It was from the humanist philosophy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that Socialism inherited the ideas of international brotherhood and world peace, and the achievement of these ideals represented the ultimate goal of the Socialist International. It sought to unify all national sovereign states in a federal, world Socialist Republic which would eradicate the plague of national hatreds and eliminate war from the earth. It saw in war an extreme expression of the evils of existing society, a barbaric instrument of foreign policies through which ruling classes of the various countries sought to promote, on a world scale, their individual struggles for political and economic power. In fighting to preserve peace, the International saw itself opposing the social system whose end-product was war. Almost every congress of the International was, in part, preoccupied with the question of how the workers of the world could unite to prevent wars.
The debate was opened as early as the Brussels Congress of the First International in 1868. This congress took place two years after the Austro-Prussian War—a war in which the Prussian and Habsburg monarchies strove for the domination of the German Confederation, which linked thirty-seven sovereign states under the leadership of Austria. The war had been deliberately provoked by Bismarck with the object of expelling Austria from the German Confederation so as to weld it into a centralized state under Prussian domination.
The war was over with unexpected speed. Scarcely three weeks after the outbreak, Austria was decisively defeated at Königsgrätz. The General Council of the International had devoted five of its meetings to a discussion of the policy which the Labour movement should adopt towards the war. Eventually, the unanimous decision was reached that the conflict was 'one between governments' in which the workers were advised to 'be neutral'.[1]
However, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 carried within itself the seeds of the Franco-German War of 1870. It was inevitable that Napoleon III would respond to the advance of Prussian power by seeking to prevent the unification of Germany, since this would threaten the predominant position of France on the continent of Europe. In the continuing increase of tension between France and Germany following 1866, the inevitability of war became apparent and the Brussels Congress of the International, held in 1868, anticipated only too accurately the war which was to break out two years later.
In face of the threat, the delegates from German Switzerland, led by Johann Philipp Becker, proposed that the congress should consider 'the attitude of the working class in the event of a war breaking out between two or more great powers, in particular, the policy to be adopted towards the originator'.
The resolution moved by Becker declared 'that the reasons for the precarious character of the peace could only lie in the unjust nature of society, in the jungle conditions of an economic free-for-all…; that major wars arise not only from dynastic disputes but also from conflicts of power and of economic interests…; and that such a war, of the kind threatening between Germany and France, could only be regarded as a civil war'. The resolution called on the International to organize effectively to nip all such wars in the bud, and to ensure 'that the workers in every country should not only speak out loudly and clearly against all such wars between peoples' but should also 'refuse all work which might contribute to the killing of men or to the destruction of property, such as work on military supplies'. Finally, it called for a propaganda campaign to be started immediately, 'so as to make every worker who is obliged to join a standing army clear as to his human rights, and to prescribe to him, in the event of war breaking out, certain principles of conduct'.
However, the idea of a strike against conscription was rejected as probably impracticable. 'If we were really in a position to prevent the working class from undertaking military service,' declared the Belgian delegate, Hirsch, 'the question of war would hardly arise.' The French Proudhonists, on whose behalf Tolain addressed the congress, opposed Becker's resolution, among other reasons because they had only recently and reluctantly admitted the strike to be in any conditions a legitimate method of working-class struggle. In the case of war, they argued that 'pressure of public opinion' would be the most effective means of opposition.
Eventually the congress accepted a resolution, moved by César de Paepe and supported by Charles Longuet, which dealt both with the nature of war and with the means of opposing it. Wars between nations, it declared, were civil wars, struggles between 'brothers and comrades'. It regarded economic factors, and, specifically, a 'lack of economic equilibrium', as the 'main cause' of wars. An additional reason, however, lay in 'the conditions arising out of the centralization of power and despotism'. Nations could reduce the number of wars 'in so far as they resist those who initiate and take the lead in wars'. For such resistance, declared the resolution, there existed a 'genuinely effective, legitimate and immediately applicable means'—the general strike. As 'society could no longer exist if production were to cease for any length of time, it would be sufficient', said the resolution, for the workers to stop work 'in order to render impossible all adventures on the part of personal and despotic régimes'. The resolution therefore called on the workers to cease work 'in the event of their country's declaring war'. Becker's proposal of a strike against military service was tacitly dropped.
Marx, who did not attend the congress, was not very happy with that part of the resolution which, on the insistence of de Paepe and the Belgian delegation, appealed to the workers to resist war by general strike; he called it a piece of 'Belgian stupidity'.[2] In letters to Lessner and Eccarius, who represented the General Council at the congress, he advised them to state, in the resolution regarding the general strike as a method of the prevention of war, 'that the working class is not yet sufficiently organized to exert a decisive influence on the course of events; but that Congress protests on behalf of the working class against war and denounces its instigators; and that it declares that a war between France and Germany would be a civil war, ruinous for both countries and Europe altogether'.[3]
The Franco-German War, under the shadow of which the Brussels Congress had adopted its resolution, broke out so suddenly and unexpectedly that no one could give the matter much prior thought. In neither France nor Germany was there any suggestion of a strike. In both countries the Socialists confined themselves to protesting against the imminent threat of war, at mass meetings and in public statements which reflected the spirit and letter of the Brussels resolution. They condemned it forthrightly as a dynastic war and in the North German Parliament both Liebknecht and Bebel opposed—as 'members of the International Workers' Association'—the government's demand for military credits. But when the war in fact broke out and had all the appearance of an assault by Napoleon III against the German nation, the overwhelming majority of German Social Democrats rallied, along with the rest of the population, to the cause of national defence.[4]
The position of the German Social Democrats was hardly compatible with the International's ideas on war, as embodied in the Brussels resolution. That had called on the workers to resist wars of every kind, with no distinction between those which were aggressive and those which might be described as defensive. The Brussels resolution had taken no account of the possibility that Socialists might feel impelled to defend their country against external aggression.
On the other hand, the General Council, once military operations had started, did recognize a distinction between offensive and defensive wars. It did not question the right of Socialists to defend their country against aggression. It did not view the attitude of the German Socialists, nor that of the French Socialists in the second phase of the war, as a violation of international proletarian solidarity. The first address on the war, written by Marx and signed by all members of the General Council, appeared on 23 July, four days after its outbreak. It recognized that 'on the German side, the war is a war of defence', and the second address spoke with approval of the fact that 'the German working class has resolutely supported the war, which it was not in their power to prevent, as a war for German independence and the liberation of France and Europe from that pestilential incubus, the Second Empire'.
To Engels, any other attitude seemed plainly 'impossible'. He had written to Marx on 15 August that 'the whole mass of the German people of every class have realized that this is first and foremost a question of national existence and have therefore at once flung themselves into the fray'. If Germany were defeated, he went on,
Bonapartism will be strengthened for years and Germany broken for years, perhaps for generations. In that event there can be no more question of an independent German working-class movement either, the struggle to restore Germany's national existence will absorb everything.…If germany wins, French Bonapartism will at any rate be smashed, the endless row about the establishment of German unity will at last be wiped out, the German workers will be able to organize on a national scale, quite different from that prevailing hitherto, and the French workers, whatever sort of government may succeed this one, are certain to have a freer field than under Bonapartism.
In Engels's view, the German Social Democrats should
join the national movement…at the same time emphasize the difference between German national and dynastic Prussian interests…work against any annexation of Alsace and Lorraine…as soon as a non-chauvinist republican government is at the helm in Paris, work for an honourable peace with it…constantly stress the unity of interests between the German and French workers, who did not approve of the war and are also not making war on each other.[5]
These ideas were, in fact, decisive in the minds of the German Social Democrats during the war. As long as it remained a defensive war, it had their support. Immediately France was defeated and Napoleon III overthrown, they went into opposition. They issued a manifesto—the famous Manifesto of the Brunswick Committee (which led the Eisenach party) that was to provide the grounds for the subsequent charges of treason against its members—which condemned the continuation of the war, solemnly protested against the proposed annexation of Alsace and Lorraine and demanded an immediate end to the war and the conclusion of an honourable peace. As soon as Bismarck delcared in the North German Diet that the war would continue for the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine, the Social Democrats voted against war credits and put down a motion demanding that the government 'effect a speedy peace with the French Republic and renounce any suggestion of annexing French territories'.
French Socialists acted in much the same way. While Bonaparte was in power they opposed the war. But then the war, which had apparently started as an act of French aggression against Germany, changed into a German war of conquest against France, they had no hesitation, after Napoleon's abdication, in joining forces with the new Republican government to resist Germany's war of conquest. Two days after the proclamation of the Republic, Blanqui founded his paper, La Patrie en danger, and declared in a statement signed by himself and his principal followers: 'In face of the enemy there must be no party.…The government which stemmed from the great popular uprising of 4 September represents the national spirit and the cause of national defence.' A statement from the International—the Second Address of the General Council—called on the French workers to 'perform their duties as citizens' in defence of their country, and begged them not to run the political revolution on 4 September, which had replaced the rule of Napoleon by a bourgeois régime, into a Socialist revolution. It issued the clear warning that 'any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the door of Paris, would be a desperate folly'.
Both German and French Socialists had, in the event, supported the principle of national defence and resistance to aggression against their country, and the International had given the principle its full support.
The problem confronting the Second International throughout its existence was not, however, the right of national self-defence, which few thought seriously of denying, but how to prevent nations from getting into the position of having to defend themselves by force. Congress after congress debated the question of how the working class should behave in the event of an outbreak of war. Before very long, however, the question of how to prevent war from breaking out forced itself to the forefront.
The foundation congress of the Second International, in 1889, considered the problem. It opposed outright the institution of standing armies, whose existence, it assumed, constituted in itself a threat to peace. The resolution submitted to the congress by Vaillant repudiated standing armies not only as 'incompatible with any democratic and republican régime', as the military expression of the 'monarchical or oligarchic form of capitalist rule' and as an 'instrument of reactionary coups d'état and social repression', but above all as part of the machinery of conquest and hence as an independent cause of war. It called for the replacement of standing armies by a popular militia.
