great or not, to dedicate my devoted service to my nation. I wanted to have my share of fortune, to be on the spot and play my part in the country where my heart’s most burning desire was destined to be fulfilled : the union of my beloved home with the common Fatherland, the German Reich.
Vienna gave me the hardest and most thorough schooling in my whole life ; only now do I fully appre¬ ciate the essential value of those years of discipline.
That is why I have treated that period rather fully —because it gave me my first instruction in the questions affecting the principles of the Party, which, having started on a very small scale, is, after barely five years,* well on the way to become a great popular movement. I do not know what my attitude towards Judiasm, Social Democracy, all that is meant by Marxism, the Social question, etc., would have been to-day, if the force of destiny had not at that early period of my life given me a foundation of opinions based on personal experience.