Fomenting Political Violence: Fantasy,

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 FOMENTING
POLITICAL VIOLENCE
FANTASY, LANGUAGE, MEDIA, ACTION

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL

EDITED BY STEFFEN KRÜGER,

KARL FIGLIO AND BARRY RICHARDS
 Studies in the Psychosocial

Series Editors
Stephen Frosh
Department of Psychosocial Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
London, UK

Peter Redman
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK

Wendy Hollway
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
Studies in the Psychosocial seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic
and social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in
each other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of
a single dialectical process. As such it can be understood as an interdisci-
plinary field in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Studies
in the Psychosocial is also distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the
irrational and unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, under-
stood psychoanalytically. Studies in the Psychosocial aims to foster the
development of this field by publishing high quality and innovative
monographs and edited collections. The series welcomes submissions
from a range of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary orientations,
including sociology, social and critical psychology, political science, post-
colonial studies, feminist studies, queer studies, management and organi-
zation studies, cultural and media studies and psychoanalysis. However,
in keeping with the inter- or transdisciplinary character of psychosocial
analysis, books in the series will generally pass beyond their points of
origin to generate concepts, understandings and forms of investigation
that are distinctively psychosocial in character.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14464
 Steffen Krüger • Karl Figlio
Barry Richards
Editors

Fomenting Political
Violence
Fantasy, Language, Media, Action
Editors
Steffen Krüger Karl Figlio
Department of Media and Communication Department of Psychosocial and
University of Oslo Psychoanalytic Studies
Oslo, Norway University of Essex
Colchester, UK
Barry Richards
Bournemouth University
Poole, UK

Studies in the Psychosocial

ISBN 978-3-319-97504-7    ISBN 978-3-319-97505-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97505-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956326

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
2018
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 Acknowledgements

This book grew from a conference by the same name in 2016 and has
been a group effort throughout. We thank our authors whose inspired
work and engaged participation made this a smooth and pleasant process.
But as usual, when it comes to team play, there are those dexterous, untir-
ing people in the background whose excellent work would not find
appreciation if their names weren’t mentioned here. Thus, our thanks go
to Deborah C. Stewart and Tom Kugler at the Department for Psychosocial
and Psychoanalytic Studies (DPPS), University of Essex, for their fantas-
tic (not in the psychoanalytic sense) help with the 2016 conference. We
also thank all conference presenters and other participants who engaged
in discussion with us, sharpened our ideas, or changed them entirely. The
conference was also enriched by a chamber music trio comprising
Katherine Darton, Stina Lyon, and Chris Scobie. The University of Essex
graciously hosted the conference. The Faculty of Media and
Communication at Bournemouth University, the Department of Media
and Communication (IMK) at the University of Oslo and the DPPS at
Essex supported us financially. IMK also helped with the book publica-
tion. Thanks a lot!
Further thanks go to Grace Jackson and Joanna O’Neill at Palgrave
Macmillan for guiding us elegantly and surefootedly through the publi-
cation process, as well as to the series editors of Studies in the Psychosocial,
Stephen Frosh, Wendy Hollway, and Peter Redman, who supported this
v
vi Acknowledgements

project from the first. We are also extremely grateful to Jessica Yarin
Robinson, who copy-edited the book in a manner that sets new standards
of professionalism. And finally, we thank Joanne Brown, Stina Lyon, and
Marianne Heggenhougen for putting up with their respective parts of
this book’s editorial team on a daily basis.
 Contents


Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction  1
Steffen Krüger, Karl Figlio, and Barry Richards


‘Fighting for Something Great …’: Intergenerational
Constellations and Functions of Self-culturalisation for
Adolescents in Migrant Families 17
Vera King

 Most Brutal and Implacable Superego: Understanding the

A
Pseudo-political Violence of the Islamic State 37
Barry Richards


Pussy Riot, or the Return of the Repressed in Discourse 57
Maria Brock


Violence and the Virtual: Right-wing, Anti-asylum Facebook
Pages and the Fomenting of Political Violence 75
Steffen Krüger

vii
viii Contents


Shaping Prejudice? Holocaust Remembrance and the Narrative
of German Suffering103
Roger Frie


The Rhetorical Satisfactions of Hate Speech125
James Martin


Fundamentalism and the Delusional Creation of an Enemy149
Karl Figlio


Spatialisation and the Fomenting of Political Violence167
Deborah L. S. Wright


Four Monuments and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and
Collective Memory in Contemporary Hungary189
Jeffrey Stevenson Murer


Darwin, Freud, and Group Conflict219
Jim Hopkins

Index253
 Notes on Contributors

Maria Brock is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Baltic and East
European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University, Stockholm. With a BA in
Russian Studies (Bristol), an MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology (LSE), and
a PhD in Psychosocial studies, she does research into nostalgia and memory
culture in ex-socialist/ex-communist states.
Karl Figlio is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychosocial and
Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK. He is a senior member of the
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of the British Psychotherapy
Foundation and a Clinical Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, in
private practice. He has published widely on psychoanalysis as a discipline and
in relation to other disciplines, most recently on bearing unbearable memory.
His book, Remembering as Reparation: Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory
(Palgrave 2017), develops themes relevant to his chapter in this book.
Roger Frie is a clinical psychologist and a professor at the Faculty of Education,
at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. His academic work examines the inter-
section of cultural and personal dimensions in psychological development. He
focuses on how human beings develop within social, cultural, historical, and
political contexts, and in turn, how they respond to these contexts through situ-
ated acts of psychological and political agency.
Jim Hopkins is a Visiting Professor at UCL and Reader Emeritus in Philosophy
at King’s College London. He was Kohut Visiting Professor of Social Thought at

ix
x Notes on Contributors

the University of Chicago for 2008. His main work has been on psychoanalysis,
consciousness, interpretation, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Vera King is head of the Sigmund Freud Institute Frankfurt for psychoanalysis
and its cultural applications, as well as professor of sociology and psychoanalytic
social psychology at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. She has conducted
research into strategies of self-perfection, on migrant identities and disadvan-
taged families.
Steffen Krüger is a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at the Department
of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway. He develops criti-
cal, psychosocial approaches to media texts and discourses. In his current
research project, “Online Interaction Forms,” financed by the Norwegian
Research Council (NFR), he analyses forms of online interaction on a variety of
platforms – discussion forums and social networking sites.
James Martin is a professor of politics at the Department of Politics and
International Relations at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a
political theorist with interests in public speech, argument, ideology and dis-
course and their effects on subjectivity. He is currently working on the topic of
‘hate speech’ and preparing a book on the ‘psychopolitics of speech.’
Jeffrey Stevenson Murer is lecturer on collective violence at the School of
International Relations, University of St. Andrews. His research explores the
psychosocial processes associated with collective and individual identity forma-
tion in the context of conflict and through violence. It explores how anxiety can
motivate social action, and how perceptions of material change can prompt not
only violence but also a profound realignment of the boundaries of identity in
the contexts of postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe.
Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University
in the U.K. He has long-standing interests in terrorism and political violence, in
social cohesion, and in national identity and nationalisms. His approach to these
topics is psychosocial, combining psychoanalytic insights with sociological and
political analyses. His current work continues to explore the emotional dynam-
ics of democracy and governance, with security and the sense of safety as key
topics.
Deborah L. S. Wright has a degree in Visual Communication from Edinburgh
College of Art. Her artistic and academic work have centered on humans’ rela-
tionships with their environment. She worked as a supervisor, staff trainer, and
 Notes on Contributors xi

manager in residential care with people with learning difficulties and mental
health issues. She has worked as a Psychotherapist in private practice for eleven
years and is currently doing the professional doctorate at the Department of
Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.
 List of Figures

