What Schiller said about Paris at the time of the French Revolution, is doubly true of the situation today concerning Latin America: this is where, during these weeks, the great destiny of mankind is being negotiated! While the issue in France in Schiller"s time was the establishment of a single national sovereign government, today the sovereignty of many nations, the happiness, and even the lives of millions of people are at stake, and the great question is whether the courageous actions of a few governments, inspired by a program based on reason, can lead us out of the most severe world economic and financial crisis in history and bring into being a new and just world economic order, marking the start of a new epoch of world history, or whether we will miss this great opportunity which fate has again thrown our way, and perhaps seal the doom of us all.

If Schiller were to cast his eye on our world today, what would he see? Would he see, as he did then, the "spirit of freedom in combat with despotism, the chains of stupidity asunder, thousand-year prejudices shattered, nations demanding their human rights, the practice of republican virtues, more enlightened ideas coming into currency, minds in ferment and souls elevated by an enthusiastic interest to fill out this happy constellation"--in short, would he see an international republican movement, reaching from Ibero-America, through Asia, Africa, and Western Europe, to America, jointly working to realize the Grand Design?

In no previous historical epoch, in fact, have the decisions facing us been more immense--decisions which will determine the Southern Hemisphere's development or its demise, the maintenance of peace for the majority of the world's population, or the catastrophe of a global nuclear war.

And what would Schiller say were he to observe us today? Would he have to conclude once again that "a great moment has found a little people"? Would he have to repeat his words: "Man portrays himself in his deeds, and behold the figure we see depicted in the drama of the present age! Here barbarity, there impotence--the two extremes of human depravity, and both united at a single moment in time!"

Would this be his judgment? Or would he be that much more hopeful that mankind has arrived on the threshold of the Age of Reason?

So that we may find a happier answer to this question than was found 200 years ago, we have founded the international Schiller Institute. Its multinational membership is inspired with an unshakeable confidence that mankind can attain reason, and that we can find a solution to even the greatest of crises.

It is my deepest personal conviction that we already hold in our hands the ideas with which we can solve all of the world's important problems. I am equally convinced that the works and the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller, more than any other great poet and thinker of the past, can provide us with the conceptual weapons and the method of thought we require to win the great cause for mankind.

The Schiller Institute has no lesser task than to defeat the tendency to decouple Western Europe from the United States and to reformulate the basis for the Western Alliance. It must furthermore help elevate foreign policy between nations onto the foundations of the American Revolution, establishing a community of principle among national, sovereign republics.

Precisely what such a just world order should look like, and how an entente of national sovereign republics can mutually promote their own development and well-being, was already worked out long ago. Many thinkers have put their brush to this beautiful painting, from Nicolaus of Cusa, to Leibniz, John Quincy Adams, Pope Paul VI, and Lyndon LaRouche, to name only a few. As a plan, this "Grand Design" is near at hand; but in order to realize it, a "little people" must be transformed into a great one. Our "little people" must learn to think big, to concern themselves with the great affairs and problems of mankind, and to act as citizens of a true republic.

Let me make this even more comprehensible: I am absolutely convinced that mankind can only be saved when the individuals constituting that humanity are improved, and when, as human beings, they become better and more human than they are today. And Schiller has shown us how this can be done.

Now, it is altogether conceivable that some of you are already beginning to secretly protest, and might feel like calling out: "Impossible! You can't improve people, that's sheer idealism; it would be nice, but it will never happen, especially not in politics. Politics is all pragmatism!"

This is precisely the problem. If we continue to think like this not-so-hypothetical protester, then mankind is finished. If we take the "pragmatic," "realistic" view, then the decoupling of Western Europe from the United States is virtually ensured, and the Federal Republic of Germany as good as lost--and more than a few people in the Reagan administration already think this way. Then it would be more or less certain that the Soviet Union would soon extend its hegemony over all of Western Europe, enabling them to rapidly dominate the entire globe.

