A POLITICAL PILGRIM IN EUROPE
[Illustration:
_Photograph by S. A. Chandler & Co._]
A POLITICAL PILGRIM
IN EUROPE
BY
Mrs. PHILIP SNOWDEN
Author of “Through Bolshevik Russia”
[Illustration]
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1921
To
MY NOBLE AND HEROIC MOTHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
1. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL 1
2. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (_continued_) 17
3. THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (_concluded_) 38
4. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CONFERENCE 54
5. THE CONFERENCE OF WOMEN AT ZURICH 75
6. THE INTERNATIONAL AT LUCERNE 95
7. DYING AUSTRIA 103
8. AFTER ONE YEAR 128
9. MORE ABOUT RUSSIA 139
10. FROM RUSSIA BY SWEDEN AND GERMANY 155
11. CONCERNING THE JEWS 175
12. GEORGIA OF THE CAUCASUS 189
13. MORE ABOUT GEORGIA 215
14. HOME THROUGH THE BALKANS 228
15. THE DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY 237
16. MORE ABOUT IRELAND 254
CONCLUSION 271
INDEX 275
INTRODUCTION
In these days everybody is writing his memories. Disappointed
politicians decline to be forgotten. Successful and unsuccessful
generals refuse to be neglected. People of all sorts and conditions
insist on being heard. The most intimate affairs of a life are laid
bare in order to arrest public attention. Intolerable to most is the
fear that the world will go past him. Nobody will willingly let himself
die. This is the conclusion to which one is driven by the publication
during the last two years of a vast mass of autobiography.
I am writing my own memoirs--two years of them. It never would have
occurred to me unaided that they could be of the slightest interest to
anybody. Friends have listened to my stories with interest, and public
meetings on several occasions have, by their silence and attention
during the telling, shown a certain pleasure in their recital; but only
the insistence of a valued few has induced me to put some of them into
a book.
These are not the most interesting experiences of my life. The four
years of the war could reveal much more, and better, if it were
possible to write about those times. I doubt if I could--fully. The big
experiences of life are seldom even spoken about, much less put down in
black and white. Things happened during the war which are as sacred as
the birth of a child or the death of a lover.
The twelve years of agitation for woman suffrage, during which time
I addressed more than two hundred public meetings a year in as many
different towns, were packed full of incident, grave and gay, which a
little quiet thought might dig out of the recesses of the mind. They
were gallant days, full of fine friendships.
But these stories of my wanderings in Europe since the Armistice, with
no other purpose in view than to do what one person might do, or at
least attempt, to restore good feeling between the nations and the
normal course of life as quickly as possible, will interest chiefly
those who understood, and those honest folk who wondered at, the
position which a few of us adopted during the war.
Those who have been brought up to believe, as I was, that war is alien
to the spirit and teaching of Christianity, will scarcely blame me
for taking that teaching literally. I believed with all the intensity
of conviction that evil could not be wholly destroyed by evil. The
application of this belief to war was clear: Militarism could not be
destroyed by militarism even though the princes of this world declared
that it could.
I had read enough history to prove to myself the mad folly of wars.
All of which never clouded my apprehension of the fact that war may
be an evil and yet, by reason of vicious policies and pledges over a
number of years, become the lesser evil of two wrongs in the eyes of
many wise and good men and women. To choose between the evil and the
good is simple. To decide which of two evil things is the lesser evil
is anything but simple. I believed myself to be intensely right. This
never meant that the other person was necessarily wrong. I never tried
to influence by so much as a hair’s breadth the judgment of the young
man called upon to fight. What he did was his business, not mine. If
pure-motived, he was entirely honourable whether he chose prison or the
front.
I believed from the first hour that the overwhelming majority of those
who enlisted for the war and of those who supported the war did so
from the best of motives, and from the same idealism which made it
impossible for me to believe in its good issue. It was all a matter
of method. The young men went to fight for the thing which I believed
could not come by fighting. But as a woman, who could not be called
upon to go into the trenches, it was peculiarly my business to seek to
end the war as soon as possible for the sake of the gallant lads who
had no choice consistent with their sense of duty.
