CHAPTER II
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (continued)
The secretariat of the Conference had its headquarters at the Belle Vue Hotel. The Conference itself was held in the Volkshaus, the headquarters of the Socialists. This fine building in the heavy German style comprised within itself an hotel, a theatre, a restaurant, a lecture-hall, and any number of Trade Union committee rooms. The funds for its building were supplied by the members of the Party and the Municipality jointly. If this were the only building of its kind in Switzerland it would be remarkable; but I very much doubt if there are a dozen cities of any size in the whole of Central Europe which have not a similar Labour Temple. Some of these buildings are very fine indeed, and can lay claim to a certain architectural distinction. Their numbers put to shame the British Labour Movement, which has not a single building set apart for the social uses of all its members.
Similarly with their newspapers: The Daily Herald is the only daily newspaper in Great Britain which can claim to represent organized Labour in the slightest degree, and the Daily Herald is not the property of the Labour Party, which has no right to dictate its policy nor control in any way its activities. In Germany alone, before the war, there were more than sixty Socialist dailies.
The necessity of frequent meeting obliged all the British delegates to remove from the charming pension, to which some of their number had gone, to the Belle Vue Hotel. This public palace could tell strange tales if its walls could speak. Some day a writer will appear who will tell the true story of this modern Babel; but he will have to wait until this generation is dead and gone before he publishes it, or else commit suicide when it appears! It housed the most extraordinary medley of princes and peasants, dukes and dockers, ex-kings and Socialist presidents ever collected in one building since the Great War turned the world upside down! In the wake of these illustrious or dangerous personalities crept that indigenous growth of the centre of diplomatic life and political activity, the political agent or spy.
Unaccustomed to the society of this individual I never sought him. Unaware of his existence before the war I never recognized him. He may have spoken to me. It is possible he extracted enough information from me to fill several sheets of a report and earn his squalid wages; but the fear of him never obsessed me. It was painful to observe how suspicious everybody was of everybody else. Nobody dared to speak freely. You realized that your companion, whoever he might be, was making reservations and preparing an escape when he was talking to you. Nervousness showed itself in every gesture, fear in every glance.
To be an object of suspicion oneself is not pleasant. To have to be frightened of everybody else is disgusting. I refused to do it. I would avoid nobody. I would speak to everybody who wanted to speak to me on serious business. I wouldn’t pay any attention to his nationality beyond the inquiry necessary for an intelligent appreciation of his conversation. So far as I was concerned there was nothing to hide. What I felt and thought about the political situation I was prepared to say from a public platform, and did so, not only in this Conference, but later in Zurich, at the Women’s Conference held there in June. I had come to Switzerland on a mission of reconciliation, and it was obvious from the first hour that the personal touch and warm human sympathy were more needed and would be more warmly appreciated than any number of Conference resolutions.
A friend—one of those well-known friends possessed by everybody, who always hasten to tell one the unpleasant things—told me that I was in the reports of the spies of every Legation in the city. “Splendid!” I said. “It will give them something to think about, and will keep them all guessing.”
I made four separate journeys from London to Berne between January and July of 1919. On various occasions during that period I heard a great deal about myself that I had never known before! I was a dangerous Bolshevik! I was a spy of Clemenceau’s! I was a British agent! I was an active pro-German! I was an anti-German pretending to sympathize with Germany! I was aiding and abetting the royalists of the ex-enemy states! I was an anarchist in disguise! I was in the American Secret Service! I was a pro-Turk! I was a friend of Karolyi’s! I was a secret Communist posing as a moderate! I was a pacifist!
Of all these stories only the last was true. And in these days, when I hear pacifists defend the methods of Bolshevism, I want to have a definition of that word before I desire to be classed under it.
Poor little spies! They have to earn their salaries, so this is the sort of thing they say. A chance phrase in their hearing, and you are promptly labelled. You take tea with a charming princess who speaks a little English, and wants to practise on you, and you are in some Royalist plot! You talk to a polished French diplomat with a Scottish ancestry, as I talked with Lieutenant Gilles of the French Embassy, and you must be in the pay of the French! You entertain a sweet English lady who is the very lonely wife of a German attaché and you are a pro-German! You seek knowledge from some authoritative person on one of the thousand questions in which you are interested, not knowing that he is the agent of one Government, and the spy of another Government reports you his confederate!
