"I am anxious to leave but I have no money to leave with," I told him. He could see my perplexity, but he could not see that it was any concern of his.
The workingmen heard of my plight and came to my rescue. They were in hard straits but they raised a thousand rubles. The men in jail smuggled out another thousand. Now I was ready to go. But the Japanese Consul refused to vise my passport. He confronted me with a list of my crimes, chief among which were articles against intervention that I had published in the Soviet papers. The Tokio Foreign Office did not like these articles. It had cabled that in no circumstances was my presence to be allowed to pollute the sacred soil of Japan. The Chinese, however, gave me a vise and I booked on a coasting-steamer bound for Shanghai.
My last night was spent with tovarishe in a hiding-place in the hills. The Soviet had not been destroyed. It had gone underground. In the secret retreat the leaders yet uncaptured, gathered to plan and organize. In farewell they sang for me the hymn of the English Transport Workers, taught them by Jerome:
"Hold the fort for we are coming!
Union men be strong;
Side by side we battle onward,
Victory will come."
With these words ringing in my ears on July 11, I sailed past the Allied battleships and out into the
