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,