During our Conference the Swiss police picked up in the streets of Berne a packet of papers in a language which they did not understand—English. Seeing the name of Mr. Arthur Henderson in the context they sent the papers to him. They purported to be a detailed report of one of our private meetings, a tissue of lies from beginning to end, with a pathetic note at the end asking for more money! Mr. Henderson was at first annoyed, as anyone would be who took such things seriously; but he preserved enough of the ironic sense to send the papers with his compliments to the address for which they were intended, the British Legation!
It took my breath away to learn that the staff of every Legation and Embassy in Berne contained scores, even hundreds, of men and women agents, at any rate, before the war when money was not so scarce. In any sphere of life other than those of politics and diplomacy such activities would wear an ugly name. By a general consensus of opinion in diplomatic circles such a system is necessary. So much the worse for a society which requires lying and trickery for its preservation. It is admitted that ninety-nine out of every hundred reports are entirely worthless, often misleading. It is for the hundredth valuable discovery that all this costly machinery is maintained. With the system goes an enormous amount of corruption. Bribes are freely given and taken by surprising people in the most unexpected places.
A young girl from Bohemia came to see me in the Belle Vue Hotel. I invited her to my room where we could talk quietly. Ostensibly she had come about child relief, in which she knew me to be actively interested. But her talk was all of the ex-Emperor Charles, whom she had seen; whose secretary, with the assistance of a British officer whose letter she showed me, had helped her to get into Switzerland. I was distinctly puzzled. What was her game? Was she soliciting British interest in unfortunate ex-royalty? Incredible! Was she trying to make me say something which would result in my being sent out of Switzerland? To this hour I have not the faintest idea. I never saw her again. She was young and very pretty, with brown eyes and fair hair, an English type. If she really were a spy she was an artist in her work, for when I spoke in the clear English which fifteen years of public speaking have developed into a habit, she held up a deprecating hand, answered in a whisper, and looked fearfully round.
“We are quite alone. What is troubling you?” I inquired. “Say anything you wish to say. Nobody will hear you. Nobody knows you are here.”
“It is not so sure,” she said anxiously. “In some of ze bedrooms is ze machine and ze speak is heard. Zey listen to us. Il faut que nous parlons doucement.”
The general conduct of Conferences in Europe differs very greatly from the method in England. Delegates from the four corners of the earth come to an International Conference, and owing to the exigencies of travel, it is quite impossible to assemble them all at exactly one time. They arrive in batches during the two or three days preceding the Conference. But it is equally impossible to waste these days waiting for the late-comers, so the method pursued is to have a preliminary discussion of the questions set down in the agenda. The general feeling of the delegates on a particular topic, the broad divisions of opinion among them are known beforehand in this way, and the form of the final resolutions on the subject made easier of design. The fresh arrivals who join the group take up the discussion where they find it.
When the Conference proper assembles the first thing done after the speech of the chairman and the announcements of the secretary is the division of the delegates into Commissions. Each important subject is delivered over to a Commission, whose duty it is to report in the form of a resolution when a unanimous decision has been reached. Each country represented in the Conference is entitled to be represented on each Commission. The Commissions adjourn each to a separate room, elect a chairman (at this time a neutral), and begin business. The full Conference begins its deliberations with the presentation of the first Commission report.
These Commissions are not committees, as might very well be supposed. They are the Conference in miniature. The speeches are as long and as fervid as if delivered to the full Conference. I was a member of the League of Nations Commission of the Second International, and well remember a speech of great eloquence upon the subject delivered by a Frenchman which lasted for an hour and a half! Then followed two translations, English and German. I never expected to reach the report stage during that week or the next! And there were only twelve members of this Commission.
Delegates may not rise and speak when they wish. It is not the man with the loudest voice or the most aggressive manner, nor the one who is lucky enough to catch the chairman’s eye, who speaks. The would-be orators are taken strictly in their turn. Names are sent up to the chairman, who calls upon each in order, and all are expected to speak from the platform.
Disorderly interruptions are frequent, and sometimes quite terrifying. On this occasion the French and German Majoritaires raged at each other across the heads of the delegates. But then so did the French Majoritaires and their Minoritaires. These last were just as bitter and violent as the first two sections. Similarly with the German and Austrian Majorities and Minorities. When feeling ran high the hall became a veritable bear garden. The one astonishing thing to those of us who expected every minute an ink-bottle or a book to come hurtling across our heads at one or another of the combatants, was that these furious men never came to blows. Infuriate rage and cheerful good humour followed each other with the suddenness and regularity of sunshine and rain in an English April.
