Throughout the winter of 1919-20 our one struggle was to strengthen faith in the conquering power of the young Movement and swell it into the fanaticism which has power to remove mountains.
A meeting of the “Deutches Reich” in the Dachauer Strasse again proved that I was right. The attendance amounted to over 200, and our success both as regards the public and financially was brilliant. A month later over 400 came to our meetings.
It was not for no reason that the young Movement fixed on a definite programme and did not employ the word “popular” [völkisch). Owing to its lack of limitation as a conception, that expression offers no possible basis for any Movement, nor does it set a standard for those who are to belong to it. Since the conception is hard to define in practice and is open to broad variations of interpretation, its appeal is too wide. Introduction into the political struggle of a conception, so undefined and with so many interpreta¬ tions, would tend towards destroying that community of aim in the struggle in order to attain which it cannot be left to the individual to settle his desires and con¬ victions for himself.
I cannot enough warn the young Movement against being drawn into the net of so-called “silent workers”. They are not only cowards, but are always incapables and idlers. A man who knows of a matter, recognizes some possible danger, and sees a remedy for it before his eyes, has the obligation laid upon him not to work “silently”, but to stand up publicly against the evil and work for its cure. If he fails in this he is a miser¬ able weakling, forgetful of duty, who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incapacity. But that is how most of these “silent workers” usually react, as though they knew God knows what. They are quite incapable, yet they try to trick the whole world with their pretentions ; they are lazy, yet give an impression of vast and busy activity with their pretence of “silent” work. I11 short, they are swindlers, political profiteers, who hate the honest work done by others. Every single