I. Monarchy

“The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.” — Rivarol.

IT IS probable that “democracy” is the most original form of “organized” society.⁸¹ One could well imagine that if seven out of ten cavemen wanted to do a thing collectively in one way and the three others decided differently, the majority of these cavemen (assuming that they are of about equal bodily strength) could force the rest to accept their decision. The rule of majorities, in combination with the employment of brutal force, is likely to be the most primitive form of government in the development of mankind.⁸²

As soon as society valued expediency, justice, and reason more than the momentary whims of mere majorities, a crystallization of leadership probably came about. This later form was probably a compromise between majority rule and the monarchical idea. The lack of an efficient executive still made the consent of the large bulk of the people a necessity and a council often acted as an intermediary; frequently the council was the primary organ and the “leader” (chieftain, ruler) only emerged as a primus inter pares of the oligarchic council. The only practical and workable form of “democracy” today has most of these features. The deputies form a vague sort of aristocracy or oligarchy, and the presidents and prime ministers are often nothing else but kinglets with a time limit. There has been practically no major attempt to return to direct democracy in large states; only a few cranks would like to restore this archaic order with the help of modern, technical devices. They dream of an endless chain of plebiscites; the questions would be put to the citizens by radio and the answer would be given by pushing a white button for “ayes” and a black one for “no” a couple of hours after the questioning. Adding machines in the capital would then give a clear picture of the general will at a certain moment. Some people consider Dr. Gallup’s Institute for Public Opinion to be such a forerunner of tomorrow’s Integral Direct Democracy, yet there is little likelihood that there will ever come such a reductio ad absurdum of democracy. The political development goes clearly in the opposite direction.

We must not forget that political ochlocracy has no scientific basis and that its defenders in the past one hundred years came forward with far more sentimental reasons than the most enthusiastic adherents of monarchy.⁸³ Berdyaev in his Christianity and Class-War emphasizes this point very strongly. There are many superstitions which we find expressed or implied in connection with the rhapsodies of unthinking exponents of democratism, while some of these tenets are not seldom more seriously espoused by saner minds. For argument’s sake we might enumerate just a few of these superstitious concepts:

1. All human beings are equal.

2. One human being can err, the majority of a group never.

3. Everybody is able to judge every political question.

4. The representatives in the Parliament are necessarily the best heads.

5. All intelligent and honest men are popular.

6. The functional value of the ignorant and the learned are the same.

7. Both sexes have the same abilities and functions.

8. Masses have an unerring instinct.

9. Majorities have an inate sense of justice.

10. No human being is indispensable.

11. Majorities are the better part of the whole.

12. Truth can stand by itself. The lie never prevails.

13. More progress means more happiness.

14. A majority suppressing a minority is a lesser evil than a minority dominating a majority.*

15. More ochlocracy means more liberty.

16. The masses value liberty more than everything else.

17. Liberty, progress, “democracy,” peace, and social justice are thoroughly interconnected.

One could go on with this list endlessly. Today some of these points are viewed with skeptical despair by many “democrats” but they nevertheless cling to their faith with bitter tenacity, although they have given up its basic tenets — a situation remindful of Roman-Greek paganism in the third century. The façade still stands but the interiors are moth eaten and decayed and the very foundations are crumbling underneath. It is only the lack of hurricanes, thunderstorms, and earthquakes which still prevents the final disaster.

It is also remarkable that ochlocracy never had brilliant advocates like monarchy, aristocracy, or socialism. There is nobody in the “democratic” camp who can be compared for brilliancy — I do not say orthodoxy in each case — to de Tocqueville, Marx, Maurras, de Reynold, Trotzky, Spengler, Proudhon, Plato, Bainville, Aristotle, Ortega, and St. Thomas. Democracy never had, and probably never will have, an appeal for the man of original genius.*

In Europe monarchy usually sprang from some sort of “democracy” through open consent or through tyranny which became consolidated and gained a certain amount of popularity. The first monarchs, the founders of the European dynasties, were all outstanding people who excelled either through their wisdom, virtue, bravery, sanctity, or at least through their shrewdness, diplomacy, brutality, or daredevil courage. None of them was insignificant. The families of these rulers constantly intermarried; even back in the early Middle Ages the tendency was clearly one of intermarriage between the royal and imperial houses with the result that we find at the end of this epoch in the Christian Occident one large family of rulers with many different branches, united by the common faith as well as by the ties of common ancestors, of common tombs, of common blood.

There is little wonder that the constant crossbreeding of the progeny of “excellent” people created a superior strain. The steady intermarriage of children begotten and born by parents engaged in administration, rule, jurisdiction, and military affairs created a class of men and women with a special capacity for this task. The study of heredity and practical biology teaches us that there is definitely such a thing as inheritance of certain intellectual capacities and trends; we have only to observe the small gypsy boys with their violins, or six- and seven-year-old children of watchmakers in the Swiss Jura whose ancestors have made clocks and watches for generations; their dexterity in handling watches would astound every outsider.

The crossbreeding of the royal and imperial families of Europe has also resulted in a large amount of inbreeding, which in itself is not necessarily an evil. The characteristics of the common near ancestor will be overemphasized in the progeny and cousins who have a grandfather with a congenital defect of his eyesight will have to fear an even greater ocular ailment in their children. Yet positive characteristics are increased in a similar way. If we make a survey of the royal breed of the past hundred years (when parliaments already overshadowed monarchical power) we still find an astounding number of highly gifted men and women.⁸⁴ Few of them were specialized in one direction or the other, but most of them had a great many talents and abilities. The Prince Consort, Albert of Coburg-Gotha, was far above the average, just as his wife, Queen Victoria, his son, Edward VII, and his daughter, “Empress Frederick.” William II,* in spite of certain political mistakes, was a good painter, a first-rate archaeologist, a fair military expert, a fine amateur gardener, a master of many languages, and a man of very great general knowledge. High above the average, too, was the murdered Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the best shot of Europe, a man of great character and piety, an architect, military expert, reorganizer of the navy, one of the greatest and most educated art collectors, an original Austrian and foreseeing statesman.** King Ferdinand of Bulgaria had abilities which ranked from engine driving to political plotting and ornithology.*** Among the great alpinists we find the late King Albert of the Belgians as well as his son. Most Scandinavian kings, the queen of the Netherlands, the late king of Saxony, the last emperor of Brazil were and are people above the average. Alexander I and Alexander II of Russia belong in the same category. Even a madman like Louis II of Bavaria or a Louis I with his easygoing morals were culturally a great asset. The “tyranny” of a George III, measured by modern standards, smacks of charity.

