“Isn’t what glorious?” I asked, thinking she meant our first view of the sea, stretching black and restless beyond the veil of fine rain which dimmed the windows of the railway carriage.
“Why, that we can travel once more, and that we are flying as fast as we can to see the comrades from whom we have been separated so long.” And she waved her passport gaily. “I wonder if Clara Zetkin will be at the conference; and Balabanova? It is ages since I saw Angelica.”
Margaret’s bright face beamed with happiness, and her brown eyes shone like stars as she gathered up her wraps and bags for transport to the boat. She was like a bird set free from the cruel cage that had held her for four tormenting years. She suggested a warm little bird in her looks and manners. Small and brown, with a rich russet colouring of the cheeks, and quick in her movements, there is nothing in the world she resembles so much as the robin with the red breast.
She was one of the delegates representing the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress. I was a representative of the political side of the Movement. Miss Sophie Sanger was invited to accompany us as interpreter, and was possibly the most practically useful woman of the party. She speaks four languages with equal fluency. What Miss Sanger does not know about the world’s laws regulating labour and labour conditions, especially those affecting women, is said not to be worth knowing; which probably accounts for the fact that she now enjoys an appointment of considerable value and importance in the League of Nations Labour Department.
Mr. Henderson did not travel with us. He had gone ahead several days previously to help M. Huysmans with the final arrangements for the Conference. There had been some slight hitch with the Swiss Government, which at that time was tormented with the fear that we were a body of Bolsheviks out to subvert the loyalty of Swiss citizens. It was necessary to reassure President Ador and his associates on this point. Mr. Henderson was the man to do it. Nobody could look at him, the simple strength and solid respectability of him, and think him a Bolshevik! In spite of assurances given by him, every delegate was obliged to sign a statement repudiating the Bolsheviks and all their works before he was permitted to enter Switzerland!
Mr. J. H. Thomas was also one of the delegates; but whether he was attending a special conference with Mr. Barnes at the Hôtel Majestic in Paris, or whether he was busy settling a strike I cannot remember—strikes were epidemic at this time. He came to Berne later in the week.
The short passage across the Channel was quiet and uneventful. We sat in our deck-chairs well covered with warm wraps. A grey mist soon hid the land from our view. A slight rain moistened our hair and faces. We could not read for excitement and the blowing of the wind. We sat watching our fellow-passengers’ efforts to control their nerves and the busy sailors engaged upon their various tasks.
I do not know why the sentimental confession should be made here, but ever since I was a child chatting to the fishermen on the beach at Redcar I have felt a peculiar liking for the men of the sea. Perhaps it is an inheritance from a seafaring ancestry. It should be in the blood of every Briton. There is something in the brave, blue eyes of the sailor, his jolly frankness, his courage, his simplicity which goes straight to the heart of one. His unending contact with Nature in all her moods has stamped itself upon his being as plainly and unmistakably as the heated atmosphere of the weaving-shed or the smutty environment of the mine have set their mark upon the workers in these places; but in a pleasanter, more wholesome fashion.
In an hour or so we sighted Boulogne. It was raining hard, and the little French town looked very dreary and very dirty. French, British, and Belgian troops in considerable numbers mingled confusingly, the bearded poilu laughingly replying in cockney slang to Tommy’s amusing French. Incredible quantities of war material of all sorts met the eye. The railway track which we crossed from boat to train was a swamp. We had waited till our backs were almost broken with fatigue for the examination of our passports in the smoke-room of the steamer. At that time the element of common sense had not entered in the faintest degree into the organization of this business. Several hundreds of people, packed like sardines in a tin, waited their turn in the crowded ship’s corridor, and as the war had spoilt everybody’s temper and ruined most people’s manners, elbows were freely used to jostle out of their rightful places in the queue the timid and the polite.
A similar rushing, pushing, squeezing, tearing of clothes, wounding of ankles with the sharp edges of boxes, which the owners were too mean to give to the porter or too faithless to trust to him, occurred in the douane. At this time every box was opened and its contents carefully examined. The fatigue was immense. Women fainted and children screamed. Men swore loudly, unashamed. Unperturbed, the blue-uniformed officials pursued their avocation.