Spatialisation and the Fomenting of Political Violence

Fig. 1 The spatial array of a building as an auxiliary mind introjected as
an auxiliary mind, by Wright, D 173
Fig. 2 Marking out spaces and people, by Wright, D 173
Fig. 3 The nave of Westminster Abbey, by Wright, D 177
Fig. 4 The shrine of Edward the Confessor, by Wright, D 178
Fig. 5 Speer’s ‘Cathedral of Light’ (‘Lichtdom’) at Nuremberg, by
Wright, D 181
Four Monuments and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and Collective
Memory in Contemporary Hungary
Fig. 1 Soviet War Memorial, designed and built by Károly Antal in
1946, is dedicated to the fallen soldiers of the Red Army during
the Battle of Budapest, by Jeffrey S. Murer 195
Fig. 2 Bust of Admiral Miklós Horthy dedicated in 2013, by Jeffrey S.
Murer196
Fig. 3 Monument to the Victims of the German Occupation, designed
and built by Péter Párkány Raab, was unveiled in the Spring of
2014, by Jeffrey S. Murer 198
Fig. 4 Shoes on the Danube Bank, conceived and executed by Can
Toguay and Gyula Pauer, was installed in 2005, by Jeffrey S.
Murer199
Fig. 5 Dialogue instead of double-talk, a protest placard in Szabadság
Tér in 2015, by Jeffrey S. Murer 211
xiii
 Fomenting Political Violence:
An Introduction
Steffen Krüger, Karl Figlio, and Barry Richards

Abstract In this introduction we use a speech by Rodrigo Duterte, the

president of the Philippines, as an example with which to explain the
psychosocial outlook of the volume. ‘If you had raped three, I will admit
it, that’s on me,’ Duterte told soldiers tasked with battling Muslim rebels.
We follow the reception of this and others of Duterte’s statements in
order to map the theoretical frame laid out by the concepts of fantasy,
language, media, and action and offer various interpretations and analy-
ses of the unfolding scenes. Subsequently, we introduce the volume’s
chapters with reference to the theoretical frame thus set up.

S. Krüger (*)
Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: steffen.krueger@media.uio.no
K. Figlio
Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex,
Colchester, UK
e-mail: kfiglio@essex.ac.uk
B. Richards
Bournemouth University, Poole, UK
e-mail: BRichards@bournemouth.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Krüger et al. (eds.), Fomenting Political Violence, Studies in the Psychosocial,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97505-4_1
2 S. Krüger et al.

‘If you had raped three, I will admit it, that’s on me.’ This is what Rodrigo
Duterte, president of the Philippines, told soldiers tasked with battling
Muslim rebels on the southern Mindanao island, after having declared
military rule there in order to fight armed rebel groups (Reuters 2017).
Duterte made the remark as a joke in which he contradicted – and practi-
cally disavowed – both the pleading and threatening rhetoric that went
before it: ‘If you go down, I go down,’ he appealed to the soldiers in his
speech, ‘But for this martial law and the consequences of martial law and
the ramifications of martial law, I and I alone would be responsible, just
do your job I will take care of the rest.’ Subsequently turning to threats,
he warned his soldiers: ‘I’ll imprison you myself,’ referring to any soldiers
committing violations. It was at this point that he made the joking prom-
ise that soldiers would go unpunished for three rapes.
Now, this is probably one of the most direct, least euphemistically
vested ways of inciting political violence of recent times – performed
publicly, not only in front of soldiers but, via the media coverage of the
speech, national and international audiences. In its flabbergasting frank-
ness, it exaggerates and caricatures the tendencies towards impulsiveness
and looseness, aggression and transgression, populism and nationalism
that combine to weigh in heavily on the structure of feeling (Williams) of
the current historical moment. As that, it can serve here as an exemplary
case with which to unfold the practices, processes, and dynamics that the
chapters in this book seek to shed light upon.
In keeping with existing definitions (Bosi and Malthaner 2015; Della
Porta 2013), we define political violence as the infliction of physical, psy-
chological, and/or symbolic harm on people and/or things through a
variety of means so as to influence wider parts of a given public in order
to achieve political goals. However, the word ‘fomenting’ is a decisive
qualification here. In its sense of to rouse, stir up, excite, effect, and spread
(OED 2018), the term directs our interest in political violence to the
seismic contractions, historical movements, and shifts in social, political,
and cultural constellations that lay the ground for such violence to
emerge. Furthermore, the developmental aspect contained in the term
points towards the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic viewpoint that the
present volume takes. Such a perspective is oriented towards micro-­
interactions, relational styles, and dynamics between people, and pays
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 3

particular attention to the inter- and intra-subjective dimensions of such

dynamics.
This can be demonstrated by returning to the example of Duterte’s
aside. The jocular, self-contradicting way in which he made this state-
ment opens an ambiguous realm of meaning and non-meaning that acti-
vates all the concepts contained in the subtitle of this volume: fantasy,
language, media, and action. Into this realm of ambiguity, fantasies can
flow from various positions and perspectives. Not only will it have trig-
gered the imaginations of the Philippine soldiers as to who they are, what
their task is, and their duties and privileges, but also the wider Philippine
population will have been set alight with impressions and ideas concern-
ing their leader and themselves – let alone the female population on
Mindanao thus surrendered to the wills of an army let loose – and finally,
also the ‘world stage.’ All who witnessed Duterte’s statement could find
dark, brooding meaning here – to be embraced or rejected, rejoiced or
feared.
Staying with Duterte’s speech, in the kind of martial law to be estab-
lished on Mindanao, soldiers were to become unbound, relieved, and
freed from the constraints of doubt and empathy: ‘My order to the troops
is all people who are not authorised by government to carry arms and
they resist, kill them, wipe them out,’ Duterte ordered. In other words,
the force by which resistance was to be met was to be immeasurably,
unchallengeably stronger than the resistance it was to meet. Resistance is
not merely to be met and overcome here; rather, it is to be totally ‘wiped
out’ so that no trace of it will be found after the soldiers’ work is done.
In light of this fantasy of total annihilation, the joke about going free
for up to three rapes can no longer be seen as remaining enclosed in the
sphere of the ‘as-if.’ Rather, in a situation thus defined, the joke hints at
the very plausible circumstance that sexual violence becomes tolerated as
a degree of collateral damage to be expected and absorbed (see Wood
2014 for a comprehensive overview of conflict-related sexual violence).
Furthermore, the execution of military force and political violence on
this imagined scale becomes charged with a sexual dimension itself. Total
annihilation presupposes total domination and, accordingly, total subju-
gation. In this respect, Duterte’s joke is a way of admitting to a grotesque
proportionality in the monstruous fantasy of martial law that he imposed.
4 S. Krüger et al.