The resolution did not, of course, convey the illusion that such a levée en masse would be enough to abolish war. Since war was 'the result of existing economic conditions' it would disappear, the resolution continued, 'only when the capitalist system of production has given way to the emancipation of labour and the triumph of Socialism on an international scale'. But the International believed that the abolition of standing armies and their replacement by popular militias would at least exclude the possibility of wars of open aggression.
At another level the International disbelieved in the possibility of doing away with wars while capitalism survived. The congress which followed at Brussels in 1891 passed a resolution which declared outright that the roots of war were firmly embedded in the capitalist system and that all attempts to preserve peace would be 'futile' until the economic causes of war had been eliminated under Socialism.
But if wars were endemic in capitalist society, was there anything the working class could do, while capitalism survived, to prevent their occurrence? Was any form of mass action likely to be effective? This question dominated the discussion through a succession of congresses which were largely devoted to the problem of war and its prevention. At Brussels the possibility of various forms of mass action was considered by the commission concerned with the problem of war. In particular, there was a discussion on what action might be appropriate in the face of an outbreak of war—including strike action by reservists or by industrial workers. But as Liebknecht, who reported for the commission, pointed out, all such suggestions were 'immediately and unanimously ruled out by the delegates of the very nations most directly confronted with the challenge of militarism'. The resolution drafted by Vaillant and submitted by Liebknecht, which traced the 'permanent—overt as well as latent—conditions of war…to the system of exploitation of man by man and the class struggle which such a system engenders', was content to request the working class 'to protect, ceaselessly and powerfully against the will to war in all its forms, and those alliances which inevitably give rise to wars'.
Domela Nieuwenhuis opposed the resolution on the grounds that it was hardly sufficient to condemn war verbally. The International must make up its mind what it would do if war actually broke out. In the name of the Dutch delegation he proposed that the Socialist parties should 'respond to any declaration of war with an appeal to the peoples for a general cessation of work'. A majority at the congress, however, considered it dangerous to adopt a resolution which the International lacked the power to make effective. Of the sixteen nations represented at Brussels, only the Dutch and a majority of the French and British were prepared to support the resolution.
This spirit of resignation dominated all the International's discussions on war, right down to the actual outbreak in August 1914. The resolution adopted at Zurich, in 1893, had merely emphasized the need for Socialists 'to oppose with all their strength the chauvinist lusts of the ruling class', while it went on to declare that only with the 'total destruction of all forms of class rule would the danger of war be removed', and ended with the statement that 'the overthrow of capitalism will bring world peace'. Once again, in the debate on the resolution, the idea of a general strike and the refusal of reservists to be called to the colours, proposed by the Dutch delegates, was rejected by the majority at the congress. Plekhanov from Russia, Stanislas Mendelssohn from Poland, Liebknecht from Germany, Adler from Austria, Aveling from Britain, Turati from Italy, Rakovsky from Bulgaria, Charles Bonnier from France and Louis Heritier from Switzerland made the point that the mere attempt to call a strike against military service would be crushed by mass executions, while a strike of workers, called on the outbreak of war, would end in bloody defeat for the entire Socialist movement. Daniel de Leon, president of the Socialist Labor party of the United States, was right when he pointed out that a strike against military service could only, from the moment it was called, precipitate a violent revolution. And basically, as was apparent from the debates on the general strike as a weapon in the class struggle, the International was scared of the very idea of revolution. At no stage in the development of the Socialist and Labour movements in western Europe did it feel either the strength or the inclination for a violent clash with the forces of the state.
Plekhanov, who reported for the majority of the commission on war policy, added a new item to the conventional list of arguments against a strike in the armed forces. Such a strike, he alleged, even if it were feasible, would be effective only if it broke out with equal vigour in both camps. The slogan of a military strike against the war, therefore, presupposed that Social Democracy had developed with equal strength in all the belligerent countries. But while considerable mass movements had developed in western Europe, there had been no comparable development in industrially backward Russia, languishing under the despotic régime of the Tsars. Yet Russia would be among the most powerful participants in any future war. A strike against military service, therefore, according to Plekhanov, 'would in the first instance disarm the civilized nations and leave western Europe at the mercy of the Cossacks. The whole of civilization would be swamped by Russian despotism and instead of an era of proletarian emancipation, which the strike was supposed to inaugurate with such brilliance, we should have the rule of the knout. Therefore, what is ostensibly the highly revolutionary proposal of the Dutch delegation, turns out, in practice, to be a recipe for reaction.'
This line was strongly opposed by Domela Nieuwenhuis, who claimed that it reflected a type of chauvinism particularly prevalent among German Social Democrats. He recalled a speech of Bebel to the Erfurt Party Congress of 1891, in which the German leader had declared: 'Should Russia, that land of cruelty and barbarism, that enemy of all human civilization, attack Germany with the object of dismembering and destroying her, we shall resist.'[6] This whole approach, thought Nieuwenhuis, stank of chauvinism, and chauvinism was completely incompatible with the spirit of internationalism for which they stood. At the Brussels Congress he had opposed the attempt to distinguish between aggressive and defensive wars, differences which, he asserted, sprang from an essentially chauvinist outlook. Socialists who succumbed to this kind of thinking inevitably betrayed the spirit of international working-class solidarity.
The Dutch resolution was once again rejected by an overwhelming majority. The resolution sponsored by the majority of the commission was passed, with an addendum moved by the Belgians, pledging the working-class representatives in all legislative assemblies 'to vote against military credits, to denounce militarism and ot advocate disarmament'.
The London Congress of 1896, which returned to the topic of war, formulated a number of specific proposals designed to avert the threat of war. Like the Paris Congress of 1889 it demanded the abolition of standing armies and their replacement by popular militias. It further proposed the setting up of an international court of arbitration for the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Should any government refuse to accept the findings of such a court, the question of war and peace must then be submitted to a national referendum.
Soon after the London Congress, the imperialist policy of the major European powers considerably increased the danger of world war. In 1898 a French advance from East Africa into Fashoda in the Sudan brought Britain and France to the brink of war. The Fashoda crisis was followed a year later by the beginning of the Boer War, and in 1900 by a crusade on the part of the Great Powers against China. The carving up of the huge, helpless Asiatic empire had begun in 1894 with the conquest of Korea and Formosa (Taiwan) by Japan. In the course of the next three years Russia occupied Manchuria, Dairen and Port Arthur; Germany secured a lease on the bay of Kiaochow and control over the Province of Shantung; Britain seized the harbour of Weihaiwei and declared the valley of the Yangtze a British sphere of influence; France extorted a lease on the bay of Kwantung and concessions in the Province of Yunnan. A few days before the International assembled for its congress at Paris in August 1900, troops of the major powers had marched into Peking for the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rising—an outbreak born of Chinese resentment at the continuous humiliation and dismemberment to which their country was being subjected by the foreigners.
Since the London Congress of 1896, wars had taken on a manifestly new character. They were no longer, like the Italo-Austrian War of 1859, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 or the Franco-German War of 1870, purely national in character. The new type of war was overtly imperialist, fought by ruling classes for colonial possessions, markets and spheres of influence in Africa and Asia.
The Paris Congress of 1900 discussed the problem of war in relation to the colonial policy of the Great Powers. It reaffirmed the earlier decisions on working-class policy in the fight against the war danger and recommended particularly 'the education and organization of youth for the fight against militarism'.
The idea of systematic anti-militarist propaganda was especially well received in France, and later spread to Germany, Belgium, Italy and beyond. In Germany, the most effective among the early exponents of anti-militarism was Wilhelm Liebknecht's son, Karl, who made a particular point of propagating the Socialist attitude to war among the youth who were eligible for military service and in the armed forces themselves. The propaganda, however, as Liebknecht told a conference of the Young Guard, was 'of course' confined within 'legal limits' and was never intended 'directly or indirectly to incite military disobedience'.[7] Moreover, Liebknecht's anti-militarism did not stray beyond the limits laid down at successive conferences of the german Social Democratic party.
In France, however, anti-militarism spread far beyond the youth movement to the broad mass of working-class activists, where it gave rise to acute controversy concerning the principles as well as the tactics of the party. Gustave Hervé, a leader who had quite early been officially rebuked for his pacifist outlook, advocated not only a general strike among industrial workers and reservists but an armed insurrection in the event of wars being declared. Like Nieuwenhuis, whom he revered on the grounds that he 'kept alive and unsullied the genuine revolutionary Socialist principles of internationalism',[8] he also rejected any distinction between aggressive and defensive wars, and demanded that any international war, no matter who declared it, should be countered by civil war. Since the workers had no country, it was 'immaterial', he declared in a resolution which he submitted to the Stuttgart Congress of the International in 1907, so far as the workers were concerned, 'which government is calling for patriotic support or who lyingly proclaims the existence of some community of interests among those who happen to live in the same country'.[9]
As in the case of Nieuwenhuis, Hervé's anti-patriotism was rooted in the Proudhonist version of Anarchism. In the days of the First International the Proudhonists had advanced the view that 'all nationalities and even nations were "antiquated prejudices"'—a view which Marx had duly ridiculed when it was raised on the General Council.[10] He had himself declared in the Communist Manifesto that 'the working men have no country'. But this widely quoted and widely misunderstood aphorism merely stated a fact—that the workers could reasonably be considered the disinherited stepchildren of the fatherland, those who had been, in Otto Bauer's words, 'abandoned by the nation', shut out from that community of culture that formed the essence of nationhood, allowed no part in the national riches which they produced and denied all right to a say in the nation's affairs. In such conditions the country could fairly be represented in the terms of the Manifesto as the property of the ruling classes, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.[11]
Marx's conclusion had not been that the workers should destroy the nation, but rather that they should take it over. They must themselves, he wrote, immediately following the much-discussed aphorism, 'rise to be the leading class of the nation'. Moreover, Marx assumed, as he went on to explain, tht 'national differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily vanishing more and more, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto'. In contrast, Otto Bauer had developed the idea, in his discussion on the sociology of nationalism, that to the extent to which the workers won the right to participate in the benefits of the national civilization and became incorporated in the life of the civilized community, nations would diverge more and more in their distinctive characteristics.[12]
Marx, at all events, accepted the nation as a historically constituted entity. For him, therefore, the right to national self-determination as a pre-condition for democracy was beyond question. In the programme which he drafted for the Geneva Congress of 1866, and which was endorsed by the General Council, the right of self-determination for Poland, 'the right of every people',[13], in Marx's words, was demanded. However, if the right of nations to self-determination and independence was recognized as a basic principle of democracy by the International, it was hardly feasible to deny their right to defend that independence. Such a right was asserted by the First International in the General Council's Addresses on the Franco-German War and confirmed by the Second International in the revolution of its London Congress of 1896, which advocated 'the complete autonomy of all nations'.