During the last year of the war, after Trotsky had proclaimed
the terms of a just peace at Brest-Litovsk, after the German
Reichstag had embodied the same terms in a resolution passed by an
overwhelming majority of its members, after President Wilson in his
wonderful speeches and Mr. Lloyd George in his masterly phrases
had given the world to understand that these objects were theirs
also--self-determination and the rights of small nations, universal
disarmament, and the League of Nations for the preservation of peace--I
toured the country from Land’s End to John o’ Groats making speeches in
favour of a just and lasting peace by negotiation. A moderate estimate
places the number of people I spoke to on this topic at not less than
150,000.
I have re-read those speeches, widely reported in the local Press.
I can find no word that I would alter, no principle which I would
retract, no position stated from which I would withdraw.
In them I gave my reasons for fearing the effect upon Europe and
the world of the policy of the knock-out blow. Every one of those
prophecies has come true. They are becoming more dismally true every
day.
I made it clear that a negotiated peace might not be successful. It
might be proved that the peace honourable to all concerned, which was
to justify to the immortal spirits of our dead the sacrifice they had
made, and make their dreams come true, was not possible by conference.
Very well. The loss of young life was so appalling that it ought to be
attempted.
I gave the utmost credit for sincerity and honesty to those who
differed from me in their views. I paid my full debt of sincere praise
to those who fought and died for the right.
No; there is nothing in those speeches to be regretted. And I do not
regret them.
I am still profoundly convinced that the war went on two years too
long, and two years more than were necessary. Time will prove me right
or wrong. I am content to wait.
But I cannot wait, and no patriot in this country can afford to wait,
for the _Peace_ to come right. He must begin to make it come right.
The imperialists of Europe are poisoning the world. Into the pit which
they are digging for one another they are destined to fall themselves,
dragging the innocent with them. Russia, Germany, France, England,
America--all will go the same way to ruin unless the great awakening
comes soon, and men learn that the bonds which unite nations are
indissoluble, or are cut by them at their own peril.
It is needful that all should become, if not pilgrims, priests and
prophets of peace and good will. It is vital to do so. Communism cannot
save mankind if it be imbued, as so far it has been, with the old bad
spirit of hate. Capitalism is failing before our eyes. Militarism has
failed.
A new conception must be born, or an old vision reborn in the minds and
hearts of men. The everlastingness of Love! The indestructibility of
Faith! The eternity of Hope!
“Many waters cannot quench Love,
Neither can the floods drown it;
Who shall slay or snare the white dove
Faith, whose very dreams crown it?
Gird it round with Grace and Peace
Deep, warm and pure and soft as sweet sleep.
Many waters cannot quench Love,
Neither can the floods drown it.”
A POLITICAL PILGRIM IN EUROPE
CHAPTER I
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY, 1919
“How infinitely little is the best that we can do, and how infinitely
important it is that we should do it!”
To begin a new book with an old quotation is bad; but it must be
forgiven because it expresses in a phrase the sentiment upon which
the whole of my public life has been built, and it explains in a
sentence the object and purpose of those wanderings in many lands of my
colleagues and myself about which I have engaged to write.
Nothing less than a clear understanding on the part of the critical
observer that they held very strongly the belief, old-fashioned it
may be, that “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” is strength
ordained, can save from the charge of madness or of folly the plunge of
twelve members of the British Labour Movement, with a bright hope in
their hearts, into the maelstrom of Europe and of European politics in
January of 1919.
Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., Secretary of the National Labour Party, had
made strenuous efforts during the later days of the war, and after his
return from Russia, to open a door to international understanding and
possible reconciliation by trying to obtain from the British Government
permission for representatives of British Labour to attend an
international Socialist conference at Stockholm, but without success.