Extending this line of thought, it is enlightening to assess the family

relations that Duterte constructs between his soldiers and himself, how
he as president and military leader binds himself to the soldiers and, in
turn, makes the soldiers dependent on him personally. He takes respon-
sibility for and ties his fate to the soldiers’ actions; he threatens to person-
ally punish them for war crimes, but at the same time offers them personal
protection from such punishment – he upholds the law but informally
suspends it. From the viewpoint of Freudian theory, this creates a precari-
ous situation in which subjects are offered to let their drives (cultivated in
military training) run freely by assuring them that this will not only be
within the limits of what is approved of by the (externalised) superego
but, moreover, welcomed by it as being for its sake (see Kris 1941 for an
assessment of Nazi-German home propaganda along those lines). Soldiers
are directly bound to the president by ties of love and are made to depend
on the president’s quasi-parental authority. After all, should they, by
juridical standards, overshoot the mark in the way Duterte suggests and
jokingly invites them to, their fate will be in his hands only. In such a
paternal context, having the father’s goodwill, blessing, and protection
can be expected to have very concrete effects on the soldiers’ actions. Do
as I please – which I know will please you too – and I have you covered. This
has been the way in which the ground for conflict-related sexual violence
was laid in the Philippines in 2017. The circumstance that Mindanao is
Duterte’s home island adds a further troublesome familial dimension to
the concessions to his soldiers. It is as though Duterte, speaking from the
position of connoisseur, makes a perversely cruel, underhand compli-
ment to the women on the island – as though he gives his soldiers to
understand that he himself knows from experience that the women of
Mindanao are ‘impossible to resist.’1
Even though Duterte made his career in local politics, having held the
office of mayor of Davao City for long stretches of consecutive election
periods (1988–1998 and 2001–2009; Batalla 2016), his joke is anything
but a product of provinciality or naivety in national, or international
politics. To the contrary, with the incident being one in a chain of similar
and similarly gruesome ones, he will have been fully aware of the media
attention, and even if his remarks should have come to him spontane-
ously and were made off-script, he will have intuitively anticipated what
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 5

impact they would have. After all, in the case of the rape joke he could
already draw from extensive experience with public responses. In 2016,
for example, during a string of provocative anti-American statements –
one in which he called US President Barack Obama a ‘son of a bitch’ – his
approval ratings kept at an unambiguously positive 86 percent (Batalla
2016, p. 180). Against the insight that it apparently pays nationally to
show an aggressive disregard to the sentiments of international onlookers,
especially as concerns the US as the Philippines’ former colonial power,
Duterte could expect that the shocked responses from international news
outlets would only strengthen his standing with substantial parts of the
Philippine population, who – similar to the relationship his soldiers were
offered in the speech – embrace him as a strong, uncompromising, and
charismatic leader. Indeed, his rape joke could be expected to resound
positively and impress as a token of radical independence from and disre-
gard for an intellectual, globally oriented, liberal elite.
Carried by international media coverage, Duterte’s enactment of
authoritarian populism will have further resounded with audiences with
likewise authoritarian, transgressive inklings around the world. In
Western societies, his joke could tap into strong anti-Political Correctness
currents that, in turn, are part and parcel of contemporary internet cul-
ture. As Angela Nagle (2017) rightly claims, this online culture must be
seen as the reactionary reinterpretation of a culture of transgression that,
throughout the second part of the twentieth century, had been owned by
artists and intellectuals with leftist political orientations. Directly related
to this intersection of Duterte’s populist play with violence and transgres-
sive internet culture, BBC News reported in November 2017 on several
video games available on various app stores in which players could either
play Duterte himself or his police chief, Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa, and
shoot drug addicts.
Duterte’s links to urban death squads are an open secret and reach back
to his time as mayor of Davao. These connections he apparently took
with him into the president’s office in 2016, so that already by September
2017, there had been over 8000 extrajudicial killings by vigilante groups,
in addition to the 3900 deaths at the hand of police forces (Human
Rights Watch 2018). The above-mentioned video games, boasting titles
such as Pinoy Crime Fighter and Fighting Crime 2 (BBC 2017), turned
6 S. Krüger et al.

the killings into fun and play and, in view of their crude, two-­dimensional
aesthetics, into a joke once more. Indeed, one can understand the games
symptomatically as confessing to and disavowing the ongoing violence in
the Philippines at the same time. As with Duterte’s jokes, which play
‘hide and seek’ with reality, making suggestions only to laugh them off,
the games invite players to restage the literally thousands of killings and
experience them as absurd and inconsequential and the victims as two-­
dimensional cutouts receiving their natural fate.

 Psychosocial Approach to Studying Political

A
Violence
As cursory as the above assessment of aspects of political violence in the
contemporary Philippines is, what we hope becomes apparent from it is
how the realms of fantasy, language, media, and action inform and inter-
act with one another in a process towards fomenting violence – violence
that, in addition to its often horrendous effects, is politically motivated
and has political gains and losses. As shown, Duterte’s statement and its
ambiguous relation to reality has a place between humour and serious-
ness, legality and illegality; it draws on and, in turn, triggers fantasies that
are based on shared cultural imaginations, creating and recreating rela-
tions and dynamic interplays of investments, attitudes, and meanings. In
turn, the media coverage of the statement, circulating in the hybrid spaces
(Chadwick et al. 2016) in which various media forms (mainstream news
media, social networking sites, anonymous online discussion boards,
etc.) overlap and contend with one another, further shapes and adds to
the imaginaries and fantasies of audiences in vastly different contexts,
strengthening positions, modifying and transforming them, or breaking
them down. And finally, all the above will interact with existing cultures
of conflict that shape dispositions and the pathways of action and, in the
case of an eruption of violence, the modes and quantities of discharge.
Such an approach to the preconditions and developmental aspects of
political violence shares central viewpoints with a social scientific para-
digm in the study of political violence that has formed throughout the
last 15 years. This paradigm took shape when social movement scholars
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 7

started to research political violence in a way different from mainstream

terrorism studies (Bosi and Malthaner 2015, p. 3). The latter field had
shown tendencies to render essential the notion of the terrorist and failed
to take into consideration the specific ways in which people were becom-
ing radicalised and drawn into insurgent groups (see Della Porta 2013).
Social movement scholars, by contrast, sought to develop critical perspec-
tives to address and counter terrorism studies’ somewhat rigid and uni-
versalistic conceptions by shedding light on the specific contexts, relations,
processes, and dynamics in which radicalisation and acts of violence emerge.
In Political Violence in Context (2015), for example, Lorenzo Bosi, Niall
Ó Dochartaigh, and Daniela Pisoiu use the dimensions of time, space,
and milieu ‘as variables that are an intrinsic and central part of the analy-
sis of contention’ (Bosi et al. 2015, p. 3). In Dynamics of Political Violence
(2014), Bosi, Chares Demetriou, and Stefan Malthaner seek to develop
an understanding of the buildup and development of cases of political
violence by focusing on four dimensions of such dynamics: ‘state-­
movement interactions, intra-movement competition, meaning forma-
tion, and (transnational) diffusion’ (2014, p. 5). As a last example, Eitan
Y. Alimi, Bosi, and Demetriou (2012) offer an approach to studying
political violence that looks at its relational and processual dynamics. In
the article they write:

