Page:Karl Marx the man and his message.pdf/9

 and Utopian dreamers whose names subsequently became famous in the Valhalla of revolutionary fame. Heine, the poet, Bakunin and Proudhon, the philosophers of Anarchy, Cabet, the Owenite Communist, and other choice spirits, welcomed the brilliant young German, who had already made for himself a place in the ranks of the giants of intellect and of action.

THE LONG ARM OF TYRANNY.
In January, 1845, Marx, with others, was expelled from France,and went to Brussels, where at the end of three years the "long arm of the Prussian Government" again reached him, And he was again driven out. As it happened, however, a provisional Government, the result of a successful revolution, was in office in Paris, and at its invitation Marx returned to that city, and had a right royal reception. From there he went to Cologne to organise and direct the revolutionary movement in Germany. Here he edited a newspaper, and was twice tried and acquitted for writing sedition. But in the end the paper was suppressed, and Marx was once more expelled. Before leaving Cologne he paid off the debts of the paper to the uttermost farthing, and not only beggared himself in so doing, but also his wife, who parted with the family heirlooms, which her grandmother had inherited from her Argyll forbears.

There were now three children in the Marx family. They had entered Cologne practically penniless, they left it absolutely so. Marx fled to Paris in May, but an abortive rising on June 13 following restored the reactionaries to power, and Marx had again to flee for safety. He made for London, which, but for an occasional holiday, was now to be his home for the rest of his life. The years which followed were years of toil, suffering, hunger, and privation. The record of those weary years is one of almost unrelieved tragedy. Huddled in a small, single apartment, turned out into the street for non-payment of rent, frequent sickness among the children, the loss of little Edgar—their only boy—the birth of Eleanor, whose tragic end a few years ago sent such a thrill of horror through the movement and finally, the death, first of his wife, and then of Jenny, his eldest daughter, all combined to deepen the gloom of those dark days.

THE OUTCAST.
The spectacle of the possessor of one of the greatest intellects of his day in Europe, trudging the streets of London, haggard, hungry and forlorn, applying for and being refused a job as a clerk at probably 25s. a week; chased by a policeman on suspicion of being a thief, whilst on his way to pawn the remains of his wife's trinkets to get food for his starving children, is a sad commentary on the theory that only the unfit suffer. Because this man,