Everything is
ground down, everything laid waste, the governing spirit has not
left one stone standing upon another. Even our youth, with whom lies
our hope for the future, is rotten in part. In many student circles
I see a want of principle, a low cringing to success, a cowardly
worship of animal strength, that is without its parallel in our
history. Instinctively, this corrupt youth sides, in every question,
with the strong against the weak, with the pursuer against the
pursued, and that at the age when my generation exerted itself
passionately, without a question as to right or wrong, for everyone
oppressed against every oppressor. Of course we were simpletons, we
of '48, and the golden youth of to-day scoffs superciliously at our
naive ideals. In the present order of things everything has become a
curse--even the parliamentary system. For that gives the people no
means of making its will known, and has simply become a vehicle for
general corruption at the elections. Our officials, on whose
independence of spirit we used to pride ourselves so much, have sunk
into mere electioneering agents, and unless they pursue, oppress,
and grind the opponents of the government, have no chance of
promotion. It is a Police State such as we have never known, not
even before '48.
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