Hugo Lerchenfeld Quotes
Democracy does not seem to render the world more peaceful. The masses are emotional by nature, skilled propaganda will always succeed in arousing their feelings.
This is a very interesting historical quotation. German leaders were aware of the risk of propaganda by demagogues leading people astray. Lerchenfeld thought this was true of all people, but the Germans seem to have been more susceptible to propaganda and demagogues than most peoples. Adolf Hitler used this weakness and the Germans destroyed much of Europe and Germany as well in WWII.
Count Hugo Lerchenfeld, 1871-1944, Prime Minister of Bavaria, Member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs of the German Reichstag, “Dawn”, Foreign Affairs, September 1923
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
His use of the noun “Democracy” refers not to a form of government but the specific institution of the Democratic Party. Smith, like many of the Founding Fathers was deeply suspicious of political parties. See also {614907}. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
The Ambassador of Bavaria represented an area where the politicians saw democrats and socialists as their great enemy, as did many of the leading right wing conservatives in all of Germany. They believed that a great war would give them a chance to crush democratic socialism in Europe. Bethmann warned that just the opposite might result, and indeed it did. He was correct. Many of the crowned heads of Europe were deposed and the democratic socialists emerged as a major political factor in the victorious democracies. Bethmann-Hollweg, however, was not a strong leader and could not prevent the Conservatives, the military leaders, and Kaiser Wilhelm from initiating WWI.
This quotation is of critical importance as it shows that the Germans were actually planning the First World War. See {642092} for another quotation on the subject.