Realistically, pragmatically, the situation looks like this: Even though President Reagan, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, and Lt. Gen. Abrahamson have fortunately expressed their firm commitment to the Western Alliance, the decoupling forces on both sides of the Atlantic--the Kissingers, Carringtons, Genschers, and Andreottis--are very far along in the realization of their plans for a "New Yalta" agreement, whereby Western Europe would be handed over into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence.

The condition of Western Europe is grim. Greece, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, all formally members of NATO, are advocating a variety of plans to turn themselves into nuclear free zones, some having even refused to station the new medium-range Euromissiles. Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland have long dropped all pretenses of neutrality, and are now cooperating quite openly with the Soviet Union. On his recent Moscow visit, French President François Mitterrand presented himself as a spokesman for European opposition to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. In the recent European parliamentary elections, the Communist Party of Italy has just become that nation's strongest party, and a collapse of the Craxi government now seems imminent.

The installation of Lord Carrington as NATO's new Secretary General is truly a disaster. A friend and business associate of Henry Kissinger, Carrington will give a giant boost to the decoupling forces and the opponents of the beam weapons policy. And what about the Federal Republic of Germany? A government crisis is rapidly approaching; Chancellor Helmut Kohl could fall in a few weeks, and the Social Democratic Party politicians are already whetting their knives, boasting how they will take over the government before the end of this year--a turn which would make the Federal Republic of Germany's withdrawal from NATO more or less certain.

All of West Germany's leading institutions and parties have entered into a secret agreement with Moscow, in the hope that a separate peace would permit them to escape unscathed in the expected confrontation between the two superpowers. And it is extremely important that you, the people of America, understand that this development is motivated by pure and simple fear.

Ever since Lenin, the Soviet Union has proceeded on the assumption that control over Western Europe would be their key to the ultimate victory of world communism, and that their success entirely hinged on breaking Germany, or, later, the Federal Republic of Germany, out of the Western camp. A glance at a map suffices to show that Western Europe is only a thin strip of land on the Eurasian continent, an area whose lack of depth precludes any defense by conventional means alone. In the past, only the American nuclear umbrella has deterred a Soviet attack.

There is an immense blunder contained in the opinion frequently voiced over the U.S. media: "Why should we be over there, if they won't even take care of their own defense?" Leaving geographical realities to one side for the moment, let us examine the actual situation.

Europe, shaken by economic crisis and politically disunited, may appear to be weak. However, measured in terms of industrial capacity and highly skilled manpower, Europe's potential is even greater than that of the United States. Were this potential to ever fall under Soviet control, this combination of the Warsaw Pact and Western Europe would become by far the strongest economic power, and hence the strongest military power in the world. The United States would then be reduced to the status of a third-rate power, and nothing would stand in the way of total Soviet world domination.

Consider how the Soviets have mobilized over half a million troops in their current war maneuvers, extending from the Baltic, through Poland, to the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia, in order to test combat readiness for a blitzkrieg; consider also the Soviets' global command and control maneuvers which are scheduled to continue through the U.S. elections in November. Adding this up with the unprecedented barrage of Soviet rhetoric about an alleged resurgence of "revanchism" in West Germany, we must un fortunately conclude that the Soviet Union is seeking to deal President Reagan some decisive defeat in the course of a strategic confrontation which would break out before the presidential elections. Moscow calculates that a President Mondale would not only carry through on the troop withdrawals demanded by Kissinger and Nunn, but would also guarantee future Soviet domination of outer space, so that the United States would cease to be a match for the Soviet Union in any field. Should Mondale win the election, the past 2,500 years of human civilization would rapidly go down the drain.

What can we do about this? How can we find our way out of this dramatic world crisis, if every foreign policy institution, every think tank is advocating one or another version of disengagement and neo-isolationist policy, and while similar institutions in Western Europe are all capitulating to the threat from the East?

In this situation, it is obvious that simply continuing along with pragmatic policies will not enable us to prevent disaster. Unless the present trends are dramatically shifted, those people who claim that there is no longer any common basis for the Alliance will be proven right, because both continents will have undergone an irreversible transformation. Mere lip-service will not be enough to bridge the resulting deep gap; too much has happened in the twentieth century, and too many chances have been missed already, especially in the period following World War II.

