Diary in Exile-1935

February 7, 1935

The diary is not a literary form I am especially fond of; at the moment I would prefer the daily newspaper. But there is none available. … Cut off from political action, I am obliged to resort to such ersatz journalism as a private diary. At the beginning of the war, when I was confined in Switzerland, I kept a diary for a few weeks. Later, after being deported from France to Spain in 1916, I did so again. I think that is all. Now once again I have to resort to a political diary. Will it be for long? Perhaps months; in any case not years. Events must come to a head in •one way or another and put an end to the diary—if it is not cut short even sooner by a surreptitious shot directed by an agent of … Stalin, Hitler, or their French friend-enemies.

Lassalle wrote once that he would gladly leave unwritten what he knew if only he could accomplish at least a part of what he felt able to do. Any revolutionary would feel the ...