Hervé's opposition to patriotism, therefore, contradicted the traditional outlook of the International. His agitation was more in line with the Anarcho-Syndicalist tendencies of a section of the French trade-union movement, but found little response in the French Socialist party.
It was, in particular, opposed by Jaurès, who effectively expressed in his own person a fusion between the internationalist currents of Socialism and the modern concept of the nation. He called the paper which he founded for the Socialist movement in 1904 L'Humanité—humanity, to whose cause it was dedicated. But, for him, humanity was not a shapeless mass of individuals, but received its highest expression in the nation. He regarded nations as organic entities, formed through a lengthy process of historical development from which had emerged groups of men and women linked together by a common psychology and outlook. The destruction of the nation would mean not only the suppression or annihilation of a great collective existence, but also, as he wrote, 'a reduction of vitality, a spiritual impoverishment, a mental decline and a basic impairment of the individual'. The working class would lose even more than any other group, he added, because it would lose the very medium through which it could conduct its struggle for freedom. 'Even if the conquering nation were to institute Communism in the conquered country, even if it were to abolish capitalist tyranny, it would mean for the wokring class, thus liberated and violated at the same time, an intolerable suffering, feeling itself enslaved in the very nature of its apparent economic victory, and umable to taste under the new order of justice the liberty and joy of its own genius.'[14]
Jaurès compared humanity to a crown jewel which derived its lustre from the illuminated facets of the diversity of nations. But he wrote in the first issue of L'Humanité that humanity as a genuine organic community did not yet exist, since class distinctions had disrupted the unity of nations, while national selfishness prevented the unity of mankind. To overcome these contradictions was the main task of Socialism. 'Humanity must achieve its genuine, living unity as a free alliance of autonomous and fraternal nations.' Socialism, however, as Otto Bauer pointed out, could be achieved only within the historically constituted framework of the nation. 'Hervé wants to destroy the fatherland,' Jaurès told the Stuttgart Congress. 'We would rather socialize the fatherland for the benefit of the working class, by transferring the means of production into common property. Since the nation embodies the creative spirit of mankind and is the main vehicle for human progress, it is hardly appropriate for the working class to try to destroy it.'[15]
Although the French party charged Hervé with being unpatriotic, his anti-militarist agitation did not go without effect, as became apparent at the Limoges Congress in 1906. The subject of debate was that of the past way of preventing wars. Hervé's proposal of a general strike against the war was, of course, turned down. But up to that time a majority of the party, led by Jules Guesde, had also rejected the general strike as a political weapon. Jaurès, however, had conceded that it might be legitimate as a last resort, in face of a fundamental threat to the future of the working class. Such a danger, he now believed, could arise in a war situation, and to meet it all methods of struggle should be considered. He had no hesitation in giving the same warning from the parliamentary rostrum. When the Moroccan crisis was debated in the Chamber of Deputies in December 1905, he said that the Socialist peace policy was governed by the need to 'every day increase the union and effective action of the workers in every country, so as to prevent, by their collective and co-ordinated action, the explosion of wars'. If, in spite of this, a war should break out, he added the warning that the workers would 'reduce to impotence from one end of Europe to another the criminal governments which unleash the tempest'.[16] Jaurès persisted in the belief that it lay within the power of the international working class to prevent wars.
At the Limoges Congress the Marxist wing, led by Guesde, opposed these views. The resolution which they submitted to Congress declared both militarism and wars the inevitable results of capitalism. Hence, the evil could be ended only by the destruction of the capitalist system in which it had its roots. Anti-militarist propaganda impeded the fight against capitalism, since it diverted attention from the need to recruit Socialists and so postponed the day when the workers would be sufficiently strong and organized to carry through the Socialist revolution, overthrow capitalism and banish war from the world for all time. As interim measures, however, the resolution recommended the workers to make war 'almost impossible' by struggling to shorten the period of compulsory military service, opposing all credits for the army, navy and colonies and demanding the replacement of standing armies by a mobilization of the entire people.
Guesde's resolution was opposed, at Limoges, by one put forward by Jaurès and Vaillant. the latter also considered militarism to be a phenomenon rooted in capitalist society—'an armed machine organized by the state with the object of keeping the workers under the economic and political yoke of the capitalists'—but it lacked the unqualified pessimism of Guesde's. Jaurès certainly considered capitalism to be the cause of wars. He wrote that 'as the cloud carries lightning and thunder, capitalism is the bearer of war'. But unlike thunderstorms, wars did not arise spontaneously from the clash of elemental forces. Since they sprang from voluntary actions of men and women, they could not be considered inevitable. They could, in fact, be prevented if the working class opposed its own will to that of the rulers. Even in capitalist society, the workers possessed the power to avert the calamity of war. In line with this conviction the resolution called for effective opposition to wars by all means, 'from parliamentary intervention and public agitation to the general strike and the armed uprising'.
In complete contrast to Hervé's anti-patriotic line, however, this resolution recognized that the workers shared in the common destiny of the nation, and it stressed that any threat to national independence must be considered a threat to the working class. Moreover, it declared that the nation had not merely the right ot defend its independence against external aggression, but that such defence was an 'imperative duty' which the working class shared fully with the nation as a whole. The principle of national independence was formally adopted and proclaimed by the International. The resolution was also careful to include the corollary that a nation which found its independence threatened enjoyed 'the right to assistance from the workers throughout the world'.
The resolution from Jaurès and Vaillant was approved by a majority at the congress and confirmed, at the following party congress, at Nancy in 1907, by 1,960 votes to 1,174. At the same time it was agreed to submit the resolution for discussion at the forthcoming congress of the International, which was due to meet at Stuttgart in August 1907.
The Stuttgart Congress was the seventh to be held by the Second International, and the largest in terms of delegates and national delegations. Twenty-five nations were represented by a total of 886 delegates, a gathering 'more splendid and inspiring', as Bebel claimed in his opening remarks, 'than any other International Socialist congress had been able to achieve'. It was the first congress to be held on German soil and, inevitably, took place beyond the reach of the government of Prussia. It would have been, as Bebel pointed out, a little too risky 'to hold it under the gaze of Prince Bülow and the Berlin police' in the capital of the German Reich.[17]
The problem of 'militarism and international conflicts' came first on the agenda. Discussion, which went on for six days, of which five were taken up by the commission and the sixth in full congress, was based on the two French resolutions, one by Jaurès and Vaillant, the other from Guesde (with an amendment in the name of Hervé), and one submitted by Bebel on behalf of the German Social Democrats.
Bebel's resolution, like Guesde's, saw wars as an expression of capitalist contradictions. They would 'cease only when the capitalist economic system has been superseded or when the magnitude of the sacrifice in men and money needed to maintain and develop the military machine, and the consequent indignation produced by the arms race, brings about the abolition of the system'. The resolution emphasized the duty of the workers, and their parliamentary representatives, to fight with all their power against military and naval armaments and to oppose the granting of money for their maintenance. It also reiterated the earlier demand for the democratization of the armed forces as 'an essential guarantee for a lasting peace'.
Before submitting his own resolution to the commission, Bebel had described the Jaurès-Vaillant resolution as unacceptable to the German delegation, and likely to 'plunge the party into the greatest difficulties and dangers'. Not that he opposed those parts of the resolution which emphasized the right of the nation and its working class to defend its independence, a right which was questioned by no one except Hervé. What worried him was the passage in the resolution which dealt with the means of preventing wars, and which said that the 'impeding and prevention of war will be achieved by the national and international action of the working class, using every means available, from parliamentary intervention and public agitation to the general strike and the armed uprising'.
Instead of this passage, Bebel proposed to substitute the words: 'If there is a danger of war breaking out, the workers and their parliamentary representatives in the countries concerned are pledged to do everything possible to prevent the outbreak, by whatever means seem most appropriate. If war should, none the less, break out, they should work for its speedy termination.'
The proposal to prevent war by international working-class action was considered to be of such supreme importance that it needed a unanimous vote of Congress and, particularly, the support of the German and French Socialists. Since Europe had divided into two armed camps—the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy, and the Franco-Russian Alliance—the question of war or peace was likely to be decided in Berlin and Paris. Only if it should prove possible to bring irresistible pressure on the governments of Germany and France would a European war be prevented. But for this to be even thinkable, an agreement on common action between the Social Democrats of France and Germany was essential.