The Comte de Paris, pretender to the French throne, would compare very favorably with most existing presidents.* Francis Joseph of Austria was a ruler of remarkable integrity and had a sense of duty, although lacking imagination. His grandnephew, Charles I, last emperor of Austria, was a saintly man. All these rulers were, naturally, on account of the curtailing influence of their constitutions, less “spectacular” than those of the past — Philip II, Charles V, Charlemagne, Mathias Corvinus, Peter the Great, Maria Theresa, St. Louis, Frederick II, or Louis XIV.⁸⁵

The superficial student of history stands under the impression that Europe before the nineteenth century was torn asunder by endless wars and disagreements, yet there was far more inner unity in spite of the lack of airliners and superhighways. The interrelationship between the European monarchs also had the practical effect that totalitarian wars were not waged and that between A.D. 900 and 1866 no European monarchy was wiped off the map with the exception of Poland and the temporary grabs of the French Revolution. There is also little doubt that the absence of the modern means of war contributed to the relative mildness of medieval warfare.** Yet the fact that all rulers were related was of greater importance and it acted as a break during peace negotiations; playing bridge against one’s cousin or brother-in-law, one is glad to gain small sums but never intends to ruin the opponent. Wars during the Middle Ages were collective duels and to a certain extent even a privilege of the nobility and their kinsmen. The introduction of mercenaries— soldiers receiving a solde —lowered the moral level of warfare. The towns, defending themselves against a decadent, robbing knighthood, hired professional soldiers. These, thanks to the invention of gunpowder, were able to destroy the castles of the marauding or rebelling nobility. Thus went down what once had been, in the days of its true service, the finest symbol of European liberty.⁸⁶

The idea of the mercenary springs from the same mentality as the one expressed by the two Chinese watching a couple of Europeans playing tennis under the hot sun of Shanghai. As they seemed rather exhausted, one of the sons of the Celestial Empire remarked to the other: “It’s odd. This club has only well-to-do members. They easily could afford coolies to play in their stead.” Yet the institution of mercenary armies still did not mark the nadir of war methods in Europe. It was at least not a return to the laws of the jungle, of primitive tribes, where every male capable of bearing arms has to join in. The officers had still the background of warriors;⁸⁷ they were frequently second or third sons of noble families out for adventures, but nevertheless educated in the habits of chivalry. The average mercenary, on the other hand, was usually a ne’er-do-well, maybe the son of the henchman; he belonged to the scum of the cities or the village and he was often nothing else than a courageous jailbird.

These mercenary armies had many advantages over the modern system. On the whole they fought without hatred. It was true that the discipline was inadequate, measured by our standards, but no brutality could keep the liberty-loving men of the sixteenth century in bounds. The mercenary also liked fighting for its own sake; he had volunteered for this job and he needed no propaganda to instill him with hatred for his enemy. The loss of his life on the battlefield was certainly not an irreparable one; from a social point of view it meant just one dissolute element less in the state, while his final suffering was often an expiation for a wild, cruel, and disorderly life. Prison camps were rare. Captured officers often gave their word of honor not to fight in the present war any more and were allowed to retire to their estates, while soldiers, made prisoners of war, often enlisted in the “enemy” armies. Ministries of propaganda and information who might stir up the feelings of the population did not exist, nor was any need felt for such an institution. The decent burgher stayed at home, far from the scene of war, and rarely did he see anything of the fighting or the fighting forces except when an army happened to pass his town. The rape of Magdeburg, or even the Sacco di Roma, was hardly as thorough as the destruction of Ypres in 1914–1918 or of Warsaw and Rotterdam in the present war. Neither was it easy to take a well-fortified town; the burghers had a good chance to defend themselves behind the walls until relief came; the menace of a passing army was far greater to the open village. A heavier war taxation only came into use when the patriarchal monarchy switched over to more absolutistic forms after Protestant political theories had penetrated all European countries. Before the advent of absolutism, monarchs were often in dire financial straits which could only be alleviated by borrowing and not by taxation. Taxes were more or less voluntary contributions by cities and estates.*

Traditional monarchy enjoyed an added advantage over modern states inasmuch as it could not only boast of a juridical continuity but also of the possibility of following a planned national and foreign policy. We have the example of the “political testaments” of numerous monarchs which not seldom served as Leitmotiv for the policy of generations or centuries. We do not claim that the policies of the preconstitutional monarchies adhered necessarily to a blueprint, but it must be emphasized that planned action (planned for a long time to come) was feasible. The term “perfidious Albion,” on the other hand, was the result of parliamentarian instability; if the Whigs agreed to a certain course then little doubt was left that their replacement by Tories would force the country into a course diametrically opposed to the one supported by the Whigs. Ochlocracy (even more so than aristocracy) is based upon change and instability; ochlocracy is revolution in permanence. A constructive foreign policy in the ochlocratic world is therefore well-nigh impossible. The continuous change of plans in the ochlocratic setup is nevertheless a minor evil of that system, although it is true that a bad plan is better than none. The catastrophical aspect of “democratic” international politics lies in the almost total absence of mutual confidence without which a lasting peace is unthinkable.⁸⁸

As for the peace treaties, they were concluded after shorter or longer negotiations, conducted usually by noblemen or ecclesiastics. Social events brought the delegates nearer to each other personally and the very last peace congress dealing with “Pan-European” affairs — the Congress of Vienna — was one of the greatest social events in Europe. (The Congress of Berlin in 1878 falls into a similar category.) Nobody was more lionized than Prince de Talleyrand, representative of the defeated power which had menaced the rest of Europe for decades. Popular sentiment happily played no role in these negotiations.

