he members suspect not only everybody else but each other.
The more revolutionary the party is, the more the members are inclined
to regard each other, not as potential Garibaldis, but potential
traitors. For much the same reasons criminal conspiracies seldom
prosper. Crime seems to create an atmosphere of suspicion, and
co-operation among men who doubt each other is impossible. But it is
the same with every conspiracy, whether it is criminal or not. Secrecy
seems to awaken all the nerves of suspicion, even when one is secret
for the public good, and the conspirators soon find themselves
believing the most ludicrous things. Who has not known committees on
which some man or woman will not sit because of an idea that some
other member is in the pay of Scotland Yard? The amusing part of the
business is that this kind of thing goes on even in committees about
the proceedings of which there is no need of secrecy at all and at
which reporters from the _Times_ might be present for all the harm to
man or beast that is discussed. But there is a tradition of suspicion
in some movements that serves the purpose of enabling many innocent
people to lead exciting lives. I once knew a man who spent half his
time tying up his bootlaces under lamp-posts. He had an invincible
belief that detectives followed him, and he was never content till he
had allowed whoever was behind him to get past. Scotland Yard, I am
confident, knew as little of him as it does of Wordsworth. But it was
his folly to think otherwise, and for all I know he may be going on
with those slow but sensational walks of his through the London
streets at the present day. This is the amusing side of suspicion.
Unfortunately, it has also its base and mirthless side. Practically,
every bloody mistake--I use the word not as an oath--in the French
Revolution was the result of suspicion. It began with suspicion of the
Girondins; but suspicion of Danton and Robespierre soon followed.
Suspicion is a monster that devours her own children. Manifestly, no
movement can succeed in which men believe that their friends are viler
than their enemies. But in every movement, there are men who make a
trade of suspecting the leaders in their own camp, and the Socialist
movement is as much exposed to the plague as any other. Suspicion of
this kind, I think, is a bitter form of egoism. It is a trampling of
the suspected persons under one's own white feet.

Nor is it only in movements and in nati