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vi autumn of the same year he was taken ill, but was in a fair way to recovery, when; by resuming work too soon, he suffered a relapse. His illness took the form of typhus fever, and he died insensible, without being able to make any arrangements respecting his papers and collections.

Mr. Cleasby’s heirs, anxious that his labours should not be thrown away, paid a considerable sum of money to certain persons in Copenhagen, for the purpose of completing the book. But in 1854 came a demand for more money; and as it seemed doubtful whether the work was likely to be finished in any reasonable time, and on any reasonable terms, it was determined that the whole of the MSS. should be sent to England. It seems, however, that none of Mr. Cleasby's original slips were included in the papers sent. These papers consist of rough transcripts, made after Mr. Cleasby’s death by various students in Copenhagen, whereas his original papers have not to this day come over to England.

It is clear, from an examination of these transcripts, that scarcely any part of the Dictionary, with the exception of the words sent to Grimm, had been completed during Mr. Cleasby’s lifetime or by him. The letters D, F, J, K, N, O, P, S, U, V, and H (partially), were worked out after his death by the Copenhagen editors, but in such a manner that it would have been much better to have had Mr. Cleasby’s papers in their original form. In his collections he appears to have been accustomed to write out in full the references taken from MSS., while he made but a brief note by page or otherwise of words drawn from printed books. This he probably did, both to save labour and also because he may have looked forward to being able to complete his book In England, where the printed editions, but not the MSS., would have been within his reach. The editors have simply copied out these references, adding and explaining little or nothing.

The MSS. in this state were placed at the disposal of the well-known Icelandic scholar, Mr. G. Webbe Dasent, and In the year 1855 he proposed to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press at Oxford to undertake the publication of the Dictionary under the belief that the collections left by Mr. Cleasby would not require much revision to fit them for publication. A specimen was set up in type, and Mr. Dasent himself undertook to see the book through the Press.

The matter, however, remained In abeyance till the year 1864, when Mr. Dasent again brought it before the Delegates. They, having taken into consideration the great value of a complete and accurate Dictionary of the old classical Scandinavian language, and the great interest this language has for students of Old English, were persuaded to renew their engagement with Mr. Dasent and to undertake the publication of the work. Mr. Dasent consented, as before, to revise the proof-sheets, to correct the English explanations and translations, and to add parallel words and usages from the Old English and Scottish dialects. He also stated to the Delegates that the papers were left in an imperfect state, and asked them to grant a sum of money, for the


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 sub-factories; a French official bound for Franceville, which it will take him thirty-six days, go as quick as he can, in a canoe after Njole; a tremendously lively person who has had black water fever four times, while away in the bush with nothing to live on but manioc, a diet it would be far easier to die on under the circumstances. He is excellent company; though I do not know a word he says, he is perpetually giving lively and dramatic descriptions of things which I cannot but recognise. M. S, with his pince-nez, the Doctor, and, above all, the rapids of the Ogowé, rolling his hands round and round each other and dashing them forward with a descriptive ejaculation of "Whish, flash, bum, bum, bump," and then comes what evidently represents a terrific fight for life against terrific odds. Wish to goodness I knew French, for wishing to see these rapids, I cannot help feeling anxious and worried at not fully understanding this dramatic entertainment regarding them. There is another passenger said to be the engineer's brother, a quiet, gentlemanly man. Captain argues violently with every one; with Mr. Cockshut on the subject of the wicked waste of money in keeping the Mové and not shipping all goods by the Éclaireur, "n'est-ce pas?" and with the French official on goodness knows what, but I fancy it will be pistols for two and coffee for one in the morning time. When the captain feels himself being worsted in argument, he shouts for support to the engineer and his brother. "N'est-ce pas?" he says, turning furiously to them. "Oui, oui, certainement," they say dutifully and calmly, and then he, refreshed by their support, dashes back to his controversial fray. He even tries to get up a row with me on the subject of the English merchants at Calabar, whom he asserts have sworn a kind of blood oath to ship by none but British African Company's steamers. I cannot stand this, for I know my esteemed and honoured friends the Calabar traders would ship by the Flying Dutchman or the devil himself if either of them would take the stuff at 15s. the ton. We have, however, to leave off this row for want of language, to our mutual regret, for it would have been a love of a fight.

Soon after leaving Lembarene Island, we pass the

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Rh purpose of securing the services of an Icelandic scholar in completing the work. This was also agreed to; and Mr. Dasent, in the course of the same year, secured the services of Mr. Gudbrand Vigfusson, a born Icelander, already well known for his learning, and for his labours in the field of his native literature.

Mr. Vigfusson’s report of the papers handed over by Mr. Cleasby’s heirs shews that they contained copious materials for a Dictionary, but required much labour and research to work them into a form fit for publication. Mr. Cleasby’s were the first large and comprehensive collections ever made, and are particularly valuable in that they were all taken from the documents themselves. The words of varied construction, such as the chief Verbs and Prepositions, are very rich, and taken from the best writers. But the words relating to Antiquities are left in a meagre condition; and there are many omissions of a kind which shew that Mr. Cleasby kept much of the matter in his head, and intended carefully to revise the whole. He intended no doubt to have worked out every word with the same conscientious accuracy which is shewn in the completed articles,—a task which would have occupied years of labour; and had life been granted him, it is certain he would have fulfilled this self-imposed task well and thoroughly. These circumstances have rendered the business of completing the book very arduous, and must account in a great measure for the delay which has occurred in the publication of even a part of the work.

Unfortunately also, Mr. Dasent’s incessant and various occupations have prevented him from carrying his promised supervision beyond the first two sheets. The task of revising the English part of the work has fallen into hands far less competent, not only in respect to knowledge of the Scandinavian language and literature, but also in respect to acquaintance with those archaic and provincial dialects of the British Isles, which have special affinities to the Scandinavian tongue.

The Delegates however have reason to hope that a fuller account of Mr. Cleasby’s life and labours, as well as a general introduction to the whole work, will be written by Mr. Dasent and prefixed to the Dictionary when it is completed.

Mr. Vigfusson takes this opportunity of acknowledging the help and advice he has received from the officials at the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, and particularly to express his many obligations to the Rev. H. O. Coxe, librarian of the Bodleian. He also desires to render his personal thanks to the following Icelandic scholars,—Mr. Dasent, Dr. John Carlyle, Prof Konrad Maurer of Munich, Prof. C. R. Unger of Christiania, and last, not least, to his friend and countryman Mr. Jón Sigurdsson of Copenhagen. H. G. L. b 2


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 mouth of the chief southern affluent of the Ogowé, the Ngunie; it flows in unostentatiously from the E.S.E., a broad, quiet river here with low banks and two islands (Walker's islands) showing just off its entrance. Higher up, it flows through a mountainous country, and at Samba, its furthest navigable point, there is a wonderfully beautiful waterfall, the whole river coming down over a low cliff, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains. It takes the Éclaireur two days steaming from the mouth of the Ngunie to Samba, when she can get up; but now, in the height of the long dry season neither she nor the Mové can go because of the sand banks; so Samba is cut off until next October. Hatton and Cookson have factories up at Samba, for it is an outlet for the trade of Achango land in rubber and ivory, a trade worked by the Akele tribe, a powerful, savage and difficult lot to deal with, and just in the same condition, as far as I can learn, as they were when Du Chaillu made his wonderful journeys among them. While I was at Lembarene, waiting for the Éclaireur, a notorious chief descended on a Ngunie sub-factory, and looted it. The wife of the black trading agent made a gallant resistance, her husband was away on a trading expedition, but the chief had her seized and beaten, and thrown into the river. An appeal was made to the Doctor, then Administrator of the Ogowé, a powerful and helpful official, and he soon came up with the little cannonier, taking Mr. Cockshut with him to vindicate the honour of the French flag, under which all factories here are. They, having got to the scene of action, sent a message to the chief to come down and talk the palaver. The chief being a natural-born idiot, came with two of his head men and some retainers. Only he and the head men were allowed into the room, and three or four Senegalese soldiers held the door, while the three white men, the Doctor, the captain of the cannonier and Mr. Cockshut took a black man apiece, and after a fine fight, threw them and bound them. The injured lady was then admitted, and given a Kasanguru with which she returned thanks personally to the chief with all her might, accompanying her operations with verbal commentary on the way he had behaved to her, as any lady would. The chief and his two head men were then


text: An Icelandic-English Dictionary/Preface

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 20 NON-FICTION

GRENFELL, W. T. Adventure of life. 1912 Houghton $1.75

KLEISER, Grenville. Training for power and leadership. Star bks $1

MARDEN, O. S. Keeping fit. 1914 Crowell $1.75

MARTIN, E. D. Meaning of a liberal edu- cation. Star bks $1

ROYDEN, A. M. Life’s little pitfalls. 1925 Putnam $1.25

RUSSELL, Bertrand. Conquest of happi- ness. 1930 Liveright $3

Education and the good life. 1931 Boni $1

WALSH, W. S. Cultivating personality. 1930 Dutton $2.50

WILSON, Woodrow. When a man comes to himself. 1915 Harper 75¢

YOUNG, Vashni. Fortune to share. 1931

Bobbs $1.50 Let’s start over again. 1932 Bobbs $1.50

200 RELIGION

AUGUSTINE, Saint. Confessions. Everyman’s $1

BARTON, Bruce. Grosset $1

BARTON, G. A. Religions of the world. rev ed 1919 _ Univ of Chicago press $2.25

BROWNE, Lewis. Stranger than fiction. Macmillan $1

This believing world. 1930

Macmillan $1

DELARUE-MARDRUS, Lucie. Ste. Therese of Lisieux. 1929 Longmans $2

EDDY, M. B. Science and health. Chris- tian science pub soc, Boston (often free to prisons)

FLEG, Edmond. Why I am a Jew. 1929 Bloch $1.25

FOSDICK, H. E. Adventurous religion. Red label $1

What can a man believe?

