Now I was on the platform. I had to walk a good distance before I shrank into the corner of my compartment. The train was a long time in starting, and human shapes were hurrying down the corridor. A fat man tore the door open and looked inside as if searching for somebody. Then I, too, looked on the ground like those anxious to hide. Suddenly the columns before the window slowly began to move. Then the shape of goods sheds passed slowly by. The wheels rattled over the points. Then the compartment became lighter: we had reached the open track. And as the train gathered speed I knew that I had left the town, with its People’s Commissaries, its police, its prisons, behind me. I was free! For a moment I realised this, then again my consciousness became dimmed and a pleasant fatigue overcame me. From the window I watched the telegraph wires rise, then came a post and jerked them down, then they rose again till the next post came. I turned to look at my fellow travellers. Every seat was occupied. In one sat an officer whose insignia of rank had been torn from his collar, leaving the marks of three stars. His field-gray cavalry cap was ornamented with a red rosette. As soon as Budapest was left behind us he took his cap off and threw the rosette out of the window. An old lady looked on in alarm and drew away from him: her husband wore the ‘red man’ ostentatiously in his button-hole. Both seemed scared. Opposite sat a well-dressed man, who buried his face deeply in a book, using it as a screen. I looked at it: _The Workmen’s Library_. On the title-page was the drawing of a book from the pages of which sprang a naked, unkempt workman, holding a burning lamp in his hand. This lamp, I suppose, represented the light spread by the contents of the book. I strained my eyes to catch the title: it ran “_The Principles of Communism_, by Frederick Engels. Translated by Ernest Garami.” Why read it now? I thought. Why did he not read it long ago? Why have not all those who suffer to-day read it long ago? It was there, always, in their midst. Its principles were set out in a thousand publications, in a thousand minds. These little books have been doing their work for a long time, and their wrappers were pink only because for the time being they did not dare to demonstrate outwardly that they were red. “The slave is sold once for all. The proletarian has to sell himself every day, every hour.... The slave frees himself if he abolishes the institution of slavery. The proletarian can only free himself by completely destroying private property. This cannot be achieved by any other means than by a revolution.” And in the Socialist revolution there is an end to the family, the country, and religion.