But it was all very tiresome to those of us who were more concerned with the future than the past. Just when we were about to settle down, as we thought, to something really constructive, up would jump Albert Thomas, bursting with rage and quivering like a jelly, shaking his long hair and roaring like a mad bull; or Renaudel shrieking in a high-pitched voice like the enraged tenor at Covent Garden when he sees his lady-love in the arms of the villain; provoking the plethoric Wels to an apoplectic fit of frenzy, and the angry Müller to an ironic reply shouted above the heads of the lesser partisans on either side, whose fearful and monotonous yells: “You are guilty! They are guilty! We are not guilty! We are right! You are wrong!” almost made the tops of our heads come off!
Then the English delegate Stuart Bunning stepped quietly up to the platform. He made no brilliant speech. There was no attempt at eloquence. He was just as tired of that as the rest of us. He spoke in an even, level voice, making a few quiet, common-sense observations about the object of our Conference and the need for getting to work. The effect was magical! The storms ceased raging. The Conference quietened down. From that moment the idiotic charges and counter-charges ceased to be made. It was one of the two noteworthy and outstanding events of the Conference.
But the British delegation was the most harmonious in the room. It was not that we had no differences of opinion. We had many differences; and some of them were so deep that several of the delegates preferred not to travel with the rest. But when we got to Berne we kept these differences for the privacy of our own committee room, and endeavoured to present a united front in the conference hall. Only once did something bellicose threaten to develop amongst the Britons. It was when two gallant miners, who had borne with marvellous patience the interminable speeches they couldn’t understand, saw a jolly fight about to begin between two sections of the French. It was too much for them. They would be in at that; and, anyhow, they were sick and tired. Why not have some fun and set the whole Conference going again. “Come on, fellows!” said one of them, leaping to his feet, his ruddy face glowing with pleasure. “Come on, chaps! Let’s have a b——y row!”
A foreign conference is certainly no picnic. It means very hard work for a conscientious delegate. Both commissions and conference sit irregular and interminable hours. There is no stopping at 5 to resume at 10 the next morning as in England. The delegates go on until they finish or as long as they can keep their eyes open. At Berne we were sometimes debating at 2 in the morning. On the other hand unpunctuality is the besetting sin of the Continental. With him 10 o’clock means 11, 1 o’clock, 2 or even 3. To the British this is a maddening vice; but I fear familiarity with it resulted in our embracing it ourselves.
Our first meeting with the Germans took place in the Belle Vue Hotel three days before the Conference proper began. I had anticipated this meeting with curious and painful interest. I knew that some at least of the men we were to meet had opposed the war from the beginning, even voting against the war credits; but it is curious how the separation of two nations by war can affect the consciousness of the individual national. All such feeling of hesitation and reluctance on both sides vanished at the sight of one another, men and women bound by a common aim in indissoluble bonds.
The little group which we approached in the vestibule of the hotel included Herr Kautsky and his wife, and several Austrians I met here for the first time. The physical appearance of all was very touching. Kautsky who was at all times frail and delicate, is now an old man with a fringe of white hair round his smooth and well-developed head. His wife is a clever, dashing woman, full of energy, the antithesis of her less dominating spouse. Both showed in a marked manner the effects of terrible underfeeding. The eyes were red rimmed, and the skin dry and of a yellowish cast. Their faces lit up with pleasure as we greeted them. We asked about their journey, and found that for two days they had travelled in an ice-cold train, with broken windows and tattered upholstery, and with no opportunity of eating warm food. Such was the general condition of transport in the countries of Central Europe at this time. Naturally the strain of the journey had added to their appearance of suffering; but I never heard them complain about themselves. Their instant concern was for the sufferings of their children, the German children, innocent of the war, and dying like flies from diseases which were the result of under-nourishment. And we were only too painfully aware that the blockade of Germany and the embargoes against Austria were our share, the British share, in the responsibility for this unnecessary torture of little children. We felt shamed in the presence of men who had never wavered in their opposition to their Government’s policy, that our Government should be using the very weapon most conspicuous in the defeat of Germany three months after it was decided to lay down arms!
