Evening star., 1938-12-23
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A& WORLD DICTATOR

N10 0O1~u%DON
could be no doubling his originality
and vigor.
His onsets Of political clalrvoyance
took him by surprise almost as
much as they surprised his follow
Ing. He hadA little introspection;
his disposition was to be consistent
and always right, and he passed
from phase to phase almost unwit-
tingly. At one moment he would be
sullen, rather angry, disinclined to
speak, with a cloudy confusion OF
facts and impressions, things he had
heard, partial suggestions he had
never tackled, old reveries and
present impulses swirling about in
his brain, and then suddenly. like a
crystallization, everything fell into
place, with a conviction, an abso-
lutte certainty of rightness and fit
ness, apd with 1t came words and
phrasas, coherent, continuous. Life
which had been like dispersed jig
saw puzzle, appeared then as a
stateable and manageable problem
and the only astonishing thing
about 1t for him was that it was
not as clear and compelling to
every one as it was to himself. 1t
was as If some different intelli-
gence, sort of parasitic lucidity
was hidden in his brain, with con-
facts and range that went far be-
yond his personality; it was a
genius, he had, a genius in the
Socratic sense, like that of a mu-
sician or a calculating boy or poet
1t seemed not to affect his general
character at all.
Gradually he became aware of the
alien nature of this mental being
within him, and shaped his conduct
to exploit it. Generally he would
sit in corner drinking little and
smoking less, and waiting. 1t be-
came a leading interest to "get Ruo
going" Sometimes when he had a
feeling OF inadequacy, he would stay
away for days at a time. so as not
to spoil the impression he perceived
he was creating.
He would sit in corner under a
chalk caricature of himself that one
OF the artistic contingent had made
1t was on brown paper and the fore
head was exaggerated and done in
white. His normal scowl was exalted
to intensity, his eyes were alight
and he raised one eloquent fist tc
the level of his forehead. 1t was
one of those brilliant caricatures
that seems to exercise a moulding
influence upon their originals.
Ever-Increasing Intensity.
Since the war Scares of 1897 and
1888 the process of world armament
had been going on with an ever-in-
creaslng intensity and an ever-in-
creaslng stress and dislocation of the
ordinary life of mankind. Every
one now was being regimented, en-
rolled, enlisted, taxed beyond all
reason, intimidated. If new world
was being born, it was being born
very uncomfortably. A feverish ex-
acerbatlon of human consciousness
was manifest under these conditions
Overt criticism was dangerous ano
suppressed, but doubt and unbelie1
gathered intensity through thel
lack OF expression. One dogmatisn
destroyed another and was in its
turn destroyed. Everything was be.
ing openly accepted and furtively
questioned. No tacit assumption and
no established institution was safe
from this seeping away of belief. A
mean superficial cynicism spread
like miasma over every land.
Compared with any former period
in human history, the second anc
third decades of the Goth century
saw stupendous diffusion and fer
ment of ideas round and about the
earth. The only approach to a
parallel is the intellectual, moral
and religious confusion of the worlo
that occurred between the breakup
OF the ancient localized paganisms
and mythologies and the onset OF
the first syncretic, universalist ex.
perlments, Christianity, diasporic
Judaism and Islam. And that was
an Infinitely fainter and slower men,
tai turnover. One instance marks
the difference in tempo and the
change of scale. In the 8Os of the
18th century, communism was the
imagination of an obscure group OF
eXlles In London. Marx wrote his
articles in Highgate and made a
scanty living, and young Mr.. Bernard
Shaw, after speaking, chiefly for his
own amusement, at little meeting
In Hyde Park, was accosted by an
unrecognized stranger who pro-
claimed himself: Il am Friedrich
Engels!" 1t did not seem to be
anything very wonderful in the way
OF an encounter at the time. Engels
indeed struck Shaw as a needlessly
self-lmportant person. "O-O-oh!-
Engels!" he said, with the rising in
Election OF surprised enlightenment.
Yet within 80 years there was not
country in the world, from Quito
to Lhasa and from Greenland to
Papua, where the names and doc
trlnes of Marx and Engels were un-
known; and communism and the
doctrine of the class war were as
widespread as Christianity and far
better understood. It was a diffu-