as well, but if they or one person reads it, it's one more who can see the real picture. These are the translated words of Nahum Goldmann, founder of the World Jewish Congress in his 1915 book Der Geist Militarismus (p. 37-40)--

Yes, world history has a meaning; it may seem cool to say so, especially in these months; in those months when thousands have lost their belief in the meaning of history in the face of this world war. But that is precisely why it has to be announced with greater strength: world history has a meaning. And this sense made this war necessary. The antagonism between the militaristic and the anti-militaristic spirit had to be finally decided, and since our current cultural system is built up in such a way that all great struggles get their ultimate decision through wars, this war was necessary.

But the same sense of history that made war necessary demands the ultimate victory of militarism with the same necessity. In a higher sense, all wars are decided before they are declared. Anyone who could see the meaning of history would be able to predict the ultimate result of all great historical struggles; and this is where the profound senselessness of war rests, that it is always led to a result that is already fixed from the start. This time this result means: victory of militarism. Because only the victory of the militaristic tasks that world history has given her to solve. The last chapter tries to hint at this in a nutshell.

The meaning and historical mission of our time can be summed up in one: its task is to rearrange the culture, to replace the existing social system with a new one. One has the same thing in mind when, as usual, we describe our time as one of transition. Transitional periods are those that stand between a previously existing social order and a newly established one and have the task of sweeping the old with the new.

All reorganization and reorganization now consists of two things: the destruction of the old order and the reconstruction of the new one. First of all, all boundary piles, order barriers and labels of the previous system have to be removed and all elements of the system that are to be reorganized, as such, must be laid apart, equivalent to one another. Only then can the second, the reorganization of these elements, begin.

So the task of our time is to destroy: all social stratifications and social formations created by the old system must be destroyed, the individual people must be torn from their ancestral milieus; no tradition can be considered sacred anymore; age is only a sign of illness; the slogan is: what was, must go. The forces that carry out this negative task of our time are: capitalism in the economic-social area, democracy in the political-intellectual area. We all know how much they have already done; We also know that her work is not yet fully considered. Capitalism is still fighting against the forms of the old, traditional economy, and democracy is still fighting a hot fight against all forces of reaction. This will complete the negative task of the time completely: once all members of our cultural heritage have been uniformed as soldiers of our cultural system, this one task is solved.

Only then does the other, bigger and more difficult task arise: the building of the new order. The limbs, which have now been torn out of their old roots and stratifications and are lying around disorderly, anarchically, have to be broken down into new forms and categories; If everyone was initially declared to be equal when solving the first task, people must now be divided and differentiated again: a new pyramidal, hierarchical system must be established. Capitalism also attempted to solve this problem; we know with what misfortune. He made the fundamental division into rulers and rulers from wrong points of view: those of wealth, capitalist power. This second task, too, can solve the militaristic spirit by virtue of its other great principle of subordination. He will bring the true aristocratic basic rule to rule: Whoever can rule should rule. Deciding not the art and name, not the berms and power, but the talent to rule. In an army that was organized entirely according to the demands of militarism, there was only one aspect for the promotions: the ability to command and lead. The same sign point will prevail in the society as the militaristic spirit will rebuild: whoever is able to rule will rule.

But if both of these have been carried out, the old system has been destroyed and the new order has been established, then a third must be accomplished without which this entire work would be incomplete, which would make the new order superior to the old as the higher: it will be necessary to shape the new society into a unified, closed organization. Why was it ever necessary to destroy the old social system and sweeten it with a new one? Because it had lost its organic unity over time, because its limbs and organs began to disintegrate and were not completed until it would become an organism. We all know today that this task is the greatest and most significant; we only call them different: we call them the solution to the social question. The social question - what is it different from the state of inner social anarchy? Since the few bite too much and more, but most too little and less, that production and consumption do not balance each other harmoniously, that agriculture and industry do not complement each other, and like all the other major sub-problems of the overall complication of the social question may mean, all of these are only expressions of inner anarchy and disorganization. What power can this anarchy overcome? Only one: the idea of ​​organization, the organism; the very idea that we recognized as the highest, highest idea of ​​the militaristic spirit. It follows from this that only the militaristic spirit can accomplish this least and greatest task of our time, the solution of the social question, or what is the same, the organization of the new social system. That he is called to do this alone is already common knowledge or at least a general idea. All the strokes and directions that want to solve the social question are moving in this one direction. Cooperative movement, socialism, communism, they all boil down to this one thing: only the idea of ​​the organism can bring the solution of the social question; but this means that only the spirit of militarism will bring it to us.