Yet Talleyrand carried great strength in Vienna because he was the representative of a legitimate monarch and not of a makeshift revolutionary power without European responsibilities. A dynasty belonged and belongs, so to say, to the “natural features” of a country, like the mountains, the rivers, the flora, and the historical monuments. The continuation of a dynasty was procured by the “sweet process of nature” (to use the words of Bossuet) and the heir to the throne was the product of the conjugal love between the monarch and the (foreign) queen who had not only espoused a man but also a country. (This international character of monarchy finds its expression in the fact that the death of a Christian ruler resulted and still results in an official mourning of all European courts.) A king could be forced to abdicate or persuaded to lay down his crown, but the dynasties who were parts of the countries (almost in the geographical sense) as well as states (in the political sense) were everybody’s property, i.e., res publica. The royal cross consisted largely in the fact that the royal families had no personal and private lives in the sense the other classes enjoyed it. A royal marriage was not less res publica than a royal pregnancy (officially announced) or a royal birth.

The question as to which are the intrinsic qualities of monarchy as compared with other forms of government has not been raised yet. St. Thomas Aquinas considers monarchy to be the best of the three good forms of state, the other two being aristocracy and polity, while he calls democracy the mildest of the three evil forms tyranny and oligarchy being the others. “There is only one queen among the bees and in the whole universe one God, Creator and director of all,” writes the Angelic Doctor in his treatise De Regimine Principum. Natural law is, to a great extent, the basis of St. Thomas’ philosophy, and his point of view can justly be called “cosmic.” One might raise the objection that monarchy is a wicked system of government because it attempts to imitate the great monarcha of the cosmos and therefore contains a certain element of blasphemy. Yet the very cell of human society, the family, in its natural form is also a patriarchal monarchy guided by the same natural-cosmic principle. This close resemblance between patriarchal monarchy and the family has already been recognized by Abel Bonnard in his excellent book Les Modérés.⁸⁹

The traditional European of the prereformation period lived and believed in the patriarchal principle which was one of authority based on love. Medieval man had not only a physical father, but also a Father in Heaven, a Holy Father in Rome,⁹⁰ the Monarch (the Pater Patriae), the godfathers, and a “Father” in the person of his confessor. It was his physical father who had brought him into being, cooperating with the Divine Power of Creation. The physical father was truly regarded to be the auctor (in a similar, not identical sense, as God is creator mundi) and human beings looked upon themselves to be existing ex voluntate viri. Woman was merely in the position (physically as well as psychologically) to accede to man’s will, to reject it or to influence man’s free will through her power of attraction.

St. Thomas has only one doubt in regard to monarchy, and that is the possibility of its development into a tyranny, whereas Plato in his Republic (Books 8–9)⁹¹ sees “tyranny” as a natural development,⁹² a “final stage” of democracy. In this respect he is more “modern” than the great Aquinate.⁹³

The only advantage St. Thomas thinks “democracy” has over tyranny is the fact that “democracy” at least seems agreeable to the many while tyranny only benefits one person. Yet tyranny as well as monarchy in his eyes are more “effective” — in the good or bad sense — because power is more effective when centralized than when spread out or divided: virtus unita magis est efficax ad effectum inducendum, quam dispersa vel divisa. This in his opinion is the reason as well why these two forms are also extremes in both moral directions.⁹⁴ St. Thomas also sees the advantage of an expert central power over the vague opinions of the lay people.⁹⁵ Yet he has doubts about the value of the element of heredity in the established monarchy. Some elements of primitive democracy and aristocracy then still clung to the institution of kingship and the royal strain was not yet the homogeneous unit it came to be in the later Middle Ages. The Popes at first were elected by the acclamation of the Roman people and then later by the cardinals. Their secular defenders, the Holy Roman Emperors, received their office through a mixture of election and heredity.* The dangers of such elections were clearly seen by St. Thomas; in his opinion they were likely to divide the people into hostile fractions — the beginning of party rule and party system was always looked upon with suspicion by the Church. We must keep in mind that the corporate system of “orders,” ordines, as favored by Pius XI, is strictly nonpolitical and not based on party rule. The Fascist corporate state is a mere caricature of the Catholic blueprint. There is no insistence on a corporate state in the Quadragesimo Anno, but of a state that favors and aids the nonpolitical corporate system.

Patriarchal monarchy unfortunately gave sway at a later period to absolute monarchy, which became entangled in nationalist etatistic movements, a process which finally led to a suicide of the monarchical form of government, which saw its Golden Age after the decline of feudalism and before the rise of absolutism.*

The theory of the Divine Rights of Kings, as we see it under debate in the seventeenth-century England, is naturally not a part of Catholic theology. It was Cranmer who advanced this doctrine during the reign of Edward VI and it was artificially revived by James I. It received due attention by Catholic theologians like Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine who condemned it in explicit terms. The formula “We, so and so, by the grace of God, king of this and that country,” used by Christian rulers, is no affirmation of an absurd claim; whatever we are, we are by the grace of God and stating this fact nobody usurps a title to a divine prerogative.⁹⁶

During the Middle Ages nationalism was extremely weak.** It did not exist in the modern, linguistic sense of the nineteenth or in the racial sense of the twentieth century. Nationalism, as far as we are justified to use this term in relation to the centuries preceding the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, was merely an exaggerated loyalty to the people considered to be one’s conationals, people of the same language and custom. “Statism” was a slightly greater danger and the idea of the sovereignty of the state was alive in different forms centuries before Hugo Grotius. It was only too natural that statism, however inarticulate it was, had to collide with the Church. Marsilius (Marsiglio) of Padua, who preached the priority of the state over the Church, exalted at the same time the monarchical prerogatives. His Defensor Minor expressed a view on the relationship between state and Church which had similarities with ideas professed on the same subject by Louis XIV, Joseph II, Napoleon, Hitler, and Peter the Great.