A relational approach, ‘depicts social reality in dynamic, continuous and

processual terms, and sees relations between social terms and units as pre-
eminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, ongoing processes rather than
as static ties among inert substances’ (Emirbayer 1997, p. 289). From this
perspective, strategy, rationality, and even values and norms are always rela-
tionally embedded in space and time and gain salience in the context of
social relations. (Alimi et al. 2012, pp. 7–8)

Paying attention to dynamic and relational aspects becomes particu-

larly important in view of the strong rationalistic orientation that domi-
nated a substantial part of terrorism and insurgency studies. In Why
Terrorism Works, for example, Alan Dershowitz (2002) argued that terror-
ism is ‘an entirely rational choice to achieve a political objective’
(Dershowitz 2002, p. 89). This argumentative line has been a mainstay in
8 S. Krüger et al.

terrorism studies of the 2000s and has been extended even to suicide
bombers. For example, Robert Pape (2005) contends that ‘over the past
two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists
have learned that it pays’ (Pape 2005, p. 343, quoted in Abrahms 2006,
p. 45).
Now, whereas we by no means want to rule out that a strong belief in
the effectiveness of one’s actions on the part of the (surviving) insurgents
plays an important role in spawning further such acts, we do not think
that conceiving of the rationale of terrorist acts as outcomes of sober
decision-making processes, in which pros and cons are meticulously
weighed against one another, is a fertile path to understanding insurgen-
cies. Thus, we strongly agree with Alimi et al.’s (2012) above point that
political violence cannot sufficiently be captured in and understood
merely through notions of strategies, tactics, aims, and calculations of
gains and benefits (see also Bosi et al. 2015, p. 6). As Barry Richards
argues in the present volume about a case of Islamic State propaganda,
even though this propaganda might appear to offer the recruit a rational
choice between in-group and out-group, or right or wrong, ‘There is no
real choice of any kind here, since the terms of the dichotomy have pre-­
empted that: would you choose the only right path, which leads to para-
dise, or (the only alternative) sin and eternal hellfire?’ (Richards, this
volume). Far from considerations of rational choice, Richards under-
stands the act of joining IS along the lines of Sandor Ferenczi’s (1949)
concept of ‘identification with the aggressor’ – that is, ‘a way of seeking
safety through merger with the boundless power and will of god’
(Richards, this volume). In our opinion, this interpretation of the
motives and circumstances of joining IS – a step offering a makeshift
solution to painful insecurities about one’s place and identity – is signifi-
cantly more orienting and socially enabling than that of a rational weigh-
ing of options.
What a psychoanalytic perspective can thus bring to existing approaches
to political violence is its theoretical richness and sophistication in analys-
ing and interpreting the inter- and intra-subjective dimensions of social
relations and cultural constellations. This sophistication is oriented towards
finding the irrational in the supposedly rational and, vice versa, the ratio-
nal in the supposedly irrational. Referring back to the above reading of
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 9

Duterte’s speech, a psychoanalytic orientation can unfold the affective,

‘sticky’ qualities in the relation between the president and his soldiers that
are mixed into the more explicit relations in the scene. As shown, the for-
mal relationship between soldiers and their leader can be understood along
these lines as permeated by a radically informal, libidinous dimension in
which Duterte enacts a paternal authority who is known to be brutal and
violent, but who shows himself to be benign towards and understanding
of his (soldier) sons’ needs.2 In this way, the context of his official speech is
coextensive with another context of male bonding, specifically: subjection
under and initiation into a paternal structure which needs female victims
to counter its homoerotic implications. This initiation will thus have
unfolded a catastrophic dynamic on Mindanao, inflicting gruesome vio-
lence on the island’s female population. While as of today, independently
verified figures are missing, the Philippine government has stated that the
counterinsurgency cost 1112 lives, all but destroyed the Muslim city of
Marawi, and displaced more than 400,000 residents (Human Rights
Watch 2018). Against these numbers, one can only surmise what the
women of Mindanao had to suffer – silently and off the record.

The Chapters in This Volume

In the approaches to fomenting political violence we have gathered in this
volume, psychoanalytic considerations of inter and/or intra-subjective
dynamics, such as the above, are combined with and checked against the
social, cultural, and political dimensions (and to a lesser degree economic
ones) in various ways and to differing degrees. Rather than attempting to
bring all contributions in line with one central conception of the psycho-
social, we have embraced a range of positions and methodologies, repre-
sented by our international roster of researchers, with some chapters
engaging more intensely with psychoanalytic theory while others are
more empirically oriented.
Vera King’s chapter (“‘Fighting for Something Great …’: Intergenerational
Constellations and Functions of Self-culturalisation for Adolescents in
Migrant Families”), which opens the main part of the volume, represents a
qualitative and intergenerational approach to the psychosocial dimensions of
adolescent development. This approach conceives of the psychic and the
10 S. Krüger et al.

social as dialectically interrelated. Her synopsis of findings from research proj-

