My reasons at that time for guarding strictly against letting the Storm Detachment of the German National Socialist Labour Party appear as a defence association were as follows:

Moreover, a proper system of military training cannot be developed where there are such ridiculously scanty means as those at the disposal of the defence associations. The principal task of such an institution must be to impart the best and most reliable kind of instruction. Eight years have passed since the end of the War, and during that time none of our German youth, at an age when formerly they would have had to do military service, have received any systematic training at all. The aim of a defence association cannot be to enlist here and now all those who have already received a military training; for in that case it could be reckoned with mathematical accuracy when the last member would leave the association. Even the younger soldier from 1918 will no longer be fit for front-line service twenty years later, and we are approaching that

state of things with a rapidity that gives cause for anxiety. Thus the defence associations must assume more and more the aspect of the old ex-service men's societies. But that cannot be the meaning and purpose of an institution which calls itself, not an association of ex-service men but a DEFENCE association, indicating by this title that it considers its task to be, not only to preserve the tradition of the old soldiers and hold them together but also to propagate the idea of national defence and be able to carry this idea into practical effect, which means the creation of a body of men who are fit and trained for military defence.

But this implies that those elements will receive a military training which up to now have received none. This is something that in practice is impossible for the defence associations. Real soldiers cannot be made by a training of one or two hours per week. In view of the enormously increasing demands which modern warfare imposes on each individual soldier to-day, a military service of two years is barely sufficient to transform a raw recruit into a trained soldier. At the Front during the War we all saw the fearful consequences which our young recruits had to suffer from their lack of a thorough military training. Volunteer formations which had been drilled for fifteen or twenty weeks under an iron discipline and shown unlimited self-denial proved nevertheless to be no better than cannon fodder at the Front. Only when distributed

among the ranks of the old and experienced soldiers could the young recruits, who had been trained for four or six months, become useful members of a regiment. Guided by the 'old men', they adapted themselves gradually to their task.

In the light of all this, how hopeless must the attempt be to create a body of fighting troops by a so-called training of one or two hours in the week, without any definite power of command and without any considerable means. In that way perhaps one could refresh military training in old soldiers, but raw recruits cannot thus be transformed into expert soldiers.