-cases,
and one comfortable chair for visitors in addition to two or three
hard chairs. It is obvious that he has no love of luxury or even
comfort. He is very friendly, and apparently simple, entirely without
a trace of _hauteur_. If one met him without knowing who he was, one
would not guess that he is possessed of great power or even that he is
in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of
self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up
one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of
the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely
friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He
is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of
self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of
history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his
desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who
misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got
the impression that he despises a great many people and is an
intellectual aristocrat.

The first question I asked him was as to how far he recognized the
peculiarity of English economic and political conditions? I was
anxious to know whether advocacy of violent revolution is an
indispensable condition of joining the Third International, although I
did not put this question directly because others were asking it
officially. His answer was unsatisfactory to me. He admitted that
there is little chance of revolution in England now, and that the
working man is not yet disgusted with Parliamentary government. But he
hopes that this result may be brought about by a Labour Ministry. He
thinks that, if Mr. Henderson, for instance, were to become Prime
Minister, nothing of importance would be done; organized Labour would
then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On this ground, he
wishes his supporters in this country to do everything in their power
to secure a Labour majority in Parliament; he does not advocate
abstention from Parliamentary contests, but participation with a view
to making Parliament obviously contemptible. The reasons which make
attempts at violent revolution seem to most of us both improbable and
undesirable in this country carry no weight with him, and seem to him
mere _bourgeois_ prejudices. When I suggested that whatever is
possible in England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waved a