220 Bible.

BARTON, Bruce. Grosset $1

Man nobody knows. Grosset $1

BIBLE. (Usually free to prisons from Gideons’ Society) Oxford ed. Oxford 85c up

CASE, S. J. Jesus; a new biography. 1927 Univ of Chicago press $3

Book nobody knows.

Meaning of faith ($1.35); Mean- ing of prayer ($1.15); Meaning of serv- ice ($1.25) Assn press

GIBBONS, James, cardinal. fathers. Murphy $1

GORE, Charles. Philosophy of the good life. 1930 Scribner $3

MERRIFIELD, Fred. Modern religious verse and prose. 1925 Scribner $3.50

REINACH, Salomon. Orpheus; a history of religions. rev ed 1929 Liveright $5

ROYDEN, A. M. I believe in God. Red label $1

SCIENCE and religion; a symposium. 1931 Scribner $1.75

THOMAS 4 Kempis. Imitation of Christ. Everyman’s $1

WALKER, Williston. History of the Chris- tian church. 1918 Scribner $3.50

Faith of our

Jesus Christ

GLOVER, T. R. Jesus of history. Harper $1.50

HASTINGS, James & others. Dictionary of the Bible. ly ed Scribner $7 (when funds permit)

HODGES, George. Red label $1

VAN LOON, H. W. Story of the Bible. 1923 Boni $5

1917

How to know the Bible.

291 Mythology

BULFINCH, Thomas. Bulfinch's mythology. rev and enl Crowell $3

FRAZER, Lady. Leaves from The golden bough. Grosset $1

GUERBER, H. A. Myths of northern lands. Am bk $2

HUTCHINSON, W. M. L. Orpheus. Longmans $2 �


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 NON-FICTION 21

300 SOCIOLOGY

ADDAMS, Jane. Twenty years at Hull

house. 1930 Macmillan $4 ANGELL, Norman. Unseen assassins. 1932 Harper $3

BRANDEIS, L. D. Social and economic views of Mr. Justice Brandeis. 1930 Vanguard press $4.50

BURNS, C. D. Modern civilization on trial, 1931 Macmillan $2.50

CHASE, Stuart. Men and machines. 1930 Macmillan $1.75

DICKINSON, G. L. After two thousand years. 1931 Norton $2

Modern symposium. Doubleday $1.50

ENCYCLOPAEDIA of the social sciences; ed-in-chief E.R.A. Seligman. 15v 1930 Macmillan per vol $7.50; per set $112.50 (for large libraries which can afford it; 9y now out)

1905

LUMLEY, F. E. & Bode, B. H. Ourselves and the world. 1931 McGraw $3

MARSHALL, L. C. Story of human prog- ress. 1925 Macmillan $1.48

MERZ, Charles. Great American band wagon. Star bks. $1

MUMFORD, Lewis. Story of Utopias. Liveright’ $3

AGE, Kirby. Recent gains in American

civilization. 1928 Harcourt $3

ROSS, E. A. Civic sociology. rev and enl ed’ 1932 World bk $1.80

Principles of sociology.

1930 Century $4

TOWNE, E. T. Social problems. 3d ed 1931 Macmillan $1.68

WELLS, H. G. Work, wealth and happiness of mankind. 2y 1931 Doubleday $7.50

1922

rey ed

326 Negroes

CALVERTON, V. F. Anthology of Ameri- can negro literature. Modern lib 95c

DOWD, Jerome. Negro in American life. 1926 Century $5

DU BOIS, W. E. B. Gift of black folk; the

negroes in the making of America. 1924 Associated pubs $2

EMBREE, E. R. Brown America. 1931 Viking $2.50

JOHNSON, C. S. Negro in American civili- zation. 1930 Holt $4

JOHNSON, J. W. Autobiography of an ex- coloured man. Knopf $1

Black Manhattan. 1930 Knopf $3

ed. Book of American negro poetry. 1922 Harcourt $1.75

LOCKE, Alain, ed. New negro, an interpre- tation. 1925 Boni $5

MOTON, R. R. What the negro thinks. 1929 Doubleday $2.50

WOOFTER, T. J. Black yeomanry: life on St. Helena island. 1930 Holt $3

330 Economics

AMBLER, M. B. Man and his riches. 1931 Rockwell $1.25

BABSON, R. W. Fighting business depres- sions. 1932 Harper $3

BAKER, C. W._ Pathways back to pros- perity. 1932 Funk $2.50

CARVER, T. N. & Carmichael, Maude. Elementary economics. rev ed 1929 Ginn $2

CHAMBERLIN, W. H._ Soviet planned eco- nomic order. 1931 World peace founda-

tion $2.50 1932 Macmil-

CHASE, Stuart. Jan $2 & Schlink, F. J. Your money’s worth. 1927 Macmillan $1 COLE, G. D. H. Guide through world chaos. 1932 Knopf $3.75

New deal.

DONHAM, W. B. Business looks at the un- foreseen. 1932 McGraw $2.50

ELY, R. T. Hard times—the way in and the way out. 1931 Macmillan $1.75

FAIRCHILD, F. R. Essentials of econom: 1931 Am bk $1.60

FAULKNER, H. U. American economic history. rey ed 1931 Harper $3.50

FLYNN, J. T. Graft in business. 1931 Vanguard press $3

GEORGE, Henry. Progress and poverty. 1926 Vanguard press 75c

HANSEN, A. H. Economic stabilization in an unbalanced world. 1932 Harcourt $3

HOBSON, J. A. Poverty in plenty. 1931 Maemillan $1.25

HUGHES, R. 0, Fundamentals of econom- ics. 1929 Allyn $1.80

�


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MET him in the Blue Room of the Transoceanic Liner Harding the night of Mars Day—June 10, 1967. I had been wandering about the city for several hours prior to the sailing of the flier watching the celebration, dropping in at various places that I might see as much as possible of scenes that doubtless will never again be paralleled—a world gone mad with joy. There was only one vacant chair in the Blue Room and that at a small table at which he was already seated alone. I asked his permission and he graciously invited me to join him, rising as he did so, his face lighting with a smile that compelled my liking from the first.

I had thought that Victory Day, which we had celebrated two months before, could never be eclipsed in point of maa national enthusiasm, but the announcement that had been made this day appeared to have had even a greater effect upon the minds and imaginations of the people.

The more than half-century of war that had continued almost uninterruptedly since 1914 had at last terminated in the absolute domination of the Anglo-Saxon race over all the other races of the World, and practically for the first time since the activities of the human race were preserved for posterity in any enduring form no civilized, or even semi-civilized, nation maintained a battle line upon any portion of the globe. War was at an end—definitely and forever. Arms and ammunition were being dumped into the

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2 five oceans; the vast armadas of the air were being scrapped or converted into carriers for purposes of peace and commerce.

The peoples of all nations had celebrated—victors and vanquished alike—for they were tired of war. At least they thought that they were tired of war; but were they? What else did they know? Only the oldest of men could recall even a semblance of world peace, the others knew nothing but war. Men had been born and lived their lives and died with their grandchildren clustered about them—all with the alarms of war ringing constantly in their ears. Perchance the little area of their activities was never actually encroached upon by the iron-shod hoof of battle; but always somewhere war endured, now receding like the salt tide only to return again; until there arose that great tidal wave of human emotion in 1959 that swept the entire world for eight bloody years, and receding, left peace upon a spent and devastated world.

Two months had passed—two months during which the world appeared to stand still, to mark time, to hold its breath. What now? We have peace, but what shall we do with it? The leaders of thought and of action are trained for but one condition—war. The reaction brought despondency—our nerves, accustomed to the constant stimulus of excitement, cried out against the monotony of peace, and yet no one wanted war again. We did not know what we wanted.

And then came the announcement that I think saved a world from madness, for it directed our minds along a new line to the contemplation of a fact far more engrossing than prosaic wars and equally as stimulating to the imagination and the nerves—intelligible communication had at last been established with Mars!

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 Generations of wars had done their part to stimulate scientific research to the end that we might kill one another more expeditiously, that we might transport our youth more quickly to their shallow graves in alien soil, that we might transmit more secretly and with greater celerity our orders to slay our fellow men. And always, generation after generation, there had been those few who could detach their minds from the contemplation of massacre and looking forward to a happier era concentrate their talents and their energies upon the utilization of scientific achievement for the betterment of mankind and the rebuilding of civilization.

Among these was that much ridiculed but devoted coterie who had clung tenaciously to the idea that communication could be established with Mars. The hope that had been growing for a hundred years had never been permitted to die, but had been transmitted from teacher to pupil with ever-growing enthusiasm, while the people scoffed as, a hundred years before, we are told, they scoffed at the experimenters with flying machines, as they chose to call them.

