found in the ordinary usages of war"; and should summon persons and governments before it and award damages. Particular attention was drawn to the loss of life and property of merchant seamen and other non-combatants, including women and children, resulting from this inhuman conduct.

Thus, at every point, labor was for giving human content to the "safety" of democracy after the war. It was not a dynastic map, nor a destiny map, nor a trade map, but a peoples' map that it proposed should be engrossed at the Peace Conference.

Repeatedly, in the course of the war-whether before America's entrance, at the time of the President's first request to the Allies for a statement of war aims, or in 1918 in the exchanges as to Japanese intervention in Siberia-Americans who have access to the British press have caught the note of comprehension and democratic sympathy with the American viewpoint in such journals as the Manchester Guardian. Here is what the Manchester Guardian said of the war aims of the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference of February, 1918:

... Above all and through all runs the demand, not as a sequel in the conclusion of peace, but as an essential part of the terms of peace, for the establishment of an effective League of Nations, for disarmament, for the substitution of international law for force, and, as a corollary of these things, for open diplomacy, the publication of all treaties, the effective control of foreign affairs by popularly elected bodies. It follows, of course, that if governments are to rest upon consent and foreign affairs are to be controlled by popularly elected bodies, there will be no room left for the autocracies, and that conclusion is plainly drawn. It is indeed designed that the whole of the belligerent nations shall form part of the League of Nations, and no conditions of entry are in terms imposed. But no nation could enter a league with such functions and such a constitution which had not pretty effectively democratized itself—more effectively indeed, as regards control of foreign affairs, than has our own country up to the present moment. The first object of such a league is declared to be the one laid down by President Wilson for his own people, "to make the world safe for democracy," and it is to a democratic world, and a democratic world only, that the conference looks for the mighty step forward in the adjustment of human affairs which is necessary as the sequel to this war if worse, and much worse, is not to befall us in the days to come.

This is the answer of democracy to autocracy, to-day so seemingly triumphant, and it is surely a notable one. It is, be it observed, the answer not of British democracy alone, but of the labor forces of the Allied nations. The governments have so far failed to draw up a common programme of war aims; the conference has done it for them. All the world can now know the policy of Allied

labor, and labor among the central powers may usefully ponder it What will it say? That we have yet to learn, and nothing must stand in the way of our learning it. For in truth it is on the accord of the democracies far more than on that of their governments for the time being that the future depends. Indeed, it may yet be that only through the effective accord of the peoples can peace be reached at all. It is for the peoples, therefore, to assert themselves, our own people, the French and Italian peoples, the German and Austrian peoples. What hope, will it be said, is there of that? How is a triumphant militarism, at this very moment rich with spoil, to be crushed and broken? Perhaps the triumph is pretty far from being as complete as it seems; perhaps even its leaders have something more than a suspicion that their power rests on no very stable base, and that unless they in their turn can offer their people something more than conquest, can at least assure them peace, there may be limits to the endurance of the most patient. But in order that the peoples in those countries may have some stable ground to go upon, in order that they may know what for them peace would mean, it is essential that the terms should be clearly stated, and stated collectively. That is what the inter-Allied conference has done so far as labor is concerned. It is well done, and the Allied governments would be well advised speedily to follow suit. When it is fully known to the German people that peace means not subjection but liberty, there is no saying what useful transformations may not follow.

Now it may be said that the Manchester Guardian is a liberal paper, which held a critical attitude towards not a few of the activities of the British War Cabinet. Let us turn, therefore, to the editorial page of the London Times, the chief of the Northcliffe press. On February 25, the Times published the war-aims memorandum of the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in full, and described the memorandum as in the main "sound and sensible." Under the heading, A Democratic Challenge, the Times said in its leading editorial:

The organizers of the Allied Labour-Socialist Conference of last week have every right to congratulate themselves on the result. In the first place they secured agreement, which is in itself no small triumph; and, in the second place, they did so, not by watering down the British labor memorandum to a few colorless generalities, but rather by amplifying and strengthening it. The result is a very long, detailed and definite statement of war aims and peace terms. The weakest part is the preamble, taken from a resolution adopted at a socialist conference held three years ago, and implying that the war is due to general causes and especially to the "capitalist" order of society. . . .

Readers who approve of some parts of the statement and object to others, must remember that it is addressed primarily to the labor

socialists of enemy countries, and that it speaks a language to which they are accustomed. It is not the voice of the nation; it represents a point of view, and if it occasionally ascends into a somewhat nebulous atmosphere, that does not weaken the firm and positive stand taken on essential matters. As a whole, it offers far more ground for satisfaction than for objection.

