intellectual aristocrat.

The first question I asked him was as to how far he recognized the
peculiarity of English economic and political conditions? I was
anxious to know whether advocacy of violent revolution is an
indispensable condition of joining the Third International, although I
did not put this question directly because others were asking it
officially. His answer was unsatisfactory to me. He admitted that
there is little chance of revolution in England now, and that the
working man is not yet disgusted with Parliamentary government. But he
hopes that this result may be brought about by a Labour Ministry. He
thinks that, if Mr. Henderson, for instance, were to become Prime
Minister, nothing of importance would be done; organized Labour would
then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On this ground, he
wishes his supporters in this country to do everything in their power
to secure a Labour majority in Parliament; he does not advocate
abstention from Parliamentary contests, but participation with a view
to making Parliament obviously contemptible. The reasons which make
attempts at violent revolution seem to most of us both improbable and
undesirable in this country carry no weight with him, and seem to him
mere _bourgeois_ prejudices. When I suggested that whatever is
possible in England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waved aside
the suggestion as fantastic. I got little impression of knowledge or
psychological imagination as regards Great Britain. Indeed the whole
tendency of Marxianism is against psychological imagination, since it
attributes everything in politics to purely material causes.

I asked him next whether he thought it possible to establish Communism
firmly and fully in a country containing such a large majority of
peasants. He admitted that it was difficult, and laughed over the