THE CONSPIRATORS.
II.
My dear Charles,—The Third International is not a Rugby football match. It is a corporation of thrusters whose prospectus announces that it will very shortly have your blood, having first acquired exclusive rights in your money. Have you two acres and a cow? Have you seven pounds three and threepence in the Post-Office Savings Bank? Have you any blood? Very well, then; this concerns you.
There was a meeting of shareholders in Moscow as recently as July last. The Chairman said: "Gentlemen—I beg your pardon, Comrades,—I am happy to be able to report promising developments. Our main enterprise in Russia, for technical reasons with which I will not now trouble you, is not for the moment profit-producing; but we have been able to promote some successful ventures abroad. In all parts of the civilised world—and Ireland—we may anticipate a distribution of assets in the near future." And among those assets to be parcelled out are, I may say, your acres, your cow, your savings and yourself.
There followed a meeting of the Executive Committee (I wish they would avoid that tactless word "executive," don't you?). Simple and brisk instructions were drafted for foreign agents, bidding them get on with it and not spare themselves, or in any case not spare anyone else. These were inscribed on linen, which was folded over, with the writing inside, and neatly hemmed. Shortly afterwards a number of earnest young men wearing tall collars and an air of exaggerated innocence sought to cross various frontiers and were surprised and offended when rough and rude officials stole their collars and set about taking them to pieces.
I hate to speak slightingly of anyone, but these world-revolutionaries have no business to be so young. According to my view a professor of anarchy and assassination ought to be a man of middle-age with stiff stubble on his chin. He has no business to be a pale and perspiring youth, tending to long back hair and apt to be startled by the slightest sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a place on a perch in your own fowl-house.
We had an opportunity of seeing them in procession when a consignment of these world-revolutionaries drove off in state from Berne about the time of the Armistice. I told you, last week, that we had a Legation of them, very kindly lent by the Moscow management, and I also told you that our Italian juggler had let us into the secret of their midnight lucubrations, of which we had duly informed the officials interested in such matters. We had front places when the motor lorry called for them and the military escort arrived to assist all the passengers to take, and keep, their seats. Into the lorry were packed the Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary, the Chargé d'Affaires, the First Secretary, the Second Secretary, the Third Secretary, the Legal and Spiritual Advisers and the Lady Typist. Their features were not easy to distinguish; when the Bolshevists assume dominion over us they will not nationalize our soap. One or two fell out, but were carefully replaced by willing hands and bayonets; and so home.
Now that is a sight you don't often see: a Diplomatique Corps being returned to store in a motor lorry. The disappointing thing about them was that, for all their fiery propaganda and for all their drastic resolutions, never a one of them produced so much as a squib-cracker. The only people to derive any excitement from the affair were the small children, who took it for a circus.