No, something much more dramatic is required! We immediately need a new republican elite to take foreign policy into its own hands, and which will set an example for relations between sovereign states, by establishing relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States on a new foundation based upon natural law.

But where is this republican elite going to come from?

I am utterly convinced that not only the Western Alliance, but the entirety of civilization will be lost unless we retrieve our sunken treasure, the humanist ideals of the American Revolution and of the German Classics, and put these ideals visibly before the public. By linking up in this way with the best epochs of our history, we can repeat, or even surpass, this republican revolution in our own time. Indeed, we can lead the way to final victory in the cause of reason!

We today must link up with the American Revolution, the German Classics and the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, because never before nor since did mankind conquer a higher degree of political freedom, and achieve a more beautiful ideal of humanity and a nobler method of thought. The coincidence of these two high-points represents the watershed of modern history, against which everything else must be measured. Precisely for this reason, this republican movement soon became the target of the most raging attacks from the oligarchical faction.

The American Revolution established for the first time a democratic republic in which every citizen's inalienable rights, based upon natural law, along with his absolute equality before the law, became integrated with his reciprocal relationship to the state. The Revolution was ajoint European project, in which all of Europe's republican forces exerted a most direct and practical influence in the persons of the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron von Steuben, among many others. But more than this, it became the proving ground for the best products of 2,500 years of European culture. The American Constitution was molded from the ideas of Plato, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, and Pufendorf, and these ideas encompassed both the citizen's republican duty to act for the best possible development of his nation, as well as the state's own obligation to provide for the flowering of every individual's latent potentials.

The American Revolution also represented the first complete victory for the republican system of economy, which Friedrich List subsequently called the "American System." As Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, and Henry and Mathew Carey demonstrated in their works, the increase in productivity effected by means of technological progress is the sole source of all social wealth. It is therefore the responsibility of the state, for the sake of its citizens' well-being, to promote technological and industrial progress by means of a suitable credit policy. It was this right to economic progress that England refused to grant its most important colony, a policy which finally convinced America's Founding Fathers that independence from England would have to be won by force of arms.

Benjamin Franklin was rightly called the "Prometheus of the Eighteenth Century," and the best minds Europe had to offer became associated with his political network. Contemporary literature described the young American republic as the "beacon of hope" and the "temple of liberty," and those who had supported America in the League of Armed Neutrality began to hope that the example of the American Revolution could be repeated in Germany. They enthusiastically viewed the early phases of the French Revolution as another step in this direction.

All of Europe's republicans hoped that a successful republican revolution in France would catalyze the development of sovereign, national republics in every part of Europe. William Penn, thoroughly conversant with the humanist authors of European civilization, presented a proposal entirely in the tradition of Nicolaus of Cusa and Leibniz. Relations between nations, he proposed, should be shaped on the basis of a community of principle among sovereign republics, in which such nations would enter into a relationship of mutual support, with each nation equally concerned for other nations' well-being as if it were its own.

John Quincy Adams later incorporated these foreign policy principles of the young American republic within the Monroe Doctrine, which was firmly anchored upon the principle of national sovereignty. Adams had traveled to Paris at an early age together with his father, John Adams, and became immersed in European culture. To him we owe the first translations of Schiller into American English.

No one celebrated these ideas of the American Revolution with greater dramatic tension and poetic beauty than Friedrich Schiller himself, especially in his works Don Carlos and William Tell. In his "Letters on Don Carlos" he wrote about

. . . the favorite discussion topic of our decade--on the propagation of a purer, more tender humanity, on the highest possible freedom of the individual, coinciding with the state's greatest flourishing--in short, on the most perfect condition of mankind as is attainable with what lies implicit within its nature and its powers.

