more by the development and use of their economic organizations. Neither the one nor the other method alone suffices for this tremendous task. What is needed is a more comprehensive organization of the workers, both in the trade unions and in the branches of the party. To change from the parliamentary to the syndicalist method, or vice versa, can have but little effect, except to cripple the working-class in the midst of a difficult war. The whole congress was occupied in this struggle between the three factions. In the voting Labriola was badly defeated by a union of the Reformists and the Integralists. The movement goes on united, if unity is possible where there is so much ill-feeling between the factions. How much it is a mere unity of form, without a unity of spirit, one cannot say. Certainly the divisions between the factions seem very deep and forbidding. They make one feel grateful that one is not an Italian socialist. One would not know what to do or whom to support. This must be a very common feeling among the Italians, with the effect that their work must be, to a certain extent, weak, uncertain, and halting, all of which is especially deplorable for Italy. The working-classes there, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, need the training and development that come from participation in organizations of their own. They need its steadying influence, and the education it gives in self-reliance. They need both their economic organizations and their political organizations, and anything which retards the growing and strengthening of these resources of the working-class of Italy does it a very bad turn. To one sitting in that hall, not in the heat of a faction or under the spell of a personality, the spectacle was of a kind to make one despair. At the end all was tumult. There were shouts, congratulations, exultations there were the victors and the vanquished. The congress of the Italian Socialist Party was another thing of the past in the city of things of the past. It was not without a feeling of relief that one left the new temple to walk through the wastes and ruins of the old. From the terrace of the senatorial palace one sees the white, deserted temples of a thousand gods, vast wastes of the precious, unrewarded, and gigantic labor of the poor. By the love and labor and hope of the disinherited the temple of Saturn was built, and that of Castor, and that of Vesta, and that of Futura, and that of Concord. The arch of Septimius was their labor, and so too were the towering arches of the basilica of Constantine. And to-day it is but a step, as it was three thousand years ago, from this spacious, but now dead city into the narrow alleys of the living poor. It was the work of the poor. It was they who had built it all. They had cut its marble from the hills, dug the trenches, laid the foundations. Every wall, column, arch, they had put in place. The city of palaces, of baths, of circuses, of arches, of temples, they had built again and again. They had laid its pavements and adorned its streets with exquisite beauty. They had built palaces for their tyrants, for their kings, emperors, and senators, for their priests, for their demagogues, and for the mistresses of their tyrants, and emperors, and priests, and demagogues. But for themselves they had in B.C., and they have in A.D., hovels and alleys. Is this new movement going to repeat the old, old story? That is hardly conceivable; but in Italy, instead of union, education, and organization, the party brings to the proletariat the quarrels, tendencies, hair-split sun. tings, and personalities of a few middle-class intellectuals. It is, I fear, a party of Roman patricians, with the votes of a restive, revolutionary proletariat. Is this too harsh? Perhaps it is. It may be that these impressions of the Italian socialist movement are all wrong, and no one more than I can hope that they are; for Italy needs socialism as much as any land under the It is her only hope; and I should think that any man with heart would be a socialist in Italy. The misery is so great there that even the hardest must be touched. I think of one valley, so smiling, so beautiful, with a thousand terraced gardens on its exquisite slopes, under skies that enrapture the soul; and with men, women, and children whose forms and faces lacerate the heart. After one sight of that humanity, there are no more skies, no gardens, no valleys, no hills. I would rather live forever in Dante's hell than there among my wretched human brothers. Great God, is not the Valley of Tirano all the school Italy needs for socialism? Are not the streets and alleys about the temple, living, and about the Coliseum, dead, all that is needed for propaganda? The faces one sees there are the faces with big eyes and sunken cheeks. They are faces that, once seen, can never be forgotten. you eat, and your food sickens you. They are with you when you dress, and your clothes become hateful to you. They are with you when you try to sleep, and the night haunts you. They are with you when Italy can close their It may be that some men in hearts to these faces and eyes. men must do what St. Francis did —give all, absolutely all. But is it possible that any one with compassion can know and see and feel, and not be a revolutionist? CHAPTER III THE FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY THE German congress was an impressive gathering of intelligent and wide-awake men. The Italian congress was full of excitement and pyrotechnics. The French congress, held at Limoges, in the heart of the great potteries, was impressive, interesting, and also not without its fireworks. The delegates thought with a thoroughness not inferior to that of the Germans, and debated with a vivacity and charm not exceeded by the Italians. They were men from the workshops, men from the study, men from the "sanctums" of the great journals; and there were there men of international reputation in science, economics, and politics. The congress was therefore not so exclusively workingclass as the German, nor so middle-class as the Italian. Those who were Intellectuals took their inspiration from the people, and those who had come from the workshops were as capable as the Intellectuals of thought and of leadership. The movement in France is superb. It has all the necessary qualities and elements of a great party. If it has its opportunists, it has also its impossibilists. If it has its cautious ones, it has also its impetuous ones. If it has its pure theorists, it has also its thorough practicians. And the balance is admirable. But it is not the balance which comes from the dominance of one powerful mind. Criticism runs high; each tendency is represented by some mind and voice of a high order. And a tactic or a policy which runs the gantlet of the keen intelligence of men with such different points of view is pretty certain to be sound. For the first time I have seen some good resulting from divisions among socialists. The French socialists are to-day united, but for thirty or more years they have been separated into various groups, sometimes attacking each other, often competing with each other, and at times maligning each other. Again and again they have achieved a sort of unity, only to break again into bitterly antagonistic groups. Schism after schism occurred, and the weary years of propaganda dragged on, without that unity of the proletariat which was the watchword and fundamental doctrine of all their teaching. There was a bad side to these divisions which no one could wish to minimize, but at least they had one good result. Great men were produced, - skilful debaters, indefatigable propagandists, powerful polemical writers. And now that unity has come, and all the men of the old groups are fighting together for the common end, the French party has in its fold a remarkable number of brilliant and capable men. Each of the four or five old factions has contributed its quota of extraordinary men. Some of the groups had drawn to themselves the ablest minds from among the workers; others had drawn from the intellectual proletariat men of exceptional ability; and all together contribute now to the united party the valuable results of their labors. But what a history the French movement has for discord and division! France is the birthplace of nearly all the idealism that gave rise to the modern |