ects on adolescents with immigrant backgrounds in Germany shows how the
socioeconomic and sociopolitical realities of migrant families in their host
country, as well as the ways in which these realities come in conflict with the
families’ hopes and expectations, prepare the ground for relational dynamics
between family members that can (but by no means must) lead to rigid iden-
tity formations on the part of the adolescents which might then foment acts
of violence.
Barry Richards (“A Most Brutal and Implacable Superego:
Understanding the Pseudo-political Violence of the Islamic State”) offers
an understanding of IS and its appeal to (particularly Western) recruits
through his reading of Dabiq, IS’s official, glossy magazine that was pub-
lished monthly for over two years, until the ‘caliphate’s’ demise. Drawing
on Ferenczi’s concept of the ‘identification with the aggressor’ (1949),
Richards suggests that surrendering to the absolutist and persecutory
superego of IS’s vision of Allah has a liberating effect in that the recruit is
freed from all ambivalence and ambiguity, all doubts and insecurities as
to her/his existence and role in life. This escape from ambivalence and
insecurity thus continues on from what King observes as rigid modes of
self-fashioning caused by a state of comprehensive disorientation.
In the chapters following Richards’s, we will turn to discursive phe-
nomena and their violent dynamics. Maria Brock (“Pussy Riot, or the
Return of the Repressed in Discourse”) analyses the widespread public
calls, circulating in Russian mainstream and social media, for harsh phys-
ical punishment of the female members of the band Pussy Riot, following
their satirical performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in
Moscow in 2012 and their subsequent imprisonment. What she finds in
the language and rhetoric used in these calls are residues of a linguistic
repertoire of Stalinism. Using Freud’s concept of the ‘return of the
repressed’ as a means with which to understand the significance of this
discursive afterlife of Stalinism in contemporary Russia, Brock suggests
that language which is ‘uprooted and retrieved from a previous historical
context … can retain a violent charge that comes back to haunt the
speaking subject.’ What this charge entails, as well as the fruits it has
borne, can be witnessed today, six years after Pussy Riot’s notoriety, in the
Russian government’s repressive treatment of journalists, activists, and
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 11

the political opposition. While these repressions are widely known, the
Putin government nevertheless has the support of the majority of Russians
and especially young adults (Troianovski 2018).
Continuing on Brock’s path, Steffen Krüger’s analysis of anti-asylum,
anti-migration Facebook pages in Germany (“Violence and the Virtual:
Right-wing, Anti-asylum Facebook Pages and the Fomenting of Political
Violence”) offers a similar connection between language and violence.
Applying Alfred Lorenzer’s (1986) interactionist paradigm to the posts
on those pages, Krüger identifies two main forms of interaction becoming
established there. Firstly, news reports about crimes committed by for-
eigners throughout Germany and Austria are condensed into a coherent,
agonistic reality. Secondly, the intolerableness of this reality is emphasised
time and again. In this way, a disposition towards violence is gradually
built up and, by implicitly making the users and audiences of the
Facebook pages responsible for the ongoing injustice, ways of violent dis-
charge are tacitly suggested. The disposition created on the pages can be
paraphrased: How can you be a witness to such injustice without doing
something?
The repeated plaints of an ongoing injustice done to the German peo-
ple, which Krüger finds in the posts of right-wing German Facebook
pages, are traced back to their historical roots in Roger Frie’s chapter on
the present state of Holocaust remembrance in Germany (“Shaping
Prejudice? Holocaust Remembrance and the Narrative of German
Suffering”). What Frie finds in the memory discourses advanced in
German families and closely knit communities is people’s tendency to
perceive of themselves as victims of World War II. In a development of
Krüger’s observation of the rhetoric of ‘endless suffering,’ Frie finds that
such suffering is put on a par with that of the Nazi regime’s victims.
Right-wing extremism, Frie warns, is able to profit from such perceived
victimhood and from Germans’ aggressive rejection of their role as
perpetrators.
While Brock, Krüger, and Frie thus point to the ways in which a vio-
lent charge can seep into and be built up in everyday exchanges, James
Martin (“The Rhetorical Satisfactions of Hate Speech”) puts forth the
question of what can be done with such charges and the language which
bears them. Approaching the 2015 controversy over antisemitism in the
12 S. Krüger et al.

British Labour Party, Martin argues for a view of political speech (includ-
ing hate speech) as a means to sublimate, rather than overcome violence.
Whereas rhetorics of hate tend to distract from the satisfactions that the
haters draw from them, it is important that we identify and analyse the
desires that drive them. Our task cannot be to eliminate hate altogether,
writes Martin, but, rather, to find ‘better ways to let our hate speak.’
Martin’s identification of a particularly harmful form of hateful
speech – one that acts as ‘a refusal to accept any symbolic mediation with
one’s opponent’ – prepares the ground for Karl Figlio’s argument
(“Fundamentalism and the Delusional Creation of an Enemy”). In his
contribution the author offers an understanding of fundamentalism by
way of acts upon objects that have lost – again in Martin’s words – ‘any
symbolic mediation.’ Reconstructing an incident in which an agitated
mob attacked the house of a paediatrician, smearing ‘paedo’ on the win-
dows of the doctor’s house, Figlio interprets this expletive, ‘paedo,’ as the
object of/for the attack itself. Staking out the wider bearings of this claim,
Figlio takes a theoretical detour to Freud’s concept of primary narcissism
(1914). From the first, Figlio states, narcissism creates a tension and, ulti-
mately, a rift in the ego due to the ego’s desire to take itself as object and,
at the same time, its fear of being replaced by such an object. The higher
the perceived degree of sameness between ego and object, the higher the
fear of replacement by that object and, consequently, of extinction.
Subsequently, Figlio claims, there exists within us a drive towards making
a difference which can then help us create the object upon which our worst
fears can be projected. He uses historical analyses of the establishment of
antisemitism at state level in Nazi Germany to illustrate this claim of the
difference that begs to be made.
Figlio’s observation that, under extreme stress and in near psychotic
states, people’s use of words can begin to act as objects builds a bridge to
Deborah Wright’s concept of spatialisation (“Spatialisation and the
Fomenting of Political Violence”). Spatialisation, Wright argues, is a psy-
chic mechanism by which intolerable, anxiety-provoking feelings and
thoughts, which cannot be contained in the self, are projected onto, and
placed inside, objects in the physical world, such as buildings, parts of
landscapes, furniture, but also people and animals. These objects are
manipulated and modified, moulded and marked, so as to inscribe into
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 13

them the charge that the subject is unable to bear. This concept represents
a fertile extension of Melanie Klein’s notion of projective identification
(1946). Like the latter, spatialisation projects intolerable feelings into an
Other that then becomes identified with these feelings. In spatialisation,
however, this Other is also physically modified so as to fit the projection.
This modification in turn facilitates the transmission of unconscious feel-
ings in that the object is made to bear the stigma that the self is unwilling
to accept.
Wright’s concept of spatialisation, in turn, offers a fertile tool with
which to approach the conflicted and embattled politics of remembrance
in contemporary Hungary, analysed by Jeffrey Murer (“Four Monuments
and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and Collective Memory in
Contemporary Hungary”). The four memorials and a funeral site, which
Murer refers to in his chapter’s title, are all positioned in walking distance
from one another in Budapest’s city centre. They all can be understood as
the material renderings of the Hungarians’ struggle with their unfinished,
conflicted past. Contending interpretations of this past are thus inscribed
into the urban space, where they disseminate undigested affective states
amongst Budapest’s inhabitants. In this way ­memorials can be seen to play
an active role in Hungary’s ongoing authoritarian turn.
Finally, in the volume’s last chapter, we take an evolutionary perspec-
tive to the theme of fomenting political violence. While such universalis-
ing, ‘big’ narratives of the root causes of political violence have fallen out
of favour – and rightly so (see Bosi et al. 2015, pp. 1–2) – our psychoana-
lytic viewpoint justifies the present attempt in that it helps us uncover an
invariable aspect inherent in the manifold manifestations of political vio-
lence analysed in this volume. Thus, in “Darwin, Freud, and Group
Conflict,” Jim Hopkins integrates psychoanalytic theories of identifica-
tion and projection with recent advances in computational and affective
neuroscience and Darwin’s (1871) concept of in-group cooperation for
out-group competition and conflict (‘the competition of tribe with tribe’).
The problem of political violence, writes Hopkins, can be seen as arising
from this evolutionary arrangement:

For insofar as we cooperate in groups only to compete in groups, we can-

not cooperate as a single group, however important the shared interests
14 S. Krüger et al.

that might impel us to do so. … Attempts at species-wide cooperation thus

constantly regress to forms of all of us against the foreigner. (Hopkins, this
volume)

Confronted with the recent turn to authoritarianism in various parts

of the world, Hopkin’s claim rings painfully true – and so does Karl
Figlio’s argument of the ‘difference that begs to be made.’ With James
Martin, then, we must conclude that it cannot be our aim to overcome
hatred, but rather to find ways to ‘hate better’ so that aggression becomes
sublimated into symbolic contention and not fomented into violence.

Notes
1. This reading is supported by Peter Kreutzer’s (2009) analysis of Duterte’s
political rhetoric: ‘Duterte makes abundantly clear that there can be secu-
rity, but only he himself can provide it. Security is provided according to
his personal ideas of justice and adequateness. In his political symbolism,
Duterte clearly is above the law. It is him, who indicts, passes judgement
and orders the executioners to do their job. It is a personalized fight
between those who do not follow the rules and the rightful vigilante
whose rules reign supreme. It is boss-rule in pure form’ (p. 59).
2. Indeed, in an earlier incident from 2016, Duterte joked about the rape
and murder of an Australian woman, Jacqueline Hamill, during a prison
riot in the Philippines in 1989, that ‘I was mad she was raped but she was
so beautiful. I thought, the mayor [i.e. Duterte himself ] should have been
first’ (The Guardian 2016).

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dick's
retriever
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Dick's retriever

Author: E. M. Stooke

Release date: November 13, 2023 [eBook #72111]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Thomas Nelson and Sons,

Limited, 1921

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICK'S

RETRIEVER ***
Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as
printed.

"By the time that Mrs. Wilkins put in her appearance,

the table-cloth was laid."
 DICK'S RETRIEVER

BY

E. M. STOOKE

Author of "Tim and Jim," "A Reformatory Boy,"

&c. &c.

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LIMITED,

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.

1921

CONTENTS.

I. THE ARRIVAL
II. DICK RUNS AN ERRAND

III. DICK'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE BULLY

IV. TEN SHILLINGS REWARD

V. DICK'S INTERVIEW WITH THE COLONEL

VI. HARD TIMES

VII. A GALLANT RESCUE

VIII. STRANGER'S MISSION FULFILLED

DICK'S RETRIEVER.

CHAPTER I.
THE ARRIVAL.

IT was a wild, dark night. The rain was coming down in

torrents, the wind blowing a perfect hurricane. Creak!
Creak! How the branches of the elm trees groaned as they
swayed to and fro outside the tiny cottage where Widow
Wilkins and her eldest child—a delicate looking boy of
twelve—crouched over a dying fire!
"Hark, mother, to the wind! Isn't it terrible?" little Dick
exclaimed in awe-stricken tones.

"Yes," said the widow, "it's a dreadful night. I shudder to

think of the poor sailors out at sea. Depend on it, there'll be
lots of wrecks before morning, unless the wind goes down,
and that pretty soon."

With this, she turned her head towards the door, beneath
which she had stuffed some old matting to keep out the
draught.

"I thought," she went on after a few minutes' pause, "I

heard a cry, but suppose it was only my fancy. One thing's
certain, it can't be from upstairs, 'cos the children are
asleep."

"P'raps it's the wind in the chimney or in the branches of

the trees you hear, mother," said the little boy. "It makes all
kinds of sounds when there's a gale on like this. Listen! I
heard a cry then—sure enough I did! 'Twas like the whine of
a dog, only very low and weak. What do you say—shall we
open the door and look? Something is going 'scratch,
scratch,' now," he cried, jumping excitedly to his feet.

"It's late to open the door, Dick," protested his mother

nervously. "Who's to tell that it isn't some drunken body
playing a trick upon us. Mind we've no near neighbours to
shout to if we should want help ever so bad!"

"I know, I know; but I ain't a bit afraid. And we couldn't go

to bed without seeing what was outside. If it isn't a dog,
why, then, maybe it's a child."

The widow looked disturbed. She rose from her chair, raked
the dying embers together in the fireplace, and lit the
candle; for she and Dick had been sitting the last half-hour
by firelight—they always did so to save lamp oil after she
had put away her sewing at nine o'clock on winter evenings.

"Here, mother, you stand back whilst I undo the door,"

directed Dick.

Mrs. Wilkins, not without some slight misgivings, did as she

was bid. Meanwhile Dick went to the door—his small face
pale with anticipation—and withdrew the heavy bolts. This
done, he lifted the latch, and as a result a gust of storm-
wind swept into the cottage kitchen, and a crouching,
shivering retriever entered.

"Oh!" cried the child. "What a poor wretched thing! See,

mother," he continued, as he shut the door and followed the
dog into the centre of the room, "he's soaked to the skin,
and there's a rope round his neck with a big stone at the
end of it! I know; I see what that means. Some one has
been trying to drown him in the river yonder."

"I reckon your guess isn't far out, Dick," agreed the widow.
"Here, you poor creature, let me look at you. Why, you're
cold as ice, and one of your paws is bleeding!"

Then, turning her kind face to her little son, who stood
looking down on their visitor with pitying eyes, she went on,
—

"Throw a few kindling sticks on those embers, child; and

take the bellows and blow the fire into a blaze. 'Tisn't often
you and I get a chance of doing good, 'cos we're so poor;
but we'll do the best we can for this miserable creature,
though he is but a dog."

"He's a real retriever, I believe," said the enthusiastic little

boy, hastily placing some sticks crosswise on the dying
coals, and reaching forward for the bellows. "See how
affectionately he's licking my hand, mother! Why, what are
you going to do to him with that great cloth you've got?"

"Dry him a bit, to be sure," was the woman's answer. And

straightway she knelt down and began to rub the animal's
rain-sodden coat. "We shall never get him warm as he is,"
she continued, "for he's so wet the water is running off him
into pools on the floor. Try and take off the rope, Dick. And
when you've done it, get me a rag and a piece of string,
and I'll bandage up his paw—it's very sore; I find he can
hardly bear me to touch it."

Dick wanted no second bidding. Setting to work with nimble

fingers, he soon succeeded in untying the knotted rope that
had in some places rubbed the dog's neck into wounds. This
done, he went to a cupboard and took from it a ragged but
clean apron of his sister's, which Mrs. Wilkins split into
strips and bound round the retriever's injured foot.