Schiller and many of his contemporaries were spurred on by this "great destiny of an entire state, the happiness of humankind for many generations to come," and he shared the conviction that mankind was on the eve of the Age of Reason. A tremendous sense of cultural optimism inspired them to greater works, in music and in poetry; never had men's minds been ennobled by a higher ideal of mankind. More than anyone else, Schiller embodied within his own person and works the humanist ideal of man, and no one has more effectively united the idea of republican freedom with the principle of poetical beauty. What Beethoven was for music, Schiller was for poetry. Indeed, we can confidently say that Schiller and Beethoven were the two giants of the German Classics, infinitely like one another in their method of thought, each having established the standards against which all art must henceforth be measured.

Schiller was the great republican poet of freedom, who developed his capacity to clothe the ideals of a more noble, more beautiful mankind in such powerful language, that he indeed found that "infallible key to the most secret accesses to the human soul." None could surpass his ability to evoke the most tender emotions within his audience, to expand its heart, and to guide it to previously unknown heights of reason. Schiller fulfilled the criterion he himself had set for all poetry:

All that he can give us is his individuality. Hence, this must be worthy of being displayed before the world and to posterity. To so ennoble his individuality, to refine and purify it into the most magnificent example of humanity--this his most important obligation he must fulfill before he can endeavor to move superior intellects.

For Schiller, the most perfect of all works of art was the establishment of true political freedom. But what, to his mind, was the content of this most pure and most magnificent humanity?

Schiller was also one of the best philosophers in all history, worthy of being taught and studied in every university philosophy department. His concept of the universe was identical to that of Cusa and Leibniz, the only difference being that he expressed their conception more poetically, and hence all the more effectively. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who forged his famous educational system according to Schiller's philosophy, wrote about Schiller:

Confidence in mankind's mental faculties, elevated to a poetical image, is expressed in the distich entitled "Columbus," one of the most unique Schiller ever composed. This belief in the invisible force residing within the human mind, this exalted and so profoundly true view that there must exist a secret, internal agreement between this force and those which order and govern the entire universe--since all truth must be but a reflection of that which is eternal and primary--was a characteristic feature of Schiller's system of ideas. This was in keeping with how tenaciously he applied himself to every intellectual task, until it was solved to his satisfaction. Already in his early letters of Raphael to Julius, published in the Thalia, with the bold, but beautiful expression, "When Columbus entered a dubious contest with the untraveled sea," we see this same thought allied with the same image.

This is the idea--already evident in Plato and pronounced in Cusa--of a correspondence between the lawfulness of human reason, the micro- cosmos, and the laws of the macrocosmos, the philosophical universe.

In the Raphael letters, Schiller wrote:

The universe is a thought of God. Once this ideal image of the mind had entered into actuality, and the birth of the world had fulfilled the plan of its creator--permit me this human simile--it became the mission of all thinking beings, to rediscover the first design for the entirety of what exists--to seek the rule governing this mechanism, the unity of what is composed, the lawfulness of the phenomenon, and so to trace the edifice back to its first outlines.

Schiller goes on to develop an epistemological kernel idea which constituted the conceptual basis for the great advances in the natural sciences and mathematics during the nineteenth century, namely, the idea that the visible world is only the reflection, the analogy of a more complex reality. It can be proven that there exists a direct coherence between Schiller's ideal of humanity, his philosophy, and the geometry of Bernhard Riemann.

In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, Schiller proceeds from this agreement between human reason and the laws of the universe, taking up the question of how it might be possible to found the perfect state and to establish political freedom. In the fourth letter, he writes:

We can say that every individual, by his very nature, encloses within himself a pure and ideal man, for whom the concordance of his immutable unity with all his changes of state, is the great problem of his existence. This pure human being, who is more or less distinctly manifest within every individual, is represented by the state Republican thought!--HZL], the objective and, as it were, canonical form in which the great multiplicity of individual characters strives toward unity. Now, there are only two conceivable ways by which man in time coincides with man the idea, and just as many ways by which the state can become manifest within individuals: either the pure man represses the empirical man, so that the state annuls the individual, or the individual becomes the state, so that man in time ennobles himself into man the idea.

Now, for Schiller, who loved freedom above all else and considered freedom to be the only fitting condition of mankind, only the the latter possibility was conceivable. But how is this to come about? How shall man be ennobled, and to what end?

