Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/251

 among us Germans, they would offer their necks without invitation, without thanks, and, as I hope, without finding acceptance, to the yoke of spiritual serfdom. They would bitterly revile their own country in flattering its oppressor; they would think that diplomatic, for they do not know the mind of true greatness, but measure its thoughts by the thoughts suggested by their own pettiness; thus they would make use of literature, for which they know no other use, to pay their court by slaughtering it as a sacrificial victim. We, on the other hand, praise the greatness of the soul, with whom power lies, much more by the fact of our confidence and our courage than words could ever do. Throughout the entire domain of the whole German language, wherever our voice rings out free and unrestrained, it thus invokes Germans by the very fact of its existence: No one wants your oppression, your servility, your slavish subjection; but your independence, your true freedom, your elevation, and your ennoblement are wanted; for it is not forbidden to discuss these things openly with you and to show you the infallible means of attaining them. If this voice finds a hearing and has the result intended, it will set up a memorial of this greatness, and of our faith in it, for all centuries to come—a memorial which time cannot destroy, but which will grow greater, and spread more widely, with each new generation. Who dares to set himself against the attempt to erect such a memorial?

So, instead of consoling ourselves for the loss of our independence with the promise of a period of bloom for our literature in the future, and instead of allowing ourselves to be deterred by consolations of that kind from seeking a means to restore our independence, we prefer to ask whether those Germans, to whom a kind of guardianship of literature has fallen, still allow, even in these days,