yards away along the line a concert and entertainment
arranged by the Jaroslavl railwaymen was going on, and that
their committee, hearing that Radek was at the station, had
sent them to ask him to come over and say a few words to
them if he were not too tired.


"Come along," said Radek, and we walked in the dark along
the railway lines to a big one-story wooden shanty, where an
electric lamp lit a great placard, "Railwaymen's Reading
Room." We went into a packed hall. Every seat was
occupied by railway workers and their wives and children.
The gangways on either side were full of those who had not
found room on the benches. We wriggled and pushed our
way through this crowd, who were watching a play staged
and acted by the railwaymen themselves, to a side door,
through which we climbed up into the wings, and slid across
the stage behind the scenery into a tiny dressing-room.
Here Radek was laid hold of by the Master of the Ceremonies,
who, it seemed, was also part editor of a railwaymen's
newspaper, and made to give a long account of the

present situation of Soviet Russia's Foreign Affairs.
The little box of a room filled to a solid mass as
policemen, generals and ladies of the old regime threw
off their costumes, and, in their working clothes,
plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen.
When the act ended, one of the railwaymen went to the front of
the stage and announced that Radek, who had lately come back
after imprisonment in Germany for the cause of revolution, was going