Time alone will prove the folly of the Government’s refusal. It is
sufficient here to remind the reader that a deep and widespread desire
for some attempt at an honourable peace by understanding had existed
in Great Britain for nearly two years before the end of the war came.
A working women’s organization, the Women’s Peace Crusade, collected
in a few weeks nearly 60,000 signatures to a petition for a negotiated
peace; and at 133 public meetings addressed in less than a year by
myself, with an average attendance of 1,000 persons, was carried a
resolution on similar lines, with fewer than thirty dissentients in
all. These were small things in themselves, but symptomatic.
So great was the anguish and concern at the time of the Stockholm
proposal that a great Conservative London newspaper headed one of its
daily leaders with the words: “Hands off the Socialists!”
Whatever may have been the reason for the Government’s refusal to
allow British workmen to meet the workmen of other lands at Stockholm,
whether on account of French pressure, which was said, or through fear
of impairing the _moral_ of the soldiers, which was inferred, they
withdrew their opposition after the Armistice, and in January of 1919
we left for Berne and the Second International.
I have the most vivid recollection of that first journey to Europe
after the war, probably because it _was_ the first. I think that every
delegate felt the same, a revival of faith, a renewal of hope, a
quickening of life. For months before the sudden end of the war, acute
sadness and cruel pessimism had possessed us all. Ten, twenty, thirty
years, the best that life held, had been devoted by one or the other to
the building of a better humanity, and this destruction of everything
we had worked for, this swift rattling back to the beginning of things,
and to worse than the beginning in some ways, was at times too tragic
to be borne. But before the opening of new opportunities pessimism
promised to fly and hope to return and stay.
“Isn’t it glorious!” shouted Margaret Bondfield to her colleagues as we
shot swiftly into Folkestone station.
“Isn’t what glorious?” I asked, thinking she meant our first view of
the sea, stretching black and restless beyond the veil of fine rain
which dimmed the windows of the railway carriage.
“Why, that we can travel once more, and that we are flying as fast as
we can to see the comrades from whom we have been separated so long.”
And she waved her passport gaily. “I wonder if Clara Zetkin will be at
the conference; and Balabanova? It is ages since I saw Angelica.”
Margaret’s bright face beamed with happiness, and her brown eyes shone
like stars as she gathered up her wraps and bags for transport to the
boat. She was like a bird set free from the cruel cage that had held
her for four tormenting years. She suggested a warm little bird in her
looks and manners. Small and brown, with a rich russet colouring of the
cheeks, and quick in her movements, there is nothing in the world she
resembles so much as the robin with the red breast.
She was one of the delegates representing the Parliamentary Committee
of the Trade Union Congress. I was a representative of the political
side of the Movement. Miss Sophie Sanger was invited to accompany us
as interpreter, and was possibly the most practically useful woman of
the party. She speaks four languages with equal fluency. What Miss
Sanger does not know about the world’s laws regulating labour and
labour conditions, especially those affecting women, is said not to be
worth knowing; which probably accounts for the fact that she now enjoys
an appointment of considerable value and importance in the League of
Nations Labour Department.
Mr. Henderson did not travel with us. He had gone ahead several days
previously to help M. Huysmans with the final arrangements for the
Conference. There had been some slight hitch with the Swiss Government,
which at that time was tormented with the fear that we were a body
of Bolsheviks out to subvert the loyalty of Swiss citizens. It was
necessary to reassure President Ador and his associates on this point.
Mr. Henderson was the man to do it. Nobody could look at him, the
simple strength and solid respectability of him, and think _him_ a
Bolshevik! In spite of assurances given by him, every delegate was
obliged to sign a statement repudiating the Bolsheviks and all their
works before he was permitted to enter Switzerland!
Mr. J. H. Thomas was also one of the delegates; but whether he
was attending a special conference with Mr. Barnes at the Hôtel
Majestic in Paris, or whether he was busy settling a strike I cannot
remember--strikes were epidemic at this time. He came to Berne later in
the week.
