the Move¬ ment. After long hestitation—for he already had a good position with prospects—he consented, but only on one condition, that he should not be at the mercy of incompetent committees ; he must have to answer to one single master, and one only.
What actually happened was that some men were taken on to the staff of the paper who had formerly been attached to the Bavarian People’s Party, but their work showed that they had excellent qualifications. The result of this experiment was eminently successful. It was owing to this honest and frank recognition of a man’s real qualifications that the Movement captured the hearts of its employees, more swiftly and surely than had been the case ever before. Later on they became, and remained, good National Socialists, not in word alone, and they proved it by the solid, steady and conscientious work which they performed in the service of the new Movement.
In the course of two years I brought my views more and more into operation, and to-day, as far as the leadership-in-chief is concerned, they hold their ground as the most natural solution.
The obvious success of this system was shown on November 9th, 1923. Four years previously, when I entered the Movement, there was not even a rubber stamp. On November 9th, 1923, the Party was broken up, and its property confiscated. The total sum fetched by all objects of any value and by the paper amounted to over 170,000 gold-marks.