There is little doubt that the works of Marsilius were well known to John Wycliffe, the first and probably most original of the “reformers.” In his book De Eucharistia he denies transubstantiation and thus deprives the priest of his supernatural power. In De officio regis he declares the king to be second only to God. All Popes after Sylvester, who had received the Patrimonium Petri from Constantine, were, according to Wycliffe, representatives of antichrist, because they had yielded to the materialistic temptation of temporal power. His “poor preachers” soon infested the country and his idea of a Church devoid of all earthly possessions and without any visible organization first attracted the nobility who hoped to enjoy the spoils from the liquidation of the Catholic Church in England. Yet Wycliffe’s insistence on the supremacy of royal power displeased them and the rise of Lollhardy after his death gave them no further encouragement to support his heresy.

Wycliffe actually dreamed of a national Church headed by the king, a Church wholly independent from Rome. Apart from the fact that this would have paved the way to an absolute monarchy⁹⁷ — the reductio ad absurdum of every monarchy — without any interference from the side of the Church, it would have given an enormous impetus to Nationalism. National messianism is one of the most subtle and therefore most dangerous forms of nationalism. If the central teaching authority is eliminated, the “national” Churches, living a life of their own, soon grow into dogmatically and culturally widely diverging units and form, as a matter of course, different religions.

If nation A has the religion X and the the nation B follows the religion Y, the already existing national-cultural-linguistic abyss will be widened by religious antagonism. The members of the nation A are now thoroughly insistent that their religion X is the right and true faith and that other nations are therefore not only different but also basically wrong in their beliefs. This causes a fatal increase in national pride which now assumes a religious aspect. The A’s persist in considering themselves (solely endowed with the true religion) as chosen by God, not only chosen to understand truth and be rewarded with eternal bliss but also chosen to “save” the world. (This “salvation” is best achieved by rule.)

This present-day national messianism is not only typical of the Jews, but also of the British, North Germans, Russians, and North Americans. Catholic nations never have it, neither is it typical of the oriental religions like supranational Mohammedanism and Buddhism. The strongly insular Japanese Shintō and Hinduism are the exceptions. Nationalism within the framework of Mohammedanism is merely due to European influence. The basically Christian attitude of Mohammedans toward other anthropological races puts many followers of Christ to shame. Yet the local heresies of Europe and America possess this national messianism to an astounding degree; British Israelitism, the Ku Klux Klaners, the National Socialists and their numerous forerunners and last but not least the Russian Messianists of both denominations— the consciously messianistic Schismatics not less than the subconsciously messianistic Bolsheviks — illustrate this truism rather well. The heresies, on account of their intrinsic lack of Catholicity, always were the protagonists of a suicidal parochialism in time and space. Their rise means the decline of Europe.

The étatisme (statism) of the later heresies such as North Teutonic Lutheranism, Scotch Dutch Calvinism, Czech Hussitism, Anglicanism, and the Eastern Schism have exalted the separatistic and state-omnipotential tendencies of the herdists who always clamored for their little, uniformistic homesteads. Yet the real mother of Caesaro-Papism and at the same time the source of all great heretical trends in early Christendom is Byzantium and her representative in the modern world — Moscow, the Third Rome.⁹⁸

The truth that all power is derived from God was thus perverted.⁹⁹ The victory of Lutheranism in northern Europe was largely due to the treachery and shortsightedness of the rulers and the aristocracy. Absolute monarchy could not maintain a couple of centuries later its position once the hierarchic structure of Europe was badly damaged. The weakening of the Church resulted in the impairing of the most efficient control against royal tyrants. The pendulum which had swung too far on one side was soon to swing to the other extreme. The mass wars under a “religious” slogan of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were already foreshadowed by the Thirty Years’ War, a large scale massacre embittered by ideological antagonisms.

The phenomenon of absolute monarchy based on Protestant governmental theories was thus only a comparatively short-lived straw fire which lit the way for a new and even more dangerous movement — the rule of the masses. Luther, who taught that human beings morally are utterly wretched and hopelessly corrupted through original sin, invoked the establishment of a severe, efficient, and vindicative authority (Obrigkeit). Thus the decline of Europe started with heresy which begot personal absolutism, absolutism begot the reaction of the masses, finally the masses sought their personification in an absolutist “leader.”

