Nationalism and Culture Read Free Page A

personal reasons he felt constrained to employ proved unsatisfactory. The transcription of his rendering from the cylinders of a dictating machine was so faulty as to make necessary an almost complete re-translation of most of the chapters he undertook and drastic revision of all the others. It would therefore be unjust to hold Mr. James responsible for any part of the translation as here presented. It would be outrageous not to make plain that but for the impetus that he gave and the example that he set this translation would probably never have been made. The writer is glad to record his recognition of this fact.
    For the faults which remain in this translation the writer is alone responsible.
    One who has undertaken a task of this magnitude while practically bound to an armchair must needs have owed much to others—much than can never be acknowledged in detail. Mention must, however, in decency be made of some of the many obligations incurred:
    First, to all of the Los Angeles members of the Rocker Publications Committee, whose names are given in the author's preface, and among these more particularly to H. Yaffe and to C. V. Cook and Sadie Cook for painstaking care of the business and financial details j to Edward A. Cantrell for invaluable assistance in verifying quotations from English language sources j to Clarence L. Swartz for formal revision of the manuscript and for useful suggestions as to renderings j to T. H. Bell for critical assistance and—especially—for friendly approval.
    Second, and above all, to De De B. Welch for the unceasing loyal
    encouragement which has kept the writer at his task and for her indispensable help in verifying historical and artistic references.
    Nationalism and Culture is the first of the works of Rudolf Rocker to appear in English. Although the author is known as a platform speaker to wide circles both in England and the United States some introduction of him to the wider reading public seems appropriate, the more so as his book is in a rather unusual degree an expression of the man.
    Rudolf Rocker was born on March 25, 1873, in the ancient Rhine city of Mainz. He refers with a touch of pride to the fact that the city of his birth was founded by the Romans in 57 b.c, and that it was the birthplace of Johann Gutenberg and the site of his first printing house.
    With mingled pride and affection he refers to its record of fruitful cultural activity, of democratic spirit and ready acceptance of advanced social ideas—he specifies the "Declaration of the Rights of Man"—and of resistance to oppression—he specifies its antagonism to the encroachments of the Prussian state. He mentions the friendly attitude of a large part of the population of Mainz to the South German federalist, Constantin Frantz, one of Bismarck's most determined opponents.
    It seems clear that the atmosphere and the traditions of his native city profoundly influenced him in his youth.
    Rocker's father was a music printer {Notenstecher^ "music typographer"). His mother came from one of the old burger families of Mainz. Rocker early lost his parents, and his boyhood was passed in a Catholic orphans' home.
    During his childhood and youth Rocker was strongly influenced in his intellectual development by his uncle Rudolf Naumann, his mother's brother, whom he described as an extremely intelligent and well-read man. The uncle instilled in young Rudolf a fondness for serious studies and assisted him in every way in the pursuit of them. He initiated the youth into _the_sociaiist movement, which at that time in~Germany was completely under the intellectual domination of Marx and Lassalle. The Bismarckian anti-socialist law was still being rigorously enforced, so that open activity of any sort was out of the question, and the movement was entirely an underground one. Socialist literature was printed abroad, smuggled into the country and distributed secretly. The influence of this situation on young Rudolf is perhaps best