THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO CAPITALISM AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM. Zenovieff (_by the bell_); to the right of him (_i.e._ on his left) are Radek (_spectacles_) and Bela Kun (_rather foggy_). ] [Illustration: THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO CAPITALISM AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM: The Body of the Hall. ] Among the most amusing things in this queer intellectual situation are the repeated scoldings that come by wireless from Moscow to Western Labour because it does not behave as Marx said it would behave. It isn’t red—and it ought to be. It is just yellow. My conversation with Zenovieff was particularly curious. He is a man with the voice and animation of Hilaire Belloc, and a lot of curly coal-black hair. “You have civil war in Ireland,” he said. “Practically,” said I. “Which do you consider are the proletarians, the Sinn Feiners or the Ulstermen?” We spent some time while Zenovieff worked like a man with a jigsaw puzzle trying to get the Irish situation into the class war formula. That jigsaw puzzle remained unsolved, and we then shifted our attention to Asia. Impatient at the long delay of the Western proletarians to emerge and declare themselves, Zenovieff, assisted by Bela Kun, our Mr. Jack Quelch, and a number of other leading Communists, has recently gone on a pilgrimage to Baku to raise the Asiatic proletariat. They went to beat up the class-conscious wages slaves of Persia and Turkestan. They sought out factory workers and slum dwellers in the tents of the steppes. They held a congress at Baku, at which they gathered together a quite wonderful accumulation of white, black, brown, and yellow people, Asiatic costumes and astonishing weapons. They had a great assembly in which they swore undying hatred of Capitalism and British imperialism; they had a great procession in which I regret to say certain batteries of British guns, which some careless, hasty empire-builder had left behind him, figured; they disinterred and buried again thirteen people whom this British empire-builder seems to have shot without trial, and they burnt Mr. Lloyd George, M. Millerand, and President Wilson in effigy. I not only saw a five-part film of this remarkable festival when I visited the Petersburg Soviet, but, thanks to Zorin, I have brought the film back with me. It is to be administered with caution and to adults only. There are parts of it that would make Mr. Gwynne of the _Morning Post_ or Mr. Rudyard Kipling scream in their sleep. If so be they ever slept again after seeing it.