We witness in the eighteenth century the preparation of the French Revolution by individualism and the degeneration of the old “liberal” trends into economical liberalism of the deterministic Manchesterian pattern. Egalitarianism only appears in strongly collectivistic societies where strong exogenous powers try to shape persons into “individuals,” deprived of their original character. The “individual” is merely the last indivisible unit of the “mass,” and individualism the last, grotesque, and hopeless fight of depersonalized man within the ocean of collectivism to withstand the encroachment of the masses. Charles V had a personality but Gustave de Nerval, who promenaded a tamed lobster in the streets of Paris, was a mere individualist.¹⁰⁰

Collectivism implies egalitarianism. An ideal mass is homogenous and consists therefore of equal atoms. Egalitarianism as well as collectivism are thus incompatible with liberty.¹⁰¹ Force must not only be used for the leveling process in the initial stage — it becomes necessarily a permanent factor in order to maintain the unorganic “symmetrical order.” This brutal force is necessary for any and every egalitarian effort. It is even more necessary in the case of a frantic identitarianism. The desire for more equality and identity becomes finally a mania and the use of more force a sadistic delight. Gynaecocracy and pedocracy, so familiar to ochlocratic cultures, become a part of the great program and even the animals rise to the level of human equality.¹⁰² From there it is only a short step to a terroristic pantheism bordering on madness.*

Yet even in the urban life a truly inhuman equality can be achieved only by sheer force and the more logical a people will be by nature, the more brutally will this equality be realized. A comparison between America, England, France, Germany, Russia, and Spain demonstrate to us the various methods of handling the problem of equality. French egalitarianism was comparatively mild — yet it was far more ferocious than for instance American egalitarianism. But for modern ochlocracies at least fictional equality is essential; as a tendency it is basic for the creation of mere masses. Masses or mobs consist necessarily of identical or similar atoms in order to function as great irresistible units which, confident in their homogeneity and quantity, are not only able to smother all obstacles but also to transmit in the shortest time emotional and “electric” shocks to the remotest parts of the whole. The French philosophers had prepared the advent of the “individual” and the French Revolution completed their work. “The philosophy of the French Revolution,” quotes Stapleton in his Life of Canning, “reduced the nation to individuals so as to, later on, congregate them into mobs.” And these mobs on account of their strong inferiority complex shouted loudly for equality and demanded the elimination of everybody who dared to be different. The proposition of the elders of Strasbourg was actually carried out with human beings who defied the iron law of similarity and identity; they were shortened — beheaded by the progressive medical machinery of Docteur Guillotin.

Equality, identity, and uniformity have since been the backbone of every ochlocratic movement and the only liberty compatible with the true spirit of ochlocracy is the collective liberty — the liberty of a class or a nation state. The element of equality has never succeeded in getting a foothold in international politics — not even in the League of Nations, where the position of the Great Powers was legally different from that of the smaller states.¹⁰³ Modern nationalism appealed less to the “democratic” demand of equality than to the worship of majorities which is not less in the ochlocratic tradition. It does not recognize the fact, that each nation is an entity in itself, having its own life and its intransferable destiny, and, independently of its size, an inalienable right for existence.* This conception would resemble too much a personalistic, medieval point of view. Modern nationalism prefers to count the noses of the inhabitants by national groups in a given geographical sector and then let the majority rule. A German Empire in Central Europe with eighty million Germans and 79,999,999 non-Germans is a thoroughly “democratic” proposition in the new style of 1942.

The reader will now understand why “democracy” and democratism are totally different from liberalism. We clearly mean here liberalism before it became an ism, when it was still aristocratic liberality and generosity coupled with the natural thirst for liberty and independence. Continental liberalism was never genuine nor honest; it was totalitarian like all other parties.¹⁰⁴ In early times it found its political expression in England, Hungary, Spain, and southern France and it existed at the same time, though not so articulate and formulated, in the more mountainous parts of Europe. The seventeenth century in England witnesses a restatement of these liberal principles and it is this second and secondary English liberalism and whiggism which, finally based on economic cognitions and theories, nonconformist sentiments and bourgeois principles, influenced the French Revolution, and later even the rest of Europe. Modern liberal sentiment in England is something rather complex and it is difficult to tell where the primary aristocratic (whiggish) liberalism ends and the economic, intellectual liberalism of Manchester begins.

A certain symbiosis between liberalism and ochlocracy is a frequent phenomenon in the nineteenth and even in the twentieth century. In the case of cooperation of these two ideologies liberalism is ordinarily of the nonaristocratic, Manchesterian type which shows a remarkable parallel with communism. Both, bolshevism and modern, bourgeois liberalism, started as economic theories and became Weltanschauungen, world philosophies. It is only in Anglo-Saxon America that the cry for “democracy” is tempered by liberalism of the more aristocratic type. The amenities of American life are due to the British-Whiggish tradition of the signers of the Declaration of Independence — most of them “gentlemen” — and not to the desperate appeal for equality of the poor immigrants of the Fin de Siècle who had nothing to lose and everything to gain.¹⁰⁵

Liberty was quickly trampled on by the French Revolution, which hastened to get rid of its aristocratic or intellectual supporters. Lavoisier, the famous mathematician and astronomer, was condemned to death with the characteristic remark “The Republic has no use for savants,” and the Noailles, Mirabeaus, and Lafayettes were relegated to the background. Total identitarianism grew in all spheres of life. The revolution in the Vendee, where peasants and noblemen had risen against the identitarian terrorists of Paris, was crushed and soon the levée en masse was well under way. As each citizen had the same rights he also had the same duties.¹⁰⁶ The return to the military tradition of Central Africa, where every male has to join up in tribal warfare, was perfect.¹⁰⁷ Militarism could start its career and soon a military dictator was due to appear at the head of a gigantic army of conscripts, which made the Prussian army of Frederick II seem like a kindergarten in comparison.

Militarism as a nationality accepted idea and norm is feasible only in a “democratic,” i.e., politically conscious nation, where each “individual” is imbued with his great importance as acting and directing part of the whole—otherwise the militaristic mass sentiment remains a dead letter. There is no militarism without active enthusiasm. It is either a real movement or just the sum of governmental regulations, and in that case it can hardly be regarded as an ism.¹⁰⁸

Yet ochlocracy itself was and is not a sufficient basis for militarism. The identitarian façade of identical military clothes — “uniforms” — which had come into fashion a few decades ago, was not enough. Within the borders of an ochlocratic country the stressing of equality between the different classes and groups gratified the herdist instincts; in contact with the enemy another collective sameness had to be emphasized in opposition to the mass identity of the enemy. Nationalism, already nourished by the reformers reached a new height of intensity; the French republicans not only were ochlocrats but also “patriots” (yet in reality nationalists). This “patriotism,” which had nothing to do with the natural love for the soil, culture, tradition, and habits of the country, first became a parochial movement of cleverly disguised anti-Europeanism and later on a violent herdist sentiment, attacking in and outside the country all those who dared to belong to a “different” culture and linguistic unit, until it finally degenerated into racialism, demanding identity even in the color of hair and eyes, index of the skull, pigmentation of the skin and structure of the bones.