About 1940 had come the first reward of long years of toil and hope, following the perfection of an instrument which accurately indicated the direction and distance of the focus of any radio-activity with which it might be attuned. For several years prior to this all the more highly sensitive receiving instruments had recorded a series of three dots and three dashes which began at precise intervals of twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes and continued for approximately fifteen minutes. The new instrument indicated conclusively that these signals, if they were signals, originated always at the same distance from the Earth and in the same direction as the point in the universe occupied by the planet Mars.

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 It was five years later before a sending apparatus was evolved that bade fair to transmit its waves from Earth to Mars. At first their own message was repeated—three dots and three dashes. Although the usual interval of time had not elapsed since we had received their daily signal, ours was immediately answered. Then we sent a message consisting of five dots and two dashes, alternating. Immediately they replied with five dots and two dashes and we knew beyond peradventure of a doubt that we were in communication with the Red Planet, but it required twenty-two years of unremitting effort, with the most brilliant intellects of two worlds concentrated upon it, to evolve and perfect an intelligible system of inter-communication between the two planets.

Today, this tenth of June, 1967, there was published broadcast to the world the first message from Mars. It was dated Helium, Barsoom, and merely extended greetings to a sister world and wished us well. But it was the beginning.

The Blue Room of The Harding was, I presume, but typical of every other gathering place in the civilized world. Men and women were eating, drinking, laughing, singing and talking. The flier was racing through the air at an altitude of little over a thousand feet. Its engines, motivated wirelessly from power plants thousands of miles distant, drove it noiselessly and swiftly along its overnight pathway between Chicago and Paris.

I had of course crossed many times, but this instance was unique because of the epoch-making occasion which the passengers were celebrating, and so I sat at the table longer than usual, watching my fellow diners, with, I imagine, a slightly indulgent smile upon my lips, since—I mention it in no spirit of egotism—it had been my high privilege to

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 for ever (Rom. ix. 4-5), God’s own (dov) Son (Rom. viii. 32), who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. ii. 6); he ascribes to him divine attributes: eternity (Heb. xiii. 8), unchangeableness (Heb. i. 10-12), almightiness (Heb. i. 3; Phil. iii. 21), and says: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Col. i. 16, 17).

In these Epistles Christ is in three places called God (Rom. ix. 4-5; Tit. ii. 11-13; 1 Tim. iii. 16). I examine the texts, and I discover that all three indications by St. Paul that Christ is God are based on the addition of words to the old texts, and on the incorrectness of the translations and the punctuation. The passage in Timothy is read in various ways. In the oldest texts the word “God” does not occur at all, but instead of it there is a relative pronoun, now of the masculine, and now of the neuter gender. In any case this whole verse refers to Christ, and not to God, and the substitution in later texts of the word “God” for the pronoun cannot serve as a proof of the divinity of Christ. Then follows the passage Tit. ii. 11-13. The verse stands as follows: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” The conjunction “and” is taken by the Theology to be the same as a colon and an equality, and, instead of understanding the passage, as many similar passages are understood, as speaking of the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, these words are taken as a proof of the divinity of Christ. Finally, the last passage is Rom. ix. 5. This passage is read in such a way that Christ is called a blessed God, only because the punctuation mark which ought to stand after “flesh Christ came,” has been changed from a period to a comma.


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 taken up to Njole, where they are at present engaged in the healthy and invigorating pursuit of navvying a stiff clay bank in the interest of the government.

The Samba natives are in no hurry for that job to be completed. They are quite tired of that chief themselves, and would have had to poison him off on their own account had not the Doctor intervened. In fact, every one is satisfied except the chief and the two head men, who have not acquired a taste for manual labour yet.

The banks of the Ogowé just above Lembarene Island are low; with the forest only broken by village clearings and seeming to press in on those, ready to absorb them should the inhabitants cease their war against it. The blue mountains of Achango land show away to the E.S.E. in a range. Behind us, gradually sinking in the distance, is the high land on Lembarene Island.

Soon we run up alongside a big street of a village with four high houses rising a story above the rest, which are strictly ground floor; it has also five or six little low open thatched huts along the street in front. These may be fetish huts, or, as the captain of the Sparrow would say, "again they mayn't." For I have seen similar huts in the villages round Libreville, which were store places for roof mats, of which the natives carefully keep a store dry and ready for emergencies in the way of tornadoes, or to sell. We stop abreast of this village. Inhabitants in scores rush out and form an excited row along the vertical bank edge, several of the more excited individuals falling over it into the water.

Yells from our passengers on the lower deck. Yells from inhabitants on shore. Yells of vite, vite from the Captain. Dogs bark, horns bray, some exhilarated individual thumps the village drum, canoes fly out from the bank towards us. Fearful scrimmage heard going on all the time on the deck below. As soon as the canoes are alongside, our passengers from the lower deck, with their bundles and their dogs, pour


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 assist in the consummation of a hundred years of effort that had borne fruit that day. I looked around at my fellow diners and then back to my table companion.

He was a fine looking chap, lean and bronzed—one need not have noted the Air Corps overseas service uniform, the Admiral's stars and anchors or the wound stripes to have guessed that he was a fighting man; he looked it, every inch of him, and there were a full seventy-two inches.

We talked a little—about the great victory and the message from Mars, of course, and though he often smiled I noticed an occasional shadow of sadness in his eyes and once, after a particularly mad outburst of pandemonium on the part of the celebrators, he shook his head, remarking: "Poor devils!" and then: "It is just as well—let them enjoy life while they may. I envy them their ignorance."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He flushed a little and then smiled. "Was I speaking aloud?" he asked.

I repeated what he had said and he looked steadily at me for a long minute before he spoke again. "Oh, what's the use!" he exclaimed, almost petulantly; "you wouldn't understand and of course you wouldn't believe. I do not understand it myself; but I have to believe because I know—I know from personal observation. God! if you could have seen what I have seen."

"Tell me," I begged; but he shook his head dubiously.

"Do you realize that there is no such thing as Time?" he asked suddenly—"That man has invented Time to suit the limitations of his finite mind, just as he has named another thing, that he can neither explain nor understand, Space?"

"I have heard of such a theory," I replied; " but I neither believe nor disbelieve—I simply do not know."

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 I thought I had him started and so I waited as I have read in fiction stories is the proper way to entice a strange narrative from its possessor. He was looking beyond me and I imagined that the expression of his eyes denoted that he was witnessing again the thrilling scenes of the past. I must have been wrong, though—in fact I was quite sure of it when he next spoke.

"If that girl isn't careful," he said, "the thing will upset and give her a nasty fall—she is much too near the edge."

I turned to see a richly dressed and much dishevelled young lady busily dancing on a table-top while her friends and the surrounding diners cheered her lustily.

My companion arose. "I have enjoyed your company immensely," he said, "and I hope to meet you again. I am going to look for a place to sleep now—they could not give me a stateroom—I don't seem to be able to get enough sleep since they sent me back." He smiled.

"Miss the gas shells and radio bombs, I suppose," I remarked.

"Yes," he replied, "just as a convalescent misses smallpox."

"I have a room with two beds," I said. "At the last minute my secretary was taken ill. I'll be glad to have you share the room with me."

He thanked me and accepted my hospitality for the night—the following morning we would be in Paris.

As we wound our way among the tables filled with laughing, joyous diners, my companion paused beside that at which sat the young woman who had previously attracted his attention. Their eyes met and into hers came a look of puzzlement and half-recognition. He smiled frankly in her face, nodded and passed on.

"You know her, then?" I asked.

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 "I shall—in two hundred years," was his enigmatical reply.

We found my room, and there we had a bottle of wine and some little cakes and a quiet smoke and became much better acquainted.

It was he who first reverted to the subject of our conversation in the Blue Room.

"I am going to tell you," he said, "what I have never told another; but on the condition that if you retell it you are not to use my name. I have several years of this life ahead of me and I do not care to be pointed out as a lunatic. First let me say that I do not try to explain anything, except that I do not believe prevision to be a proper explanation. I have actually lived the experiences I shall tell you of, and that girl we saw dancing on the table tonight lived them with me; but she does not know it. If you care to, you can keep in mind the theory that there is no such thing as Time—just keep it in mind—you cannot understand it, or at least I cannot. Here goes."

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 over the side into them. Canoes rock wildly and wobble off rapidly towards the bank, frightening the passengers because they have got their best clothes on, and fear that the Éclaireur will start and upset them altogether with her wash.

On reaching the bank, the new arrivals disappear into brown clouds of wives and relations, and the dogs into fighting clusters of resident dogs. Happy, happy day! For those men who have gone ashore have been away on hire to the government and factories for a year, and are safe home in the bosoms of their families again, and not only they themselves, but all the goods they have got in pay. The remaining passengers below still yell to their departed friends; I know not what they say, but I expect it's the Fan equivalent for "Mind you write. Take care of yourself. Yes, I'll come and see you soon," &c., &c. While all this is going on, the Éclaireur quietly slide down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt her stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit whenever the captain, the engineer, and the man at the wheel are all busy in a row along the rail, shouting overside, which occurs whenever we have passengers to land. Her iniquity being detected when the last canoe load has left for the shore, she is spun round and sent up river again at full speed. Just as this is being done, the inhabitants of the country salute the captain with a complimentary salvo of guns. I am quietly leaning against the side of his cabin door at the time, when bang comes his answering salute from out of it, within three-and-a-half inches of my right car. Sensation of stun for minutes. Captain apologetic; he "did not know I was there." I am apologetic too; I did know he was there, "but I did not know he was going to fire off his gun?" "He is forgiven." "N'est-ce pas?" "Oui, oui, certainement," say I, quoting the engineer. Peace restored.