We must begin by saying that for Schiller, the maximum perfection of a man's character is his moral beauty; it is the condition in which he has a "beautiful soul." The idea of man's beautiful soul, however, can only be understood from the standpoint of Schiller's general aesthetics. Wilhelm von Humboldt rightly said that Schiller has set down everything essential concerning the concept of beauty of creation and of action, and hence on the foundations of all art and art itself, and that it would never be possible to go beyond what he had accomplished.

Schiller was moved to write his works on aesthetics, his theory of beauty, in part because of his irritation over the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant. Kant had claimed that reason can dictate no universally valid criteria for beauty, but rather beauty is a subjective judgment of arbitrary taste, having no other recognizable purpose, so that an arabesque, for example, is more beautiful than the human form. On the other hand, Kant postulated the categorical imperative, according to which man, whenever he perceives a contradiction between his inclinations and his duty, must always choose the latter.

But beauty cannot possibly come about in this manner, and Schiller, who considered Kant to be a rather monkish fellow who must have had an unhappy childhood, wrote the following:

Clearly, the dominion which practical reason exerts over our impulses as it morally determines the will, has something abusive, something distressing about it. Yet we do not wish to see compulsion anywhere, not even when exerted by reason itself. We also desire that the freedom of nature be respected, because, in aesthetic judgment, we consider each being as a purpose unto itself, and because we who hold freedom to be supreme, are repelled by the thought that something must be sacrificed for the sake of the other, serving as the means to some other end. Therefore, a moral action can never be beautiful so long as we can observe the process by which it is tormented away from the sensuous.

Only when fulfillment of duty has become part of one's nature, when reason and sensuousness, duty and inclination coincide, and man fulfills his duty with ease and on his own accord, as if he had acted on instinct alone--only then does a man have a beautiful soul.

It is important that beauty here does not become equated with perfection. Only those representations of perfection which are free, become at once transformed into beauty. This is the notion of organic self-organization, the notion of free self-determination, of freedom and autonomy of phenomena.

Something is perfect, says Schiller, if its manifold predicates come into agreement with the unity of its concept; it is beautiful when this perfection appears as nature. "Beauty increases when perfection becomes more elaborated and nature does not suffer therefrom, for as the quantity of predicates grows, the problem of freedom becomes that more difficult, and its successful resolution all the more surprising."

This is why man, in his most beautiful humanity, is always more beautiful than the most splendid beast, and this is why a cathedral constructed according to the Golden Section is always more beautiful than a common house, and why--with your permission--a fugue of Beethoven is more beautiful than one by Bach.

Along with Schiller, I say that there do exist absolute criteria for beauty, dictated by reason. However--and Schiller is emphatic about this-- purpose, order, proportion and perfection have absolutely nothing to do with beauty itself; they are merely the material of beauty. "The only form of beauty is a free exposition of the truth, of purpose, of perfection."

Beauty as the free exposition of truth--that is an ennobling thought! For the beaùtiful soul potentially residing within every individual, "desire shall ally with duty, and reason shall be joyously obeyed." Beauty is therefore of vital significance for all mankind. Man's "intellectual nature has been provided with a sensuous partner, not so as to cast it off or to shed it like a rough shell, but on the contrary, so as to unite it with its own higher self."

But it is the senses which give human reason so much trouble, and they must be educated to the level of reason. Likewise, even though beauty itself is founded upon reason, it is through the senses that beauty is perceived. Schiller therefore arrives at the following conclusion:

The contemplation of beauty, of truth, of excellence, is the momentary appropriation of these qualities. Whatever condition we perceive, we ourselves enter into that condition. The moment we think it, we are already the possessor of a virtue, the author of an action, the discoverer of a truth, the harborer of a joy. We ourselves become that object which we perceive.

The contemplation of beauty awakens within us a power which transforms the sensuous world into a free product of our reason, and governs the material world through ideas.