Kautsky is the greatest living exponent of the philosophy of Karl Marx. He is at the moment the great philosophic antagonist of the Bolsheviks and supporter of Social Democracy in Europe. He is hated with a deadly hatred in every part of the world by the Communists, and is denounced as a “social traitor” by the slavish adherents of Zinoviev and Radek, the two most extreme Bolsheviks in Russia. A lifetime of self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of Socialism has not saved this distinguished writer and his able wife and collaborator from the unmerited scorn of the extremists. But the extremists in every land have always had more hatred for the colleagues from whom they differed in method than for the capitalist enemy, separated from themselves by oceans of difference in principle. On this the capitalist and his allies count to defer the day of their doom.
Herr Seitz, who was one of the group in the hotel, was then President of the new Austrian Republic. I am quite sure from his sad expression of face and the tone of his conversation that he had found more pain and anxiety than honour and glory in his new position. He is a tall and strikingly handsome man of perhaps fifty years of age. He spoke no English, but Mr. Charles Roden Buxton, our gifted English interpreter, translated his talk for us. Again it was of the children, this time of the Austrian children who, if one half of what he told us was true, were enduring things which were a disgrace not only to the conquering nations but to civilization itself.
I determined then and there to go to Austria to satisfy myself by the sight of my own eyes if such things could be true. Here was a matter engaging the honour of every Briton, for the reasons I have already given; and things must be bad, I felt at a later stage, when even the neutral Swiss took occasion to point out to some of us very earnestly the real loss of prestige the Allied cause was suffering from what appeared to be the wanton destruction by famine of the helpless and innocent children of the ex-enemy states. “Eight hundred thousand children in Germany have died of starvation during the war” was a statement made by one of the German delegates during the Conference, a statement which made for a moment even the most belligerent delegate speechless with pity. The man who made it became afterwards the Chancellor of Germany, and one of the unhappy men compelled by superior force to sign a treaty at Versailles which no sane man either in Germany or in England, having thought about it, believed for one moment that Germany could carry out.
The Socialist Governments of Europe—Austria, Bavaria, Germany, Russia—entered upon their responsibilities at a time very unfortunate for themselves. The terrible war had left everything in ruins. The difficulties of restoration were so appalling that the old governing classes had everywhere fled, not only from the anger of their peoples, but from the wellnigh insuperable difficulties of government. The people were everywhere hungry. They lacked clothing. They were without fuel. They were full of disease and had neither medicines nor disinfectants with which to deal with it. Transport had wholly or partially broken down. Money had woefully depreciated. Trade had entirely stopped as in Russia, or seriously diminished by reason of blockades and embargoes. Prices were incredibly high. There were the hard conditions of the Armistice to be fulfilled. In addition to all this, revolution and counter-revolution, Red rioters and White Guards, brewed special troubles for their unhappy rulers, and kept their countries in a constant state of terror and unrest. Into this indescribable mess and muddle were tossed the Socialists by a newly-born will of the entire people. Who else was there to take the responsibility, the old rulers having fled? And was it not possible that the Socialists, whose programme was magnificent, and who had not been tried, might restore them to the prosperity that had been destroyed by the rulers who had been tried and found wanting?
But it was precisely because they had not been tried that it was unfortunate for the Socialists. They had to make the biggest of experiments in the circumstances least favourable for them. They had to please their parties, which expected certain things of them, and satisfy their constituents who demanded certain others. They made mistakes. They were bound to make mistakes. No Government of any kind could have avoided making mistakes. I doubt if any alternative Government in any of these countries would have made fewer; but the mistakes made by the Socialists were those most likely to provoke the reaction which has already so disastrously set in, the mistake of putting the party programme before the general interest in the face of the conquerors ready to smite; and that of adopting the militarism of the Governments they had overthrown.
Less than any of the Socialist Governments of Europe had the Austrian Government offended, largely on account of the firmness and moderation of its leaders, of whom I shall have something to say later, and of the discipline of the party, which is perhaps the best organized and best-disciplined Socialist Party in Europe.
But a growing knowledge of all the circumstances of Europe made it increasingly clear why no Socialist Minister I have met in Europe looks happy; unless it is Lenin. And I am inclined to think that even Lenin’s merry, red eyes must be frequently shadowed in these days, as he sees his great experiment gradually withering away in the atmosphere of realism created by hungry workmen and angry peasants.
The great test of a system, any system, the Communist system amongst others, is its power to produce healthy, happy men and women and keep them so. If it fails in that it is condemned in all.