We go on up stream; now and again stopping at little villages to land passengers or at little sub-factories to discharge cargo, until evening closes in, when we anchor and tie up at O'Saomokita, where there is a sub-factory of Messrs. Woermann's, in charge of which is a white man, the only white man between Lembarene and Njole. He comes on board and looks


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 only a boy, but is really aged twenty. He is a Frenchman, and was at Hatton and Cookson's first, then he joined Woermann's, who have put him in charge of this place. The isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this, he stays on board to dinner. While waiting for dinner that night, as I am sitting at the saloon table, I see an apparition on the settee opposite. Is it fever coming on? Or does it arise from having got some brain cells permanently shaken out of their place by that gun shock this afternoon? I don't mention it to my fellow passengers, who I notice do not seem to see it, for fear of exciting their derision, but watch it furtively during dinner. It does not move nor multiply itself, nor has it any phosphorescent halo. Good signs, all these, but still it cannot be a black silk chimney-pot hat. After all, it was, and it belongs to the captain. How or why or when he got it, I do not know—neither do I exactly know what he and the passengers do with it, now I have gone to my cabin, which is next to the saloon. That the French official is the leading spirit in proceedings I am quite sure, for I know his voice wherein he is now singing tunes I have heard at the Jacots' as hymn tunes. I am convinced of this, however, that they are not hymn tunes now, because you don't dance a species of Highland fling, which from the vibrations communicated to me I know is being danced, to hymns; neither do you greet them with shouts of laughter. I wish—no, of course I don't, for it comes neither under the head of fetish, nor fishes, and morcover in the intervals, filled with violent conversation, I hear the French official, I am perfectly sure, trying to convince the others that I am an English officer in disguise on the spy; which makes me feel embarrassed, and anything but flattered. Wish to goodness I knew French, or how to flirt with that French official so as to dispel the illusion.

June 23rd.—Start off steaming up river early in the morning time. Land ahead showing mountainous. Rather suddenly the banks grow higher. Here and there in the forest are patches which look like regular hand-made plant-


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 ations, which they are not, but only patches of engombie-gombie trees, showing that at this place was once a native town. Whenever land is clear along here, this tree springs up all over the ground. It grows very rapidly, and has great leaves something like a sycamore leaf, only much larger. These leaves growing in a cluster at the top of the straight stem give an umbrella-like appearance to the affair; so the natives call them and an umbrella by the same name, but whether they think the umbrella is like the tree or the tree is like the umbrella, I can't make out. I am always getting myself mixed over this kind of thing in my attempts to contemplate phenomena from a scientific standpoint," as Cambridge ordered me to do. I'll give the habit up. "You can't do that sort of thing out here—It's the climate," and I will content myself with stating the fact, that when a native comes into a store and wants an umbrella, he asks for an engombie-gombie.à

The uniformity of the height of the individual trees in one of these patches is striking, and it arises from their all starting fair. I cannot make out other things about them to my satisfaction, for you very rarely see one of them in the wild bush, and then it does not bear a fruit that the natives collect and use, and then chuck away the stones round their domicile. Anyhow, there they are, all one height, and all one colour, and apparently allowing no other vegetation to make any headway among them. But I found when I carefully investigated engombie-gombie patches that there were a few of the great, slower-growing forest trees coming up amongst them, and in time when these attain a sufficient height, their shade kills off the engombie-gombie, and the patch goes back into the great forest from which it came. The frequency of these patches arises from the nomadic habits of the chief tribe in these regions, the Fans. They rarely occupy one site for a village for any considerable time on account—firstly, of their wasteful method of collecting rubber by cutting down the vine, which soon stamps it out of a district; and, secondly, from their quarrelsome ways. So when a village of Fans has cleared all the rubber out of its district, or has made the said district too hot to hold it by rows with other villages, or has


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 The whole verse ought to read: “Whose (the Jews’) are the fathers, and whose Christ is according to the flesh.” After that there ought to be a period. Then follows the usual praise to God: “Who is over all, God, is blessed forever” (and not “blessed for ever”). This intentional error is regarded as a proof of the divinity of Christ. In the whole book Christ is mentioned as a prophet, and the words “Son of God (υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ) are not even used, but instead, παῖς τοῦ Θεοῦ, that is, more correctly, servant of God. Those are all the proofs.

It is evident that those are not proofs, but juxtapositions of words which may serve as a confirmation of a proposition which has no foundation whatever in the Gospels and the Epistles. For any man who studies Holy Scripture in the original, who is acquainted with the criticism of Scripture and of the history of the church, it is evident that in the first century of Christianity, when the Epistles and Gospels were written, there was not even any mention made of the divinity of Christ. The best refutal of the proofs of the church about the Godhead of Christ is found in the vain endeavours which it makes to find anything resembling a proof. Everything which might have looked as an indication, every such a phrase, every juxtaposition of words, every blunder, every chance for an incorrect reading, is taken as a proof, but no real proof exists or can exist, because that idea was foreign to Christ and to his disciples. This is especially apparent from the reading of the Acts of the Apostles in the original. Here is described the teaching of the apostles, and here Christ is mentioned many times, and not only is he not spoken of as God, but no special meaning above any saint is ascribed to him; he is called saint, prophet, messenger of God, and not even υἱός, as John and Paul call him, but παῖς τοῦ θεοῦ, which can in no way be connected with the present teaching of the church about Christ the God. But in order to have clear and manifest proofs of


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 * 1) Mr. Cleasby’s collections, which have in words, phrases, and references supplied about one-half of the materials for the present work.
 * 2) The Lexicon Poëitcum, by Dr. Sveinbjörn Egilsson, born 1791, died 1852, a most excellent work, which has served as a chief guide in references from the old poetical language.
 * 3) Fritzner’s Dictionary, by Johan Fritzner, a Norse clergyman, begun shortly after the year 1850, and completed in 1867. It is a very rich and good collection, entirely independent of Mr. Cleasby, and has afforded much valuable assistance throughout.
 * 4) Björn Halldórsson’s Dictionary, Icelandic and Latin. The author, an excellent Icelandic clergyman, was born about 1715, and died, 1794, and his work was published in 1814 by Rask, who also translated the original renderings into Danish: it is well known from the fact that Grimm in his Grammar has taken from it almost all his collection of the vocabulary of the Icelandic language.
 * 5) Alt-Nordisches Glossar, by Theodor Möbius, 1866, a limited but independent collection, which has afforded many happy references.
 * 6) The Dictionary published in Copenhagen in 1860 (Old-Nordisk Ordbog). This book has evidently been compiled from Cleasby’s papers in Copenhagen: it omits all references. It has been of some use, as it has here and there shewnshown [sic] where words have been omitted in the transcripts now at Oxford.
 * 7) Earlier Glossaries:α. Specimen Lexici Islandici, by Magnús Ólafsson, an Icelandic clergyman, died 1636, published under the name Specimen Lexici Runici in 1650 by the Danish scholar Ole Worm, who also wrote it in the Runic character. This is the first Icelandic Glossary alphabetically arranged, and contains from 1200 to 1500 words with references. Hence the word ‘Runick,’ as applied to Icelandic, in Hickes and Johnson.β. Lexicon Islandicum, by Gudmundus Andreae, an Icelander, died 1654, published by Resen in 1683; it derives all words from Hebrew: not very interesting and without references.γ. Monosyllaba Islandica, by Rugman, an Icelander, 1676; it contains about 1400 such words.δ. Index Linguae Veteris Scytho-Scandicae sive Gothicae, by Olaf Verelius, a Swedish scholar, died 1682, published by Rudbeck in 1691; a fairly done work, containing about 12,000 words with references from MSS.ε. Lexicon Islandicum, a large collection made by Jón Ólafsson, born 1705, died 1779; it has not been published but is preserved in MS. in Copenhagen and has therefore not been within reach, but illustrations from it are now and then given from memory.ζ. Skýringar, by Pál Vídalín, died 1727, a commentary on obsolete law terms, published at Reykjavík in 1854.
 * 8) Indexes along with Editions, etc., e. g. the 12th volume of Fornmanna Sögur: Lexicon Mythologicum, by Finn Magnusen, affixed to the large edition of Sæmundar Edda: Indexes to Njála, Grágás, Annálar, etc.: Indexes along with Chrestomathies, e. g. Dietrich, a German scholar; as also Dietrich’s Runic Glossary (Runen-schatz), 1844: Physical Index in the Itinerary or Travels of Eggert Ólafsson, Copenhagen 1772: Index on Medical Terms in Félags-rit, 1789, 1790; Botanical Index in Hjaltalín’s Icelandic Botany, 1830: Indexes of Proper Names in Landnáma, 1843; in Fornmanna Sögur, vol. xii, and Flateyjar-bók, vol. iii; in Munch’s Beskrivelse over Norge (Geography of Norway), 1849.
 * 9) Mr. Vifusson’s own collections and such additions and illustrations as he has been enabled to make through his knowledge of his own mother-tongue.

Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, a work which embraces all Teutonic languages.

