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[The following is from Malcolm Muggeridge’s diary from April, 1951.]

Curious Kafka-like dream, immensely vivid. I was under arrest for some crime, probably murder. Whether I was guilty or not didn’t seem to trouble me greatly. Probably I was guilty of some crime or other, but that seemed far away and not to matter much. It appeared that I was allowed out of my prison from time to time, but I always had to return. I was always conscious of the prison, yet the prison itself was not a place of bars and locked doors but a small, bare house, of whose back rooms I was terrified. Once when I was out I saw a woman outside her house, and her husband arrived and asked for food. She spoke to him shortly, and he answered back sharply, and soon they were quarrelling, their faces distorted with rage and hate. I rushed up to them and said that hatred and anger were devilish and never in any circumstances justified, and suddenly, in my dream, I had one of those moments of comprehension when the universe and human life in it make sense. This was accompanied by a feeling of inexpressible happiness. I went back to my prison quite cheerfully, though everyone else was moving in the opposite direction, and thought how really quite pleasant a place it was. I even looked at the dreaded back rooms, and found that they, too, were harmless and clean. Then I reflected: ‘How lucky I am to be here. I might be in the town prison with all the ordinary criminals.’ At this reflection another great burst of feeling seized me, and I thought to myself: ‘The ordinary criminals are no different from me. It might be a privilege to be with them. I might be able to help them and they me.’

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