him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to
the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out.
Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big
subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous
people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went
further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people
in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but
that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money.
A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited
the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had
puzzled me--things that happened in the Balkan War, how one
state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and
broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war
came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and
Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it
would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-
pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists
would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage.
Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides,
the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have
been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The
Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to