We poor devils subscribed little sums and finally managed to advertise a meeting in the Munchener Beobachter, which was then independent. This time the success was amazing.
We had taken a room for the meeting. At 7 o’clock 111 persons were present and the meeting began. A Munich professor was to make the chief speech, and I was to speak second. I spoke for 30 minutes, and I now proved what I had instinctively felt but did not know for certain in any way : I could speak. After 30 minutes the audience in the little hall were electrified, and the enthusiasm was such that my appeal caused those present to be ready to subscribe 300 marks for expenses. This relieved us of a great anxiety.
The then Chairman of the Party, Herr Harrer, was by profession and training a journalist. But as a Party leader he had one great disability. He was not an orator for the masses. Exact and conscientious though his work was, for want of this talent, perhaps, he lacked the extra driving power. Herr Drexler, then local Chairman of the Movement in Munich, was simply a workman and of not much account as a speaker ; moreover, he was not a soldier. He had never served in the War, so that, besides being naturally weak and undecided, he had never had the sole train¬ ing which can make men out of soft, undecided char¬ acters. Thus, neither of them was hewn out of timber of the kind to assimilate fanatical faith in victory for any Movement.
I myself was then still a soldier.
Most of all must the Marxist betrayers of the nation have hated a Movement the outspoken aim of which was to win over the masses, which up till then had been absolutely at the beck and call of the inter¬ national Marxist Jewish Stock Exchange Parties. The title “German Workers’ Party” was an irritation by itself.