that belonged to obsolete social or religious systems and prevented the freer growth of individual initiative and variety in life. Nor had he hitherto found much difficulty in working with Anarchists on a common platform. He had often addressed meetings with Kropotkin (and to the last remained his personal friend), with Mrs. C.M. Wilson, Louise Michel, and other pronounced Anarchists, and several of his colleagues in the Council of the League were decidedly Anarchist in their views. It had indeed been easier on the whole for him to get on with the Anarchists than with the parliamentarians, for the simple reason that the matter of parliamentary policy was involved in almost every practical question that arose, whereas Anarchism as a practical system was, or seemed to be, a question of the far future.
But already it was becoming evident to him and to other of the more observant members of the League in London and in the Provinces, that Anarchism was no longer an abstract theory merely. The Anarchist idea was gaining more and more adherents in the Party; and with their growth in numbers they were becoming increasingly bold in their efforts to apply their principles both within and without the organisation.
There was, in fact, a sort of current of Anarchism rising in the Socialist Movement—a current which a year or two later threatened to carry away with it a large part of the more active propagandists.
It was difficult just then to account for this circumstance. There appeared to be something mysterious in its origin and mode of diffusion. It was hardly to be ascribed to any circumstance in the political or industrial situation of the time. It was rather a reaction of influences within the Movement itself. Nowhere did Anarchism spring up spontaneously, so to speak, in the country, as Socialism so often did. It grew and spread only within the Socialist Movement, parasitically in the branches—a fact which accords with general experience of Anarchist propaganda in other countries.
