Preface

I have been pressed by friends for many years to write a brief account of my life, and to put on record my remembrance of some of the interesting people I have met. As, except when I was roaming about the South Sea Islands, I never kept a diary, it was desirable I should do this as soon as possible, if I did it at all. But that was no easy matter for a very busy man. At last I have squeezed out the time necessary for the work, and now the book is finished I hope it will prove readable.

I am one of the very few left who knew both Mazzini and Marx well, and even the numbers of those who were active at the commencement of the organised Socialist movement in England are being rapidly reduced. I have made no attempt to deal with that movement in detail, though in the short personal sketches I have brought in events of much later date than are to be found in the main narrative. I hope, however, ere long to be able to carry my reminiscences farther.

Born into the stirring period when the armed uprising of oppressed Nationalities was the most hopeful feature of European development, I have lived to see the day when pacifism has reached such a pitch among its more ardent votaries, that manful resistance to militarist aggression is regarded as a betrayal of democracy. This view is, to my mind, utterly pusillanimous and contemptible. I shall never cease to combat it so long as I can make a speech or hold a pen. A vigorous and persistent enemy of Capitalism and Imperialism all over the world, I, a Social-Democrat of more than thirty years’ standing, hold that any nation which refuses to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain its influence and uphold its treaties abroad is unworthy, as it must remain incapable, of conquering for itself economic and social freedom at home. And this is specially true of my own countrymen.

A large portion of the book, however, is not concerned either with Socialism or politics, and it is this, perhaps, which will be of most interest to the general reader.

H.M. Hyndman
9 Queen Anne’s Gate
LONDON, S.W., July 1911.

Chapter 1

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