Then I lost all patience and decided to conduct a demonstration of protest on my own responsibility. By midday on the Wednesday I had dictated the posters in ten minutes and had hired the Circus Krone for the next day, February 3rd.
In those days it was a tremendous venture. It was quite uncertain if we could fill that vast hall, and there was a risk of the meeting being broken up. One thing was certain—a failure would throw us back for a long time to come.
We had one day in which to post our bills. Unluckily it rained on the Thursday morning, and there was reason to fear that many people would pre¬ fer remaining at home rather than hurrying to a meet¬ ing in rain and snow, especially when there was likely to be violence and murder.
On the Thursday two lorries, which I hired, were enveloped in red as much as possible, and two flags were stuck on them ; each one carried fifteen or twenty members of our Party ; orders were given to drive fast through the streets, throwing out leaflets— propaganda for the mass meeting to be held in the evening. It was the first time that lorries with flags had driven through the streets containing others than Marxists.
When I entered the great hall I felt the same joy which I had felt a year previously at the first meeting in the Hofbrähausfestsaal ; but it was not till I had forced my way through the solid wall of men and climbed on to the platform that I perceived the full measure of our success. The hall was before me, packed with thousands and thousands of people.
My theme was “Future or Ruin”. I began to speak and spoke for about two hours and a half. My feeling told me after the first half-hour that the meeting was going to be a big success.
The bourgeois papers reported the demonstration as having been merely “nationalist” in character ; in their usual modest fashion they omitted all mention of its promoters.