Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [293]
Jaurès spoke from the pulpit of the Cathedral, given over to the Congress by the ecclesiastical authorities despite bourgeois fears of “dangerous” consequences. The sound of the church bells, he said, reminded him of the motto of Schiller’s “Song of the Bells”; Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango (I summon the living, I mourn the dead, I break the furnaces). Leaning forward urgently, he spoke to the upturned faces: “I call on the living that they may defend themselves from the monster who appears on the horizon. I weep for the countless dead now rotting in the East. I will break the thunderbolts of war which menace from the skies.”
As it happened, these particular thunderbolts were broken by capitalist statesmen who summoned a Conference in London in December, 1912, which limited and, when reconvened in the following May, settled the war before it could expand into conflict between Russia and Austria.
In March, 1913, in a measure directly contrary to Jaurès’ campaign, France acted to enlarge her Army by restoring the period of military service from two years to three. Jaurès threw all his energies into battle against it and in favor of the nation-in-arms. For the next six months the Three-Year Law was the dominant fact of French life. Enactment became the rallying cry of nationalism and resistance to it the symbol of the Left. Jaurès denounced the measure in the Chamber as “a crime against the Republic” and drew a crowd of 150,000 to an open-air protest meeting. Leadership of the opposition marked him as the outstanding spokesman for peace. As such he was made the object of further attack as a pacifist and pro-German. After seven weeks of furious debate, the Law was enacted on August 7. Persisting, as he had done through six years of embittered struggle after Rennes until Dreyfus and Picquart were reinstated, Jaurès now led the movement for repeal.
Bebel died that year at seventy-three. In a procession lasting three days, workers and Socialists from many countries filed past the coffin surrounded by hundreds of wreaths and bunches of red flowers. Leadership of the party went to his chosen successor, Hugo Haase, a lawyer and deputy from Königsburg. In August, 1913, in the presence of Andrew Carnegie, and representatives of forty-two states affiliated with the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Peace Palace was opened at The Hague in what The Times called “the happiest circumstances.” A survey of French student life in 1913 remarked that the word “War” had a fascination which “the eternal warrior instinct in the heart of man keeps reviving.”
Working-class strength continued to grow. Union membership in Germany and Great Britain each reached three million by 1914 and one million in France. The Socialists of Denmark were the largest single party; in Italy Socialists increased their seats in parliament from 32 to 52 in the election of 1913; in France from 76 to 103 in the election of April, 1914. Belgian Socialists, besides electing 30 deputies and seven senators, held 500 municipal council seats. Long frustrated by the stubborn resistance of the ruling class to equal suffrage, they felt themselves strong enough at last to enforce their demand by a general strike. Against impatient radicals who wanted immediate action, Vandervelde and his associates insisted on long and careful preparation; even so, although 400,000 workers joined the strike and stayed out for two weeks, they could not prevail and the strike failed.
The Tenth Congress of the Second International was scheduled for August, 1914, in Vienna, to mark the fiftieth anniversary