In 1922, following the strikes and bloodshed in Johannesburg in the early months of that year, of which much history has been written, and to which I have made brief reference in former pages, Sidney P. Bunting and I were given credentials to attend the annual International Conference in Russia-the "Mecca" of the Communist Party to which 'we then both belonged, Bunting representing the Johannesburg branch and myself Cape Town. I shipped on a German boat direct to Hamburg, and there stayed a few weeks and made the acquaintance of many German comrades.
I can speak sufficient German to make myself understood and sometimes met one who was acquainted with my own language - Erich Hoffman in particular, who was then a member of some Hamburg public body. He had spent several years in Cape Town. C. Rossow entertained me very hospitably, sometimes at his home, but neither he nor his family could speak anything but German.
They had at that time a very spacious trades Hall or, as they call them, Gewerkschaftshaus, and elaborate trade union offices, to which I was given access, and they loaded me with their books and literature. The Trades Hall in Germany was an open public bar, with often musical evenings, to which all the Socialist and Labour men assembled, sat with their beloved jugs of beer before them and poured out' their economic knowledge or the evils of the economic system to each other. They are almost hospitable people, if I dare to-day.
With the inflated currency (the mark was thousands to the English pound sterling during my star) we, especially being South Africans, were as millionaires amongst them. Of course they knew the visitors and the hotel I stayed at in Hamburg charged me for a room more than I should have paid for full board. I subsequently reached Berlin some weeks before Comrade Bunting and I was given this time a recommendation to stay at the Gewerkschaftshaus, Engelufer, or the Trades Hall. They, unlike the hotel proprietors, treated me as one of themselves, without inflating the charges for my accommodation, and it cost me less than a shilling' a day in English money. I have in my possession to-day a 100,000-mark note, and many others equalling that amount, as a relic of the German currency at that time.