The short passage across the Channel was quiet and uneventful. We sat
in our deck-chairs well covered with warm wraps. A grey mist soon hid
the land from our view. A slight rain moistened our hair and faces.
We could not read for excitement and the blowing of the wind. We sat
watching our fellow-passengers’ efforts to control their nerves and the
busy sailors engaged upon their various tasks.
I do not know why the sentimental confession should be made here, but
ever since I was a child chatting to the fishermen on the beach at
Redcar I have felt a peculiar liking for the men of the sea. Perhaps
it is an inheritance from a seafaring ancestry. It should be in the
blood of every Briton. There is something in the brave, blue eyes of
the sailor, his jolly frankness, his courage, his simplicity which goes
straight to the heart of one. His unending contact with Nature in all
her moods has stamped itself upon his being as plainly and unmistakably
as the heated atmosphere of the weaving-shed or the smutty environment
of the mine have set their mark upon the workers in these places; but
in a pleasanter, more wholesome fashion.
In an hour or so we sighted Boulogne. It was raining hard, and the
little French town looked very dreary and very dirty. French, British,
and Belgian troops in considerable numbers mingled confusingly, the
bearded _poilu_ laughingly replying in cockney slang to Tommy’s amusing
French. Incredible quantities of war material of all sorts met the eye.
The railway track which we crossed from boat to train was a swamp.
We had waited till our backs were almost broken with fatigue for the
examination of our passports in the smoke-room of the steamer. At that
time the element of common sense had not entered in the faintest degree
into the organization of this business. Several hundreds of people,
packed like sardines in a tin, waited their turn in the crowded ship’s
corridor, and as the war had spoilt everybody’s temper and ruined
most people’s manners, elbows were freely used to jostle out of their
rightful places in the queue the timid and the polite.
A similar rushing, pushing, squeezing, tearing of clothes, wounding of
ankles with the sharp edges of boxes, which the owners were too mean to
give to the porter or too faithless to trust to him, occurred in the
_douane_. At this time every box was opened and its contents carefully
examined. The fatigue was immense. Women fainted and children screamed.
Men swore loudly, unashamed. Unperturbed, the blue-uniformed officials
pursued their avocation.
Once again an examination of passports, this time by French officials,
and again a swaying mass of people in front of the narrow, wooden door,
and a hideous scrimmage to enter every time the little French soldier
opened it to admit the two or three persons who were permitted to go
through at once!
The delegates lost one another in the general confusion. We made
a bee-line for the refreshment room as soon as we got through our
business, hats awry, hair blown, cheeks flushed with hot air and
suppressed fury. Some had lost their umbrellas in the scramble.
One missed a good overcoat which he afterwards found. A moderate
recovery of spirits and temper followed the appearance on the scene
of hot coffee and flaky rolls, the good-natured waitresses smiling a
coquettish welcome as we took our seats at the little square tables.
Another wave of feeling threatened to overwhelm us when the bill was
presented, but this we conquered, and paid up like lords! After all,
there were a _few_ food profiteers in England, and it was a little
early to complain!
Our indefatigable secretary and comrade, Jim Middleton, had engaged
seats for us in the Paris train which left Boulogne two hours after our
landing. “Jim,” as he is affectionately and familiarly called by his
many friends in the Movement, is one of the rarest souls in the British
Labour Party. When the history of the Party comes to be written his
name will figure in it very importantly if there is any sense of right
and proportion in the historian. What the Labour Party owes already to
his selfless and unremitting devotion to the work of its organization
can never adequately be estimated or expressed. His is the sort of
work which is done quietly, out of the public gaze, with no newspaper
advertisement and no clamour of praiseful tongues. But it is there. It
is done well and without stint. And it is of the very stuff and fabric
of the great machine which Labour is slowly but steadily building for
its uses in the struggle for its economic and political emancipation.