The German Majority Socialists did not arrive in Berne until some time after their comrades of the Minority. They had supported their Government after a fashion, but not by any means in the uncritical manner of the British Labour Movement during the first two years of the war. And this in spite of the fact that the Labour Party held a meeting in Trafalgar Square on the Saturday preceding the declaration of war in which it had called for non-intervention! The quarrel between the nationals of Germany and France was, as I have said, of the greatest bitterness. The German Majoritaires kept strictly to themselves during the whole of the Conference, probably shrinking from the harsh judgment which they knew would surely be passed upon them by their comrades from the enemy countries. To my mind they showed great courage in coming to Berne; and the restraint and moderation of their ultimate actions made for a greater measure of unity than had been expected by the most sanguine.
This small group of men were the most pathetic in the Conference. The last time I saw Müller he was a big, broad-shouldered, stalwart man, six feet or more in height, and straight as a ramrod, with a fat, jolly face. Here he appeared stooping and shrunken, a shadow of his former self, his skin grey, and his lips bloodless. Wels looked a little better, for he is a dark man, and his complexion is naturally ruddy; but his manner was nervous and apprehensive, and his eyes were restless and unhappy. Mölkenbuhr, who, the year before the war, had attended a Labour Conference in England, a happy, jovial fellow, was old and feeble beyond recovery.
Edouard Bernstein, the best-known figure in England of the pre-war Socialist Movement in Germany, an opponent of his Government’s war policy, was another ghost of himself. He shuffled about the Conference room in soft slippers, his hands shaking nervously, his short-sighted eyes peering out of his strongly Jewish face as if looking for something he had lost. But he was looking for the faces of old friends, and exhibited an almost childish delight whenever he discovered one, wringing the hand of his friend vigorously and beginning to chat volubly, unmindful of the speeches which were being delivered or the votes which were being taken.
“I have a son and daughter in England. They have been there during the war. I hope to see them in a few days,” said the old man to me whisperingly, as he passed to where Mr. Macdonald was sitting. His amiable wife followed him about, making good his defects of memory. The step was very feeble, and the crisp black hair had grown grey. I knew when I heard the rumour that his colleagues would send Bernstein as Ambassador to England that it was but a rumour. He would never recover enough of vigour and health for that.
The able lawyer Haase, attached to the pacifist minority, made an excellent impression upon the British delegates. His manner was less deprecating than that of the others, and he had a merry twinkle in his blue eye that went straight to the heart. He is dead now. He was shot on his way from the Reichstag by an assassin and died after a few days’ illness.
When the full Conference assembled on January 26 it was found that twenty-seven countries had sent delegates, including the principal antagonists in the Great War—Germany, France, Russia and Great Britain. The neutrals included Holland, Sweden, and Spain. The secretary was Camille Huysmans of Belgium, who, with M. Branting and Mr. Arthur Henderson, made an Executive Committee of three persons. A Council and a Committee of Action were formed from the Conference, which were to meet when important decisions had to be made for which it was impossible to call the full Conference. And so was created the simple machinery for the work of rebuilding the Workers’ International.
Of the two dramatic figures who appeared at the International one I have already mentioned, the weird, arresting personality who met us at the railway station, who paid with his life for his simple and courageous speech, the Bavarian Prime Minister, Kurt Eisner. Of him I shall write at length on another occasion. Here I would paint at some length another picture on an even larger canvas.
We were somewhat listlessly pursuing our debates when suddenly there appeared on the platform a short square figure of a man with broad humped-up shoulders and a shock of fair wavy hair. He still wore his travelling coat. His short-sighted eyes peered through a pair of large spectacles. His nervous hands fidgeted with his coat. He began to speak, quietly and distinctly, with a slight pleasant drawl.
It was Friedrich Adler, “the man who killed Count Sturgh,” who made this dramatic appearance towards the end of the Conference. We were told he was on his way some days before. Then we heard he had been detained on the Austrian frontier by the Swiss police, who refused to permit him to enter Switzerland on account of his political crime. Curious, that the men who applaud William Tell and teach their children with pride the story of the tyrant Gessler and the apple, objected to the Austrian version of their national story. Moreover, the Emperor Charles had pardoned Adler. Knowing the dilatoriness of officials all hope of seeing him at the Conference in time to take part in the debates had fled.
