ile agitator. 'A strike is the
only way of impressing the proletarian psychology. You must all swear
to attend school no more till your demands are granted.'

'We swear!' came from all sides in a childish treble. But the frown on
the brow of the landlord's son grew darker.

'It is well, comrades,' said the orator. 'Your success will be a
lesson to your elders, too. Only by applying the Marxian philosophy of
history can we upset the bourgeois _Weltanschauung_.'

The landlord's son reached the roof of the egg-box with one angry
bound and stood beside the agitator. 'Marx is an old fogey!' he
shouted. 'What's the good of a passive strike? Let us make a
demonstration against the director; let us----'

'Who told you that?' sneered the orator. 'Comrade Berl or Comrade
Schmerl?'

The boy missed the sarcasm of the rhyme. 'You know Schmerl's a mere
milk-blooded "Attainer,"' he said angrily.

'Believe me,' was the soothing reply, 'even beyond the Five Freedoms
the boycott is a better "Attainer" than the bomb.'

'Traitor! Bourgeois!' And a third boy jumped upon the egg-box. He had
red hair and flaming eyes. 'If Russia is to be saved,' he shrieked,
'it will be neither by the Fivefold Formula of Freedom nor by the
Fourfold Suffrage, but by the Integralists, who alone maintain the
purity of the Social Revolutionary programme, as it was before the
party degenerated into Maximalists and Mini----'

Here the egg-box collapsed under the weight of the three orators, and
they sprawled in equal ignominy. But the storm was now launched. A
score of the schoolboys burst into passionate abstract discussion. The
unity necessary to the school strike was shattered into fragments.

David ploughed his way sadly through the mimetic mob of youngsters,
who were yet not all apes and parrots, he reflected. Just as Jewry had
always had its boy Rabbis, its infant phenomenons of the pulpit,
prodigies of eloquence and holy learning, so it now had its precocious
politicians and its premature sociologists. He was tempted for a
moment to try his recruiting spells upon the juvenile Integralist,
whose red hair reminded him of his girl cousin's, but it seemed cruel
to add to the lad's risks. Besides, had not the boy already
proclaimed--like his seniors--that Russia, not Jewry, was to be saved?

It was an hour of no custom when he got back to the inn, so that he
was scarcely surprised to find host and hostess alike invisible. He
sat down, and began to wri