Jim is slim and fair as a Norseman. His kind eyes are forget-me-not
blue. His blond hair has turned to grey, but he is young. His patience
and good nature are inexhaustible. He is never too tired to oblige a
friend, and he can always find an excuse for an enemy. He is as good as
gold and as true as steel.
So are the other young men on the headquarters staff. There is “little
Gillies” as he is everywhere called, whose clear brain and Scottish
capacity for hard work have contributed big things to the international
side of Labour’s work; and I know no department of future Labour
activity more important than the ideas and schemes the Party may
develop for the conduct of international relations. By these, even
more than by its domestic policy, will Labour government be judged and
justified by public opinion.
There is Will Henderson, already a Parliamentary candidate, who will
surely follow in his father’s footsteps; Herbert Tracey, excellent
writer, full of a fine idealism as well as a practical common sense,
who gave rich gifts to the cause until a larger opportunity called him
temporarily abroad; Captain Hall, as straight as a die, the Party’s
financial secretary; Fred Bramley, the brilliant young under-secretary
of the Parliamentary Committee (Trades Congress); E. P. Wake, the very
able chief organizer of the Party--but it is impossible to mention them
all and the conscientious women who assist them. They are young men of
whom any Party is entitled to be proud.
The great strength of the Labour Party lies in the amount of devoted,
unpaid work which it is able to command from its members. “But the men
you have mentioned are paid good salaries. Why so much praise of men
who only do what they are paid to do?” says the carping critic. The
query is a common one, and pitifully mean. And it embodies a stupid
lie. A few hundred pounds a year is no payment for the work done for
the Labour Movement by these admirable servants of the Party from Mr.
Arthur Henderson downwards. There are things which cannot be paid for
in cash.
We arrived in Paris at seven in the evening. There we stayed several
days. We wanted, if possible, a preliminary conversation with certain
of the French delegates. We hoped to meet the Belgians. Some of us had
designs on the Hôtel Crillon and a possible interview with Colonel
House. The Crillon was the headquarters of the American section of the
Peace Delegation. Paris, alas! was the ill-chosen seat of the Allies
for the Peace Conference. The fate of mankind might have been vastly
different had some other centre of discussion been selected.
Paris was likewise a very crowded and uncomfortable city at the
time of our visit. Every hotel was full. The enormous staffs of
the various national Peace Delegations were a large element in the
overcrowding--they, their friends and their visitors. Suppliants to
the Conference or to individual members of the Supreme Council were
so numerous that hotel accommodation for the ordinary traveller about
his simple business scarcely existed; but then the ordinary traveller
was not encouraged to travel. A deliberate policy of embarrassment and
inconvenience was adopted to persuade him to stay at home; and if he
suffered for his wilfulness he had nobody but himself to blame. With a
new world in the making, what business abroad had any ordinary person
which mattered a tinker’s curse? Thus the official view of affairs.
So that when Miss Bondfield, Miss Sanger, and myself found ourselves
without beds, and with no quarters suitable for women to go to, nobody
in Paris was surprised. A generous fellow-countryman, hearing of our
plight, placed at our disposal his own large and elegant bedroom. There
were two beds and a comfortable sofa in it. One of us occupied the sofa
for two nights, when we were able to take up our quarters in the Hôtel
Moderne overlooking the Place de la Revolution.
Paris immediately after the Armistice was a woeful spectacle of neglect
and dirt. It was not much better six months ago. In those early days
it was like a handsome slut in need of a bath; which in view of its
sufferings was not surprising. The paint on the woodwork of houses and
shops was almost all peeled away. Shutters hung awry on their broken
hinges. Roads were unspeakably filthy, and full of dangerous holes and
swampy gutters. The parks and gardens looked ragged and tattered. The
Bois de Boulogne and the Champs Elysées were marred with the shreds and
patches of war equipment. Dismal weather made everything look a hundred
times worse than it really was. We were wise enough not to come to a
hasty judgment about Paris. After all, we had a vast gay literature to
contradict the sad story written _on_ Paris when first we saw it!