For Gothic, the Glossary to Ulfilas, by Gabelenz and Loebe, 1843.

For Anglo-Saxon, Dr. Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; as also Grein’s Poetical Glossary (Sprach-schatz), 1861 and 1864.

For Early English, the Ormulum, and old gospel paraphrase by Orm or Ormin (a Scandinavian name), published by Dr. White in 1852; it affords many illustrations of Scandinavian words, but it is chiefly curious for philological purposes because of the careful distinction it makes between short and long vowels.

For Northern English and Scottish, Jamieson’s Dictionary.

For Old Saxon, Schmeller’s Glossary to Heliand, an Old Saxon gospel harmony, 1840.

For Old and Middle High German, Graff’s Sprach-schatz, and Mittelhoch-Deutsches Wörterbuch, 1854 sqq.


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 got itself very properly shelled out and burnt for some attack on traders or the French flag in any form, its inhabitants clear off into another district, and build another village; for bark and palm thatch are cheap, and house removing just nothing; when you are an unsophisticated cannibal Fan you don't require a pantechnicon van to stow away your one or two mushroom-shaped stools, knives, and cooking-pots, and a calabash or so. If you are rich, maybe you will have a box with clothes in as well, but as a general rule all your clothes are on your back. So your wives just pick up the stools and the knives and the cooking-pots, and the box, and the children toddle off with the calabashes. You have, of course, the gun to carry, for sleeping or waking a Fan never parts with his gun, and so there you are "finish," as M. Pichault would say, and before your new bark house is up, there grows the engombie-gombie, where your house once stood. Now and again, for lack of immediate neighbouring villages to quarrel with, one end of a village will quarrel with the other end. The weaker end then goes off and builds itself another village, keeping an eye lifting for any member of the stronger end who may come conveniently into its neighbourhood to be killed and eaten. Meanwhile, the engombie-gombie grows over the houses of the empty end, pretending it's a plantation belonging to the remaining half. I once heard a new-comer hold forth eloquently as to how those Fans were maligned. "They say," said he, with a fine wave of his arm towards such a patch, "that these people do not till the soil—that they are not industrious—that the few plantations they do make are ill-kept—that they are only a set of wandering hunters and cannibals. Look there at those magnificent plantations!" I did look, but I did not alter my opinion of the Fans, for I know my old friend engombie-gombie when I see him.

This morning the French official seems sad and melancholy. I fancy he has got a Monday head (Kipling), but he revives as the day goes on. As we go on, the banks become hills and the broad river, which has been showing sheets of sandbanks in all directions, now narrows and shows only neat little beaches of white sand in shallow places along the bank. The current is terrific. The Éclaireur breathes hard, and has all


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HAD intended telling you my story of the days of the twenty-second century, but it seems best, if you are to understand it, to tell first the story of my great-great-grandfather who was born in the year 2000."

I must have looked up at him quizzically, for he smiled and shook his head as one who is puzzled to find an explanation suited to the mental capacity of his auditor.

"My great-great-grandfather was, in reality, the great-great-grandson of my previous incarnation which commenced in 1896. I married in 1916, at the age of twenty. My son Julian was born in 1917. I never saw him. I was killed in France in 1918—on Armistice Day.

"I was again reincarnated in my son's son in 1937. I am thirty years of age. My son was born in 1970—that is the son of my 1937 incarnation—and his son, Julian 5th, in whom I again returned to Earth, in the year 2000. I see you are confused, but please remember my injunction that you are to try to keep in mind the theory that there is no such thing as Time. It is now the year 1967 yet I recall distinctly every event of my life that occurred in four incarnations—the last that I recall being that which had its origin in the year 2100. Whether I actually skipped three generations that time or through some caprice of Fate I am merely unable to visualize an intervening incarnation, I do not know.

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 she can do to fight her way up against it. Masses of black weathered rock in great boulders show along the exposed parts of both banks, left dry by the falling waters. Each bank is steep, and quantities of great trees, naked and bare, are hanging down from then, held by their roots and bush-rope entanglement from being swept away with the rushing current, and they make a great white fringe to the banks. The hills become higher and higher, and more and more abrupt, and the river runs between them in a gloomy ravine, winding to and fro; we catch sight, of a patch of white sand ahead, which I mistake for a white painted house, but immediately after doubling round a bend we see the houses of the Talagouga Mission Station. The Éclaireur forthwith has an hysteric fit on her whistle, so as to frighten M. Forget and get him to dash off in his canoe to her at once. Apparently he knows her, and does not hurry, but comes on board quietly. I find there will be no place for me to stay at at Njole, so I decide to go on in the Éclaireur and use her as an hotel while there, and then return and stay with Mme. Forget if she will have me. I consult M. Forget on this point. He says, "Oh, yes," but seems to have lost something of great value recently, and not to be quite clear where. Only manner, I suppose. When M. Forget has got his mails he goes, and the Éclaireur goes on; indeed, she has never really stopped, for the water is too deep to anchor in here, and the terrific current would promptly whisk the steamer down out of Talagouga gorge were she to leave off fighting it. We run on up past Talagouga Island, where the river broadens out again a little, but not much, and reach Njole by nightfall, and tie up to a tree by Dumas factory beach. Usual uproar, but as Mr. Cockshut says, no mosquitoes. The mosquito belt ends abruptly at O' Soamokita.

June 24th.—Mr. Cockshut, who went ashore last night, kindly comes on board and asks me if I will go ashore to his sub-factory. Say yes, and go, but when ashore decide not to embarrass Hatton and Cookson's domestic economy by going into the factory. Besides, I see before me to the left a real road, the first road I have seen for months. I tell Mr. Cockshut I will go for a walk; he seems


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 elements. And the result was that the poison was not driven out of the German Communist Party, nor, I fear, out of the Communist International.

The tactic of the united front was a consistent deduction from the slogan "To the Masses." This tactic had with us a very remarkable history, which I beg all foreign comrades to study carefully, for it is an illustration of how the attempt is made to transform the correct idea of the united front as a method of agitation into revisionism. Out of the open letter on the Rathenau campaign, out of the meeting of the Executives of the three Internationals, out of the thousand details develops the attempt to fuse the German Communist Party and the German Socialist Party organisationally. When, for instance, in the last few years our German comrades discovered that the finest thing about the Russian Revolution is the New Economic Policy, that it is the true meaning of Socialism, when they go further and declare that the New Economic Policy must come before the conquest of power, and that it is the one thing needful—this is a symptom of an attempt to carry the policy to the end.

The October situation began to evince itself with the beginning of the occupation of the Ruhr. But it now appears to be unanimously agreed that the course of the German revolution was rather interrupted by the occupation of the Ruhr, that the German bourgeoisie were disturbed in their attempts at consolidation and subjection to foreign capitalism and that an internal political crisis arose. But it is not by chance that the Leipsic Party Congress by a fractional vote refused to hear a report and speech on the Ruhr occupation. We all value Comrade Zetkin extremely, but a mere report by Comrade Zetkin and the adoption of a manifesto cannot be regarded as an examination of the Ruhr question.

It is most important to remember that regarding the theses of the Leipsic Party Congress, which were emphatically disavowed by the Executive, the Executive representative more than once declared that he had read through the majority theses, pencil in hand, and had not found the least trace of a false formulation. This is a part of the policy of a common platform which he, in competition with Brandler, to-day developed.

Comrades, the Leipsic Congress came very near to a split, and no purpose is served by concealing the fact. The factional warfare and mutual hatred of the two groups was so acute that it was only by the intervention of the Executive at the last minute that a split was prevented. We made practically no preparations for the Leipsic Congress. We were in the situation of people who have not even the right to oppose the old party leaders. Nevertheless, we obtained the votes of a quite considerable number of workers from the most important industrial areas, although the situation was far from being clear and definite.

Every single action which the party conducted in the period from the Leipsic Congress to October, had a double aspect. The


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 relieved, and I start off down the road alone. Lovely road, bright yellow clay, as hard as paving stone. On each side it is most neatly hedged with pine-apples; behind these, carefully tended, acres of coffee bushes planted in long rows. Certainly coffee is one of the most lovely of crops. Its grandly shaped leaves are like those of our medlar tree, only darker and richer green, the berries set close to the stem, those that are ripe, a rich crimson; these trees, I think, are about three years old, and just coming into bearing; for they are covered with full-sized berries, and there has been a flush of bloom on them this morning, and the delicious fragrance of their stephanotis-shaped and scented flowers lingers in the air. The country spreads before me a lovely valley encompassed by purple-blue mountains. Mount Talagouga looks splendid in a soft, infinitely deep blue, although it is quite close, just the other side of the


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 the fact that the chief disseminator of the teaching of Christ, Paul, never even so much as thought of the divinity of Christ, it is necessary to read those passages of his Epistles which directly determine the relations of Christ to God.