The nationalistic “patriots” were necessarily antimonarchical, because monarchy in Europe is (as we have pointed out before) a basically international institution. The wrath of the nationalists in the French Revolution was mainly directed against the foreign-born queen, and her trial, a worthy forerunner of the staged trials of the Bolsheviks,* goes down as one of the greatest villainies of all times.

It is characteristic that it is practically always the queen or empress who has to bear the whole brunt of revolutionary hatred. This is largely due to the strict marriage laws of most continental dynasties which force the princes to marry into foreign ruling families. The alien origin of the ruler’s wife acts upon the nationalistic herdist like a red fabric on a bull. We see the same attitude of the masses toward the last empress of Russia, toward Empress Zita of Austria, Marie Antoinette, Queen Elena of Spain, Queen Henrietta Maria, and others.

The masses were little aware of the fact that rulers almost had to be “foreigners” in order to rule wisely and objectively. Apart from the fact that intranational marriages of rulers prevented the total war, their inner detachment from the nation for which they had to care, served as a real advantage. In order to read a printed text, we have to hold it at a certain distance from our eyes.¹⁰⁹ Not only were the different queens “aliens,” but most European dynasties (with the exception of the French Bourbons and the Serb Karagjorgjevic) were outlandish in their origin. Even most of the dictators are and were foreigners. Nemo propheta in patria means logically that all prophets are foreigners. Even herdism can hardly change that dictum entirely.*

Yet the Bourbons were, to a certain extent, coresponsible for what happened.¹¹⁰ The successfully aggressive policy of the Bourbons against the Holy Roman Empire, which resulted in German disunity, and the constant aid they had given to the Protestants, had also impaired Europe’s well-being. The leaders of the French Revolution continued the centralism of Louis XIV, which had merely served as a means for the absolutism of the Roi Soleil. The old historic provinces were broken up into nondescript small departments, bearing the names of rivers or mountains; these reduced and depersonalized units, similar even in the size of territory and population, soon were to become helpless administrative objects under the control of a central government in Paris. The city was supreme over the countryside and instead of the proud names of Artois, Picardie, Poitou, Gascogne, and Bretagne we had until recently such designations as Indre-et-Loire, Loire-et-Cher, Aube, Eure, Meurthe, Seine-et-Oise. . . .**

Standardization was the keynote of the French Revolution and in spite of the fact that these standardizations, as, for instance, the introduction of the metric system, had their practical advantages, the general effect upon Europe was disastrous.¹¹¹ Nationalism, so necessary for every aggressive mass army, soon swept all over Europe and brought havoc to those parts of the Old Continent where, owing to the intimate symbiosis of different race nations, not only in the geographic proximity of near-by communities but also in the layer structure of race classes, the damage could never be repaired. In the former case local antagonisms flared up, in the latter the “class struggle” received an unexpected impetus.*

The greatest suffering was reserved not only to the national-linguistic minorities in particular but to all minorities in general. People, who in one way or the other belonged to a minority group, had to pay the penalty to the majority rule of the “general will.” Whoever opposed the general will (the general whim, the general language, the general opinion) was automatically a “traitor” and severest punishment was inflicted upon him.¹¹² The more “democratic” Europe became, the worse was the fate of minorities. The years 1918–1919 and 1933 heralded the darkest periods for European minorities.

Plato in his Republic (Books 7–8–9) explains painstakingly the way in which democracies inevitably evolve into tyrannies. Tyrannies or dictatorships had in antiquity the tendency to become well-established monarchies, and thus the circle of governmental evolutions was closed. The transition from tyranny to monarchy is today extremely rare. After a millennium of settled monarchical tradition we have a dynasty on the throne or in exile for each country, and the coronation of a successful politician or party leader would only tend to make him ridiculous in the eyes of his followers and enemies alike. One must add that the idea of a Christian monarchy is quite distinct from the monarchical idea of antiquity, not only on account of the concept of legitimacy but also due to certain qualities which are intrinsic characteristics of a Christian monarchy.

The last major effort to transform a tyrant, a military leader as well as a politician, into a monarch was made in the case of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon I became a sort of republican president— “consul” — first for a limited number of years, then for lifetime, and finally his power was extended, after the proclamation of France as an imperial monarchy, to his son and heir. Shortly, he became a monarch. Napoleon III and Achmed Zogu (Zog I) had similar careers. A crown had also been offered to Oliver Cromwell and Dr. Voldemaras of Lithuania, to Yüan-Shi-Kai, and Iturbide.¹¹³

Napoleon, in spite of his imperial title, lacked the most vital characteristics of a European monarch; he neither possessed a great dynastic name, nor was he a relative of any of the other ruling dynasties. His father was an Italian lawyer of doubtful nobility in Ajaccio,* the capital of the most disrespectable island in the Mediterranean, famous for its bandits, cutthroats, and the practice of the vendetta. Napoleon could not “relax” as a Habsburg, a Bourbon, or even a Medici. He had to engrave his name in the great book of history and this dictatorial pastime of engraving is usually only accomplished with blood and tears. Neither respected nor respectable on account of his revolutionary background, he was forced to impress his fellow rulers and neighboring nations with triumphal successes; if they couldn’t respect him at least they learned to fear him.

