Though women were rarely seen at a C.G.T. meeting, Victor Dave took Jessie and me to a particularly impressive one which Bill Haywood was to address. His reputation as a firebrand had preceded him, and the police were making certain that no riot should ensue; they were stopping each person who crossed the bridge and demanding an account of his destination. Our passport was the venerable appearance of our escort, whose long white hair hung low about his head. His top hat, that universal badge of respectability, let us through. The vast auditorium was filled with some three thousand French syndicalists, similar to the American I.W.W.’s, all standing, all wearing the uniform of the proletariat—black-visored caps and loose corduroys. They were being urged not to take up arms against the workers of other nations. I began to wonder whether perhaps the various tokens of disquiet which had impalpably surrounded me since coming to France had some more desperate meaning than we in America had realized. The _War, What For?_ discussions in New York had seemed only a part of the evening conversations. Here again I was listening to protests against government efforts to arouse national hatred by calling it patriotism. I had heard the words so often, “Workers of the World, Unite,” yet at last I was vaguely uneasy because of the difference in spirit. As we emerged into the narrow, alley-like street we found the exits into the boulevard guarded by hundreds of gendarmes, both mounted and afoot. Had any outbreak occurred, the assembled syndicalists would literally have been trapped. My uneasiness was increased as a result of a visit to the Hindu nationalist, Shyamaji Krishnavarma. In England he had been an agitator for Indian Home Rule and, when the London residence of the Viceroy of India had been bombed, with other Indians who might have been implicated, he had fled to France, so long the sanctuary for anyone who, because of political beliefs, got into trouble elsewhere. Krishnavarma was now editing the _Indian Sociologist_, which was being secretly spirited across the Channel. Krishnavarma had asked whether he might be permitted to give a reception in my honor. No Hindu had ever given a reception in my honor. Trying to appear, however, as though this were a frequent occurrence, I set a time and bravely entered his salon, supported, as usual, by Jessie.