AN EVENING IN AN ANARCHISTS' CLUB.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2283, 5 February 1912, Page 2

AN EVENING IN AN ANARCHISTS' CLUB.

(Philip Gibbs, in the "Graphic.”) It was on the first floor of a corner public-house, and I stumbled through the swing-door of the taproom, and, to keep my courage to the stickingpoint, ordered a —lemonade from a buxom foreign-looking lady, who had both her arms on the counter and fixed me with a solid gaze.

“ Raining, ain’t it ?” she asked, and thinking that it might be the password I said “ Yes, It’s raining, though, to tell the honest truth, it was a fins, cold night. 1 drank my lemonade in email eips so that it lasted a long time. Then I jerked my head to an inner door, and said in a voice which trembled a little, “Is the meeting upstairs 7” “First floor,” said the buxom lady. Pulling my cloth cap a little further over my nose I went through the main door, and up a flight of wooden stairs, in semi-darkness. I wondered emotionally, whether I should ever come down them again. On the landing I paused and heard the sound of voices speaking in low' tones. I could also hear the sledgehammer of my heart. 1 went through the door at the end of the passage and found myself in a large bar# room, furnished with a few wooden benches, a deal table, covered with pamphets, and a number of wall posters in Yiddish. Here was the anarchists’ club. . . .

They were all foreigners, and mostly German Jews, I should think, though among them were the broad faces, the wide-apart eyes, and the sallow complexion of Slavs and Letts. Many of them were rather sickly looking, rather shab’by fellows. I guessed them to be Jewish tailors, who think a lot as they sit in their sunless workrooms and dream of revolution. But quite a number of these men were weil-set-up fellows, with broad shoulders, and were smartly dressed. They were by no means the outcasts of civilisation, or the children of poverty. I was a little reassured and a good deal astonished, when a number of women entered the room. They came in separatelj, and took their seats on one of the long benches by the wall apart from the men. They ■were all young women and most of them neatly and even charmingly dressed

Here was I sitting in the chief anarchists’ club of Whitechapel among eighty of the leading anarchists of London, listening to one of the chiefs of this dangerous creed, who was expounding the principles of their faith. It was as strange an adventure as one in the Arabian Nights. . . . So the orator spoke, with sledgehammer eloquence, and with absolute dogmatism. And as he spoke I looked round and saw that the members of the anarchist club were drinking in bis words, greedily, eagerly. Their dark, eyes 'glittered. Some of them were breathing heavily. Some of them were smiling, with curious, baffling smiles, as though amused by the ironies of life. I rose from my seat and made my way out of the room. My depar-

ture had the effect which startled me for a moment. The orator stopped speaking. Several men stood up, talking hurriedly in Yiddish. Others whispered together, and looked at me as though they had a mind to stop me. But I got out into the dark passage, and stumbled down the dimly-lit stairs into the fresh air. Nothing had happened to me 4 Not a hair of my head was hurt. I could laugh now at all ray fears. These alien anarchists were as tame as rabbits. I am convinced that they had not a revolver amongst them. And yet, looking back upon this adventure and remefinberlng the words I heard, I am sure that this intellectual anarchy, this philosophy of revolution, is more dangerous to the state of Europe than pistols and ni-

tro-glycerine. For out of that anarchist club in the East End come Ideas more powerful In destruction than dynamite.— “ Weekly (Telegraph.”