The second reason is not merely tragic ; it is pitiable. It arises from the said mixture of envy, greed, ambition and readiness to steal, which appears, alas ! so often combined in matters which interest humanity.
The moment that a new Movement has started and has adopted its own particular programme, men come forward, claiming to fight for the same object. This does not mean that they intend to take their places honestly in the ranks of the Movement and so admit its rights of priority, but that they mean to steal its programme and form a new party based on it.
The founding of a whole number of new groups, Parties, etc., calling themselves “Nationalist”, in the years 1918-19, came to pass with no merit to their founders but as a natural development. By 1920 the National Socialist German Workers’ Party had grad¬ ually become crystallized as the victorious Party. Nothing proves the genuine honesty of certain indi¬ vidual founders more wonderfully than the fact that several of them decided with admirable promptitude to sacrifice their own obviously less successful Move¬ ment, i.e., to close it down and affiliate it uncondition¬ ally to the stronger one.
This was the case especially with the protagonist of the German Socialist Party in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher. The two Parties were started with similar aims but were otherwise quite independent of one another. As soon, however, as Streicher was con¬ vinced clearly and unquestionably of the superior strength and stronger growth of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, he ceased working for the German Socialist Party and called upon his adherents to come into line with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which had emerged victorious out of the contest, and to combine with it in continuing to fight for the common cause. A decision highly com¬ mendable but difficult for him as a man.
It ought never to be forgotten that no really great achievement has ever been effected in this world by Coalitions ; but they have always been due