THE GREAT ALLIANCE
21
struggle ior liberation,-standing thereby for
Ge~;many's
future
a:;
a whole,
-they alone are capable of taking this cultural legacy which they cherish,
of investigating it, making it over, critically clarifying it, rendering it
serviceable to their
new
and broader class-aims, and building it up into
the edifice of that
socialistic culture of the future,
for which today they are
so tenaciously fighting and, when needs be, dying. Wherefore, comrades,
it obviously behooves every revolutionary, every freedom-loving writer to
turn a deeply respectful gaze upon the Communist Party of Germany, and
to join the struggle for the liberation of its leader, our beloved Ernst
Thaelmann.
All the signs of the times indicate that those writers whose serious
concern is with cosmopolitanism, reason, and freedom should enter into
an alliance with the working class. To him who holds dear the great
names and works of the
past,- Goethe, Hegel, Lessing, Holder/in, Schiller,
Buchner, Heine,
and all those who have been the forerunners and furtherers
in the work of building up a classical culture, from Renaissance times down
to the last hundred years,- to the one who cherishes such works and names,
and who would rescue and purify the heritage from the fascist smirch, to
such a one it will be evident that the victorious outcome of the working
class revolution is the sole guarantee for the restoration and continued
development of the best in the cultural inheritance ot the centuries.
In an era such as ours, the responsibility and obligation of the writer
toward the great mass of the workers is a heavier, more challenging one,
than ever. Never was there a truly great art which was not anchored and
rooted in those decisive social forces and movements that stood as milestones
pointing to the future. What is bound to fall must be given a push. The
bourgeois social order, dependent upon capitalistic exploitation, is doomed
to fall at last. All the forces and thinking of an upward-tending progress
are in league
against
the bourgeoisie; all the classic works of the past speak
out
against
it; the future, and with it the cause of culture in general, is
against
the bourgeoisie; for that future, with its universal human interests,
is to be identified with the struggle of the working class. The present,
the past and the future imperiously demand of us the establishment of the
great battle-alliance, the united front againt Fascism and imperialistic war.
In his
Rouge et N oir,
Stendhal has his hero, in the course of a
soliloquy, let fall a sentence which hurls a proud and open defiance at the
ruling class and its baseness; it is a beautiful, bold, clear-ringing, revolu–
tionary utterance:
"Tread confidently! I have more spirit than these hirelings. I wear
the uniform of my century."
(From the German
by
Samuel Putnam)
