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erence at London in February. As reprinted in the London Vorwärts [Majority Socialist] said:

Allied socialists have now evolved an ideal of the coming peace conditions to which we can, on many points, subscribe, though not on all. But the points on which we disagree have no great practical significance. What is more important is the question whether such ideal demands have any prospect of realization, or whether a great part of the socialistic work which is to contribute to a lasting peace, will not be achieved after the conclusion of that peace.

The German Social Democrats were the first to undergo the experience that it is immensely difficult for the socialist party of a victorious state to realize their ideal demands. The peace with Russia has not turned out as we had imagined it. Yet the influence of the socialists in France, England and Italy is not greater, but less, than in Germany. In such circumstances can idealistic demands, wise or unwise as they may be politically, be described as more than a house of cards to be overthrown by any wind that blows? In place of an abstract, universal, just formula would it not be better to seek a basis of practical agreement answering to conditions as they now exist ?

Possibly the Allied socialists consider absolutely just certain demands which they make upon Germany and her allies, but they should not overlook the fact that agreement of the Central Powers to such demands nowadays is not expected. There are in Germany two tendencies--one which would be ready to conclude peace at once with the West upon the basis of restoration and the status quo ante bellum; and another, which demands alterations favorable to German extension and power. No tendency willing to concede alterations unfavorable to Germany can be said to exist. For instance, a German peace negotiator who would be ready to make concessions with regard to Alsace-Lorraine or Posen would have no prospect of being able to maintain himself in office for twenty-four hours. Possibly the Entente sees in this a fresh proof of the moral obstinacy of Germany, but this is no moral question, only one of facts.

If at the peace conference a proposal were made by negotiators that the Central Powers should allow Czechs, Slovaks and JugoSlavs to form a free union of Danube states in place of the AustroHungarian Empire, what would be the answer? We beg to be excused for saying that the Central Powers would simply laugh! Because, first of all, the fact would be overlooked that in the Austro-Hungarian Empire there are others besides the above named peoples. In addition to which, it would be extremely Utopian to present demands to an unconquered state to operate on its own body.

The idea that Alsace-Lorraine peoples should be consulted represents a decided step down from the former attitude of unqualified disannexation. Practically no great result could be expected. If victorious, France would never forego her “rights” to Alsace-Lor

raine or allow them to be in any way disputed. At the best we should be treated to a poor comedy of self-determination. In the same way, the German bourgeois sees no military grounds for consenting to a revision of the Alsace-Lorraine question. Demands for such would be absolutely without a chance for success. Apart from this there are very good grounds for refusing to allow the possession of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany to be any further disputed. The population of Alsace-Lorraine belongs ethnographically to the German people. The province has, according to the Social Democratic conception, the right to her freedom within the German Empire, but her right to secede from it altogether is, to say the least, a very debatable question.

Meanwhile, the time for such more or less academic considerations is past. All socialistic effort must concentrate upon a peace which is tenable and bearable for all. And why should it be unbearable for England, France, Belgium and Italy if a peace were concluded which restored in the main the pre-war conditions in the West? In any case they would do well to remember that a program is unworkable as a practicable peace program which is drawn up beforehand to the disadvantage of the Central Powers. Such a program could not be realized either by an international Socialist congress or by a diplomatic conference, but only by the victory of the Entente.

Yet as early as midwinter of 1918, there were indications that in trade union after trade union, the Independent Socialists, not a few of whose leaders were in prison, were undermining this majority element that had knuckled in to the government. Thus, to quote some paragraphs in the Manchester Guardian of March 2, 1918, on “The Rift in German Socialism":

Socialism in Germany has two aspects, parliamentary and trade union. The Parliamentary Party split relatively early, and after efforts at compromise failed, the Independents set about constituting their own party organization throughout the country. Defection from the Majority Party has from time to time increased the strength of the Independents in the Reichstag, and beyond doubt their growth in the country among the masses has been much more rapid. But hitherto the Majority Party have maintained absolute control over the socialist trade unions.

What this meant was shown during the strikes. The directorate of the trade union organization denounced the strike, and the trade unions withheld strike pay. The vice-chancellor cited this last as one of the effective causes of the collapse of the strike movement. The strikers, on their part, made plain that they had still less confidence in the trade union leaders than in the Reichstag majority deputies. It was hoped that the strike would have educated the Majority Party to its duty, but there is little trace of a change of heart and mind. The Majority very tepidly rebuked the government for its treatment of Russia, but are determined not to go into opposition or to separate from the "bourgeois” party, who with them constitute the majority of the Reichstag.

The Independent Socialist Party is drawing the moral that it must establish itself in the trade unions also and wrest the monopoly of them from a party which has proved unfaithful to its socialist provisions. A beginning is being attempted at Stuttgart to form a new trade union organization under independent auspices. Of course this is denounced by the Majority as the extension of a fratricidal struggle. But the Independents, not unnaturally, hold that the world, after years of devastated war, has got to the stage at which only realities matter, not labels; and that where there is clear conflict of ideas and actions it is humbug to speak of brotherhood. This new movement deserves the closest watching. It is likely to develop more quickly than the political split which was the prelude to it.