But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him (1 Cor. viii. 6). One God and Father of all, and in us all (Eph. iv. 6). That the God of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and so forth. (Eph. i. 17). The head of Christ is God (1 Cor. xi. 3). Simplest and most indubitable of all it is in 1 Tim. ii. 5: For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

Indeed, there appears a man who teaches men of the relation which ought to exist between man and God, and preaches this teaching to all men. His relation and that of all men to God he expresses by the relation of the Son to the Father. That there might be no misunderstanding, he calls himself, and men in general, the son of man, and says that the son of man is the Son of God. In explaining man’s relation to God, he says that as the son ought to emulate the father, and have one aim and one will with him (in the parable of the shepherd), even so must man strive to be like God and to do the same that God is doing. And he says of himself that he is the son of God. Indeed, what else could Christ have said, since he taught them the sonhood to God? If he cannot help saying about himself that he is a son of God, since it is this precisely that he is teaching to all men, there cannot be said of him, what neither the Jews, nor he himself had the least idea about, that he was God and the second person of the Trinity; for, though he never denied his filial relation to God, he never ascribed any special importance to it. He was told: “If you are a simple man, like all, eating and drinking with the publicans, you have nothing to teach us about;


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 river. The road goes on into the valley, as pleasantly as ever and more so. How pleasant it would be now, if our government along the Coast had the enterprise and public spirit of the French, and made such roads just on the remote chance of stray travellers dropping in on a steamer once in ten years or so and wanting a walk. Observe extremely neatly Igalwa built huts, people sitting on the bright clean ground outside them, making mats and baskets. "Mboloani," say I. "Ai Mbolo," say they, and knock off work to stare. Observe large wired-in enclosures on left-hand side of road—investigate—find they are tenanted by animals—goats, sheep, chickens, &c. Clearly this is a jardin d'acclimatation. No wonder the colony does not pay, if it goes in for this sort of thing, 206 miles inland, with simply no public to pay gate-money. While contemplating these things, hear awful hiss. Serpents! No, geese. Awful fight. Grand things, good, old-fashioned, long skirts are for Africa! Get through geese and advance in good order, but somewhat rapidly down road, turn sharply round corner of native houses. Turkey cock—terrific turn up. Flight on my part forwards down road, which is still going strong, now in a northerly direction, apparently indefinitely. Hope to goodness there will be a turning that I can go down and get back by, without returning through this ferocious farmyard. Intent on picking up such an outlet, I go thirty yards or so down the road. Hear shouts coming from a clump of bananas on my left. Know they are directed at me, but it does not do to attend to shouts always. Expect it is only some native with an awful knowledge of English, anxious to get up my family history—therefore accelerate pace. More shouts, and louder, of "Madame Gacon! Madame Gacon!" and out of the banana clump comes a big, plump, pleasant-looking gentleman, clad in a singlet and a divided skirt. White people must be attended to, so advance carefully towards him through a plantation of young coffee, apologising humbly for intruding on his domain. He smiles and bows beautifully, but—horror!—he knows no English, I no French. Situation très inexplicable et très interessante, as I subsequently heard him remark; and the worst of it is he is evidently bursting to know who I


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 rise of the revolutionary wave, the impulse forward of the workers, the mood of the workers on the one hand and of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party on the other. Every single action proved this. We attempted in each case to develop our own standpoint, to make it clear from February to October that the Ruhr fight was the introduction of a new period, and that the question of power was on the order of the day. At the Wasserkante District Congress Brandler called us idiots, because we failed to understand that the next stage in Germany was a Left Social-Democratic and trade union workers' government, and that there was time enough for bringing the question of power to the fore. In his opinion the latter ought to be avoided.

The Executive of Comintern realised that historically the possibility of the seizure of power was on the order of the day and that the bourgeoisie were attempting a decisive attack against the working class, and not against the November Republic.

The contradiction between the fact that the Executive of Comintern somewhat differently from the German Communist Party understood the united front tactic as a method of winning the masses to Communism, and what we actually experienced in Germany, led to the fact that we had later to reproach ourselves for the collapse.

When the Party representatives returned from Moscow, one of them spoke in Berlin and declared that in three days we should have power in Saxony, and then we should march on Berlin.

Comrades, this characteristic distortion in practice of the decisions of the Communist International proved that the Party had not the strength to fight as a revolutionary party, let alone to fight for power. The characteristic feature of the policy of the German Communist Party, according to Brandler, was that it over-rated the revolutionary forces in October. The more the Reich fell asunder and the more the inflation crisis developed into economic disruption, the more it was declared that the relation of forces was against us. Yet so much was talked of civil war in August. When, however, we were obliged to fight, the Central Committee suddenly discovered that the forces at its disposal were not sufficient for a fight.

That is typical opportunism: when the time comes for attacking, it is discovered that forces are not sufficient. After the opportunity has passed the revolution is promised in three months. This is typical German trade union tactics.

Comrades, the October defeat culminated in two points—in Hamburg and in Saxony. The contrast between the Chemnitz Conference and the fight of the Hamburgers is so great that the Party was unable to pass it over. As regards Saxony, the situation was systematically and deliberately misrepresented to the Party and to the International. Comrades, I say that whoever thinks that Brandler did not know that weapons were not to be secured in Saxony, does not understand him. He consciously carried on


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 am, and what I am doing in the middle of his coffee plantation, for his it clearly is, as appears from his obsequious body-guard of blacks, highly interested in me also. We gaze at each other, and smile some more, but stiffly, and he stands bareheaded in the sun in an awful way. It's murder I'm committing, hard all! He, as is fitting for his superior sex, displays intelligence first and says, "Interpreter," waving his hand to the south. I say "Yes," in my best Fan, an enthusiastic, intelligent grunt which any one must understand. He leads the way back towards those geese-perhaps, by the by, that is why he wears those divided skirts—and we enter a beautifully neatly built bamboo house, and sit down opposite to each other at a table and wait for the interpreter who is being fetched. The house is low on the ground and of native construction, but most beautifully kept, and arranged with an air of artistic feeling quite as unexpected as the rest of my surroundings. I notice upon the walls sets of pictures of terrific incidents in Algerian campaigns, and a copy of that superb head of M. de Brazza in Arab headgear. Soon the black minions who have been sent to find one of the plantation hands who is supposed to know French and English, return with the "interpreter." That young man is a fraud. He does not know English—not even coast English—and all he has got under his precious wool is an abysmal ignorance darkened by terror; and so, after one or two futile attempts and some frantic scratching at both those regions which an African seems to regard as the seats of intellectual inspiration, he bolts out of the door. Situation terrible! My host and I smile wildly at each other, and both wonder in our respective languages what, in the words of Mr. Squeers as mentioned in the classics—we "shall do in this 'ere most awful go. We are both going mad with the strain of the situation, when in walks the engineer's brother from the Éclaireur. He seems intensely surprised to find me sitting in his friend the planter's parlour after my grim and retiring conduct on the Éclaireur on my voyage up. But the planter tells him all, sousing him in torrents of words, full of the violence of an outbreak of pent-up emotion. I do not understand what he says, but I catch "très inexplicable" and things like that. The calm brother of the engineer sits down at the table, and I


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 his activities there so as to carry out the tactic of the united front from beginning to end, as he imagined.

I should like to take the example of the Chemnitz Conference. When a responsible politician sees that the Party is faced with an immediate armed struggle he must attempt to prepare the masses ideologically for it. The Party cannot be led into an armed conflict unless the masses are ideologically prepared for it.

At Chemnitz, however, it was intended to discuss economic industrial questions and not to call upon and mobilise the masses for the fight. When Graupe, at the moment of the civil war, declared that the masses could not be called upon to fight then but later, his method was the same as that employed by Brandler. At the decisive moment they declined because they cherished the theory of a constitutional transition from the Workers' Government to the paradise of Socialism.

The Hamburg fight is a proof that the Party, even as a minority, can win the masses for the fight, that it is not necessary to take up the ground of Social Democracy in order to secure an adequate relation of forces. I can hardly describe to you how the Hamburg fight affected the working class in Berlin. When the news reached Berlin that the Hamburg workers were fighting weapon in hand, the Berlin workers were moved, but they hardly reacted at all to the Saxon question. That shows that we shall win the workers for the struggle and be able to mobilise them if we have the courage as a Communist Party to enter the fight even without the Social-Democrats. This lesson of the Hamburg fight leads us back to the same problem of the German revolution, namely, that we must win over the masses.

There are two answers.

Shall we win the masses by wrapping ourselves in the cloak of Social Democracy by appearing to be constitutional? Or shall we win them by showing a clear Communist face, by acting as a Communist Party, and by displaying a clear Communist practice and theory.

Comrades, I say that only when we remember that we have made it easy for the Social-Democratic workers to remain in the Social-Democratic Party can we conceive what the present strength of the United Socialist Party of Germany is. The Left Social-Democratic workers who were beginning to understand that the Social-Democratic Party was a bad party, we have by our united front tactic, again united to their party.

I am of the opinion that the workers will be gradually driven towards Communism if our Party stands forth boldly and conscious of its aim, and by the strength of the International. If, however, we offer the Left Social-Democratic workers the outlet of the united front, then even the dissatisfied Social-Democratic workers will remain with the S.P.G. The talk about the split of the


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 Social-Democratic Party is incorrect. The Social-Democratic Party will not split. The disruptive process was disturbed by the tactics of our Party and by the October collapse. I can prove by figures that the Left Social-Democrats are not in the majority. If they finally split off it will be in order to unite with the Right Communists, and then they will attempt to form a Centrist Party. Comrades, I have had letters distributed among you in which the same point of view is expressed by working-class circles.

(Laughter.)