He had to wage the total war of Jacobine tradition based on the levée-en-masse. Not being related to the large family of European monarchs, he also continued the practices of the First French Republic by annexing neighboring countries en bloc and incorporating them into his empire or degrading them to vassal states and filling their vacant thrones with obedient relatives. These wholesale annexations as well as the continuation of total warfare — war in earnest — indicated that he was not willing to play the game. The European rulers soon were in utter confusion because such a breach of rules and usages had not happened since the days of Genghis-Khan and Tamerlane. Dictated peace treaties were a novelty and we have mentioned the fact before that between A.D. 900 and the advent of Napoleon no European monarchy had been wiped off the map, no European dynasty had become homeless on account of a foreign invasion.

There is still the case of Poland. Poland vanished owing to successive armed interventions and due to the fact that this country had committed the folly of becoming an aristocratic republic whose king was elected by the Diet. Thus the Polish kings had frequently no connections with the other ruling families of Europe and this is also the reason why the neighboring countries — Prussia, Austria, Russia — did not have the slightest hesitation to carve up this unfortunate country which had always prided itself to be a Rzeczpospolita, a “republic.”* The history of the decline of Poland begins soon after the moment when this country had left the path of hereditary monarchy. We see a short-lived renaissance under Jan III Sobieski, but the introduction of the liberum “veto” marks the end of Polish glory and independence.**

This does not imply that republican tendencies and downright republicanism are necessarily degenerate forms of government. It is nevertheless true that no country ever became a republic because it was too wealthy, too healthy, too happy, or too strong. All European republics originated either as a result of a movement for national independence and the acceptance of a republican form of government was then due to the lack of a pretender, or, the fall of monarchy was due to despair, hunger, bankruptcy, military defeat, corruption, invasion. Europe’s rise is written in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe’s decay in the terms of Republicanism, “Progressivism,” and Godlessness.

The European monarchs, who never loved nor liked the Corsican usurper, decided finally, in order to save their skins, that Napoleon had to be “appeased.” The presence of a crowned tyrant in Europe put an almost intolerable strain on every country, a strain not only material but also moral on account of the necessary imitation of French revolutionary methods. Every totalitarian regime since has forced most if not all the European countries to take countermeasures which led to a disastrous multiplication of totalitarian counterideas. If one part of the European body is diseased all the rest will suffer; and sometimes it may be the antitoxin which is more fatal than the poison itself.***

The only way out was to transform the tyrant into a real king, i.e., to make him a relative of his royal colleagues. And this is exactly what happened. The daughter of the Austrian Emperor (a few years ago still Holy Roman Emperor) was married to the usurper. But the monarchs soon became aware of the fact that they had become the victims of miscalculation. Napoleon did not reform. He carried the war as far as the Sarmatian plains, destroyed myriads of human lives and so still yielded to his insatiable ambitions. It was evident by now that he would never become a genuine monarch. A new coalition between the Continental rulers and the British moneyed aristocracy first deprived him of his Empire. After a renewed attempt on his part to behave like an irresponsible politician and general, the powers of the coalition stopped treating him as a monarch and interned him on an African island. Thus ended one of the most sanguinary episodes in European history.

The Napoleonic wars were concluded by the Congress of Vienna. The French delegates were treated as friends, colleagues, and gentlemen. All thrones were restored to their former owners (with the exception of the temporal powers of the German Archbishops) and France was given new borders which left her slightly larger than before the beginning of the outbreak of the Revolution.* The blame for the terrific bloodshed fell neither on the French people nor on the legitimate dynasty; the twenty-three years of terrible wars were looked upon as a series of acts of folly, as deplorable aberrations which one had better forget and forgive. This was the same spirit as expressed in the preamble of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which concluded the Thirty Years’ War and runs as follows:

“The hostilities that have taken place from the beginning of the late disturbances in any place of whatsoever kind, by one side or the other, shall be forgotten and forgiven, so that neither party shall cherish enmity or hatred against, nor molest or injure the other for any cause whatsoever.”

Obviously the progressive twentieth century was still some way off.

But the spirit of nationalism and ochlocracy, of militarism and uniformism unfortunately survived. The French levée-en-masse was answered by a Prussian levée-en-masse and the government of Berlin showed little inclination to get rid of that evil institution. The Conservatives (like Metternich) persecuted the nationalist movement bitterly, but without success. The bourgeoisie on the Continent had not yet reached the full victory. It was not yet a dominating class and therefore nobody dreamed of considering nationalism as a movement of the “Right.” There was the closest cooperation in the common fight of “democratic” nationalists and nationalistic “democrats” against the supranational Church and the institution of international monarchy.

On the surface there was a strong monarchical, rightist, and “medievalist” reaction to be felt all over Europe; Châteaubriand, de Maistre, de Bonald, Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Zacharias Werner, Clemens Brentano, the brothers Stolberg and Manzoni wrote their great works within this movement. Romanticism east of the Rhine was truly diversitarian and romantic. A wave of conversions swept over the Continent and the Tractarian movement in England was not far off. The Church seemed to regain her old influence. Yet, under the surface, the nationalists of the herdist pattern would render all efforts of the spiritual-intellectual élite illusory. The vast masses of Slav inhabitants of the East European plains began to raise their voices in favor of a union. And from the northwestern plains and islands another monster raised its head, another phenomenon bound to change the face of the earth — the Industrial Revolution. While Kaspar David Friedrich and Kriehuber painted mountain scenes and Schwind and Ludwig Richter dwelt on the subtle lore of small German towns, tall chimneys and great machines, heralding the advent of another scourge, made their appearance; while poets, painters, and princes spoke in glowing terms of the coming New Middle Ages a German of Jewish descent, horrified and bewildered by the spectacle of British industrialism, first conceived the ideas which a few years later led to the publication of the “Communist Manifesto.” The inexorable march of events could not be stopped by a few bien pensants; it took another one hundred years to teach mankind the appreciation of the proverb that God’s mills grind slowly but with firmness and precision. The reductio ad absurdum alone could bring about the showdown of the ideas of the Great Revolt of the herdists.

