heir parents. They
had been used ardently to call themselves Bolshevists until such time as
it was forced upon them that Bolshevism was not, in point of fact, a
democratic system. They and some of their friends still occasionally used
that label, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusiasm than of the
precise thinking that is done in morning light. For, after all, even Mr.
Bertrand Russell, even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their
hurried jottings down of the results of a cursory survey of so intricate
a system. And, anyhow, Bolshevism had the advantage that it had not yet
been tried in this country, and no one, not even the most imaginative and
clear-sighted political theorist, could forecast the precise form into
which the curious British climate might mould it if it should ever adopt
it. So that to believe in it was, anyhow, easier than believing in
anything which _had_ been tried (and, like all things which are tried,
found wanting) such as Liberalism, Toryism, Socialism, and so forth.

But the W.E.A. was a practical body, which went in for practical
adventure. Dowdy, schoolmarmish, extension-lectureish, it might be
and doubtless was. But a real thing, with guts in it, really doing
something; and after all, you can't be incendiarising the political
and economic constitution all your time. In your times off you can
do something useful, something which shows results, and for which such
an enormous amount of faith and hope is not required. Work for the
Revolution--yes, of course, one did that; one studied the literature of
the Internationals; one talked.... But did one help the Revolution on
much, when all was said? Whereas in the W.E.A. office one really got
things done; one typed a letter and something happened because of it;
more adult classes occurred, more workers got educated. Gerda, too young
and too serious to be cynical, believed that this must be right and good.

5

A clever, strange, charming child Barry found her, old and young beyond
her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too
often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating habit of
work, and of some things was astonishingly ignorant, with the ignorance
of those who, when at school, have worked at what they preferred and
quietly disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its wording
would be quaint. Her prose was, in fact, worse than her verse, and that
was saying a good deal. But she was