In developing his case, Jaurès attacked the fatalism which underlay Bebel's resolution. 'We are told,' he exclaimed, 'that it is futile to struggle against war, since capitalism renders war inevitable. But it is also an inherent tendency of capitalism to increase exploitation without limit and to prolong the working day indefinitely. We still fight for the eight-hour day, and with a certain amount of success.' The International ought not to be satisfied with vague generalizations about the means of preventing wars. Means of opposing wars must be expounded with detail and precision so as to prepare the workers for the decisive engagement. Social Democracy must not let the war danger weaken its sense of common struggle. 'To prevent war means to mobilize the workers into an army of invincible strength.' It would be sad, he added, 'if we could not go further than Bebel, if we had to admit that we knew no way of preventing mutual hatred and slaughter among nations'. He recalled that Bebel himself, at the congress of his party at Jena in 1905, had advocated a general strike if the workers were deprived of the right to vote. But was it, then, permissible for the French and German workers to kill each other on the orders of and for the benefit of the capitalists without making just such a supreme effort? 'If we did not, at least, make the attempt, we should be men without honour,' he declared.[18]
Bebel replied that there was no question of unwillingness to make the effort and that his resolution was not meant to rule out any appropriate means of anti-war struggle. But the method proposed in the Jaurès-Vaillant resolution of calling a general strike and a mass uprising was simply 'impossible and undiscussible' in German conditions. He described the situation which would exist in Germany the moment war was declared. Six million men—two million of them Social Democrats—would immediately be called to the colours. 'Where, then, would we get the men for a general strike?…Four million families would find themselves plunged into trouble incomparably worse than any general strike. Imagine the mood of the masses in such a situation.' A war, Bebel continued, would precipitate a major economic crisis. 'We depend on imports for a large part of our food supply. The day war was declared, that supply would be cut off. A great deal of our industrial output would remain unsold, because it could not be exported, and so production would cease. This would mean a big increase in unemployment and distress. Prices would begin to climb sky high and there might be danger of famine.…' Bebel quoted a German general who had said that, in the mass battles of the future, 'we should not know where to put the wounded or bury the dead'. Bebel continued: 'In a situation like that, could we really play about with the idea of a general strike? Our first attempt would be swept aside with derision.'[19] Resignedly, he concluded: 'We can do nothing but patiently explain, open men's minds, agitate and organize.' German Social Democracy believed in using all methods for fighting militarism and the danger of war. 'But above all we cannot proceed with methods of struggle which could destroy the normal life and, in some conditions the very existence of the party.' He proposed that a sub-committee be elected to find a formula for a resolution which could be accepted by both French and German parties.
The resolution which emerged from the sub-committee was a somewhat lengthy document.[20] It declared that war was a phenomenon inseparable from capitalism and pledged the Socialist parties to fight with all their power against the arms race and to educate the working-class youth in the spirit of Socialism and the brotherhood of nations.
The resolution went on to admit that the International was unable 'to lay down rigidly the action to be taken against militarism by the working class in all countries, everywhere and at all times'. Since the time of the Brussels COngress the workers had, on a number of occasions, taken action of various kinds in an attempt to prevent a war or to bring one to an early end. There had been the agreement between the British and French trade unions following the Fashoda crisis, an agreement aimed at maintaining peace and restoring friendly relations between the two countries. There had also been the actions of the Socialist parties in the German and French Parliaments and at public meetings during the Moroccan crisis; the joint rallies in Trieste organized by the Socialists of Austria and Italy to prevent a conflict between the two countries; the efforts of the Socialist workers of Sweden to prevent an attack on Norway; and 'finally, the heroic, self-sacrificing struggle of the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia and Poland in opposition to the war [in Japan] unleashed by Tsarism, to end it and to utilize the nation-wide crisis in the interests of working-class emancipation'. 'All these efforts,' the resolution added, 'were evidence of the growing power of the working class and of its increasing ability to safeguard the preservation of peace by resolute action.'
The resolution ended with the following statement, drafted jointly by Lenin, Luxemburg and Martov, which was to be of supreme importance for the subsequent history of the International. It said:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the co-ordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination, and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war, to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
The resolution was passed unanimously, with what the Minutes describe as 'tumultuous, long and continuously repeated applause, with particular enthusiasm from the French delegation'. Congress was convinced, in fact, that the differences between the French and German approaches had been bridged. In the debate it was emphasized that Bebel's formula of 'the means which seem most effective in the circumstances' for the prevention of war included the general strike, while it must be left to the parties concerned to decide whether this particular weapon should be employed. In any case, all the parties had pledged themselves to resist war by every means in their power.
The last paragraph in the resolution, however, went beyond merely opposing war, or trying to end it quickly once it had broken out. It committed the parties in the belligerent countries to use the crisis resulting from the war to bring about a Socialist revolution. No one drew attention to the significance of this commitment during the debate. Jaurès, for example, who, on his return from Stuttgart, spoke on the resolution to a big mass meeting at the Tivoli-Vaux-Hall in Paris, confined himself to preventive measures.
The International has proclaimed two indivisible truths. Two indissoluble truths. The first is that autonomous nations have the right and the duty to maintain their autonomy with all their energy; the second is that, in order to prevent sudden conflicts, in order to prevent murderous outbreaks in which not only the arteries but the conscience of the workers will bleed, the duty of the workers is to prevent war, and not—you will understand me—by mere verbal maledictions, not by futile grumbling and impotent curses…but by the whole force of their action: they must crush out the germ of fatal wars by parliamentary action or by social action.[21]
It was noticeable, however, that there was now no talk of the 'third truth' which the International had also proclaimed, and no reference to the possibility of responding to world war by revolutionary action to bring about 'the downfall of capitalist class rule'.
Fear of war, which had dominated the discussion at Stuttgart, grew as relations between the major powers became steadily worse. The Hague Peace Conference, which had met at the same time, failed when Kaiser Wilhelm refused either to allow the possibility of arms limitation to be discussed or to submit international disputes to arbitration. Britain had also failed in its efforts to reach agreement with Germany on the limitation of naval armaments. Wilhelm was determined to add to his already considerable land force a navy of equal strength. His continual public references to the 'mailed fist' and the 'sharpened sword' were generally taken as an indication that Germany was intent on war. There were, in fact, no conflicts between the major powers which threatened any of their vital interests seriously enough to justify war. But the frenzied arms race on which the European powers had embarked generated its own atmosphere of hatred, suspicion and mounting tension liable at any time to erupt into war on a continental scale.
The next congress of the International, meeting under the chairmanship of Hjalmar Branting in Copenhagen at the end of August 1910, represented twenty-four national sections with a total of 896 delegates. Its discussions centred on the now dangerous 'Dreadnought' race in which Britain and Germany strove for mastery of the sea,[22] and which introduced a new and dangerous factor into an already explosive situation.
The resolution, drafted by Karl Renner and eventually adopted unanimously, confined itself exclusively to parliamentary activity. It again committed the Socialist representatives in Parliament to oppose the arms race and vote against war credits. It gave a new emphasis, however, to the demand for an international arbitration court to which all disputes between nations were to be referred.
This question had already been discussed at the Stuttgart Congress in the debate on national defence. Jaurès, with the full support of Bebel, had suggested that the position of the Social Democrats in the event of war should depend on the attitude of the respective governments towards arbitration. Any government which refused to submit a dispute to arbitration should be resisted by its working class. On the other hand, full support should be given to a government which was the victim of aggression despite its willingness to refer to arbitration.
The resolution went on to pledge Socialist members of Parliament to 'continuing pressure' for general disarmament and, in particular, for an international agreement on the restriction of naval armaments. Finally, the resolution endorsed the Stuttgart agreement on the action of the workers in the event of war—the last two paragraphs of the agreement being repeated in the text—and instructed the Bureau 'in the event of the threat of war, to take immediate steps to secure agreement, between the workers' parties in the respective countries, on joint action to meet the threat'.
Keir Hardie and Vaillant, however, demanded that the debate on the possibility of direct action by the workers should be resumed. They suggested that Congress should declare a strike in the arms industry, mining and transport, a 'particularly appropriate' technique for preventing wars. In support of the thesis, Vaillant declared that parliamentary means would prove inadequate unless backed up by the extra-parliamentary threat of mass action. Such action could be effective only if prepared for well in advance. 'Our proposal is not so much to declare a general strike as to organize for one,' he explained. And Keir Hardie added that a strike by the miners would, in itself, be enough to prevent a war.
By the time the proposal was debated in full congress, it had already been discussed in the commission and rejected by 119 votes to 58, after Oddino Morgari, for the Italians, had declared that any such resolution would mean 'suicide for the party', and Ledebour, for the Germans, had claimed that it would result in the party's being declared illegal and lead to the 'destruction of the organization'. Eventually, the full congress agreed, at the suggestion of Vandervelde, to refer the proposal to the bureau for examination, and to postpone further discussion until the following congress.
It had been agreed at Copenhagen that the next congress of the International would be held at Vienna in the summer of 1913. In fact, however, there were to be no further congresses of the International. A year after the Copenhagen Congress, Italy declared war on Turkey and the Italian workers proved unable to prevent the imperialist attack on Tripoli. Immediately before the outbreak of war, the Socialists had, together with the trade unions, issued a call for a twenty-four-hour general strike, but this 'dignified protest with folded arms, while abstaining from any violent action', as the proclamation of the Socialist party described it, was incapable of preventing the disaster. And, though the workers protested in a number of spontaneous strikes and public demonstrations, the war ran its course for a whole year. It was eventually to precipitate a crisis which, starting in the Balkans, finally unleashed the catastrophe of world war.
Even before the Balkan War had begun, the international situation seemed so threatening that Victor Adler expressed, in a letter to Bebel, his doubts as to whether the congress planned for Vienna in the summer of 1913 would ever take place. Bebel confirmed Adler's fears.