At the sight and sound of him the delegates sprang to their feet electrified. “Adler! Adler!” they shouted. For several minutes they cheered without intermission. Wave after wave of genuinely passionate pleasure was expressed in shouted greetings and thunderous applause. It was remarkable; the most astonishing thing that happened at the Conference! To see the French and German antagonists, and the Majoritaires and Minoritaires of the various countries allied in a moment to render tribute to this one man was as delightful as it was puzzling to the simple soul whose quarrels are not so easily set aside.
But the explanation was really very simple. It was not what it looked like, a company of pacifists illogically applauding a murderer. It was the spontaneous tribute of his comrades of all lands to a man whose consistency to his ideals called for their devotion. Very few men in that gathering had remained true during the war to the central idea of the International. Henderson had been a member of the British War Cabinet; Branting had taken the side of the Allies; Müller had supported Germany; Thomas had been a French “patriot”—all, or almost all, had taken sides and had forgotten their International obligations and their peace ideals in the overwhelming disaster of the war. Adler had stood firm. From the first to the last hour he had never faltered in his allegiance. From the first he had denounced the war as a crime against the peoples. And he had carried his party with him. The Austrian Party was the only Socialist Party in Europe which had denounced the war and defied the war-makers from the beginning to the end. This was one of the reasons why the Austrian Government did not dare to assemble Parliament upon the declaration of war. For more than two years of the war the Constitution of Austria was in abeyance. The Socialists and Nationalists clamoured in vain for the rights of the people. Force ruled. Adler decided that only force could upset that rule. If the man who represented the autocratic system were killed, it would be a symbolic act that would be understood by the people. The head of the tyrannical Government dead, the system would follow. So this gentle dreamer and man of letters, who had never before had a revolver in his hand in his life, went into a restaurant and shot the Austrian Prime Minister dead in his chair!
His trial became famous. His speech of defence lasted for more than seven hours. It was full of devastating accusations against the Government of Count Sturgh. The speech has become one of the greatest political documents in existence, and is, as I am informed, one of the masterpieces of German prose. Reading it and knowing Adler, one comes to understand why this kind and gentle man came to kill; and one understands how it was that in spite of that every man in the International rose to applaud him.
He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to one of twenty years’ imprisonment; and just before the Austrian Revolution he was pardoned by the young Emperor Charles. This treatment by the Austrian Government of Adler is in painful contrast to the British Government’s treatment of Roger Casement.
There is a certain quality of poetic justice in the last chapter of this interesting story. A few months ago the ex-Emperor Charles made an attempt to recover the throne of Hungary. He left his place of asylum in Switzerland and appeared unexpectedly in Hungary. The inevitable happened. The armies of Czecho-Slovakia and Rumania were about to be set in motion. Hungary was menaced from all sides. The Entente expressed its official disapproval. The Hungarians threatened to revolt against the Government. Charles was obliged to leave the country. At a little railway station in Styria the royal train was held up. Eight hundred enraged workers threatened to capture the ex-emperor and his suite. Bloodshed was imminent. The man sent to appease the workers and save the unfortunate prince from the effects of his folly was Friedrich Adler. So, he paid the price of his pardon of three years before. So, the ex-monarch learnt by practical demonstration the value of generosity in government.
Let no thoughtless reader imagine that Dr. Adler, eminent scholar and scientist, the gentlest of men in private life, liked doing the thing he did. He hated it; but this man, Count Sturgh, stood for every tyranny. Adler removed him, and the long-delayed Austrian Parliament was called together immediately after.
Adler’s work since he was set free has been to save his country from the Bolshevism menacing it from Hungary. The wild men of his party would probably have preferred the Adler of the smoking revolver. Once an extremist always an extremist is their creed. A noble inconsistency is not for them. Hate is the fundamental of their gospel. He was falsely charged with running away from his principles. But, in spite of everything, he maintained a moderate attitude, had the courage to be a coward in the estimation of the vulgar, and saved his suffering country from the tyranny of the Red, which is invariably followed by the tyranny of the White, both disastrous in the appalling circumstances of Austria’s menaced existence.
Adler is the foremost figure in the enterprise which aims at bringing together the two Internationals on the basis of honourable compromise. A Conference of what is universally spoken of as “the 2¹⁄₂ International” was recently held in Vienna. I admire the optimism of these people, but have little faith in the issue of their work. So far the compromise has the appearance of being that of the lion and the lamb. They will lie down together—the lamb inside the lion!
