Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

The law of honor: Go along only on the paths of honor. Fight, and never be a coward. Leave the path of infamy to others. Better to fall in an honorable fight than win by infamy.

Besides, large-scale general plans : 1) they will seek to break the bonds between earth and heaven, doing their best to spread, on a large scale, atheistic and materialistic theories, degrading the Romanian people, or even just its leaders, to a people separated from God and its dead, they will kill them, not with the spear, but by cutting the roots of their spiritual life ; 2) they will then break the links of the race with the soil, material spring of its wealth, attacking nationalism and any idea of Fatherland and homeland ; determined to succeed, they will seek to seize the press ; 4) they will use any pretext, since in the Romanian people there are dissensions, misunderstandings, and quarrels, to divide them into as many antagonistic parties as possible ; 5) they will seek to monopolise more and more the means of existence of Romanians ; 6) they will systematically drive them to dissoluteness, annihilating family and moral force without forgetting to degrade and daze them through alcoholic drinks and other poisons. And, in truth, anyone who would want to kill and conquer a race could do it by adopting this system.

Because we have political parties led by Romanians, through which Judaism speaks ; Romanian papers, written by Romanians, through which the Jew and his interests speak ; Romanian lecturers, thinking, writing and speaking Hebraically, but in the Romanian language.

I reject republicanism. At the head of races, above the elite, there is Monarchy. Not all monarchs have been good. Monarchy, however, has always been good. The individual monarch must not be confused with the institution of Monarchy, the conclusions drawn from this would be false. There can be bad priests, but this does not mean that we can draw the conclusion that the Church must be ended and God stoned to death. There are certainly weak or bad monarchs, but we cannot renounce Monarchy. The race has a line of life. A monarch is great and good, when he stays on this line ; he is petty and bad, to the extent that he moves away from this racial line of life or he opposes it. There are many lines by which a monarch can be tempted. He must set them all aside and follow the line of the race. Here is the law of Monarchy.

Democracy elects men totally lacking in scruples, without any morals; those who will pay better, thus those with a higher power of corruption; magicians, charlatans, demagogues, who will excel in their fields during the electoral campaign. Several good men would be able to slip through among them, even politicians of good faith. But they would be the slaves of the former.

The new Romanian elite, as well as any other elite in the world, must be based on the principle of social selection. In other words, a category of people endowed with certain qualities which they then cultivate, is naturally selected from the nation's body, namely from the large healthy mass of peasantry and workingmen, which is permanently bound to the land and the country. This category of people becomes the national elite meant to lead our nation.

Democracy makes Rumanian citizens out of millions of Jews by making them the Rumanians' equals. By giving them the same legal rights. Equality? What for? We have been here for thousands of years. Plow and weapon in hand. With our labors and blood. Why equality with those who have been here for only one hundred, ten, or even five years? Let's look at the past: We created this state. Let's look at the future: We Rumanians are fully responsible for Greater Rumania. They have nothing to do with it. What could be the responsibility of Jews, in the history books, for the disappearance of the Rumanian state? Thus: no equality in labor, sacrifice, and struggle for the creation of the state and no equal responsibility for its future. Equality? According to an old maxim: Equality is to treat unequally the unequal. What are the reasons for the Jews' demanding equal treatment, equal political rights with the Rumanians?

On what must an elite be founded? a) Purity of soul. b) Capacity of work and creativity. c) Bravery. d) Tough living and permanent warring against difficulties facing the nation. e) Poverty, namely voluntary renunciation of amassing a fortune. f) Faith in God. g) Love.

Fascism is preoccupied by the clothing (namely the forms of state organization), National-Socialism by the body (namely the racial eugenics), whereas Legionarism is preoccupied by something much deeper: by the soul (namely by its strengthening through the cultivation of Christian virtues and its preparation with final salvation in mind, salvation dealt with by the Christian Church in the most perfect fashion).