Looking at the European situation [he wrote to Adler on 6 October 1912] I have felt for some time that next year will probably land us in a European war, resulting from our stupid policy towards England. This has produced an alignment of powers which, only a few years ago, no one would have thought possible, and which is intrinsically more unnatural. The English, it seems to me, cannot allow the situation to last for any length of time and are trying to force a show-down.…The whole situation, together with the reasons you mentioned, make it absolutely necessary to postpone the congress. If a conflict with Turkey breaks out, I do not believe that the war will remain isolated. Such developments have their own logic and there are too many seeds of discontent. We are inexorably pushed on, willy-nilly, and the outcome will probably be indescribable.[23]
The conflict with Turkey which Bebel feared came to a head a week later. On 13 October the Balkan states declared war on Turkey—the culmination of a long period of ferment among the Christian peoples of south-eastern Europe. Since the Berlin Congress of 1878, Macedonia and Albania had repeatedly risen in revolt against the hated Ottoman tyranny, and Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece were only waiting fo ra chance of war which would put an end to Turkish rule in Europe.
Their chance came with the Italian invasion of Libya, though it took a whole year before the governments of the Balkan states could achieve the necessary degree of unity and military preparedness. The war broke out in the first half of October 1912, and to everyone's surprise it took the Balkan armies only a few weeks to reach the Tsataldscha Line at the gates of Constantinople. The end of Turkish power in the Balkans was at hand.
It now seemed, however, that, as Bebel had feared, the Balkan conflict would turn into a European war. The Austrian government had assumed, in Count Bülow's words, that 'Turkey would easily polish off the opposing forces'.[24] The victory of the Balkan states under the leadership of Serbia seemed to Austria a deadly threat to her own empire. She saw in the tiny Serb state of scarcely three million inhabitants her most dangerous enemy, since it served as a magnet to the seven million Yugoslavs under Habsburg domination. To humiliate Serbia and render her powerless with a view, when the time came, to 'cutting out' this 'appendix of Europe', was the main object of Austria's Balkan policy.[25] In 1908 she annexed the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and so permanently alienated the Serbs, who aimed at uniting all the Slave peoples of the Balkans. Russia supported the demands of Serbia while Germany backed Austria, and the Balkan crisis of 1909 threatened to erupt into a general war. However, Russia had not yet recovered sufficiently from the effects of her war against Japan to risk a major armed clash in Europe. She determined, though, to be ready for the next crisis whenever it came.
In 1912 the Balkan crisis flared up again. Serbia had emerged victorious from her war with Turkey and now aimed at securing a port on the Adriatic. Austria was determined to allow no expansion of Serbian territory. She mobilized her army, threatened an invasion and demanded the cession of a corridor—the Sandjak—through Serbia. Once again Tsarist Russia gave her backing to Serbia in her resistance to a Habsburg domination of the Balkans. This time a clash between Austria and Russia, between the Triple and the Franco-Russian Alliances, seemed inevitable. World peace hung in the balance.
The Bureau of the International assembled in Brussels on 28 October, a fortnight after the start of the Balkan War. In accordance with the Copenhagen decisions, it convened an extraordinary congress in Basle for 24 and 25 November. At the same time it postponed the normal congress, due to meet in Vienna in 1913, until the following year.
The Basle Congress was little more than a peace demonstration, though perhaps the most impressive in the history of the International. It was formally opened on the Sunday morning in the Hall of the Burgvogtei by Édouard Anseele, with 550 delegates from twenty-three countries. Representatives of the Balkan peoples had come from Romania, Bosnia, Croatia and Bulgaria, including Janko Sakasoff from Sofia, the only member of the Bulgarian Parliament to have protested against the war. He arrived at the congress straight from the battlefields of Macedonia. The Serbian party sent a letter attributing its absence to the war, and beseeching the congress 'to put an end to the bloodshed in the Balkans'.
As the congress was holding its opening session, special trains were arriving in Basle from Baden, Alsace and all parts of Switzerland, and thousands had crowded into the vast Münster, overflowing into the wide squares which surrounded the building. At two o'clock the delegates began to march through the streets of Basle towards the Münster, headed by a group of children in white carrying twigs of birch in front of a forest of red flags. As the demonstration approached the cathedral, church bells began to chime, and as soon as those at the head of the procession passed through the doors the organ struck up the chords of the Bach Mass in C Minor.
It was a strange setting for a congress of the Socialist International. Five hundred years before the same high Gothic arches had seen another international congress—the cardinals, bishops and prelates of the Catholic church meeting for the ecumenical council of 1431. Now the Calvinist minister, Taschler, preaching the morning sermon, told how the wardens of the congregation had debated the propriety of admitting the delegates of an international Socialist congress. 'The heads of our community voted unanimously in favour,' he reported, adding: 'It is a gathering filled with the spirit of Christ which will assemble here this afternoon, though the speakers may use a style which sounds strange to our ears. But since it is essentially Christian principles and ideas which will be proclaimed, we welcome with genuine sympathy these men, many of whom have come to us over great distances.'[26]
The proceedings were dominated by the threat which overhung Europe. 'We come from the country,' said Adler, 'whose ruling classes are at this very moment engaged in fateful decisions…while we assemble here to defend the cause of peace.' Every speaker was preoccupied with the same question—how could the unspeakable evil be averted? Did the working class possess the strength to ward off the threatening catastrophe? Keir Hardie believed that 'the congress representing as it does a total of fifteen million Socialist votes, is a powerful bulwark defending the peace of Europe'. More realistically Adler pointed out that: 'It does not, unfortunately, depend on us Social Democrats whether or not a war breaks out. While the international working class is certainly gaining in strength…it would be unwise to overestimate our resources.…' The best hope seemed to be that the ruling classes would be too scared of revolution to venture on war, and it was this hope which sustained the spirit of the International. According to Adler the governments themselves suspected that 'history itself would punish the perpetrators of a historic crime.…If such a crime were committed it would be the beginning of the end for the criminals' own power.' Jaurès expressed the feelings of the congress in a highly emotional speech. 'The sound of church bells which greeted us on our arrival,' he said, 'seemed to me like a call for reconciliation. It reminded me of the preface which Schiller wrote to his beautiful Song of the Bells: "Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango.…Vivos voco…I call the living to the defence of life against the threat of murder! Mortuos plango…I mourn the uncounted dead whose corpses litter the battlefields at the other end of Europe, from whom the stench of decay reaches us as remorse for their misdeeds. Fulgura frango…I shatter the lightning of war which lights up the clouds as a warning of imminent danger!"' Jaurès concluded his speech with the warning: 'Let governments remember that in conjuring up the danger of war they invite the peoples to make a simple calculation—how much smaller a sacrifice a revolution would involve, when compared with the war they are preparing!'
Next day the congress got down to business. The Chair was taken by Hermann Greulich, a veteran of the International, who forty-three years earlier had represented the Socialists of Switzerland at the Basle Congress of the First International.
At its meeting in Brussels on 28 October the bureau had drafted a long manifesto which differed substantially from previous conference resolutions. It did not merely, as in earlier statements, condemn war and call on the workers to resist in the event of war breaking out. It went further in outlining a specifically Socialist foreign policy designed to meet the threat of war and to facilitate a peaceful solution of the European crisis.
The statement began by endorsing the proposal of the Balkan parties for a democratic federation of the Balkan states. It called on the Socialists of the Balkans to oppose not only all attempts to revive old hatreds among Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians and Greeks but also all antagonism directed against the Turks and Albanians in the other camp. 'It is the duty of Balkan Socialists,' it declared, 'to fight against every violation of national rights and, against the claims of unbridled chauvinism, to assert the brotherhood of all Balkan nations, including Albanians, Romanians and Turks.'
The manifesto then dealt with the Social Democratic parties of Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was their duty to defend Serbia with all their power against the attacks of the Danubian monarchy and oppose all attempts to deprive her of her recent gains by force and to transform her into a colony of Austria. It went on to denounce the intrigues of Tsarism, which, having betrayed the Balkan peoples on a number of occasions, now posed as a liberator of Balkan nations so as to secure her own predominance in this area in the event of war. It called on the workers of Russia, Finland and Poland to oppose every warlike policy of Tsarism and thwart Russia's aggressive designs on Armenia and Constantinople.
The main task, said the manifesto, fell, however, on the Socialist parties of Germany, France and Britain. They must press their own governments to refuse all help to either Austria-Hungary or Russia in their Balkan policies, refrain from all interference in the area and observe strict neutrality. 'It would be criminal folly for the three leading civilized nations to go to war because of a Serbo-Austrian dispute about access to the sea.' However, if the military collapse of Turkey were followed by the break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the Near East it would then be the duty of Socialists in Britain, France and Germany to oppose any attempts by their own governments at territorial expansion, since such attempts would certainly culminate in world war.
But, the document continued, the greatest danger to European peace came undoubtedly from the artificially instigated hostility between Britain and Germany. It urged the Socialists of both nations to strengthen their efforts and secure, if at all possible, an agreement on naval disarmament. To overcome the hostility between Germany on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other, would remove the greatest danger to world peace, considerably weaken the power of Tsarism which exploited the antagonism, rule out the possibility of a surprise attack by Austria-Hungary on Serbia and strengthen the cause of peace. 'All the International's efforts must be devoted primarily to this aim,' the manifesto declared.
The statement ended with a thinly disguised threat of revolution. The ruling powers should not forget, it said, 'that with existing conditions in Europe, including the state of working-class feeling, they would be unable to start a war without endangering their own position'. It reminded the governments that the Franco-Prussian War had been followed by the Paris Commune, that the Russo-Japanese War had triggered off revolution in the Empire of the Tsar and that the current military and naval arms race had raised class conflicts in Britain and on the Continent to a new level of intensity, characterized by widespread strikes. 'It would be madness for governments to lose sight of the fact that the very prospect of such an abomination as a world war would be enough to provoke the indignant hostility of the workers and drive them to revolt.'
The manifesto ended with the solemn declaration: 'The proletariat is conscious of the fact that it carries with it, at this moment, the future of humanity.' In a passionate appeal it called on the international working class 'to prevent the fine flower of the nations from being destroyed, threatened as it is by all the horrors of mass murder, famine and plague', and to demonstrate everywhere and by every means the workers' desire for peace. 'Let the capitalist world of exploitation and mass murder,' it concluded, 'be confronted by the proletarian world of peace and international brotherhood.'[27] The French text was read and approved by Jaurès, the German by Victor Adler and the English by Keir Hardie.