The differences between the new international statement and the British memorandum adopted in December are considerable and important. As we have said, the earlier draft has been amplified and strengthened in detail and its logical sequence has been much improved. The first important difference is the prominent place assigned to the project of a League of Nations. That is a project which has been put forward by President Wilson and by many other persons, but it has not, so far as we know, been previously laid down so explicitly and in so much detail. It is postulated as the future guardian of democracy and the key to the problem of preventing war forever. Further, it is to be the agency by which the principle of self-determination for nations is to be realized. It is forcibly urged that the right of self-determination would be valueless if it were at the mercy of fresh violation, and therefore that it must be protected by a super-national authority, which only the proposed league can supply. But, more than that, it is contended that the establishment of an effective super-national authority implies the complete democratization of all countries, with the abolition of autocratic powers and other features of the present or past politics of nations. It follows that if self-determination and the prevention of future wars depend on the establishment of a League of Nations wielding effective authority, and if this in turn involves complete democratization of the nations adhering to it, then it is evident that the first step towards the realization of the ideals set out is democratization. This means, when applied to the actual conditions before us, either that Germany must first be thoroughly democratized before any progress can be made, or that the League of Nations, formed without her, must be prepared to compel her compliance by force of arms. We agree. A League of Nations would be a farce with Germany as she is, ruled by a single will, cherishing boundless ambitions, restrained by no scruples, bound by no compact, owning no law but necessity, and armed to the teeth. . . .

CHAPTER X

TWO-EDGED: SWORD OR PLOUGHSHARE

TURN now, from platform to procedure. In the first place, Allied labor believed the principles in its platform were worth fighting for. That was the first edge of the labor blade. Against the Prussian embodiment of conquest, of punitive indemnities and subjugated peoples, they would have been found resisting with the last ounce of blood and brawn, had other elements in the community been willing to sacrifice the East for the West, and throw the war at cost of the principles for which they were fighting. In this sense, we have the paradox that by their peace aims, the workers made it essentially their war. In February, 1915, a conference of Socialist and Labour Parties of the Allied nations had recited the wrongs to Belgium and Poland and declared that "throughout all Europe from Alsace-Lorraine to the Balkans, those populations that have been annexed by force shall receive the right freely to dispose of themselves." Three years to a month later, the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in London reaffirmed that labor was "inflexibly resolved to fight until victory is achieved to accomplish their task of liberation."

Vorwärts did not make the mistake of those reactionaries who attacked Henderson as a defeatist. Vorwärts charged that he "preaches the aim of reconciliation, but does so raising the fist of enduring readiness for war." Renaudel, the French majority leader, was quoted as saying in the spring of 1918 that it brooked little should Germany yield the provinces wrested from France in 1870 if half a dozen new Alsace-Lorraines were set up in the East. Said Vandervelde at London, in words which forecast the impending German drive:

We are meeting in very serious times. At the time this conference assembled, it was stated in the newspapers that all the forces of imperial Germany were to be thrown against Paris. On that very day we also learned that the Russian revolution, overcome by the weight of its own miseries, and its own mistakes, had resigned itself to the signing of peace with the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. We cannot ignore what the Bolshevikists have done to discredit their own country and international socialism, but we must not for

get, on the other hand, what the Russian revolution has done for internationalism and socialism. In the splendor of its first triumph, it proclaimed those principles which, adopted by President Wilson, will form the basis of the democratic peace of to-morrow.

But we have more to do than to congratulate ourselves on the achievement of the Russian revolution; we must also draw lessons from its failures. The great lesson is that democracy was committing an irretrievable mistake by throwing away its arms before imperialism had been defeated. Whilst holding the olive branch in one hand, we have to hold the sword in the other. We have been forced to take up the sword as the only means of defense. We must not forget that if we are able to assemble here, it is because the British navy holds the seas, and the millions of allied soldiers maintain the line. If the German offensive were to succeed the resolutions we pass would be mere "scraps of paper" and of no more value than the bank notes of the Russian state bank. If our soldiers are able to throw back the attack with which we are threatened, we shall have the glorious opportunity of taking a leading part in the effort that can then be made to attain a just and democratic peace.

To Vandervelde, beside him on the platform, Ramsay MacDonald said in his speech at Nottingham in January:

We can assure him that however we may differ in some things, there is no difference between him and us regarding national selfdetermination; no difference between him and us that Belgium must be free and independent. If we made peace to-day without that, peace would be false, and in two or three years militarism would raise its head more devilish than ever before.

This edge of the British-Allied labor blade was driven home in April, 1918, as part of the general marshaling of Allied arms to meet the shock of the German drive toward Amiens and Paris. The executive committee of the British Labour Party that month passed this resolution:

Resolved, That the National Executive of the Labour Party places on record its deep sense of gratitude for, and admiration of, the heroic resistance offered by our armies in the field to the terrible onslaughts of the enemy during the recent offensive. Such magnificent courage and resolution-so consistent with the best British traditions-imposes an imperative obligation upon all sections of the country to assist by their skill, energy or substance, to carry on the great work of liberation in which our armies are engaged in order that our joint efforts may eventually result in the final overthrow of militarism and secure for the world a lasting and democratic peace.

With the development of implements of warfare, from crossbow to gunpowder, from gunpowder to high explosives, to airplanes