• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1111 0

necessity of returning to a fight for control, first of the party, then of the country, against the trends of a new age did not appeal to him. He belonged to a tradition in which government was the function of the patrician, whereas already, as he said in his speech of resignation, the demand upon administrators and legislators had become so heavy that the affairs of state must devolve upon those who were prepared “to be politicians and nothing but politicians, to work the political machine as professional politicians.” The rush of the crowd upon the tranquil garden, as Masterman had depicted the rise of the Populace, was under way and Balfour was too much the philosopher to fight it.

His succession went to neither of the two chief contenders, Walter Long, representing the landed gentry, nor Austen Chamberlain, who canceled each other out, but to Bonar Law, a Glasgow steel manufacturer, born a Canadian, who read the newspapers regularly, ate meals of vegetables, milk and rice pudding and had the backing of another of the adventurers, his fellow Canadian Max Aitken, soon to be Lord Beaverbrook.

Balfour’s departure inspired floods of press comment and political gossip and an impeccable tribute from Asquith to “the most distinguished member of the greatest deliberative body in the world.” George Wyndham, rather more sour if more genuine, thought Balfour’s refusal to fight was in character, arising from indifference which came from taking “too scientific a view of politics.” “He knows,” said Wyndham, “that there was once an ice age and that there will be an ice age again.”

* The call for a vote, which is taken by division, that is, a physical separation of members into their respective lobbies.

8

The Death of Jaurès

THE SOCIALISTS : 1890–1914

8

The Death of Jaurès

SOCIALISM was international. Its name as an organized movement, the Second International Workingmen’s Association, said so. Its anthem, “The International,” affirmed it and promised besides that “tomorrow the International will be the human race.” Its founding Congress of 1889 had as joint presidents a Frenchman and a German, Edouard Vaillant and Wilhelm Liebknecht. Its membership at its height represented the Socialist parties of thirty-three nations and would-be nations, including Germany, France, England, Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, Russia, Finland, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Serbia, Bulgaria, India, Japan, Australia and the United States. Its flag was a solid red representing the blood of Everyman. Its essential thesis was that the class solidarity of workingmen transcended national frontiers in a horizontal division of society. Its holiday set aside the first of May to demonstrate proletarian brotherhood. Its slogan was “Workers of the World, Unite!”

Whether or not miners, factory hands, farm labourers, servants and other members of the working class, in whose interest Socialism existed, felt themselves to be international, their leaders believed it, practiced it, counted on it. At the Amsterdam Socialist Congress which took place in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian and Japanese delegates, Plekhanov and Katayama, were seated side by side. When the two men clasped hands, all 450 delegates rose to their feet in a tribute of thunderous applause. When Plekhanov and Katayama each made a speech declaring that the war had been forced upon his country by capitalism and was not a matter of the Japanese people fighting the Russian people, they were listened to in “almost religious silence” and sat down amid cheers.

Socialism was equally predicated on the concept of class war and on its eventual outcome, the destruction of capitalism. It regarded both the ruling class and the bourgeoisie as the enemy. The sentiment was reciprocated. The word “Socialist” had a ring of blood and terror, like “Jacobin” of the old days. During the quarter century following its founding in Paris in 1889 on the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, the Second International inspired growing apprehension in the ruling