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Peyer, as Minister of Public Safety. Frederich was made War Secretary.

Summary. It is thus seen that the constant agitation of the socialists and the economic and military breakdown of the Central Empires led in Germany, Austria and Hungary to revolutions effected with hardly the shedding of a drop of blood. Hungary followed the Russian model, and strong elements in Germany and Austria were constantly at work during 1919 endeavoring to organize soviet governments in their respective countries. However, the Majority socialists, assisted by other democratic elements, retained control during the first part of the year, although discontent against their conservatism increased. The Hungarian Government swung still further to the left in March, 1919, but, through the intervention of the Allies, the Bela Kun government was overthrown and a Social Democratic régime was installed, only to be superseded by a dictatorship of a member of the House of Hapsburg, and, after his resignation, by another reactionary cabinet and later by a coalition ministry.

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against them. We have the feeling that our beautiful land is being treated by the victorious Powers like a corpse on the dissecting table and that the Western Powers lack either the will or the strength to take those decisive steps which it is incumbent upon the victor to take. 'In face of this situation, so frightful for us, we appeal with all our force to the peoples of the West, and first and foremost, to our working brothers in these countries. Hungary has become a Balkan problem that is, upon Hungary now depends the peace of the Balkans, and for that reason and in that sense Hungary is a concern of European democracy."

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In late November, 1919, the Frederich ministry resigned, and a coalition ministry was formed, headed by Carl Hussar, and including several socialists, among them lapsed, and Hungarian labor, emerging from this most frightful and critical illness of its sorely-tried existence is now turning itself towards social democracy, trusting to the political methods of the West.

"We Social Democrats can only condemn the methods of the Dictatorship and the Red Terror. Yet at the moment that we are in the mood to make up for past mistakes we find ourselves face to face with a cruel White Terror of a mediaeval and barbaric character. We have for Bolshevism only words of condemnation. Nevertheless, we are compelled to point out and can establish it by documentary evidence — that the White Terror in the four weeks since the usurpation of the "Archduke" Joseph of Hapsburg and the government of his adventurer lackey Frederich has spilt a hundredfold more blood than the dictatorial régime of the now-overthrown Soviet Republic did in the whole four months of its existence. Men's lives and workers' organizations have been destroyed that have not had the least thing in common with Bolshevism. Thousands upon thousands of innocent workers have been thrown into jail and there have been bloodily flogged and tortured. Simultaneously has the Frederich government, under the false pretext of hunting down communists and through the lavish expenditure of money and the exercise of other official pressure, called into existence a pogrom movement and inaugurated a race war on a scale that is perilous for all Europe.

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"The intellectual and working population of Hungary might easily rid themselves of the forces of darkness and political reaction but the Magyar nation has been deprived of its political autonomic rights.

"Hungary is occupied by a foreign military Power. Military occupation pursues its own political and economic aims. Meanwhile we are not free to move or breathe. Neither newspapers nor leaflets can be published. We are not permitted to hold public or private gatherings. All that we behold is the raging of the darkest reaction. All that we behold, too, is that no food trains are entering; that no coal is coming in for the winter and for the needs of our factories; that in one way after the other every possibility of economic production - nay, every possibility of existence now and for the futurehas been taken away, and that in consequence a frightful anxiety is seizing upon the working population of the country.

"We are overwhelmed by the prospect of a dreadful future in which scores upon scores of thousands of workers will seek to leave this land in the search for a new home, only to find every door closed

Peyer, as Minister of Public Safety. Frederich was made War Secretary.

Summary. It is thus seen that the constant agitation of the socialists and the economic and military breakdown of the Central Empires led in Germany, Austria and Hungary to revolutions effected with hardly the shedding of a drop of blood. Hungary followed the Russian model, and strong elements in Germany and Austria were constantly at work during 1919 endeavoring to organize soviet governments in their respective countries. However, the Majority socialists, assisted by other democratic elements, retained control during the first part of the year, although discontent against their conservatism increased. The Hungarian Government swung still further to the left in March, 1919, but, through the intervention of the Allies, the Bela Kun government was overthrown and a Social Democratic régime was installed, only to be superseded by a dictatorship of a member of the House of Hapsburg, and, after his resignation, by another reactionary cabinet and later by a coalition ministry.

against them. We have the feeling that our beautiful land is being treated by the victorious Powers like a corpse on the dissecting table and that the Western Powers lack either the will or the strength to take those decisive steps which it is incumbent upon the victor to take. "In face of this situation, so frightful for us, we appeal with all our force to the peoples of the West, and first and foremost, to our working brothers in these countries. Hungary has become a Balkan problem that is, upon Hungary now depends the peace of the Balkans, and for that reason and in that sense Hungary is a concern of European democracy."

CHAPTER XIII

OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: SOCIALISM SINCE 1914

GREAT BRITAIN

Introductory.— Although the war was not immediately followed by revolution in other large European countries, the socialist movements in practically all of these countries grew in importance and vitality during the war, and were all influenced to a more aggressive policy by the revolutions in Russia and in the Central Empires.

Great Britain. The political labor and socialist movements in Great Britain during the war grew materially in strength and in intellectual maturity, and took a more fundamentally radical position as the war progressed.1

British Labor Party.- Immediately following the opening of hostilities, the Labor Party, it will be remembered, definitely assisted in the recruiting campaign of the Joint Committee and in other ways supported the war. The party ratified this policy later in the year, and, when the coalition government was formed, agreed that the chairman of the parliamentary group, Arthur Henderson, should enter the government on their behalf. Henderson later became President of the Board of Education.

The labor group during the first part of the war strongly advocated governmental control of food, coal

1 See Kellogg and Gleason, British Labor and the War, for an exhaustive account of the British movement.

and other necessities, and fought for a strengthening of measures to safeguard labor. The party entered upon a political truce, under which all political parties agreed that, in case of parliamentary by-election, the seat should be filled without a contest by the party in possession.

On the reorganization of the government in December, 1916, Lloyd George appointed to the ministry six representatives of organized labor, among them Arthur Henderson, who retained his seat, and George N. Barnes, who was appointed Minister of Pensions.

The Party and the Stockholm Conference.- The British Labor Party had, in the early stages of the war, fought shy of communication with socialist representatives from the Central Powers. In January, 1917, the Manchester Convention voted against participation in the proposed international conference at Stockholm. Two months later its executive refused to accept the invitation of the French Socialist Party to attend a Paris conference of Allied socialists. In May, it refused the Dutch Scandinavian Committee's invitation to attend consultations at Stockholm. It also failed to respond to the messages of the Russian socialists, suggesting a later Stockholm meeting.

Meanwhile Arthur Henderson had been sent to Russia as one of three governmental representatives to help to strengthen the Russians in their opposition to a separate peace with Germany. He went to Russia a vigorous opponent of the Stockholm plan. He returned to England, after meeting the leading members of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, an enthusiastic advocate of this plan. He was assured that a restatement of war aims by the Allies was necessary, if the provisional government of Russia was to retain power. He looked on a

socialist and labor conference as a means to that end.

Henderson returned, in the belief that it would be

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