As a straw, also, take this paragraph from an article published in the Tägliche Rundschau in June—some time after the Allied labor memorandum may be supposed to have percolated among the German workers:

When placards which display the world situation and our position as against our enemies are openly ridiculed and described as lies and deception, and when, at a meeting of the Fatherland Party broken up by socialists, the cry can be heard: "He who fights against England is an enemy of mankind,” the initiated understand from what direction the wind is blowing.

Scheideman, speaking on July 5, before the Reichstag on von Kühlmann's speech, charged that "the gentlemen at main headquarters” were "self-deceived if they believe they are able to impose peace on the world.”

“In principle, we socialists,” this majority party leader said, "are against all annexations, all violence, whether with great or little sacrifices, or whether useful or useless for the conquering people. . . . The oppression is the more revolting the greater the difference between the strength of the oppressor and the oppressed." But he still based his position less on questions of principle than on questions of fact. In the matter of facts he may be considered a competent witness of the following:

Amongst the masses an intensified bitterness exists, not only among the industrial working people, but also among the great masses of the officials, clerks, middle classes and agricultural people, and throughout the country there is only one feeling which can be summarized in one word-finish. Finish honorably, of course. On

this point there is no difference of opinion. Finish without humiliation of Germany, but finish (strong applause from the left). The people know the truth and are completely unmoved by any attempts to impress them. The people want to end this war as quickly as possible for a war of defense which has succeeded.

The government must be the bearer of this inflexible will of the people. We demand from you that the government recognize the right of Belgium to complete independence, without any reserve, and that she does everything in order to gain us a speedy peace without harming the interests of Germany. A government which would follow such a broad policy of peace we should gladly support, but for a government which, after four years of war, has not been able to suppress the military law, we cannot vote the credits. It is high time to recognize the needs of the people and to act accordingly.

Strikes and the threats of strikes became so acute in July and August, and the increase of the vote for socialist candidates of the radical and republican minority at local elections became so pronounced that the government sought refuge from the gathering storm by inviting the leaders of the moderate Socialist Majority to come into the cabinet. In answer, Scheidemann and his colleagues produced an ultimatum reiterating the peace aims of the July, 1917, resolution, with various new ones, and amplified by a number of detailed demands for drastic changes in the constitution and civil law, including complete freedom of the press and of assembly and appointment of all cabinet officers from the Reichstag majority. The Hertling cabinet, with its Junker backing, we are now told, was unable to accept these conditions and fell.

How much of these doinestic tendencies would have been conveyed to the British and Allied leaders by Troelstra, the Dutch Socialist who was denied passports to England in June, we do not know. He cabled (July 1, 1918) that the German majority Socialists would accept the peace proposals of the Stockholm neutral committee-a cable which led Henderson to make a hopeful announcement.

This Henderson later retracted, for a letter by Herman Müller of the Socialist Democratic Party, dated June 26 and later printed in Vorwärts, stated that the Majority Socialists were ready to meet with Allied representatives but saw "no cause to depart” from their earlier declarations (approved by the party congress at Würzburg in August, 1917) which, as already pointed out, the Independent Social Democrats had denounced at Stockholm. Also, early in July, Troelstra wrote an open letter to Henderson in Het Volk, which made it clear that the Majority German Socialists were unprepared to accept the London memorandum or the neutral man

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ifesto as the basis for an inter-belligerent labor conference without those reservations 1 which Henderson scored at the American-Allied Labour and Socialist conference in mid-September. It was this failure of the German majority group to table a satisfactory reply, no less than the question of passports, that created the "obstacle" which led Allied labor at London (Chapter XXII) to pass its resolutions calling on the minority groups in Germany and elsewhere to exert their pressure upon the German majority.

ANSWERS TO LABOR'S DIPLOMACY

Knowledge of the existence of such groups and belief that they were increasingly getting out of hand gave the Allied labor leaders firmness in holding to the inter-belligerent conference project as a fulcrum for their democratic leverage. At a time when even such optimistic prophets as General Smuts did not see prospect of a military decision short of another year, they refused to abandon it in the face of government hostility that threatened to wreck the unity of the British labor movement on this issue.

But these chapters have been seriously at fault if they have conveyed the impression that the Allied labor leaders pinned their hopes for results from their "diplomacy of democracy” solely upon a consultative conference. Their tactics embraced first of all that massing of evidence as to democratic aims, of assurances as to Allied labor's intention to stand out against counter aggression in the event of working class insurgency in the Central Powers, which we have interpreted at length. In August, the British Labour Party brought out in pamphlet form the replies that had been received to date from the socialist parties of the Central Powers. Those of the Bulgarian, Austrian and Hungarian groups are of very real significance in the light of subsequent events.

The reply of the Bulgarian United Social Democratic Party, the “Broads," was published in Narod in April and May. They gave their full support to the general part of the inter-allied memorandum, the league of nations, disarmament, arbitration and the peoples' right to settle their own

"A dispatch to the London Times from Amsterdam on September 16, stated that Troelstra had been in conference with Ebert, chairman of the German Majority Socialists--and later head of the socialist government which succeeded that of Prince Max-stating that the German Majority Socialists accepted as a basis the neutral memorandum of the DutchScandinavian Committee of Stockholm, except as regards compensation to Belgium (on which they suggested some compromise) and as regards Alsace-Lorraine (on which they maintained their standpoint).

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