Quoted By:
A policy which is fundamentally bellicose can keep a Folk removed from numerous vices and pathological
symptoms, but it cannot prevent a change of the inner values in the course of many centuries. If it becomes a
permanent phenomenon, war contains an inner danger in itself, which stands out all the more clearly the more
dissimilar are the fundamental racial values which constitute a nation. This already applied to all the known
States of antiquity, and applies especially today to all European States. The nature of war entails that, through a
thousandfold individual processes, it leads to a racial selection within a Folk, which signifies a preferential
destruction of its best elements. The call to courage and bravery finds its response in countless individual
reactions, in that the best and most valuable racial elements again and again voluntarily come forward for
special tasks, or they are systematically cultivated through the organisational method of special formations.
Military leadership of all times has always been dominated by the idea of forming special legions, chosen elite
troops for guard regiments and assault battalions. Persian palace guards, Alexandrian elite troops, Roman
legions of Praetorians, lost troops of mercenaries, the guard regiments of Napoleon and Frederick The Great,
the assault battalions, submarine crews and flying corps of the World War owed their origin to the same idea
and necessity of seeking out of a great multitude of men, those with the highest aptitude for the performance of
correspondingly high tasks, and bringing them together into special formations. For originally every guard was
not a drill corps but a combat unit. The glory attached to membership in such a community led to the creation of
a special esprit de corps which subsequently, however, could freeze and ultimately end up in sheer formalities.