Having at length dried the dog to their satisfaction, they

coaxed him on to an old sack that they had spread in front
of the hearth; and dumb though he was, the intelligent
creature raised his brown eyes to their faces as if to thank
them for their mercy and compassion. Little Dick brought
some scraps left over from the children's supper and laid
them before the animal; he also offered him some warm
milk and water to drink. But so great was the dog's
exhaustion that he made no effort to drink or eat; instead,
he lay back with a sigh of contentment, and extended his
cramped limbs towards the comforting blaze. In this
position, he was soon asleep.

"Mother," said Dick in a low whisper, after several minutes'

silence, "he's uncommon pretty, now he's dry. Don't you
think so?"
"Yes, I do," assented Mrs. Wilkins. "No one could truthfully
call him ugly with such a fine curly coat as he's got. And he
seems gentle too," she added. "I can't think how folks can
find it in their hearts to be cruel to a dumb thing like him."

The mother and her son sat still for a time, silently admiring
the beautiful animal.

"Mother," said Dick, breaking the silence, "don't you wish

we could keep him—for always, I mean? 'Twould be proper
fun to see him swim in the river to fetch out sticks."

Mrs. Wilkins shook her head.

"Mother!" Dick's voice was low and coaxing; he slipped on

to the floor and laid his head upon his mother's knee. "Do
let us keep this poor dog that's come to our door to-night.
He shall have half of my dinner every day, and a part of my
supper too. O mother, do say yes!"

"Maybe he'll stray away when to-morrow comes."

"Yes, yes; but if he doesn't?"

"Well, Dick, it's not to be thought of—our keeping him—I'm

afraid. You see, a big dog eats a lot; more than you could
spare him from your meals every day, that's certain. Then,
again, there'd be his tax; I couldn't afford to pay it. But,"
hopefully, "p'raps he'll be claimed."

The boy shook his head, and pointed at the rope.

"Whoever tried to drown him doesn't want him back," he

said wisely. "Do you know what I believe, mother?"

"No, Dick. How should I know?"

"Well, I believe God means us to keep him, and I'll tell you
what makes me think so. God knows what happens
everywhere. The parson said so last Sunday. He told us that
there wasn't anything too small or poor to escape God's
notice. So He must know that this poor dog has come
whining to our door." Then, positively, "Of course He does!"

Mrs. Wilkins was silent.

Dick earnestly continued,—

"'Tisn't as if God ever made mistakes. He knows we're poor

folks, and that at times we can scarcely find food for
ourselves. Depend upon it, He won't let us lose by giving
this dear old fellow a home. And when the time comes for
paying his tax—"

"Eh, Dick, what then?" interjected his mother.

"He'll find us the seven and sixpence! P'raps I shall catch a

fish in the river with a piece of money in its mouth," the
little boy conjectured, thinking of the Bible story he had
heard at school the week before.

"We must not decide to-night, child," said Mrs. Wilkins,

heaving a deep sigh. "Poor thing, he shall sleep where he is
till morning. Now, dear, we must go to bed."

"Must we?" The boy stooped over the exhausted animal and
caressed its curly jacket. "Good-night, old man!" he said
softly. "I'm glad we heard you whining. I'm glad we let you
in."
 CHAPTER II.
DICK RUNS AN ERRAND.

THERE was no small amount of excitement next morning

when the three younger children became aware that a dog
had gained admittance to the cottage on the previous
evening. Cries of delight rang from their lips the instant
they set eyes on him, and words of pity followed as they
beheld his thin condition, sore neck, and bandaged paw.
The twins, Willie and Joe, aged four, were inclined to be
afraid of him at first; but after watching Dick and Molly
stroke his rough coat, and receive kisses in return from his
long pink tongue, they grew braver, and caressed him also.

"I wonder what he's called?" said bright-eyed, seven-year-

old Molly.

She had addressed the new-comer by a dozen or more

names owned by the various dogs with whom she was
acquainted, but not one appeared to be the right one.

"It isn't Rough, or Ranger, or Spring, or anything I can think

of. If we can't find out what it is, we shall have to think of
something quite new," clapping her hands excitedly.

"But, my dear," broke in the widow at this point, "I really

don't think we can keep him. The gentlefolks in the village
will be sure to say we ain't justified in doing so; and a big
dog is a great expense."

"O mother, we can't turn him to doors!" Dick, on the brink

of tears, pleaded. "What would become of him, lame as he
is? There are lots and lots of boys in the parish who'd stone
him directly they saw he couldn't run away from them. Do
let us keep him for a little while—at any rate, until his foot
is healed."

Widow Wilkins shrugged her thin shoulders and sighed. At

length she consented to keep the dog, assuring herself that
before long some one would be sure to take a fancy to him
and offer him a home.

"What shall we call our dog then?" asked Molly, with quite
an important air of ownership.

"Supposing we call him Stranger," said Dick. "Don't you

think that would do?"

"Yes! Yes!" his little sister and the twins agreed in a breath.

Within a week the dog learned to respond to his new name.

Within a fortnight, he learned to take the children to school
morning and afternoon, and fetch them when their lesson-
hours were over. And though his injured paw caused him to
limp a good deal at first, it soon got well. Then he was able
to scamper and bound along as gracefully as if nothing had
been amiss with it.

He was a sweet-tempered creature, and quickly made

friends with the people in the village, who constantly gave
him scraps to eat.

"Isn't his coat looking beautiful, mother?" Dick said one day
to Mrs. Wilkins, as the much-dreaded winter drew near.

"Ah, it is, my dear!" was her reply. "It's because he's so well
fed—that's the reason. Do you know, Dick, I almost envy
that dog the bits folks throw to him, sometimes, when you
children are on short rations. But there, I won't complain!
P'raps I shall get some more washing or sewing work to do
before long. I'm sure I don't mind how hard I slave, if only I
can manage to get necessaries for you children."

"But, mother, you can't—you mustn't work harder than you

do now!" cried the little boy, in tones strangely earnest for
his years. "Cheer up, though! We won't go meeting trouble
half-way," he went on, "'cos there'll be my shilling a week
that I'm to get for cleaning boots at the rectory before long.
I saw the rector's wife this morning, and promised to start
work in a fortnight's time—that is, if you were willing."

"Willing! Why, yes, 'twill be a fine help to us, my dear,"

responded the widow more cheerfully. "You're right, Dick;
we won't look upon the darkest side. We'll do our best, and
face things as they come."

But although Dick and his hard-working mother tried their

best to be brave during the weeks that followed, anxiety
met them at every turn. The winter settled in, and work
grew scarce. The children's appetites increased with the
cold weather, and rent-days came round all too quickly.

"There's scarcely a handful of coal left in the out-house,

Dick, and I can't spare money to buy more this week," said
Mrs. Wilkins one cold morning to her little son, by now her
right hand in almost every respect.

