The occupation of the Ruhr district, which did not come as a surprise to us, gave grounds for hoping that Germany would at last abandon its cowardly policy of submission and therewith give the defensive associations a definite task to fulfil. The Storm Detachment also, which now numbered several thousand of robust and vigorous young men, should not be excluded from this national service. During the spring and summer of 1923 it was transformed into a fighting military organization. It is to this reorganization that we must in great part attribute the later developments that took place during 1923, in so far as it affected our Movement.