and in arming Communists with argument
for the defence of this unified opinion a mong the masses was again
illustrated when the Conference, in leaving it to the ouyezds to choose
for themselves the non-voting delegates urged them to select wherever
possible people who would have the widest opportunities of explaining
on their return to the district whatever results might be reached in
Moscow.

It was now pretty late in the evening, and after another very
satisfactory visit to the prison we drove back to the station. Larin,
who was very disheartened, realizing that he had lost much support in
the course of the discussion, settled down to work, and buried himself
in a mass of statistics. I prepared to go to bed, but we had hardly got
into the car when there was a tap at the door and a couple of railwaymen
came in. They explained that a few hundred yards away along the line a
concert and entertainment arranged by the Jaroslavl railwaymen was going
on, and that their committee, hearing that Radek was at the station, had
sent them to ask him to come over and say a few words to them if he were
not too tired.

"Come along," said Radek, and we walked in the dark along the railway
lines to a big one-story wooden shanty, where an electric lamp lit a
great placard, "Railwaymen's Reading Room." We went into a packed hall.
Every seat was occupied by railway workers and their wives and children.
The gangways on either side were full of those who had not found room on
the benches. We wriggled and pushed our way through this crowd, who were
watching a play staged and acted by the railwaymen themselves, to a side
door, through which we climbed up into the wings, and slid across the
stage behind the scenery into a tiny dressing-room. Here Radek was laid
hold of by the Master of the Ceremonies, who, it seemed, was also part
editor of a railwaymen's newspaper, and made to give a long account of
the present situation of Soviet Russia's Foreign Affairs. The little box
of a room filled to a solid mass as policemen, generals and ladies of
the old regime threw off their costumes, and, in their working clothes,
plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen. When the
act ended, one of the railwaymen went to the front of the stage and
announced that Radek, who had lately come back after imprisonment in
Germany for the cause of revolution, was going to talk to them about
the general state of affairs. I saw Radek grin at this fore