"That doesn't matter," cried courageous Dick; "I'll pick up a

big bundle of sticks in the woods during dinner-time. And
when I come out of school this afternoon, I'll get another
lot."

And Dick Wilkins was as good as his word. He collected a

huge bundle of fuel when he came out of school at twelve,
and when lessons were over in the afternoon, he hastened
to the woods again to get another lot together.
The weather was chill, indeed; but he paid no heed to the
fact, so busy was he in selecting and collecting his sticks.
He had barely succeeded in binding up his second load
when, to his surprise, he turned and found a gentleman
within a foot of him—one whom he at once recognized as
the artist who lodged at Farmer Smerdon's.

"Don't be frightened, my boy," said the new-comer, seeing

the child start and colour slightly. "You are doing no harm, I
am sure, and it is a pity these branches should be left to rot
in the woods when they would make such capital fires. But
now to come at once to business! Will you run an errand for
me? If so, I'll guard your fagot the while."

"Yes, sir," was Dick's quick reply.

A sensation of delight came over him as he thought of the

coppers that he was in view of earning. He would take them
home to his mother as a pleasant surprise. Oh, how
pleased, how thankful she would be!

"Well, the fact is, I have left a small box of water-colour

paints on the seat in the church porch," the artist lost no
time in explaining; "and as I have walked a great many
miles already this afternoon, I feel too tired to go back for
it. On the other hand, if the village children should come
upon my property, I fear they may do it damage."

"I'll fetch it straightway, sir. Please, is that all? Isn't there

brushes as well?"

"No; I have my brushes with me. It is only the box I have

forgotten."

"Right, sir; I'll be back again in no time."

And needing no further encouragement, Dick darted off as
fast as the broken soles of his worn-out boots would carry
him.

How he did his errand in so short a time, he never knew,

but he reached the church in less than five minutes, though
it was situated at a considerable distance from the woods,
and possessing himself of the little paint-box, he fastened
its cover securely that none of its contents might fall out,
and sped back with all haste to the spot where the artist,
true to his promise, was guarding his bundle of sticks.

"What! Returned already!" exclaimed the gratified

gentleman, as Dick, hot and panting, made his
reappearance. "You have been very quick. I should not have
thought it possible for any one to do the distance in so short
a time," taking the box from the boy's trembling hands and
looking scrutinizingly into his eager countenance.

It was an honest, good-looking face, but withal pinched and

thin. There was, too, a certain wistfulness in the child's blue
eyes that hinted at poverty—perhaps privation. The artist
was by no means rich, but a kindly impulse prompted him
to reward the runner of his errand more generously than he
had at first intended. "Here, lad," said he, "take this for
having obliged me." And he put a piece of money into the
boy's hand.

"Please, sir," Dick gazed with misty eyes at the coin—"did

you mean to give me a shilling?"

"To be sure I did," was the reply; and the donor afterwards
told himself that the expression of mingled wonderment and
delight on the little face was worth three times the amount.
"Take it and welcome, my lad," said he. "Now I will bid you
good-day."
"Good-day, sir; and—and thank you ever so!" burst from
Dick's quivering lips; after which he looked at the coin a
second time, and murmured with delight, "Won't mother be
surprised and glad! Fancy a shilling!—a whole shilling! Why,
that's as much as I get at the rectory for cleaning boots in a
week!"

And then, raising the piece of money to his lips, he actually

kissed it, not for its own sake, as a miser might have done,
but for the sake of the much-needed necessaries that he
meant it to buy.

CHAPTER III.
DICK'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE BULLY.

"HULLO, Dick Wilkins, let me see what he has given you!"

The speaker was Squire Filmer's son, a well-known bully of

about fifteen years of age. As his voice—always a dreaded
one—fell on Dick's ears, the little boy thrust his precious
shilling into his deepest pocket and turned pale.

"Here! Are you deaf?" continued Stephen, as his demand

received no answer. "Let me see this instant what the
gentleman has given you, or I'll make you turn out your
pockets. Oh, it's no good!" he went on as the child looked
anxiously around him. "There's no escape for you. And as
for calling, you might shout yourself hoarse, and no one
would hear. The artist is half a mile away by now; I watched
him out of sight before I spoke to you."

"I wasn't going to call to him, sir. And I wasn't going to run
away either. I ain't a coward," Dick found voice enough to
declare.

And he spoke the truth; no thought of flight had entered his

head for a moment. He had merely glanced around with the
hope that Stranger might perchance have come, as he
sometimes did, to seek him.

"Oh, you are not a coward, eh? Then that's all right. Now
show me that piece of money!" persisted the bully, gripping
Dick's shoulder so tightly that he could have shrieked with
pain, had he been less brave than he was.

"Why should I show it to you, sir? 'Twas given to me. I

earned it by running an errand for the artist gentleman, I
did," said Dick.

"What of that? Let me see it, I tell you, or I'll give you
something to remember me by. Ah!" as Dick's hand went
reluctantly into his pocket. "I thought I should bring you to
reason. So the gentleman gave you this, eh? A shilling!
Well, it's a great deal too much money for a little boy like
you to have. Think of it I—twelve pence, to be sucked away
in candy!"

"No, sir. I mean to take it home to mother," little Dick

explained, in his straightforward way. "We're terribly poor
now that father's dead. And the children do eat such a lot
this cold weather, and—and wear out so many boots."

"Come, you don't whine badly for a youngster! Poor folks

are born grumblers, and a discontented set at best," stated
Stephen. "Look here, Dick Wilkins, I may as well tell you at
once that I am going to have that shilling of yours, whether
you like it or no; and in return, I intend to give you this
pretty little box that I picked up in the road yonder about
half an hour ago. Exchange is no robbery, and you may
think yourself lucky to have anything."

With this, he snatched Dick's shilling from his hand, and

threw a small, curiously-carved match-box at the little
wood-picker's feet.

"Oh, you shan't! You shan't!" cried poor Dick, losing all self-
control, and throwing himself bodily upon the bigger boy.
"'Tis mine," he contended, breaking into a passion of sobs
and tears. "I earned it myself, and I mean to have it. Give it
to me this minute, and take your match-box back. A thing
like that's no good to me and mother. You're a coward and a
thief."

"Now stop that noise," said Stephen. "It's no use your

making a fuss; I want your shilling badly. I'm saving for
new skates; and there's certain to be ice on the lake in Lord
Bentford's grounds early in the new year."

"And I want to buy all sorts of things for mother and the
children," sobbed the miserable and indignant Dick. "Listen
to me, sir!" He ceased crying, took a step towards young
Filmer, and looked fearlessly into his face. "If you don't give
me back my money at once," he said, "I'll go straight to the
farm and tell your father."

"So that's your little game, is it?" exclaimed the bully. "Well,
it's a fortunate thing you mentioned it to me, because now I
can tell you what the result of your doing it would be. I
should make my mother promise me that she would never
have Mrs. Wilkins to do washing or charing for her again."