But there is never a final goal in this quest. We must never cease striving for improvement, struggling for the creative fruits of genius. As Schiller warns, "General experience teaches us that the person who relapses into the criminal life is all the more maniacal, and that the relief which the renegade from virtue finds from his heavy burden of contrition, is all the sweeter when he returns to the arms of perfidy."

Or, conversely, "The person who has managed to reap all the beauty, greatness, and excellence of nature in small and large, and can find the grand unity within this multiplicity, has already come much closer to the divinity. The entirety of creation flows into, and dissolves within his personality. If each man loved all men, then each individual would inherit the world."

Hence beauty, the free expression of the order of creation, is absolutely necessary for the ennoblement of the human species, and consequently for the development of sovereign, national republics and a just world order. And is it not precisely such beauty which our present world so sorely lacks? What has the twentieth century produced so far, that truly deserves to be called beautiful?

This is why we must go back to Schiller. The ideas I have dealt with here theoretically can all be found in his works, presented with even greater power and effectiveness. Never was the majority of Germans at a higher level than during the time when Schiller became the beloved and celebrated national poet. He understood how to raise the people "playfully and jestingly" up to his own level, and by loving him, they also loved the best of humanity within themselves. It was Schiller who scaled the highest pinnacle ever attained by the human species, and at the same time expressed this with the most power, sensitivity, and poetical beauty.

Schiller was a product of the best Leibnizian tradition. The real conditions of his time, however, were anything but ideal. He often described the despotic caprice and internal strife afflicting mankind, conditions which remind us very much of our world today. Schiller was not the happy son of his time; he had to conspire with Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and their circles to single-handedly create the program of the Weimar Classics. So it is possible to overcome dreadful situations!

Studying the biographies of Schiller's contemporaries and other documents from the period, it becomes clear that Schiller's influence was not confined to his works, but that an infinity of sparks was thrown off whenever his genius directly touched another mind. His genius helped bring forth more geniuses, and numerous people have recounted how their encounter with Schiller left an indelible impression on their lives.

Almost all of the Prussian reformers felt the influence of Schiller's mind, and even after Schiller was long dead, they sought to realize political changes designed by him in patriotic fervor. It is because of the joint influence of Schiller and the Humboldt educational system which embraced his ideas, that nineteenth-century Germany produced a larger number of outstanding scientists than any other epoch or nation!

The high-point of German history is unquestionably the period of the Liberation Wars, a time when the population not only rose up in patriotic revolt against Napoleon's tyranny, but also viewed itself as a republican movement to secure a constitution for Germany. The correspondence, diaries, and other literature of the period contains massive testimony of how Schiller's conception of freedom was the guiding idea uniting the minds of the German people into a national republic. The French philosopher Re mon characterized the war of 1813 to 1815 as the only exalted time of the century, and it was Gneisenau's dictum that the issue was not merely the independence of the nation, but its "ennoblement" as well.

Gneisenau, who during this time was staging rehearsals of Wallenstein's Camp with his officers, wrote to Count Münster on March 14, 1783:

I cannot tell you enough about the spirit sweeping the nation. Sons of princes, children of the wealthiest families are streaming in to take up the lowliest duties. Men of office are leaving their lucrative positions to do the same. The administration has already been obliged to take curbing measures. It is truly moving to see all the sons of the nobility and the upper classes, with their refined upbringing, lined up as common soldiers in numerous rifle companies, where they clothe, equip, and recompense themselves. A wonderful spirit of enthusiasm prevails.

Three days later, Gneisenau wrote to his wife:

These are great and noble times. We are freeing ourselves of an intolerable, foreign yoke. If ur son] successfully gets through this period of warfare, I know he will always thank me for having given him the opportunity to say one day: "I, too, fought in the War of Independence!" And as Schiller has already said:

And stake ye not your life thereon, Never will your life be won!

And on March 19, 1813, he wrote to Eichhorn in Berlin:

How fortunate we are to have lived long enough to see this era in world history! Now we can die, and bequeath independence to our progeny.

Independence--almost. Little indeed was wanting for a repetition of the American Revolution on German soil!