I should like to ask the comrades of the Right to consider seriously the mood of the Leipsic comrades and how much confidence they still have in Böettcher and Brandler. You are playing with the mood of the workers. And indeed, it was only the existence of the Communist International which prevented large sections from passing over to the Communist Labour Party because of the attitude of the Party in October. If you continue to behave in this way you will disgust good workers and drive them out of the Party. Not Ruth Fischer: she is too clever to be caught in a breach of discipline.

Comrades, the collapse is therefore not to be explained by technicalities, by small errors, We shall not abandon this platform and we will fight it through to the end, for it is the only means of saving the Party—which consists of good workers—from opportunism. The representative of the E.C.C.I. pursued a tactic in Germany which was very good for its own purposes, but which nevertheless was a political masquerade. Now he comes forward and declares that he has changed his point of view completely since October: one need not always say A, one may also say B. We have read an article of his written before October in which he says that Fascism must first triumph in Germany before the workers will fight. He has the same fiery perspective as Brandler, declaring in the midst of the defeat: "We need not fight now; it would he light-minded and inexcusable to suggest fighting now, for the situation improves for us every day." This is the prospect which the comrades dared to put forward after Chemnitz and Hamburg. Brandler, as a responsible person, declared that the situation would get better every day; he added that it would perhaps require only four weeks in order to undertake the fight for power. This produced a burst of indignation in the Central Committee; it must take place in ten days, it was declared. Brandler fixed four weeks as the minimum. The following is characteristic of all these accusations: when action was possible—as for instance when on the Anti-Fascist Day we demanded that we should demonstrate—it was not done, and Brandler, in order to make the demonstration impossible, declared that if we demonstrated the world would collapse as the result of armed collisions. And to avoid this, and to avoid the suppression of the Party, he forbade


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 am sure tells the planter something like this: "Calm yourself, my friend, we picked up this curiosity at Lembarene. It seems quite harmless." And then the planter calmed, and mopped a perspiring brow, and so did I, and we smiled more freely, feeling the mental atmosphere had become less tense and cooler. We both simply beamed on our deliverer, and the planter gave him lots of things to drink. I had nothing about me except a head of tobacco in my pocket, which I did not feel was a suitable offering. Now the engineer's brother, although he would not own to it, knew English, so I told him how the beauty of the road had lured me on, and how I was interested in coffee-planting, and how much I admired the magnificence of this plantation, and all the enterprise and energy it represented.

"Oui, oui, certainement," said he, and translated. My friend the planter seemed charmed; it was the first sign of anything approaching reason he had seen in me. He wanted me to have eau sucrée more kindly than ever, and when I rose, intending to bow myself off and go, geese or no geese, back to the Éclaireur, he would not let me go. I must see the plantation, toute la plantation. So presently all three of us go out and thoroughly do the plantation, the most well-ordered, well-cultivated plantation I have ever seen, and a very noble monument to the knowledge and industry of the planter. For two hot hours these two perfect gentlemen showed me over it. I also behaved well, for petticoats, great as they are, do not prevent insects and catawumpuses of sorts walking up one's ankles and feeding on one as one stands on the long grass which has been most wisely cut and laid round the young trees for mulching. This plantation is of great extent on the hill-sides and in the valley bottom, portions of it are just coming into bearing. The whole is kept as perfectly as a garden, amazing as the work of one white man with only a staff of unskilled native labourers—at present only eighty of them. The coffee planted is of three kinds, the Elephant berry, the Arabian, and the San Thomé. During our inspection, we only had one serious misunderstanding, which arose from my seeing for the first time in my life tree-ferns growing in the Ogowé. There were three of them,


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 the demonstration. It is a characteristic method to roar oneself hoarse in order to make a thing impossible.

Consequently, it was decided not to demonstrate on the anti-Fascist day, in spite of the fact that the whole of Berlin was tensely expecting it and had prepared itself for it. At the lowest estimate 250,000 workers assembled at our meetings. That was the mood of the masses. And yet we were not to demonstrate, because Brandler demanded of me a guarantee that no armed collisions would take place. And since I could not, and would not, give such a guarantee, the demonstrations were forbidden. But in October, when the Party was in its most difficult crisis, when our workers were being restrained with difficulty from leaving the Party, the representative of the Executive Committee demanded an armed demonstration, merely on political grounds, so to speak. We carried through the demonstration and gave it armed protection; we carried through what the Executive had demanded, for that we shall always do.

I will now deal with the state of the Party and what is bound to take place. Many comrades think that it is an insult to the Communist Party to say it is not a good party. Comrades, it is nevertheless a fact that leadership is not understood in our Party. That illusion has collapsed in Germany.

A profound process is going on in the membership of the Party itself. Within the Party there are tendencies to go over to the Social Democrats. It would be folly not to recognise that this mood exists.

The crisis in the Party cannot be healed by a compromise, by swallowing all stupidities without a murmur. The crisis can be solved only by brutally declaring that there is revisionism in the Party. If we declare this, we may be able to cure the Party. If not, the Centre will form a coalition with the Social-Democrats and at the next Party congress there will be a split.

Our immediate duty is to rearrange and regroup the Party. Without such a regrouping, the Party will be incapable of action.

I should like to add to what the representative of the Executive said about Fascism, namely, that the Fascists had defeated the November Republic. Comrades, what did it mean to say that Fascism has defeated the November Republic? It was sheer demagogic declaration designed to turn the minds of the workers away from the defeat. That was the prime purpose. These theses naturally made the work of our people more difficult.

I must declare (1) that the Party was deceived about the defeat and (2) that the justification was based upon Democratic illusions. This policy can only be justified when one distinguishes between a Fascist, industrial, and a Social-Democratie government, and if one advances the theory that the democratic republic was a non-class structure.

I would like to recommend the comrades of the International to read the last volume of the German International. I have


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 but if you are a Son of God, a Messiah, show us your power, or be executed.” He denied both. He said: “I am not a simple man,—I am fulfilling the will of God my Father, and teaching men about it; but I am also not a special son of God, but only one who is doing his Father’s will, and this I teach to all men.”

It is with this that he struggled all his life, and this they now ascribe to him, and try to prove that he said what he actually denied and what, if he had said it, would have destroyed the whole meaning of his teaching. According to the teaching of the church it turns out that God descended to earth only in order to save men. Their salvation consists in believing that he is God. It would not have been much trouble for him to say outright, “I am God,” or, if not outright, at least not by such circumlocution that there is a possibility of understanding him quite differently without any desire to do wrong. Let it even be by circumlocution, if only it would be possible to explain his words as meaning that he was God. Well, even if his words were not exact, at least they should not contradict the statement that he was God. But, as it is, he has spoken in such a way that it is not possible to understand him otherwise than that he asserted to many that he was not God. If he had only revealed this secret to his nearest disciples so that they might have imparted it to other men, but, as it is, the disciples taught only that he was a righteous man, a mediator between man and God, and not a God.

Suddenly it turns out that for our salvation, which comes from him, his words have to be comprehended not as he and his disciples have spoken them, and that we must not rely on our common sense, but must believe the church, which, basing itself on tricks and misinterpretations of certain verses, asserts the opposite of what he has said about himself, and what his disciples have said of him. I have not dwelt on this passage in order to prove


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 underlined ten quotations from Brandler's article. There you find the revisionist meaning of the theses on the victory of the Fascists over the November Republic. Comrades, the point of view there expressed serves as a theoretical explanation of the policy of our Party in October: it is the consequence of Radek's analysis.

As to the prospects of future struggles in Germany. When I opposed the three months' perspective, it was because the Party to-day is not in a position to lead great decisive Struggles, unless it consolidates itself internally. There will be fights, but they will be of a different nature from those which preceded October. The characteristic feature of the latter were that they were struggles that started over economic questions, but immediately assumed a political form; they became struggles for power. In the Cuno strike we said to Schlecht, one of our factory leaders: you must tell the people that we are in favour of economic assistance. He, however, stormily declared to the people: we want no economic assistance, we want to overthrow the government. This call to the masses was symbolic of the change which had overtaken the mass movement. We shall again have fights, conradescomrades [sic], but they will be fights in defence of economic interests and for economic demands. We shall have to make the centre of our activity the eight-hour day, which is now smashed, and every penny of wages. We shall have to take care that the breach between the unemployed and the employed does not become too great. We shall have to fight for the Factory Councils—not that they should become Soviets, but they should not be driven out of the factories because the employers are beginning to liquidate them.

Such will be the different nature of the coming conflicts. These conflicts may and will lead to a great union of the Party with the masses, although we must return to old positions. We have won ground, and thanks to the vagueness of our policy, lost it again. It will now be a question of again gaining ground among the masses; not of conducting a policy among the Social-Democrats which is tearing us to pieces, but of a policy which will consolidate us and will win the masses away from Social-Democracy. Then, perhaps, the conflicts will be transformed into struggles for power sooner than we expected. But without other political lines of policy, we shall conduct also these conflicts only with partial success and shall not be able to become a real revolutionary party. We demand that the Communist International should give a clear decision and that a Party congress should be held at which shall be discussed the question of how the Party is to be conducted. And we shall be on our guard against the oratory of certain comrades. Let us forget the past, a glad and glorious future lies before us. The past has not been in vain.


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 Rh

The Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, the real Soviet Government, which took place a few weeks later (in April, 1920), attempted to give reasons for the new coercion plans. The chief arguments used were these:

The Ninth Congress approves of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party on the mobilization of industrial proletariat, compulsory labour service, militarisation of production and the application of military detachments to economic needs.