In the debate Hugo Haase spoke for the German party, Frantisek Soukup for the Czech Social Democrats, Troelstra for the Scandinavian, Belgian and Dutch Socialists, Clara Zetkin for the International Women's Movement, Sakasoff for the Balkan Socialists, Baillant for the French party and Gregorio Agnini for the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian delegations. There was no discussion on the tactical means of preventing war. However, Keir Hardie told the opening meeting of the congress that, if political action proved unable to prevent the outbreak of war, he hoped tha tthe workers would bring into use their economic weapon—'the international revolutionary strike against war'. And Vaillant emphasized that, although the manifesto did not explicitly refer to the question of direct action against war, it 'by no means excluded either an anti-war uprising or a general strike'.
August Bebel spoke at the closing stages of the congress. It was to be his last speech. Already gravely ill, the seventy-two-year-old veteran had barely a year to live. When his name was called and he walked to the rostrum, 'he was cheered', according to the official record, 'for several minutes by the Congress'. Deeply moved, Bebel paid tribute to the gathering, which would go down in the history of the International 'in golden letters' and could never be forgotten by those who had been privileged to take part.
Humanity was spared disaster for the time being. But the war-clouds which hovered over Europe did not disperse. Whatever their own intentions towards their neighbours, all the powers felt themselves threatened. The European tensions which had been building up over so many years, and which had not been resolved, continued to breed hatred, mistrust and fear. The armaments of the Great Powers continued to accumulate. Russia went on with the strategic network of roads leading to her western frontier, the French government called on Parliament to extend the period of conscription from two to three years, the German government strengthened its artillery, at the same time building up its fleet, while, for each armoured cruiser Germany added to her navy, Britain built two.
An event in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo—the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, by Serbian conspirators, precipitated the dreaded confrontation of powers. No one guessed, at the time, that the death of a single prince would lead directly to the death of millions still living. Assassinations of royalty in the Balkans were by no means uncommon; the assassins themselves were Bosnians, and thus Austrian subjects; there was no proof that the Serbian government was implicated. Moreover, the Archduke had not been especially popular and even among the ruling Habsburg family few tears can have been shed over his death.
However, the government at Vienna saw, in Serbia, the seat of South Slav irredentism, and the main threat to Habsburg power in the Balkans. The opportunity of removing this threat seemed too good to miss. In 1912 the powers had prevented a show-down with Serbia. This time Austria was determined to let nothing stand in the way. The Sarajevo assassination would be the pretext, not only for humbling Serbia, but also, as Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, reported to the Privy Council on 7 July 1914, 'for rendering her permanently harmless by a demonstration of strength'. Berchtold left the Privy Council in no doubt 'that an armed conflict with Serbia could lead to war with Russia'. But since, as he went on to say, he 'felt quite confident of the support of Germany in the event of warlike complications', it seemed a risk worth taking.[28]
It was inevitable that a conflict between Germany and Russia would unleash a European war. Russia had an alliance with France, while Britain could not allow Germany to triumph over France and Russia and so dominate the Continent. In that event Germany would control the entire mainland of Europe from St Petersburg to Brest and so destroy that 'balance of power' on which Britain relied for her security. Although England had no formal bond of alliance with the Franco-Russian bloc, she had let it be understood by both France and Germany that, in the event of a continental war, Britain would fight alongside France and Russia against Germany.[29]
To the Socialist parties, as to everyone else, it seemed incredible that Germany would jump into the abyss of a war against Russia, France and Britain on account of Austria's quarrel with Serbia. They refused to believe that either a European or any other kind of war could develop out of the incident at Sarajevo. The shots were fired in Sarajevo on 28 June. Regardless of this, Victor Adler's son Friedrich who, as secretary of the Austrian party had been entrusted with the preparation of the International's congress due to take place in Vienna on 23 August, went on with his work quietly. Only three weeks later, on 21 July, when the Austrian censorship deleted those paragraphs from a report in the Arbeiter-Zeitung which dealt with the discussions on the Keir Hardie-Vaillant resolution at the French Socialist congress, did Adler express doubts as to whether the Congress of the International, which had the same resolution on its own agenda, would be able to meet in Vienna without police interference. He considered the possibility of changing the meeting-place, but 'hardly any members of the party leadership happened to be in the country at the time'. All those with whom he might have discussed his doubts were enjoying their summer holidays. Only on 23 July was he able to call a meeting to discuss his proposal. However, as Adler records, 'the great majority of my comrades, and Dr Renner in particular, were not prepared even to consider the possibility of war'.[30] Two hours after the meeting closed, Austria's twenty-four-hour ultimatum to Serbia was announced to the world.
Now the leaders of the International, while recognizing the inevitability of a Serbo-Austrian war, convinced themselves that it could be localized. The Executive of the International convened by cable an urgent meeting of the Bureau at Brussels on 27 July. The next day Austria declared war on Serbia. But even then the conference hoped that a European war would be averted. So confident did they feel that, while agreeing to transfer the congress from Vienna to Paris, they announced its opening for 9 August. The Bureau adjourned on 29 July. Three days later, on 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia, and on 3 August on France. The next day Britain entered the war.
The war took the Socialists, as it took almost everyone else, by complete surprise. Almost before they could turn round it had broken over their heads.
An example of this complete lack of awareness was provided by the French Socialists, who held an extraordinary congress of their party in Paris on 14 July, a little over two weeks before the outbreak of war. Their discussions were devoted exclusively to the problem of preventing war in general, without reference to the war which was actually brewing almost literally round the corner. The main item on the agenda was the motion from Keir Hardie and Vaillant, which had been referred by the Copenhagen Congress to the following congress of the International, now due to meet in Vienna on 23 August. The conference of the French party considered the problem in the light of a possible war between Germany and France, paying no attention to the role of Tsarist Russia in the international complex of power politics. No one, in the course of the debate, referred to the question of what form of direct action by the Socialist parties could prevent the Austro-Serbian conflict from degenerating into a world war, since only the chanceries of Vienna, Berlin and St Petersburg were aware that this was a serious possibility. The conference spent its time on the more academic question of whether the general strike was an appropriate weapon for preventing wars in general, and whether it would be more effective to call a strike before or after war had been declared.
It is interesting to compare the discussions at the French Conference with those taking place two weeks later at the meeting of the International's Bureau in Brussels. In Paris, Compère-Morel warned the party against taking decisions it had no power to operate. Jaurès, however, believed that the workers would respond to a strike call from the party and that mass action by the working class could prevent war from breaking out. They must not wait for the outbreak of ware, however, before calling a strike, 'because in that case the world would already be handed over to the forces of darkness'. The International must call a general strike in the period of war-preparations and in the countries directly involved, and he added that 'we should be prepared to call off the strike in the country which was prepared to submit the dispute to arbitration'. Marcel Sembat agreed that a general strike should be called before the outbreak of war, providing that the workers in the opposing country were also prepared to join in the strike movement. He remained convinced that in the event of a war between France and Germany, a spontaneous strike movement would develop. No one considered, however, what the workers should do in a war which developed out of a Russo-German conflict in which France became involved through her alliance with Russia. Nor did anyone raise the related question of whether the Russian working class, which had risen against Tsarism, been defeated and suffered the destruction of its organizations, would be able to restrain its own government.
The case for the general strike as a weapon against war rested on the assumption that a working-class movement of roughly equal strength existed on both sides of the dividing-line, and that the possibilities of strike action were much the same in all the major conflicting countries. If this were not so it would be precisely the country with the more developed Socialist movement which would succumb to the side unhandicapped by a powerful Labour movement. The generla strike, said Jules Guesde, would be a danger to those countries where Socialism was more advanced, since 'the better organized country would be destroyed'.[31] If the French party conference failed to discuss the problem of preventing war in the situation which actually existed, and the character of which was to become only too hideously apparent a fortnight later, it was clearly because the idea of the Austro-Serbian dispute escalating into a world war would have seemed too fantastic to merit serious consideration.
The Socialist parties—especially those of Austria and Germany—became dimly aware of the approaching danger only with the publication of the Austrian ultimatum. On the day it appeared, the German Social Democratic M.P.s in Austria released a statement in which, in the name of the working class, they placed the full responsibility for war on those 'who have decided on…this fatal step'. 'It is not,' the statement continued, 'in the power of the people to decide the question of war or peace.…Parliament, their voice and instrument, is silent. The freedom of public assembly and of the Press has been destroyed.…' And, indeed, the text of the manifesto itself was almost entirely suppressed by the censorship.
On the same day the Social Democratic party in Germany published its own manifesto. Since that country was not yet at war, the party could still speak openly, with the advantages of a Press which was still uncensored and a Parliament which, unlike the Austrian, was still free to speak. The manifesto denounces 'the frivolously provocative war policy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy' and 'emphatically demands that the German government use its influence with the Austrian government to preserve peace and, should this terrible war now prove unavoidable, itself refrain from any kind of armed intervention'. It called on the workers to demonstrate their will for peace by calling mass meetings immediately. 'A crisis is upon us,' it continued, 'more desperate than for many decades past. The danger of a world war is now imminent.' Three days later, on 28 July, as Austria declared war on Serbia, hundreds of thousands took part in demonstrations in Germany's main towns and in Berlin alone twenty-seven public meetings were held.[32]
On the previous day the Bureau of the International had assembled at the Maison du Peuple in Brussels for the most fateful conference in its history. All the main representatives of the European movement were there: Jaurès, Guesde, Longuet, Adler, Vandervelde, Kautsky, Haase, Rosa Luxemburg, Keir Hardie, Bruce Glasier, Axelrod, Morgari, Angelica Balabanov, Grimm, and many others. They spoke for millions.[33] But they had little confidence in their ability to prevent the threatened war by direct mass action. Though Keir Hardie referred briefly to the possibility of a general strike, it played no other part in the conference discussions.