But the entirety of the European oligarchy entered into a conspiracy to crush this potential, a conspiracy extending from the Russian nobility, the Venetians, Swiss, French, British, and German oligarchs, to Talleyrand, Castlereagh, and Metternich. The policy forced through at the Congress of Vienna in the course of long intrigues and maneuvers, represented a huge backward step for humanity, and ushered in a phase of gloomiest reaction.

The results of these intrigues, manipulations, and "step-by-step" policies was the formation of the Holy Alliance, which established relations between its members states on a religious-fundamentalist basis. The program of the Holy Alliance, and the language in which it is framed, is one of the most stinking, slimy, hideous political documents any numbskull has ever concocted. The inventor of the Holy Alliance was the Russian Czar Alexander I, who had slid out from under the influence of the Prussian reformers, and became convinced by the fundamentalists of the Russian Orthodox Church and the mystic Julie von Krüdener, that the Russian people were a "holy race" that had not yet drunk from the cup of evil. From then on, the Russian nobility's favorite theory that Moscow was the "third and final Rome," became an integral part of the Czar's own convictions.

And so, at the end of the document we find the following:

Thus, the sole governing principle, be it between said governments or between their various subjects, shall be that they mutually serve one another with constant benevolence; that they mutually declare the affections with which they shall be inspired, and consider themselves merely as elements of one and the same Christian nation [with Moscow as the Third Rome--HZL], whereas the three allied princes shall see themselves as the mere deputies of Providence [!], who have been called upon to govern three branches of one and the same family, namely, Austria, Prussia and Russia, and thus to acknowledge that the Christian nation, to which they and their peoples belong, in truth has no other sovereign than the All-Powerful, for in Him alone reside all the treasures of love, of knowledge, and of infinite wisdom--i.e., in God, our divine Savior Jesus Christ, the Word of the Almighty, the Word of life. . . .

One would be hard put to find a more hypocritical and shameless declaration. The other European powers were asked to set their own feet onto this sticky surface, but all overtures were foiled by the Pope's refusal to support an alliance which included such "heretics" as Germany and Russia.

What was the Holy Alliance in reality? A cheap trick by which the principals could style themselves as ayatollahs, pretending to be the arbitrary interpreters of "Providence." This is the oldest trick in the oligarchy's book: the princes were simply a new edition of that infamous agent of Persian imperial influence, the Oracle of Delphi! The idea of Russian world domination was a built-in feature, and we know rather well where such ideas as a "holy race" were going to lead.

It was only four short years before the dark reaction dropped this mask of hypocrisy at the Carlsbad Conference with the infamous decrees known by the same name. All the mumbo-jumbo about affection and the Christian family was quietly thrown out the window. The memorandum on this conference, entitled "On the Difference Between Government by Estates and Government by Representation," was written by none other than Metternich's little spy and errand-boy, Friedrich von Genz. According to Genz,

The old German provincial diets were founded upon distinctions of estate and law which had been ordained by God himself [!!]‚ whereas the alien system of representation is based on revolutionary delusions of popular sovereignty and of equality before the law. In the former case, monarchical power is limited only by the exercise of specific rights; in the latter, the crown is subjugated to the whim of the popular representatives!

That was the essence of the Holy Alliance. It was directly aimed against the republican system of representative popular sovereignty based on natural law, and against everything that the American Revolution stood for. It was therefore directed against everything Friedrich Schiller represents as the humanist ideal of mankind. This total, all-out confrontation between the two factions--between the forces of the American Revolution and the spirit expressed by the Holy Alliance--has been the single most relevant battle of the last 200 years of history.

The forces allied with Moscow today, which still cling to the idea of the Third Rome and the dream of establishing a world order according to this oligarchical model--i.e., Kissinger and his associates--are all avowed worshipers of the Holy Alliance. Thus Kissinger writes in his book about this period and his self-proclaimed hero Metternich:

What is surprising is not how imperfect was the settlement that emerged, but how sane; not how "reactionary" according to the self- righteous doctrines of nineteenth-century historiography, but rather how balanced. It may not have fulfilled all the hopes of an idealistic generation, but it gave this generation something perhaps more precious: a period of stability which permitted their hopes to be realized without a major war or a permanent revolution. And our account will end in 1822, when the international order which emerged out of the revolutionary conflict assumed the form it was to retain over a generation. The period of stability which ensued was the best proof that a "legitimate" order had been constructed, an order recognized by all the major powers, so that thenceforth they sought adjustment within its framework rather than in its overthrow. . . .

