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Neither spoke any language but his own, and the few remaining passengers were reduced to express their wants in dumb-show. One small fragment of conversation gave Mr. Judson a valuable clue as to how one was expected to behave in Yugoslavia. One of the Yugoslavs aboard the train said, in the course of a long and unintelligible conversation: “I knew at once he was an anti-Titoist because he said ‘Sbogom’ instead of ‘Zdravo’.” This puzzled Judson for a moment until he remembered that the first greeting carries the name of God with it, and to the good Marxist the name of God is anathema.
    Darkness was falling as the train crawled into Trieste, and after a brief pause turned inland to climb the cliffs which separated them from the Yugoslavia which Methuen had once known so well but which Mr. Judson had never seen. At the frontier a horde of officials climbed aboard supervised by a couple of grim-looking young men in leather overcoats and top-boots, but dressed in plain clothes. Mr. Judson was interested in this first glance at the dreaded OZNA officials who held the country in a grip hardly less brutal than that of the Russian NKVD. They were obviously chosen for their powerful physique and not for their intelligence. They walked along the corridor holding the passports of the passengers and clumsily comparing the photographs which adorned these documents with the originals. They found that the likeness of Mr. Judson passed muster and handed him back his passport after taking the precaution of looking under the seats of the sleeping-carriage. The other officials treated them with great deference, and the swagger with which they walked proclaimed them a ruling caste. The diplomatic visa saved Mr. Judson from the indignity of having his baggage searched, though there was nothing incriminating in it.
    Almost empty, the train passed the last barrier and lurched forward into the darkness which covered Yugoslavia. Methuen stared eagerly out of the window to pick up remembered landmarks but the darkness defeated him; once or twice he caught a glimpse of a fairy-tale mountain fringed with fir trees, rearing up against the sky, and perhaps dotted with Hans Andersen houses, with hanging eaves. Once or twice the darkness fell away under his eyes and showed him the racing whiteness of a mountain torrent, the steady concussion of the water rising above even the roar of the wheels. But for the most part the land lay in darkness except for where a blaze of light lit up a riverside sawmill or a power factory.
    At Lunbliana the station was seething with human beings and almost before the train drew up a raging crowd of peasants burst into it, shouting incoherently and dragging after them shapeless parcels of all sizes.
    There was no attempt to keep order, and so great was the press that even the corridors of the train filled to bursting point with human beings, who overflowed into the reserved sleeping-coaches and were expelled with oaths by the attendants. Methuen had a vivid memory of the pre-war Slovene peasant with his spotless linen and he was shocked to see the ragged and dirty crowd which now besieged the train. Everywhere the shapeless cloth cap which was the badge of a new servitude. The women looked ghastly and haggard as they wrestled with their baskets, and the shrill voices with which they wrangled and argued had an edge of hysteria and fatigue. This was a new and startling phenomenon—the transformation of a Yugoslav crowd into a band of pariahs. Only the officials looked secure and well fed, each with his tall top-boots and black despatch case. The revolution had carried them to security above the common press of human beings.
    The way to the lavatory was now effectively blocked and Methuen took a stroll to the end of the corridor, reserved for the privileged foreigners, to gaze at the bee-like swarm of passengers in the next carriage. Once the train started they seemed to relax into attitudes of