Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/294

 classes, seem to have taken refuge; O, then, beyond a doubt you would be filled with a resolve to think more earnestly than ever how help might be brought to them. These addresses have suggested to you a means of help which they deem certain, thoroughgoing, and decisive. Let your counsellors take counsel among themselves as to whether they too are of this opinion, or whether they know a better means; only it must be equally decisive. But the conviction that something must happen, and must happen without delay, and that something thoroughgoing and decisive must happen, and that the time for half-measures and temporary expedients is over, this conviction I would have these addresses bring forth in you yourselves, if they can, seeing that they still have the greatest confidence in your uprightness.

226. To all you Germans, whatever position you may occupy in society, these addresses solemnly appeal; let every one of you, who can think, think first of all about the subject here suggested, and let each do for it what lies nearest to him individually in the position he occupies.

227. Your forefathers unite themselves with these addresses, and make a solemn appeal to you. Think that in my voice there are mingled the voices of your ancestors of the hoary past, who with their own bodies stemmed the onrush of Roman world-dominion, who with their blood won the independence of those mountains, plains, and rivers which under you have fallen a prey to the foreigner. They call to you: “Act for us; let the memory of us which you hand on to posterity be just as honourable and without reproach as it was when it came to you, when you took pride in it and in your descent from us. Until now, the resistance we made has been regarded as great and wise and noble; we seemed