THE STRUGGLE WITH THE RED FORGES IN 1919-20 and also in 1921 I attended so-called bourgeois meetings in person. I got to know something about those prophets of the bourgeois view of the world, and really did not wonder, for I under¬ stood why they attached so little importance to the spoken word. I attended meetings of the Democrats, German Nationalists, the German People’s Party and the Bavarian People’s Party (Bavarian Centre Party). What struck me at once was the solid unanimity of the audiences. Nearly all were Party followers who took part in such demonstrations. There was no discipline, and taken together it was more like a bored cardparty than an assembly of people who had just put through a great revolution. The speakers did all they could to keep up this peaceful atmosphere. They declaimed, or better still, most of them read, speeches in the style of a clever newspaper article or a learned treatise, avoiding all strong expressions ; here and there a feeble professional joke would be introduced, at which the gentlemen on the platform dutifully guffawed —not loudly but encouragingly, with gentlemanly reserve. The whole audience dozed in a sort of trance after three-quarters of an hour of it, with interruptions caused by someone going out, a waitress’s clatter, or yawns from many in the audience. At the close the Chairman called for a German patriotic song.
On this the meeting faded out—that is, everyone hurried to get out, one to his beer, another to a cafe, and others simply into the fresh air.
N 193 *94 MY STRUGGLE The National Socialist meetings, on the other hand, were by no means “peaceable” meetings. The billows of two world-views raged against one another, and they did not finish by grinding out a dull patriotic song but fanatical outbreaks of popular and nationalist passion.