The living in the hotels and restaurants was riotous and expensive.
In the homes of Paris it was another story, we were told. Foods were
strictly rationed, but of some kinds it was difficult to get even the
meagre portion allowed. The strain was heavy upon the city housewife of
the humbler classes. Prices were ruinously high. Wages scarcely kept
pace with them. Strikes were frequent and menacing, apt to hold up one
or another of the public services at any time, as in England.
But in the public cafés, the dance-halls, and the hotels, nothing
dimmed the joyousness of the Parisians, set free at last from the
haunting fear of the German invasion. Day and night, and night after
night, a lively, exuberant, passionate crowd in each of these public
places abandoned itself to an ecstasy of song and dance and play, in
utter and unrestrained intoxication.
M. Jean Longuet, the grandson of Karl Marx, and at that time a Deputy
in the French Chamber, invited Mr. Macdonald and myself to lunch with
him at a little Italian café near his business quarters. We called
for him at the office of his newspaper, _Le Populaire_. On our way
all together he took us past the restaurant where Jaurès was shot. He
pointed to the window at which Jaurès was sitting at the time of his
murder. If I understood him rightly Longuet was present when the awful
thing occurred; particularly awful in view of the certainty that the
issue of affairs for France might have been infinitely happier, and for
Europe infinitely less sorrowful, if this great man had lived during
the war.
One of the great scandals of history will be the acquittal of the
murderer of Jaurès. He was one of the giant political characters of
France. The squalid politicians who govern the affairs of Europe at the
present time could never have been where they are if there had not been
removed either by force or fraud, or by the ordinary process of nature,
death, so many of the great men entitled by intellect or character,
sometimes both, to occupy the seats of power. Jaurès was murdered by
a common assassin, and official France has seemed to rejoice. But I
recall the impressive fact that the most arresting picture in the
Chamber of Deputies is the immense canvas of Jaurès addressing the
chamber from the tribune. They may have hated him, but they insist on
his being remembered!
Jean Longuet was born in London, and speaks excellent English. He is
tall and dark, with curly hair and brown eyes. He has a rich voice,
and is a very eloquent speaker, full of passion when moved. Friends of
his assure me that I may trust his sense of humour, and, in order to
present a quick picture of the physical man to an English reader, I may
say that when Longuet makes a public oration and warms to his subject
he assumes an attitude and appearance which irresistibly remind one
of a genius of another sort, Charlie Chaplin. Given Charlie’s creased
trousers and big feet, the picture would be complete!
But Longuet is no comic figure in international politics. He is a
sincere idealist and a most engaging personality. There are those who
would regard this statement as less of a compliment than a comparison
with the artist whose amazing gift makes honest fun for millions.
This, they say, is much better, and much safer for mankind, than to be
the advocate of ideals too lofty for statesmen and people to achieve
because too great for them to comprehend; ideals so high that they mean
crucifixion for the few who live up to them, and greater degradation
for the many who deliberately elect to live below the best they have
heard and seen.
The tiny Italian café I sought again on the return trip, but never
found it. One delicious dish of macaroni, prepared as only the Italians
know how to prepare it, was more pleasing to the taste than all the
accumulated delicacies of the best Parisian _table d’hôte_; for those
rich hotel meals were impossible to eat without a thought of the
millions who were reputed dead or dying, in fields and ditches, and
on roadsides, in their houses, in hospitals, in prison camps, for the
lack of a crust of bread or a glass of pure water. Our friend and host
of the café we learnt afterwards was a Socialist, and a member of the
Party; a fact we had rather inferred from the whispered asides with
Longuet during the smoking of cigarettes and the drinking of the wine
and coffee.
Our chief business in Paris was to try to persuade the Belgian
Socialists to come with us to Berne. They were sitting in conference at
Brussels at the time. They had there decided not to attend the Berne
Conference, and had sent delegates to Paris to explain the reason why.