The first necessity was to clarify the attitude of the Socialist parties in those countries likely to participate in the war—specifically the parties in Austria, Germany, France and Britain. Victor Adler's report, according to his son Friedrich, who was with him at the conference, 'breathed a spirit of utter passivity, with a conviction that it was impossible to do anything effective to prevent the war'. 'The war is already with us,' said Victor Adler. 'Up to now we have done what we could to prevent it.…There is nothing further we can do. We are at war, our newspapers are suppressed. We are living in a state of emergency, and under the shadow of martial law.' He added: 'I am not here to make speeches at a public meeting but to tell you candidly that any action on our part, when hundreds of thousands are already marching towards the frontier and when we have martial law at home, is completely impossible.…' A few years later Vandervelde described how Adler, whose heart disease had grown suddenly worse in the summer of 1914 and who 'had aged ten years in a single day', was continually repeating: 'It is impossible, it is impossible, we should need a miracle.…' And the Czech Labour leader, Anton Nemec, from Prague, exclaimed in despair: 'What can we do? Parliament is suspended and public meetings prohibited. Anyone who resists mobilization will be hanged.'
The conference then turned to the position in Germany and was deeply impressed by Hugo Haase's account of the great peace demonstrations. He did something to revive flagging hopes in the possibility of peace with the remark: 'The Kaiser is against the war, not for humanitarian reasons but simply from fear.'
Jaurès shared his optimism. At the closing meeting he assured the delegates that the evil could be averted. 'The governments,' he believed, 'are still undecided. Attila is poised on the very brink of the precipice, but his horse still hesitates, is not yet willing to jump.…We must take advantage of the indecision of governments to organize for peace.…' About the attitude of his own party he said: 'For us French Socialists the task is very simple. We do not have to force a peaceful policy on our government. It already practises it. I have never been afraid to incur the wrath of our own chauvinists through persistently advocating a Franco-German rapprochement.…I am, therefore, fully within my rights in assuring you that the French government wants peace.' However, he was careful to add: 'It is our duty to insist that the French government brings strong pressure on Russia, to prevent her from declaring war. And if Russia, unfortunately, refuses to accept this advice, it is our duty to declare that we recognize only one commitment—that which binds us to the human race.'
A similarly optimistic note was struck in Keir Hardie's report. He thought it 'quite out of the question' for Great Britain to be involved in the war. If, nevertheless, the government tried to involve the nation, the trade unions would use every means, including a general strike, to preserve peace.
These reports from the German, French and British delegates strengthened the conference's belief that it was possible to avoid war. 'Although the terrible threat that the Continent might become engulfed in war provided the main theme in the discussions, no one, not even the German representatives, thought it possible that an immediate breach between the major powers was imminent,' was Bruce Glasier's summary of the mood at the conference. So convinced were they that a European war could be averted that it was decided to convene the Congress of the International in Paris on 9 August. In a final statement the conference called on the workers of all countries threatened by war to organize, in the meantime, a series of peace meetings and to work for a settlement of the Austro-Serbian dispute by arbitration. it declared that 'the German and French workers will bring even greater pressure on their own governments to make Germany exercise restraint on Austria while France persuades Russia to keep out of the conflict'.[34]
The conference ended with a public meeting in the Cirque Royal. There was a demonstration of Brussels workers, thousands of whom marched there in close column, and the city rang with the cry: 'War on War!' Vandervelde, Haase, Hardie and Jaurès spoke from the platform. It was to be Jaurès's last speech. As he had already told the conference, he had done more than enough in France to incur the enmity of the chauvinists, and the right-wing Press had openly called on the 'patriotic forces' to assassinate him. Two days after returning from Brussels, as he was sitting with friends finishing an evening meal at the Café du Croissant, he was shot dead.
A few hours before his death, Jaurès had gone with Bracke, Longuet and Marcel Cachin on a deputation to the Quai d'Orsay with the object of persuading the government to bring more effective pressure to bear on Russia. In the absence of the Premier, they were received by the Minister, Abel Ferry. Jaurès expressed his fear that the French government was doing too little to make Russia see reason. According to Cachin Jaurès insisted, 'with quite exceptional power, eloquence and decision', that the government should bring all its influence to bear to prevent Russia from mobilizing. 'Those of us who have, since the beginning of the crisis, constantly defended and never by a single word impeded their faithful activities in support of peace,' he said, 'have the right to appeal to them now, when dangers are visibly accumulating, even if they should execute us for our pains.…'[35] As the deputation left the Quai d'Orsay, news came through that the Kaiser had placed Germany on a war footing. Next morning—1 August—he declared war on Russia, while German troops invaded neutral Luxembourg.
The French party had previously declared that it would not feel bound by 'any secret agreements' which would involve France in a conflit 'with Serbia as the bait'; it would oppose, in fact, a war waged by France in support of Serbia. Even on the day following Germany's declaration of war on Russia (2 August), Vaillant told a mass meeting in the Salle Wagram that the party would support the government in a war only if France herself were attacked. At the same gathering, Longuet gave a report of the International Bureau's meeting in Brussels. He particularly emphasized the speech of Haase, who had solemnly pledged his opposition and that of German Social Demcoracy to a war against France. 'In the attitude of the German Social Democrats towards France,' said Longuet, 'lies the great hope of reconciliation between our two countries. French Socialists will fight to the end for the maintenance of peace.' He added, however, that 'if France should be attacked, should not the Socialists be the first to spring to the defence of the country of the Revolution, of Demcoracy, of the Encyclopaedists and of Jaurès?…'
The day it returned from Brussels, the British delegation issued a statement, signed by Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, calling on the British working class, in the name of the International Socialist Bureau, to keep Britain out of the war through a campaign of 'great public meetings in London and every industrial centre'. 'Let us silence those of our ruling class who would lead us into alliance with Russian despotism.…In our time, the success of Russia would be a disaster for the world,' the manifesto declared. Two days later, on 2 August, in accordance with the appeal, great public meetings were held in the main towns. The demonstration in Trafalgar Square was, according to the Manchester Guardian, 'the biggest for many years' and was addressed by the leading members of the trade unions and the Labour party, including J. Stokes, Chairman of the London Trades Council, George Lansbury, Will Thorne, Arthur Henderson, Keir Hardie and Cunninghame Graham.
At one such meeting in the provinces, the president of the Miners' Federation, Robert Smillie, said that if it were still possible to prevent the war by general strikes throughout Europe, he would not hesitate to call on the miners to do just this.[36]
Forty-eight hours later the German Social Democrats in the Reichstag, and the French Socialists in the Chamber of Deputies, voted in favour of war credits. These acts struck a mortal blow to the International. It fell, the first victim of the world war. It had been conceived as a brotherhood uniting the workers of all countries in a spirit of solidarity for the joint struggle against the ruling classes. Now the Socialist parties of the belligerent countries were making common cause with their own ruling classes, which bore the sole responsibility for the war, against the peoples of other lands who had had war forced on them. The bond of brotherhood between the nations had been broken and the spirit of international solidarity of the working classes superseded by a spirit of national solidarity between the proletariat and the ruling classes.
Up to the last moment the Socialist parties had done what they could to oppose the war and the struggle had, for many years, absorbed most of their energies. Their stubborn efforts to win the mass of the people to the Socialist cause, so as to strengthen the influence of the movement in state and society, had been inspired by the idea that only a strong Social Democratic movement could prevent war. Now social democracy had lost its race against time. To continue the struggle by calling for an uprising once war had broken out, seemed beyond its strength. Moreover, the war crisis had developed with incredible speed, and in the disastrous clash between the two groups of Great Powers, the workers in each camp saw themselves faced with the danger of invasion by one or other of the dreaded bulwarks of reaction—in Germany and Austria by Tsarist Russia, in France, Belgium and Britain by Prussian militarism. The war stemmed from the imperialist conflicts of the ruling classes and served only their narrow imperialist aims. But the Socialist parties saw it not merely as an inter-imperialist conflict of capitalist ruling classes, but also and especially as a fight for national survival.
The International saw in the approach of war a terrible and perhaps fatal threat to the values for which the movement stood, a denial of everythingt hey felt to be hopeful and creative for the future of manking. But when war arrived, the Socialist parties did not withhold their support for a contest they lacked the power to prevent. On the contrary, they gave their enthusiastic support, both morally and politically, to the war effort. The International, which had served for so long as the symbol and expression of working-class unity, could not survive.
The world war marked the end of a distinctive phase in Socialist history. The fifty years which elapsed between the foundation of the International in 1864 and the outbreak of war in 1914 may be descriubed as the apostolic period of Socialism, when the movement developed an ideology and a set of values in sharp contrast to those which prevailed in the surrounding society. The Socialist parties had, for the most part, viewed the state as an instrument of the ruling classes, had refused to participate in governments or to concern themselves with their 'own' national interests while the nations to which they belonged remained capitalist. This posture of 'non-commitment' had enabled them to advocate their principles and ideas while remaining uncontaminated by political power. With the outbreak of the war in western and central Europe there began the integration of the Socialist movement with the capitalist state, followed by the tremendous revolution in Russia which brought about a fundamental split in international Socialism.
In August 1914 the International embarked on a new phase in its development, a phase characterized by the national integration of Socialist parties in the West, while the Bolsheviks developed a new and autocratic brand of Communism in the East.
1. Minutes of the General Council, 19 and 26 June; 3, 10 and 17 July 1866, op. cit., pp. 200–13.
2. Letter to Engels, 16 September 1869, Marx-Engels Briefwechsel, vol. III, p. 110.
3. Marx-Engels: Ausgewählte Briefe, p. 244 (letter not included in English edition of Selected Correspondence).
4. For a fuller description of the attitude of German and French Socialists and of the International towards the Franco-German War, see Chapter 5.
