Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

124 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

around us... Somehow there was a great warmth about it all . . . they were all so welcoming.

On a later visit they encountered Mitrinovi¢ for the first time. Nearly half a century later this informant was still able to recall the impression he made upon her:

On the second or third time that I went to ‘55° I was sitting with a number of women at one end of that big room. At the other end of the room DM had come in. I saw this man for the first time... . He had such a presence that you only had to look at him to know that you were in the presence of someone great. As far as I was concerned I really couldn't take my eyes off him.

Other members of the group returned from visits to London similarly moved.

The first time I met Mr. Mitrinovié was in July 1933... Don’t ask me to describe him. It is beyond description in my view. An incredible man . . . My first impression was, of course “How un-English” . . . most remarkable . . . And his eyes. I shall never meet anyone like him.

Back in Rugby they began to draw their friends and associates into the group and the intensity of activities heightened with group meetings on several evenings a week, selling the weekly paper, and organising public meetings.

The astonishing thing I remember was that there was such a release of psychic energy that you could do with a very few hours of sleep. We would read and talk until sometimes 4.00 in the morning, and then the men would go to work at 9.00. š

One of the men had an old Bentley which was used as the groups means of transport:

Sometimes they would be asked to speak at other groups. On one occasion I remember we got into Robert Oliver’s car and motored down to Bristol and gave a long talk there. The men never went alone, they always went as a team . . . Discussions would go on after the actual meeting. We would get back to Rugby around 2.00 or 3.00 in the morning and have a post-mortem on how it had gone...

By this time the men had met Mitrinovi¢ and knew that they had been privileged to meet a very great man. From then I think they were prepared to sacrifice