We met them at the headquarters of the French Socialist Party. All our
pleading with them was of no avail. Their conference had so decided,
and though they would personally have liked to go, if only for the
fellowship of the thing, Party discipline must be maintained. Camille
Huysmans would be there as secretary of the International, but they
could not go.
Their great difficulty was their unwillingness to meet the German
Majority Socialists, who had supported the war and who had not
protested against the invasion of Belgium. How could they take part
with such men in the building anew of the International? What sort of
internationalists had these men proved themselves to be? The German
Majority must first express its contrition. Then would be the time to
forgive. They could never forget.
“Why do you not come to Berne and say all this to the Germans
themselves?” I asked in my speech. “Come and say all you feel about
this, where not only the German Majority but the whole world can hear
you say it.” I reminded them of the brave and splendid gesture of the
Belgian women who came to the International Conference of Women at the
Hague while the war was still raging, and who, seated on the right of
Miss Jane Addams, with the German women on the left, resolved with them
and with the women of all nations represented there to do all in their
power to make wars impossible in the future.
“Surely,” I said, “so far as the plain citizens of every country
are concerned, we are all in the same boat. We are all far more the
victims of circumstance than its architects. We have all been deceived,
cheated, lied to. In the clash of various loyalties mistakes are made
and cruel things are done and acquiesced in. But is there one of you
who, in his heart of hearts, blames any man for taking the part of
his country in an international quarrel? Is anyone amongst us quite
sure that in the same circumstances we would act otherwise? I refuse
to believe that any German Socialist rejoiced over the invasion
of Belgium. In any case, is it not better to get face to face and
talk it all out, where no false newspaper can come between, and no
misunderstanding blind and paralyse, instead of brooding alone over
wrongs for which the wrongdoers may be only too ready to atone? Come!”
We left without them. The first meeting of the Second International
included no official Belgians. But I left the meeting in Paris with
the feeling that the time of complete reunion would come very soon.
Eighteen months later in Geneva the Belgians were present, and no more
international note was struck in that gathering than the speech of
Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Minister of Justice.
* * * * *
We were obliged to travel from Paris to Berne in two parties, and even
then were unable to enjoy sleeping compartments. The trains were packed
in every available corner, and many of the passengers were obliged
to spend the night in the corridor. There had been an immensity of
passport business in Paris, but the burden of all this had been borne
by the secretary. He could not save us from the individual examination
at the Gare de Lyon, nor the ever-recurring nuisance at intervals along
the whole route.
Belgarde is the French frontier town, and here we were hauled out of
the train for further torture by passport and Customs officers. It was
the outrageous imperturbability of these fellows that made me sick.
They seemed devoid of all human feeling. At Belgarde we were roughly
questioned about our money. Had we any gold? Had we more than £40 in
any kind of currency? More than this sum was not allowed to be taken
across the frontier. Later no silver was permitted to be transported.
My bags were diligently searched by a woman official, but not one
cigarette did she find for her pains, nor wine, nor spirits, nor
jewels, nor perfumes, nor any one of the half a hundred things they
appeared to be on the prowl to discover.
These performances were repeated at Geneva in the Swiss interests; and
half a dozen times between Belgarde and Geneva Swiss police examined
our unfortunate passports, which were rapidly assuming a limp and
dog’s-eared appearance with so much handling. I never inquired, but I
imagine these people were the officials of the various cantons through
which the train passed. Any other theory would establish the Swiss
Government as insane with fear and suspicion. But finally, through
sheer weariness of flesh and spirit, I ceased to question the doings
of these minions of the law, but quietly submitted to any number of
exasperating formalities.