5. Marx-Engels Briefwechsel, vol. IV, pp. 438–40.
6. Bebel's statement was somehow in line with Engels's attitude. A fortnight before the Erfurt Congress, on 1 October 1891, he wrote to Bebel: '…a war against Germany by an alliance with Russia is, above all, a war against the strongest and most active Socialist party in Europe. Thus we have no choice but to fight with all our might any aggressor who assists Russia. For either we should be defeated, and then the Socialist movement in Europe will be finished for twenty years, or else we ourselves will get into power.…'—August Bebel: Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Engels, op. cit., p. 439.
7. See the Handbuch für Sozialdemokratische Wähler (Berlin, 1911), p. 639. Despite his insistence on the legal nature of his anti-militarist propaganda, Liebknecht was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment for 'incitement to treason' in October 1907, after the speech had been published as a pamphlet.
8. Gustave Hervé, Leur Patrie (Paris, 1906), p. 201. In this book, which caused a great sensation in France, éerve explicitly challenged the whole concept of patriotism, as the title suggests. 'Leur Patrie' meant specifically 'their country'—the country of the rich. The workers had no country and hence no patriotic duties or obligations.
9. Hervé founded in 1906 the paper La Guerre sociale (The Social War) to propagate his views on anti-patriotism and insurrection. However, when war broke out in 1914, he changed the name of his paper to La Victoire (Victory) and enthusiastically defended both patriotism and the cause of national defence.
10. Minutes of the General Council, 19 June 1856; see also Marx's letter to Engels of 20 June 1866, Marx-Engels Briefwechsel, vol. III, p. 408.
11. E. H. Carr, discussing the relation between Marx's theory of nationality and that of the Bolsheviks on the right of national self-determination, in The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–23, describes (vol. I, p. 410) some of the antecedents of the classic Marxist view, including an extract from Robespierre, who declared in his first published speech (Discours et rapports de Robespierre), ed. C. Vellay, p. 328: 'In aristocratic States the word patrie has no meaning except for the patrician families who usurped sovereignty. It is only under democracy that the State is truly the patrie of all the individuals composing it.'
12. Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 1907), I, ch. 9.
13. Session of the London Conference of the First International, 27 September 1865, Documents of the First International (1964), p. 246.
14. Petite République, 24 December 1901, quoted in J. Hampden Jackson, Jean Jaurès (London, 1943), p. 132.
15. Protokoll, op. cit., p. 89.
16. Jackson, op. cit., p. 126.
17. Although the International met outside the sphere of influence of the Prussian police, it was still subjected to a certain amount of interference. The British delegate, Harry Quelch, while Congress was still in session, was expelled by the Wurtemburg government for referring to the governments represented at the Hague Peace Conference, which was meeting at the same time, as a 'thieves' kitchen'. His empty seat, adorned with his delegate's badge and a laurel wreath, was placed on the British delegation's table, with a notice saying: 'Here sat Harry Quelch, yesterday expelled by the government of Wurtemburg.'
18. Protokoll, p. 90.
19. Protokoll, pp. 83, 100. Four years later, in 1911, Bebel tried to substantiate his case with similar arguments. 'Millions of workers will be taken from their families, who will have nothing to eat or to live on. Hundreds of thousands of small businessmen will go bankrupt, through being unable to carry on their trade. The price of bonds will collapse, leading to the ruin of tends of thousands of hitherto comfortable families. Exports will cease and our extensive world trade will be interrupted. Those numerous factories and industrial concerns not required for war production will have to close. Everywhere there will be mass unemployment and no chance of finding work. The food supply will be partially or totally disrupted. Food prices will become exorbitant. There will be widespread famine. The masses will then demand, not a strike, but work and bread!' (Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages in Jena).
20. For the wording of the resolution, see Appendix Two.
21. Jackson, op. cit., p. 135.
22. Germany's naval construction gave rise to something like panic in Britain, a panic which the jingo Press had done everything to intensify. There was widespread fear of a German invasion. The failure of the British government to reach an agreement with Germany on the limitation of naval armaments led a number of highly esteemed British Socialists—including Hyndman, Belfort Bax and Blatchford—to advocate the naval rearmament of Britain, a course which was strongly opposed by both the I.L.P. and the Labour party. Kautsky tells of a discussion with Hyndman in which he told the latter how much harder his attitude had made the struggle of the German Social Democrats against the Kaiser's naval programme. 'Hyndman asked me,' said Kautsky, 'whether I could guarantee that the German Social Democrats would prevent an invasion of England. I had to tell him that any such undertaking would be irresponsible. We should, of course, do everything possible to prevent an outbreak of war.…Right, said Hyndman, as soon as you German Social Democrats are strong enough to prevent a war being waged against us, we in England will oppose the arms programme. But until we can rely on you in this respect we shall have to rely on other factors.…'—Karl Kautsky, Sozialisten und Krieg (Prague, 1937), p. 398.
23. Victor Adlers Briefwechsel, p. 550.
24. Fürst Bernhard von Bülow, Denkwürdigkeiten, ed. Franz von Stockhammer (Berlin, 1931), vol. III, p. 112.
25. As early as 1907 the Austrian Chief of Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf, wrote a memorandum demanding 'the annexation of Serbia, including the central district of Nisch' as the main aim of Austro-Hungarian policy. He argued that 'an independent Serbia acts as a constant incitement for all those aspirations and intrigues aiming at the secession of the South Slav areas'. During the Bosnian annexation crisis of 1908 he had pressed for the annexation to be extended to Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Aehrenthal, on the other hand, preferred to wait for 'a favourable European constellation' before attempting anything so ambitious. See Otto Bauer, Die österreichische Revolution (Vienna, 1923), p. 12. The opening chapter of the first section of the book provides the best introduction to the Balkan situation in the years leading up to the First World War. See also the same author's Der Balkankrieg und die deutsche Weltpolitik (Berlin, 1912).
26. Ausserordentlicher Internationaler Sozialisten-Kongress am 24. und 25. November 1912 (Berlin, 1912), p. 52.
27. For the text of the manifesto, see Protokoll, op. cit., pp. 23–7.
28. See Österreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik von der Bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1918, edited by Ludwig Bittner and Hans Ubersberger (Vienna, 1930), vol. III, p. 343.
29. Viscount Haldane had told Bethmann-Hollweg as early as February 1912 that 'if Germany attacks France, England could give no guarantee' of her neutrality. See Theo von Bethmann-Hollweg, Betrachtungen zum Weltkrieg, Part I: Vor dem Kriege (Berlin, 1919), p. 53.
30. Friedrich Adler, Vor dem Ausnahmegericht (Jena, 1923), p. 197. Belief in the unlikelihood of war was strengthened by the attitude of leading statesmen. These were also on holiday, despite the Sarajevo episode—the Austrians and Germans, who were planning war, deliberately intended to lull suspicions, while the French and British did not believe that the crisis would result in war. Kaiser Wilhelm had gone on a pleasure cruise in his yacht to the Norwegian fjords; Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austrian Chief of Staff, and General von Moltke made a great point of being on holiday. On 15 July Poincaré, President of the French Republic, and the Prime Minister, Viviani, set off on their official visit to St Petersburg and did not return until 29 July. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, spent the critical weeks trout-fishing in the country.
31. Alexandre Zévaès, Le Socialisme en France depuis 1904 (Paris, 1934), p. 54.
32. In a memorandum on 29 July, written in response to a telegram from the Tsar, Kaiser Wilhelm remarked about this peace demonstration: 'The Reds are conducting anti-militarist agitation in the streets; this must not be allowed, especially at present; if there is any repetition I shall declare martial law and have the leaders, one and all, tutti quanti, clapped in gaol'—Kautsky, op. cit., p. 441.
33. At the outbreak of war, membership of the Socialist parties in the belligerent powers was as follows:
| Germany | ||||
| France | ||||
| Austria | Great Britain | |||
| Belgium | ||||
| Russia | ||||
| Serbia |
—Yearbook of the International Socialist Labour Movement 1956–7, edited by Julius Braunthal (London, 1956), and The Socialist Yearbook 1913, edited by J. Bruce Glasier (London, 1913). In Russia the working class had not yet recovered from its last defeat at the hands of reaction. In 1907 a total of 159 trade unions were dissolved, and in 1908 and 1909 another 100 each; almost all publications of the Labour movement had been suppressed. When Rubanovitch was asked by the Bureau of the International in 1912 to give the numbers of members of the Russian Socialist party, he replied: 'The only figures I can give you are those of our party members who live as prisoners of the Tsar in fortresses, prisons and places of exile; we estimate their numbers at about 30,000, including about 10,000 women'—quoted in A. W. Humphrey, International Socialism and the War (London, 1915), p. 22. In the elections to the Fourth Duma in 1912 the Socialist parties received about 800,000 votes. Of the 442 deputies, 7 Mensheviks, 6 Bolsheviks and 1 Polish Socialist were returned. At the outbreak of war, Lenin was in Cracow (Galicia). He was immediately arrested, but owing to the intervention of Victor Adler, he was released and allowed to leave for Switzerland.
34. This account of the Brussels Conference is based on Friedrich Adler, op. cit., p. 198; Victor Adlers Aufsätze…, vol. IX, p. 165; Émile Vandervelde, Victor Adler und die Internationale, Der Kampf, vol. XXII (1929), p. 7; Kautsky, op. cit., pp. 370–4; Jackson, op. cit., pp. 179–80; Angelica Balabanov, Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse (Berlin, 1927), pp. 55–7; Eduard Bernstein, 'Jean Jaurès', in Die Neue Zeit, vol. XXXIII (1915), p. 559.
35. J. S., 'Die Haltung der französischen Sozialdemokratie belm Ausbruch des Krieges', in Die Neue Zeit, vol. XXXIII (1915), p. 577; Jackson, op. cit., p. 182.
36. William Stewart, J. Keir Hardie (London, 1921), p. 264.