On the Value of Silence, Speech, and Action

I find the following sentences in the printed version of your speech:

“I have been accused of remaining silent for too long. Careful work seems to me more important than speaking, and I have confident that the German people prefer that which is factual, serious.”

Mr. Reich Chancellor! This opinion seems to me to rest on several not insignificant errors. It is certainly true that not every speech that is given in the world is a “factual matter” that one must approach seriously. Since German radio has regularly put itself at the service of governmental propaganda, I, too, can no longer close my eyes to the all too perishable nature of rhetoric. It would, however, be wrong to form a general opinion of the deficiencies of the intellectual content of all speeches in contrast to written elaborations based on examples from the present, even when those printed words have the good fortune or misfortune to pass through the machinery of lawmaking. The sum total of all laws ranging from those applying to the village school to those at the highest level demonstrate little evidence that they deserve to be seen as having greater importance than many speeches have, considering the conscientious and diligent work behind them. I will not deny that many laws are the result of hard mental effort, great determination, and admirable endurance. However, their final result and value is often less than the piece of paper that has the misfortune to have printed on it this blessing for mankind.

The value of a law is neither in the time it took to develop, nor in its outward length, but rather exclusively in its ultimate intellectual content. The lightning of a genius has always illuminated the world more brightly than a thousand smoking torches of regulations and laws.

I know that before the revolutions of 1848 governments thought that they had the right to act and their peoples had the duty to remain silent. But even in the Germany of that era there was strong agreement that alongside of the right of the government to act was the of the governed to have an opinion. Alongside the duty of the governed to obey a government, there is a duty on the part of government to respond graciously to objections from the governed.

Particularly since the Revolution of 1918, the German people believes that it has the right to criticize, and to criticize openly, since it was maintained that the lack of free speech was one reason for the downfall of the old system.

The constitution of the new Reich, therefore, does not say: All power comes from the government, but rather that all power comes from the people.

But you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, now jealously assert that no one in Germany has the right to act except the government. That necessarily means restrictions on the ability of the opposition to criticize and speak freely.

If today’s Germany had an Oliver Cromwell, a George Washington, or an Otto von Bismarck, at the moment all three would have to be satisfied by informing the nation of their opposition to the current government only through speaking or writing. And even if these three could only speak today, Mr. Reich Chancellor, one surely could not say that the content of their speeches would be worth less that the content of government decrees!

Such an underestimation of the speech does help me to understand the modest intellectual force of recent German rhetoric from official sources, while the frequency of such rhetorical efforts earns my grudging admiration.

Why do government offices keep using an instrument that they seem to think of so little value, or even hold in contempt? That may, however, explain why they do it so poorly.