The “German Workers’ Party”
result of their inner voice, which, more instinctively than consciously, made all past party activities seem to them no longer useful for a revival of the German nation or for the cure of its inner ailments. I hastily read over the basic statements, which were on hand in typewritten form, and I thought they betrayed seeking rather than knowledge. Much of it was vague or cloudy, much was missing; but there was nothing that did not go to show a striving for insight.
What these men felt was something I too had known: the longing for a new movement which should be more than a party in the old sense of the word.
When I went back to the barracks that evening, my judgment on the organization was already formed.
I was faced with probably the most difficult question of my life—should I join, or should I decline?
Reason could only advise refusal, but I had a feeling which gave me no rest, and the oftener I tried to urge upon myself the nonsensicality of the whole club, the oftener this feeling spoke in its favor. In the next few days I knew no rest.
I began to argue back and forth with myself. On political activity I had long since decided; that it could be only in a new movement was equally certain, but the impulsion to act had thus far still been lacking. I am not one of those who start something today, only to leave off tomorrow, and probably to switch over to something new. But my very conviction was the chief reason why it was so hard for me to decide to join a new organization, which either had to grow to be everything, or else was better left alone. I knew I was making a decision forever, in which there could be no later turning back. For me it was no temporary plaything, but deadly earnest. I have always had an instinctive dislike for people who start everything and finish nothing. To me such jumping-jacks were hateful. I thought what they did was worse than doing nothing.
This conception, however, was one of the main reasons why I could not decide as easily as many others to create a thing which either must become everything or otherwise be expediently left
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