The Paris train arrived in Geneva at 9 in the morning. The connexion
for Berne left at 4.10 in the afternoon. We had ample time to see this
famous old city, beautifully placed at one end of the great crescent
lake of the same name. Mr. Macdonald, like a true and faithful Scot,
left us to visit John Knox’s church. Some lingered over the ample
breakfast in the comfortable café. The fascinating lake drew the
attention of the rest. It was along the side of this lake that my
friend--well, I will not disclose his name--was walking, gaily swinging
his stout English walking-stick. He knew two words of French, _oui_ and
_merci_. Humming a gay tune and twirling that stick, he struck a man in
the face. “Ah, merci!” he cried, meaning “I beg your pardon.” The man
stared in blank astonishment, and then said in good, plain English: “I
think it is I who ought to cry ‘Mercy,’ young man.”
Snow lay hard and frozen upon the ground, and capped and covered the
mountains in the distance. The vast masses of Mont Blanc were visible
in the clear, crisp air. Delivered from the cramped and poisonous
conditions of a filthy railway carriage, super-heated, we enjoyed
blissfully the bright beauty and clean orderliness of this Puritan
capital of French Switzerland. And in the evening, when the last rays
of the sun had changed into a glowing pink the white of the Alpine
snows, we entered upon the last stage of our long and tiresome journey,
to begin our labour of reconciliation.
* * * * *
We were met at the Berne railway station by an odd assortment of
European Socialists.
“Willkommen, kameraden,” said a little man with a profusion of
long sandy hair and an abundant beard. “Es macht uns Vergnügen die
Englischen kameraden wieder zu sehen.” (Welcome, comrades. It is a
great pleasure to us to see the English comrades once more.)
I gazed fearfully at this amazing group of people, who looked for all
the world like a committee of anarchists ripe for an expedition! They
were, in fact, the gentlest of human beings and as pacific as Quakers!
The man who welcomed us was Kurt Eisner, President of the Bavarian
Republic, who was afterwards murdered in the streets of Munich, in
part for the attitude he adopted in this Conference. But in his
large-brimmed hat and conspirator’s cloak nothing could have saved him
from the suspicion of a raw Englishwoman, unused to the manner of dress
and style of speech of so many Socialists in European lands. And those
who met us were all alike.
“Comment allez vous, camarades,” exclaimed a French-speaking delegate,
and I found myself shaking hands with an even more terrifying apostle
of the gospel of Karl Marx, whose brilliant red tie would have served
for a railway signal!
I recall a conversation I had with M. Renaudel, at that time the editor
of _L’Humanité_, when we travelled together in Georgia eighteen months
later.
“Why do you English Socialists never use the word ‘comrade’ in speaking
to each other? In France it is always ‘comrade,’ never ‘monsieur,’
except to the bourgeoisie.”
“The word comrade is often used in England also,” I replied. “I rarely
use the word myself, and if you want to know why, my reason is very
simple. It is a very beautiful word, but it has been frightfully
misused and has lost a good deal of its value. I have heard it so
often in the mouths of people who have no more comradely feeling for
me than a nest of mosquitoes, that it is now no guarantee to me of
real friendship. On the contrary, I am suspicious of those who use
it most. It is like that even more beautiful word ‘love,’ which has
been cheapened and vulgarized by its misuse until now it means exactly
nothing on the lips of most. What value would you attach to the love of
somebody who in the same breath expressed the same fervent devotion to
a jam tart? ‘Comrade’ means nothing. It is a mere form of expression, a
hackneyed formulary. I keep this word for those I know to be truly my
friends.”
I told Renaudel of an acquaintance of mine, a Trade Union leader who
received a post card from an angry fellow unionist, with a skull and
cross-bones at the head. “Dear _Comrade_,” it began, “What do you
mean by selling out like you did? You are getting something good for
yourself out of this. You are a liar and a scoundrel! You ought to be
shot! Just you wait till I catch you out by yourself! Look out for your
dirty hide! You filthy dog! Yours _fraternally_, B. S.”
* * * * *
It was nearly midnight, and we were worn out with the long journey and
sleepless night. Soon we were fast asleep between the spotless white
sheets of those exquisite beds, happy in the thought of the morrow’s
meeting and its possibilities.