THE GERMAN WORKERS’ PARTY ONE day I received orders from my Headquarters to go and find out what was going on in a society which was apparently political, and which was to hold a meeting during the next few days, under the name of the “German Workers’ Party” ; Gottfried Feder was to speak at it. I was to go to the meeting and have a look at the people, and then make a report.
The curiosity felt in the Army regarding political parties was more than comprehensible. The Revolu¬ tion had given the soldiers a right to be active in politics, and all of them, down to the most inexperienced, made full use of it. But it was not until the Centre and Social Democratic Parties realized to their sorrow that the sympathies of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolutionary Parties towards the National Movement and resuscitation of the country that they saw cause for withdrawing the franchise from the Army and prohibiting its taking a hand in politics.
The bourgeoisie, which was really suffering from senile weaknesses, thought in all seriousness that the Army would return to its former condition of being simply part of the defences of Germany, whilst the idea of the Centre and the Marxists was merely to draw the dangerous poison-tooth of nationalism, without which an Army is nothing but a perpetual police force and is no longer a military force, capable of withstanding an enemy ; this was amply proved in the years that followed.
I decided to attend the above-mentioned meeting of this Party, of which I had had no interior knowledge at all.
I was glad when Feder’s discourse was over. I had seen enough and was preparing to depart, when the announcement that anyone might now