In connection with the above, the Congress decrees that the Party organisation should in every way assist the Trade Unions and the Labour Sections in registering


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74 all skilled workers with a view of employing them in the various branches of the production with the same consistency and strictness as was done, and is being carried out to the present time, with regard to the commanding staff for army needs. …

Every social system, whether based on slavery, feudalism, or capitalism, had its ways and means of labour compulsion and labour education in the interests of the exploiters.

The Soviet system is faced with the task of developing its own methods of labour compulsion to attain an increase of the intensity and wholesomeness of labour; this method is to be based on the socialisation of public economy in the interests of the whole nation.

In addition to the propaganda by which the people are to be influenced and the repressions which are to be applied to all idlers, parasites, and disorganisers who strive to undermine public zeal—the principal method for the increase of production will become the introduction of the system of labour. …

Owing to the fact that a considerable part of the workers, either in search of better food conditions or often for purposes of speculation, voluntarily leave their places of employment or change from place to place, which inevitably harms production and deteriorates the general position of the working class, the Congress considers one of the most important problems of Soviet Government and of the Trade Union organisation to be established is the firm, systematic, and insistent struggle with labour desertion. The way to fight this is to publish a list of desertion fines, the creation of a Labour Detachment of Deserters under fine, and, finally, internment in concentration camps.

A resolution was also adopted which still more clearly defined the nature of the new enslavement and pointed out the "necessity" for using the same punishments for


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 Rh labor desertion as those employed in cases of military desertion:

The officers' families, it may be recalled, are held as hostages for their good behavior.

If we wish to get a picture of how this industrial mobilization or militarisation works out in practice we can refer to the report presented to the International Federation of Trade Unions late in 1920 by representatives of the Russian Metal Workers Union.

Militarisation means a complete and absolute subjection of the workmen to the work's management. It embodies a number of stern measures, also restriction of leaves and cruel suppression of strikes.

In order to show to what extent militarisation is carried out in the metal industry we quote below an extract from an article, which appeared in the XIII issue of the journal "Metallist" in August, 1920, and was contributed by a Communist worker, Khronin: "Absolute submission to the director has been introduced at these works (Plow works of Kostroma); neither interference nor contradiction on the part of the workmen are tolerated. The instructions given by the works committee are in accordance with the instructions of the Works' Management. At our works absence without permission of the foreman means suspension of the extra ration. Refusal to work overtime also means suspension of ration. Whereas an obstinate refusal means arrest.


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 that Christ is not God, it is useless to prove that,—for to him who believes in God, Christ cannot be God. That was already evident in the exposition of the dogma of the Trinity and of the whole consequent inevitable tangle, but I have dwelt on this part as on one in which lies the source of all the preceding monstrosities and absurdities. It is evident to me that after Christ’s death, his disciples, who were profoundly affected by his teaching, in speaking and writing of him, of the man who taught that all men were the sons of God and must blend with God in life, and who in his life up to his death carried out this subjection of himself to the will of God and this union with him, it is evident to me that his disciples called him divine and the beloved Son of God on account of the elevation of his teaching and of his life, which fully realized his teaching; and it is explicable to me how ignorant people, listening to the teaching of the apostles, did not understand it, but instead understood the mere words and on these ignorantly conceived words built up their own teaching and, with the stubbornness which generally goes with ignorance, stuck to their comprehension, denying every other interpretation, even because they were unable to understand it, and how later such ignorant people confirmed this terrible error at the first and the second Ecumenical Councils.

In the dogma of the original sin I can admit the comprehension of those people who in the story of the fall of man can see nothing but that there was an Adam and that he did not keep God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit. This comprehension is not wrong, it is crude. Even thus I can admit the comprehension of men who say that Jesus was God and by his death and sufferings saved men. This comprehension is not wrong, it is only crude and imperfect. The conception of man’s fall as due to the fact that he did not obey God is correct in so far as it expresses the idea that man’s dependence,


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 76 For being late at work a fine of two weeks' wages is imposed."

When the Bolsheviks came into power they abolished overtime work in all branches of industry. But as the output was decreasing in an alarming way and as many skilled workmen went to the villages the Soviet Government, as far back as the beginning of 1920, reintroduced overtime work. At first it was optional, but in the summer of this year it was announced that overtime is compulsory.

At a secret meeting on the 5th of September, 1920, the representatives of the Petrograd Labour Organizations adopted the following resolution: "Never before has overtime work been practised so widely as now' the worst of it is that more than 80% of the overtime is compulsory and any refusal on the part of the workmen is severely punished."

Overtime work is remunerated as follows: for the first two hours—double pay; for the second two hours—time and a half.

The normal working day is 8 hours and 44 hours per week, but owing to compulsory overtime the Russian metal worker works now 12 hours a day, and 72 hours a week. Sometimes compulsory work is performed on Sundays, which makes 80 hours per week.

The workmen, far from being pleased with these methods, resist them, and as a result a wave of strikes passed all over Soviet Russia in 1920.

There is little known in Europe about these strikes or the measures taken to suppress them, as the Bolshevik Government which controls all papers and journals, does not allow this information to appear in the press. But in official documents we find the following information (Central Committee of Statistics of the Commissariat of Labour).

During the first six months of 1920:

1. Strikes have been called in 77% of the large and middle sized works.


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 Rh 2. In nationalized undertakings strikes are continuous and 90% of them are called at such factories and works.

As a part of the system of Labor compulsion absolute dictators have been placed over the factories with the power of life and death. Schliapnikoff, Chief Commissar of Labor, printed the following explanation in the Russian Bolshevist press on November 13, 1919:

The "Code of Labor Laws" was by no means the last experiment in methods of enslavement, Trotzky following this up with the plan for utilizing the thousands of conscripts of the Red Army for purposes of labor,thus going back to the military slavery of ancient Egypt and Peru.

Lenin and Trotzky have freely expended their rhetorical and propaganda talents to justify the new slavery, not as a temporary expedient but as resting upon the permanent principles of Sovietism. In his booklet "The State and the Revolution" (pages 51 and 67) Lenin says:

We want the Socialist revolution with human nature as it is now; human nature itself cannot do without subordination. There must be submission to the armed vanguard of the proletariat.

Until people grow accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social existence without force and


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 weakness, death,—all those are the consequences of his carnal passions. Just as correct is the statement that Christ was God in so far—as was actually the fact and as John says—as he made God manifest to us. But the moment men begin to assert that the form in which this thought is expressed is the only truth, I no longer can admit what they say, because their elucidations and assertions explain the meaning of the idea which they enunciate, and this idea excludes the possibility of all oneness of faith and clearly shows that the source of their stubbornness in their assertions is crudity and ignorance. It is precisely this that the church has been doing all the time in the name of its sanctity and infallibility.

After this follows Art. 134. The Lord Jesus has a human nature and is indeed the son of the Virgin Mary. Then Art. 135 proves that Christ was born in human form from the Virgin Mary, and that Mary, having given birth to him, remained a virgin. There are quoted proofs for what cannot be comprehended, and explanations of the fathers of the church.

“Not only did they teach so, but they frequently tried to disclose that such a miraculous manner of the Messiah’s birth was possible and exceedingly proper: in proof, or as an explanation of the possibility, they pointed to the almightiness of God and to certain other miraculous cases of the kind, as, for example, to the burning bush which did not burn up, and to the fact that the Saviour, after his resurrection, entered through closed doors into the room where his disciples were.” (p. 70.)

136. The Lord Jesus is a sinless man. “(1) The Word of God teaches us, in the first place, that the Lord does not partake of the original sin.” (p. 75.)

“(2) In the second place, the Word of God teaches us that our Lord Jesus is quite free from any personal sin.

“(3) In pursuance of so clear a teaching of the Word of God, the church has invariably believed that our Lord


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 78 without subjection there must be suppression, and it is clear that where there is suppression there must also be violence and there cannot be liberty or democracy.

This reasoning on the surface means that no peoples are ready for liberty or democracy, and as there must be some form of dictatorship, why not the dictatorship of Lenin and his Party? But under the surface is also the shrewd calculation, evident throughout the Soviet leader's statements, that the Russian masses, being accustomed to merciless repression and subjection will finally give up hope of self-government and submit to the Soviet's rule if the Bolshevists can remain a few years longer in the saddle.

In his official report to the Soviet Economic Conference in January, 1920, Lenin frankly justified the rule of a minority of the city workers, which he calls the conscious "vanguard," over the majority of the city workers as well as the peasants who constitute 90 per cent of the population—and it is to be an arbitrary personal rule like that of the army. Here is what he said:


text: The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 20


text: The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 21


text:
Author:Frank Morton Todd

Works

 * Eradicating plague from San Francisco (1909)
 * The Chamber of commerce handbook for San Francisco (1914)
 * An account of the closing ceremonies of the Panama-Pacific international exposition, San Francisco (1915)
 * The story of the exposition: being the official history of the international celebration held at San Francisco in 1915 to commemorate the discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the construction of the Panama Canal in five volumes
 * Vol. 1 (1921)
 * Vol. 2 (1921)
 * Vol. 3 (1921)
 * Vol. 4 (1921)
 * Vol. 5 (1921)

title: Author:Frank Morton Todd


text: The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 22


text: The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 23