We have gone “out of our way” in order to defend monarchy merely because we think that this form of government had either been unnecessarily abused in America or often been linked to its very opposite: plebiscitarian dictatorship. We are convinced that christian, monarchical forms of government belong, like the republic, to the good forms of government. Monarchies may not only survive the present cataclysm but may even increase in number and it is therefore necessary that Americans have an inner understanding for that political system (which does certainly not imply that they should copy it). European, Catholic monarchists profess this political conviction for very similar reasons as American Catholics voice their preference for the Republic; both Catholic camps see in these systems a (relative) guarantee for personal liberty, for the security of the Church, for legitimacy and justice (juridical and social), for international understanding.

It is naturally, also equally necessary that Europeans in general and European Catholics in particular arrive at a greater and better understanding of the principles and foundations of the American Republic. As long as many Americans view monarchy from the angle of S. Oglow’s humorous “Little King” and Europeans have a vision of the United States as “another Soviet-Union” with a stock exchange instead of a Kremlin, no real mutual understanding and affection is possible. And “affection,” not just interest mixed with curiosity, is an iron necessity for every peace. Pax est amor.

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*A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses.

*It would be difficult to classify a man like Jacques Maritain. He exalts a “democratic” concept which is not a living reality and attacks existing democracy (Rousseau’s democracy, as he calls it) violently. Henri Bergson also seemed to approve vaguely of “democratic” principles. (See: Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion.) Maritain’s sympathies seem to be on the whole with a representative government, with many checks and balances. (Cf. also J. P. Mayer, Political Thought, London, 1939, p. 273.)

*Cf. the mémoires by Bruce Lockhart and the fine monograph by J. Daniel Chamier.

**Cf. The biography by Dr. Viktor Eisenmenger, Kristóffy’s “Magyarország kálváriája. Az összeomlás útján.” Also “Apis und Este” by Bruno Brehm, and the biography by Theodor von Sosnosky.

***Cf. the excellent biography by Hans Roger Madol.

*It is also true that future monarchs ordinarily had the advantage over president or prime ministers in having been educated for their task from earliest childhood on.

**Inventors of poison gas, tanks, pursuit planes, bombers, floating mines, etc., might have run the usually decried risk of getting into trouble with the ecclesiastic authorities. They might have been possibly accused of being in league with the devil—an accusation probably not without foundation.

*Japanese militarism is largely ascribed by Ernst O. Hauser, in his brilliant articles and books, to the pseudo-aristocratic “emancipation” of the middle classes since the end of the shogunate. The Japanese monarchy varies totally from the European monarchy in its lack of international blood ties and of Christian tradition, but the aggressive element in Nippon is nevertheless a military caste, with a bourgeois background, and not the crown or the nobility. (Cf. also the articles of Joseph Newman in the New York Herald-Tribune, Dec. 28, 1941, and Hugh Byas’s Government by Assassination, New York, 1942.)

*St. Thomas recommended a mixed form of government in his Summa, I–II, 105, I in C.

*See Donoso Cortès, Oeuvres, Paris, 1858, Vol. II, pp. 256–257.

**We have clearly to distinguish between statism (étatisme), which is an enthusiasm directed toward the state as a legal and bureaucratic unit, nationalism, a herdist feeling of identity toward the ethnic people (Volk) with the same language and habit (inside and outside the state), racialism, a morbid frenzy for human beings of the same biological stock, patriotism, an enthusiasm for the natural features of the fatherland, and imperialism which seeks territorial expansion of the country (frequently under nationalistic or racialistic pretexts). Citizenship—a legal status; nationality—a cultural status; and race, as a biological status and condition, underlies the first three “isms.” It is deplorable that common usages not less than newspapers and even dictionaries have helped to create a total chaos in these technical terms; nationalism is most frequently confounded with either imperialism or statism and the concepts of race and nation are used as synonymous. (The “German race,” “French nationalism in the seventeenth century,” “Patriots rally against foreign language newspaper” are just a few contributions to the general confusion.)

*See the description of “facticism” in Erik and Christiane von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s, Moscow, 1979, New York, 1940.

*Small European states outraged only too often the sense of proportion of American tourists. They may be monstrosities from a commercial point of view, but liberty and personality demand sacrifices in blood . . . and cash.

*Stage trials are a helpful prerequisite for influencing public opinion and therefore a current phenomenon in totalitarian ochlocracies.

*The reader will understand that we do not believe that monarchy is everywhere and anywhere superior to representative republics. But we believe that on account of Europe’s diversity this supranational form of government has a greater raison d’être than the more “national” representative republic, which in its turn harmonizes more with the American tradition and American needs.

**The revival of the old Provinces by Maréchal Pétain, whatever his other merits or demerits are, was certainly a step in the right direction.

*It very frequently happens in Central and Eastern Europe that “class” means to all practical purposes “national character” just as it may mean “racial character” in the American South where the upper classes are white and the lower classes predominantly colored (apart from the “poor white trash”). The antagonism between a Hungarian burgher and a Slovakian peasant in northern Hungary or that of a Polish squire and a Ukranian servant could now not only be exploited by the socialist agitator but also by the nationalistic malcontent.

*See Chateaubriand’s Mémoirs d’Outretombe, who is very much convinced of Napoleon’s aristocratic background.

*Rather typical is the Polish proverb: “Cudzych królów gromić, a grozić swojemu”—“Subjugate foreign kings and defy your own!” It breathes a thoroughly “whiggish” spirit.

**Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a République.

***The years 1917, 1922, 1923 mark the last stages of this drama.

*Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a very strong point of this fact.