Is it not frightening, that we, the Romanian people, no longer can produce fruit? That we do not have a Romanian culture of our own, of our people, of our blood, to shine in the world side by side with that of other peoples? That we be condemned today to present ourselves before the world with products of Jewish essence? That today, at this moment, when the world expects that the Romanian people appear to show the fruit of our national blood and genius, we present ourselves with an infection of Judaic cultural caricature?

A people is not led according to its will; the democratic formula; nor according to the will of one individual: the dictatorial formula. But according to laws. I do not talk here of man-made laws. There are norms, natural laws of life; and there are norms, natural laws of death. Laws of life and laws of death. A nation is headed for life or death according to its respect for one or the other of these laws.

Prayer is decisive element of victory. Wars are won by those who have managed to attract from elsewhere, from the skies, the mysterious forces of the invisible world and to secure their support. These mysterious forces are the souls of the dead, the souls of our ancestors, who once were, like us, linked to our clods, to our furrows, who died for the defense of this land and are still linked today to it by the memory of their lives and by us, their sons, their grandsons, their great grandsons. But, above the souls of the dead, there is God. Once these forces are attracted, they are of considerable power, they defend us, they give us courage, will, all the elements necessary to victory and which make us win. They bring in panic and terror among the enemies, paralyse their activity. In the last analysis, victories do not depend only on material preparation, on the material forces of the belligerents, but on their power to secure the support of spiritual forces. The fairness and the morality of actions and the fervent, insistent call for them in the form of rite and collective prayer attract such forces.

The ultimate goal is not life. It is resurrection. The resurrection of nations in the name of Jesus Christ the Savior. Creation and culture are only means--not the purpose--of resurrection. Culture is the fruit of talent, which God implanted in our nation and for which we are responsible. A time will come when all the world's nations will arise from the dead, with all their dead, with all their kings and emperors. Every nation has its place before God's throne. That final moment, "resurrection from the dead," is the highest and most sublime goal for which a nation can strive. The nation is thus an entity that lives even beyond this earth. Nations are realities also in the other world, not only on this one. To us Rumanians, to our nation, as to every nation in the world, God assigned a specific mission; God has given us a historical destiny. The first law that every nation must abide by is that of attaining that destiny, of fulfilling the mission entrusted to it.

The law of silence: Speak little. Say only what you must. Speak only when necessary. Your oratory should be deeds, not words. You accomplish: let others talk.

But the most important of all is the spiritual patrimony, because it alone bears the seal of eternity, it alone transcends all times. The ancient Greeks are with us today not because of their physiques, no matter how athletic--those are only ashes now--nor because of their material wealth, if they had such, but because of their culture.

If Christian mysticism and its goal, ecstasy, is the contact of man with god through a leap from human nature to divine nature, national mysticism is nothing other than the contact of man and crowds with the soul of their race through the leap which these forces make from the world of personal and material interests into the outer world of race. Not through the mind, since this anyone can do, but by living with their soul.

Legionary life is beautiful, not because of riches, partying or the acquisition of luxury, but because of the noble comradeship which binds all Legionaries in a sacred brotherhood of struggle.

I started with an impulse of my heart, with that instinct of defense which even the least of the worms has, not with the instinct of personal self-preservation, but of defense of the race to which I belong. This is why I have always had the feeling that the whole race rests on our shoulders, the living, and those who died for the Fatherland, and our entire future, and that the race struggles and speaks through us, that the hostile flock, however huge, in relation to this historical entity, is only a handful of human detritus which we will disperse and defeat... The individual in the framework and in the service of his race, the race in the framework and in the service of God and of the laws of the divinity: those who will understand these things will win even though they are alone. Those who will not understand will be defeated.

Democracy cannot wield authority, because it cannot enforce its decisions. A party cannot move against itself, against its members who engage in scandalous malfeasance, who rob and steal, because it is afraid of losing its members. Nor can it move against its adversaries, because in so doing it would risk exposure of its own wrongdoings and shady business.

Consider the attitude our great Vasile Conta held in the Chamber in 1879. Fifty years earlier the Romanian philosopher demonstrated with unshakeable scientific arguments, framed in a system of impeccable logic, the soundness of racial truths that must lie at the foundation of the national state...