after article proclaiming and demonstrating our criminality, and scandalous tales, fabricated from A to Z, were meant to do the trick. But in a short time they seem to have convinced themselves that such attacks were having no effect ; in fact, it really all helped to concentrate general attention straight on us.
One reason why it never got as far as breaking up our meetings was indubitably the extraordinary cowardice displayed by our opponents’ leaders. At all critical moments these despicable creatures waited outside the halls for the result of the explosion.
At that period we were obliged to take the pro¬ tection of our meetings into our own hands ; one can never count on protection by the official authorities ; on the contrary, experience shows that they always favour the disturbing element. For the only real success attending official action was, at most, in dis¬ solving a meeting, i.e., stopping it altogether ; this was, in fact, the aim and object of our opponents in coming to disturb us.
Thus, we had to make up our minds that any meet¬ ing which depended for protection solely on the police brings discredit on its promoters in the eyes of the masses.
Often and often a handful of adherents has put up a heroic resistance against a raging and violent mob of Reds. Those fifteen or twenty men would have cer¬ tainly been overwhelmed in the end. But the rest well knew three or four times as many of them would first get their heads knocked in, and they were not going to risk that.
It was clear to anyone how the Revolution was only possible thanks to the devastating methods of the bourgeois who governed our nation. Even then there would have been plenty of fists ready to protect the German nation, but there were no craniums to crack. How often then did the eyes of my young men shine in response when I explained to