1.
My Dear Charles,--You continue to ask me what I am doing, and why, and when
I am going to sign the Peace, like everyone else, and return to honest
work. The answer is in the negative. Though I am very fond of peace, I
don't like work. And, as for being honest, I tend rather to politics. Have
I never told you that I take a leading part on the Continent in the great
Class War now raging? And, by the way, has anyone let you know that it is
only a matter of time before the present order of society is closed down,
the rule of the proletariat established and people like Charles set on to
clean the streets or ruthlessly eliminated?
LENIN began to worry about you as long ago as 1915, and you know what
happens to people when LENIN really starts to worry about them. He wasn't
satisfied that enough violent interest was being taken in you; the mere
Socialists he regarded as far too moderate and genteel. As for their First
and their Second International--he wanted something thoroughgoing,
something with a bit of ginger to it. So at the Zimmerwald Congress on the
5th September of that year all the out-and-outs unanimously declared war to
the knife agin the Government, whatever and wherever the Government might
be. How many long and weary years have you waited, Charles, to be told what
Zimmerwaldianism might be--a religious tendency, a political aspiration, a
valvular disease of the appendix or something to do with motor-cars? Ah,
but that is as nothing to the secrets I am going to let you into, to force
you into, before I have done with you.
It was not until well into 1918 that I myself began to worry about LENIN.
He had left Switzerland by that time, having got tired of the jodelling
Swiss and their infernally placid mountains. When the revolution broke out
in Russia he felt it was just the thing for him, and his German backers
felt he was just the man for it. So LENIN, whose real name isn't LENIN,
went into partnership with TROTSKY, whose real name isn't TROTSKY, and set
up in business in Moscow. But the thing was too good to be confined to
Russia; an export department was clearly called for. It was when they began
in the "off-licence" trade, in the "jug-and-bottle" business, that they ran
up against your Henry.
With the view of upheaving Switzerland, LENIN and Co. sent a Legation to
its capital, the principle being, no doubt, that before you cut another
people's throat you must first establish friendly relations. This Legation
arrived in May, 1918, when we were all so occupied with the War, making
returns and indents and things, that it hoped to pass unnoticed. But there
was something about that Legation which caught the eye; it had not the
Foreign Office look about it--smart Homburg hats, washleather gloves,
attaché-cases with majestic locks, spats ... there was something missing.
It looked as if it might be so many Anarchists plotting a bomb affair.
And that's what it was. I suppose you will say I am inventing it when I
tell you that it used to sit round a table, in the basement of an Italian
restaurant, devising schemes for getting rid of people (especially people
like Charles) _en bloc_; that it didn't provide the Italian restaurant-
keeper with as much money as he thought he could do with; that the Italian
restaurant-keeper came round to see us after dark; wouldn't give his name;
came into the room hurriedly; locked the door behind him; whispered "H'st!"
and told us all about it. It requires an Italian to do that sort of thing
properly; but this fellow was better than the best. I couldn't go to a
cinema for months afterwards because it lacked the thrill of real life.
We were so impressed with his performance that we asked him his trade. He
dropped the sinister, assumed the bashful and told us that he was an
illusionist and juggler before he took to restaurant-keeping and sleuthing.
He juggled four empty ink-pots for our entertainment and made one of them
disappear. Not quite the way to treat a world-revolution; but there! This
was all in the autumn of 1918, when we were naturally a bit above
ourselves.
Switzerland has four frontiers--German, Austrian, Italian and French.
Lenin's Legation had opened up modestly and without ostentation as becomes
a world's reformer, a distributing office on each one of the four. Somehow
I could never work myself up to be really alarmed at jolly ANNA BALABANOFF,
but I fancy she has done as much harm since as most people achieve here on
earth. Her job was to work into Italy; but in those days, when war
conditions still prevailed, she couldn't do much more than stand on the
shores of the Lake of Lugano and scowl at the opposite side, which is
Italian. Do you remember the lady's photograph in our daily Press? If so
you will agree with me that even that measure was enough to start unrest in
Italy....
Charles, my lad, let us break off there and leave you for a week all of a
tremble. In the course of these Sensational Revelations we are going to see
something of the arrangements made for the break-up of the old world,
which, with all its faults, we know we still love. The process of
reconstruction is not yet defined, and will probably not be attempted in
our time. In any case, when things arrive at that stage, there will be no
Charles and, I am still more sorry to say, no Henry.
Now, whatever you may think about it, I for one am not prepared to be
scrapped and to become part of a dump of oddments waiting instructions for
removal from a Bolshevist Disposals Board. You know what these Disposal
Boards are; one's body might lie out in the rain for years while the
minutes were being passed round the Moscow Departments. I have worried
myself to death about it, and now I am going to worry you. I am going to
make your flesh creep and your blood run cold. No use your telling me you
don't care what is coming along in the future, provided you can be left in
peace for the present. _I shall tap you on the shoulder and shall whisper
into your ear the resolutions passed with regard to you as recently as the
end of July last at Moscow._. I'll make you so nervous that you daren't get
into bed, and, once in bed, daren't get out again. I expect to have you mad
in about three weeks, and even then I shall pass more copies of this paper,
with more revelations in them, through the bars of your asylum window.
All that for sixpence a week is not expensive, is it, dear Charles?
Yours ever,