"Every country," he explained, "has been able to deal with its own Labour question more or less successfully, except Russia. The greatest danger the world might have to face would be an internationalisation of so-called Labour. Creslin is the apostle of internationalisation."
"Do you mean Creslin, the Bolshevist?" Leonard demanded—"the man whom the Prime Minister referred to as the Horror of the World?"
"The same," was the grim admission.
"But how is it that that man is free to walk the streets of any English town?" Leonard persisted. "I should have thought such a criminal could have been shot anywhere."
"I don't think there is any offence against the English law under which he could be charged," Rastall declared. "Every port was watched, and they did try to keep him out of the country. They hadn't a chance, though. He was far too clever for them."
The story of Creslin's coming was already known to me, but I asked Rastall a question which had been in my mind all the time.
"Tell me what there is against the Government putting a bold front on the matter, arresting Creslin, and deporting him as an undesirable alien?"
"Just this. The whole country just now is in a dangerously inflammatory state. The committees for settling Labour disputes worked well enough at first, but so much of this false, socialistic literature, anarchistic stuff, has made its way into the country during the last few years, that Labour, fat and well-fed and surfeited with pleasure, is more dangerous to-day than it was in the old days of starvation. Wages to-day are an enormous tax upon capital, but you know what the screaming Bolshevist is. He wants all the time to kill the goose that lays the golden egg; he wants to pull down the capitalist and reign in his stead. If ever he succeeded, as he did in Russia, England would be industrially and commercially ruined."
"Yet even with that certainty before us, you mean to tell me that the Government is going to let Creslin meet the heads of all the trades unions here and pour his filth down their throats?"
"Seems like it," was Rastall's laconic reply.