Many of the spectators at the Conference, and even more newspaper men expressed to me deep and bitter disappointment that the Conference had done so little; but what did they expect? Did they hope that a few Socialists from several countries could accomplish what President Wilson, backed by the idealism of the world, had failed to achieve? Before the echo of the cannon had died away, did they expect this small group of people could have cleared the debris from the field and buried all the corpses? It was a mad thought. The utmost that ought to have been expected was a beginning with the reconstruction of the great world-organization of workers, which is destined some day to make itself a terror to evil-doing Governments all the world over. And that we did.
The main achievement of the Second International was the bringing face to face after years of agonizing strife men and women severed from one another, not only by the compulsion of circumstances, but by wounded and outraged national feelings. It was a delicate and difficult task. But it was done. The ice was broken. Men breathed more freely who before had felt a tightening of the heart. For the future common action would be easier, unless the Russian Bolsheviks pursued the disruptive tactics of the militarists and capitalists of the European bourgeoisie; and if they did so it could be only for a time.
The Conference devoted itself to two outstanding pronouncements, although very much more was discussed. It recognized as imperative that the German Majority should make clear its position, both in relation to its past attitude and future conduct, if the French were to be appeased; and on this subject a resolution satisfying to both sections was eventually carried.
In view of the amazing events taking place in Russia at this time, and of the reported Red Terror, the great body of the Conference felt it highly important to put the International unequivocally on the side of democracy as opposed to the dictatorship of Lenin and Trotsky, which it did in an ample resolution that did not neglect to congratulate Russia on the overthrow of the hated regime of the Czars.
Friedrich Adler and Jean Longuet ventured to submit a second resolution, in which they sought a middle way, one they believed would be less offensive to the Bolsheviks. They did not want us to shut the door of the International in the faces of the Russian extremists who, they hoped, would one day return to the fold. They declared that too little was known about the Government of Lenin and Trotsky to warrant an out-and-out condemnation of it. Their resolution is recorded in the minutes. But I venture to think they must now be feeling that they wasted their efforts. The Russians have never done denouncing Longuet and those who think with him. And they have established their own International in Moscow, commonly called the Third International, an International governed from Russia, where all individuality, whether of person or nation, must be ruthlessly suppressed at the dictates of the governing brain in Moscow. All attempts at an honourable compromise with the arbitrary Russians is doomed to failure. It is impossible to reconcile the irreconcilable. The haughty and bigoted doctrinaires of revolutionary Russia will continue their violent and destructive work of poisoning and dividing the working-class movement of the world, unless the age of miracles revives.
A marked feature of the International was the immense number of newspaper men who attended. I am convinced there were more reporters than delegates in the hall. They were there from every land, representing every sort of newspaper. There were as interesting personalities at the Press table as on the floor of the conference hall. Oswald Garrison Villard, Editor of the American Nation, Simeon Strunsky, of the New York Evening Post, and Norman Angell, representing The Times newspaper, were amongst the ornaments of their profession present. Dr. Guttmann, who was the representative of the Frankfurter Zeitung in England before the war, was amongst the ablest and most sympathetic of the journalists who attended; and Herr Rudolf Kommer, of the Neue Freie Presse.
I may be quite wrong, but I formed the opinion as the result of careful observation and subsequent inquiry, and of a close acquaintance which has ripened into friendship with very many conspicuously able journalists abroad, that a higher standard of culture is required of journalists on the Continent than is expected of those of a similar status in this country. Perhaps I ought to put it a little differently. The leading lights of British and American journalism are of the first degree both in general culture and in literary attainments. But there appear to be two very separate and distinct classes of journalist in England and America: the one thoroughly educated, the other entirely uneducated. I saw no such wide difference in the various ranks of journalism abroad. I doubt very much if there were one European reporter at the Conference whose standard of education was below that of a good university. Would this be so in England? It certainly would not in America. In America a “good story” is wanted. In Europe a good argument or a witty satire is more in favour. I know very few journalists in Europe, though doubtless they exist, who would consider it serviceable to their journals deliberately to misinterpret a speech or misreport a conference. They may make a little fun, employ a little irony, caricature a speaker; but very few would deliberately mislead their readers on matters of fact. Courage in facing realities is commoner in some countries than in England. Our prowess is in the field, whether with the hunt or in the battle.