Their achievements were not inconsiderable: a period of peace lasting almost a hundred years, stability so pervasive that it may have contributed to disaster. For in the long interval of peace, the sense of the tragic was lost; it was forgotten that states could die, that upheavals could become irretrievable, and that fear could become the means of social cohesion. (A World Restored, pp. 5--6)

Manipulation of the population through fear-- this is the quintessence of the oligarchical conception of power, and this is an undeniable feature of Soviet foreign policy today. It is also the doubtful glue holding together the so-called peace movement. And at the same time, it happens to be the avowed specialty of Henry Kissinger, who is now in the forefront of the effort to decouple Western Europe from the United States.

The fact that Kissinger chose as his models Metternich, Talleyrand, and Castlereagh speaks for itself, and sheds light on the political order desired by the oligarchical faction he represents. The Holy Alliance was the most sinister reactionary brew, a system which gave us a foretaste of what was to come in the twentieth century. It was a system teeming with spies and informers; terror over the mind was the order of the day, and even the sermons of Schleirmacher, the translator of Plato, were monitored by the police. The works of Schiller were banned by the Carlsbad Decrees, although this did not prevent them from being passed around secretly from hand to hand.

The great decision confronting human society today is altogether clear: the necessity for a just world order, founded upon natural law and based on the ideas of the American Revolution and German Classicism, stands in resolute opposition to the danger of an oligarchical nightmare modeled on the Holy Alliance, which will in all likelihood spawn a Third World War.

Thus we are engaged in the decisive battle, whose outcome will determine the survival of the human species. The Schiller Institute has therefore set itself the following tasks, and will publish studies on the following themes:

1. The immediate focus of our efforts shall be to prevent the decoupling of Western Europe from the United States, because upon this question hinges the survival of Western civilization.

2. It is equally urgent that the Western Alliance be given a new content, which by linking up with the ideals of the American Revolution, the German Classics and the Wars of Liberation, will enable us to formulate new tasks for the future.

3. By disseminating and stimulating the study of humanist literature and art in general, the Schiller Institute intends to contribute to creating the conditions for the flowering of a new Renaissance.

4. In order to ensure peace, we must work out concepts for eliminating the present nuclear threat, concepts comparable to those implicitly embedded within President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Lasting peace is only possible when the superpowers demonstrate mutual respect for each other's sovereignty, as well as that of other nations.

5. Solving the world economic crisis, whose effects are threatening the lives of millions of people, is a matter of the greatest urgency. It is the moral duty of the United States and Western Europe to support the Southern Hemisphere in its legitimate desire for industrialization and development, with full recognition of national sovereignty.

6. The Western Alliance must adopt the goal of making the emerging scientific and technological revolution in the fields of plasma physics, laser technology, and biology, into an object of international cooperation, as it is already doing on a limited scale with the joint exploration of space.

It is my profound conviction that we will survive only if, at last, we fulfill Friedrich Schiller's great hope that now--in our own time--we can usher in the Age of Reason. How can this be done? Along with the great poet himself, let me tell all of you who share the ideas and goals of the Schiller Institute:

Dare to be wise. This requires the energy and the courage to overcome all the obstacles which indolence and cowardice may put in the way of our education. It is not insignificant that the ancient myth has the goddess of wisdom springing fully armed from Jupiter's head; for her very first function is warlike.

Let us therefore be the warrior-angels who will storm into the Age of Reason for all humanity. Let us never rest until, a few generations hence, all humanity, all living people, will have developed into beautiful souls; for this is the only fitting condition for mankind.

I give my thanks to Friedrich Schiller, this beautiful, great soul.