Disorderly interruptions are frequent, and sometimes quite terrifying. On this occasion the French and German Majoritaires raged at each other across the heads of the delegates. But then so did the French Majoritaires and their Minoritaires. These last were just as bitter and violent as the first two sections. Similarly with the German and Austrian Majorities and Minorities. When feeling ran high the hall became a veritable bear garden. The one astonishing thing to those of us who expected every minute an ink-bottle or a book to come hurtling across our heads at one or another of the combatants, was that these furious men never came to blows. Infuriate rage and cheerful good humour followed each other with the suddenness and regularity of sunshine and rain in an English April.
But it was all very tiresome to those of us who were more concerned with the future than the past. Just when we were about to settle down, as we thought, to something really constructive, up would jump Albert Thomas, bursting with rage and quivering like a jelly, shaking his long hair and roaring like a mad bull; or Renaudel shrieking in a high-pitched voice like the enraged tenor at Covent Garden when he sees his lady-love in the arms of the villain; provoking the plethoric Wels to an apoplectic fit of frenzy, and the angry Müller to an ironic reply shouted above the heads of the lesser partisans on either side, whose fearful and monotonous yells: “You are guilty! They are guilty! We are not guilty! We are right! You are wrong!” almost made the tops of our heads come off!
Then the English delegate Stuart Bunning stepped quietly up to the platform. He made no brilliant speech. There was no attempt at eloquence. He was just as tired of that as the rest of us. He spoke in an even, level voice, making a few quiet, common-sense observations about the object of our Conference and the need for getting to work. The effect was magical! The storms ceased raging. The Conference quietened down. From that moment the idiotic charges and counter-charges ceased to be made. It was one of the two noteworthy and outstanding events of the Conference.
But the British delegation was the most harmonious in the room. It was not that we had no differences of opinion. We had many differences; and some of them were so deep that several of the delegates preferred not to travel with the rest. But when we got to Berne we kept these differences for the privacy of our own committee room, and endeavoured to present a united front in the conference hall. Only once did something bellicose threaten to develop amongst the Britons. It was when two gallant miners, who had borne with marvellous patience the interminable speeches they couldn’t understand, saw a jolly fight about to begin between two sections of the French. It was too much for them. They would be in at that; and, anyhow, they were sick and tired. Why not have some fun and set the whole Conference going again. “Come on, fellows!” said one of them, leaping to his feet, his ruddy face glowing with pleasure. “Come on, chaps! Let’s have a b——y row!”
A foreign conference is certainly no picnic. It means very hard work for a conscientious delegate. Both commissions and conference sit irregular and interminable hours. There is no stopping at 5 to resume at 10 the next morning as in England. The delegates go on until they finish or as long as they can keep their eyes open. At Berne we were sometimes debating at 2 in the morning. On the other hand unpunctuality is the besetting sin of the Continental. With him 10 o’clock means 11, 1 o’clock, 2 or even 3. To the British this is a maddening vice; but I fear familiarity with it resulted in our embracing it ourselves.
Our first meeting with the Germans took place in the Belle Vue Hotel three days before the Conference proper began. I had anticipated this meeting with curious and painful interest. I knew that some at least of the men we were to meet had opposed the war from the beginning, even voting against the war credits; but it is curious how the separation of two nations by war can affect the consciousness of the individual national. All such feeling of hesitation and reluctance on both sides vanished at the sight of one another, men and women bound by a common aim in indissoluble bonds.
The little group which we approached in the vestibule of the hotel included Herr Kautsky and his wife, and several Austrians I met here for the first time. The physical appearance of all was very touching. Kautsky who was at all times frail and delicate, is now an old man with a fringe of white hair round his smooth and well-developed head. His wife is a clever, dashing woman, full of energy, the antithesis of her less dominating spouse. Both showed in a marked manner the effects of terrible underfeeding. The eyes were red rimmed, and the skin dry and of a yellowish cast. Their faces lit up with pleasure as we greeted them. We asked about their journey, and found that for two days they had travelled in an ice-cold train, with broken windows and tattered upholstery, and with no opportunity of eating warm food. Such was the general condition of transport in the countries of Central Europe at this time. Naturally the strain of the journey had added to their appearance of suffering; but I never heard them complain about themselves. Their instant concern was for the sufferings of their children, the German children, innocent of the war, and dying like flies from diseases which were the result of under-nourishment. And we were only too painfully aware that the blockade of Germany and the embargoes against Austria were our share, the British share, in the responsibility for this unnecessary torture of little children. We felt shamed in the presence of men who had never wavered in their opposition to their Government’s policy, that our Government should be using the very weapon most conspicuous in the defeat of Germany three months after it was decided to lay down arms!
Kautsky is the greatest living exponent of the philosophy of Karl Marx. He is at the moment the great philosophic antagonist of the Bolsheviks and supporter of Social Democracy in Europe. He is hated with a deadly hatred in every part of the world by the Communists, and is denounced as a “social traitor” by the slavish adherents of Zinoviev and Radek, the two most extreme Bolsheviks in Russia. A lifetime of self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of Socialism has not saved this distinguished writer and his able wife and collaborator from the unmerited scorn of the extremists. But the extremists in every land have always had more hatred for the colleagues from whom they differed in method than for the capitalist enemy, separated from themselves by oceans of difference in principle. On this the capitalist and his allies count to defer the day of their doom.
Herr Seitz, who was one of the group in the hotel, was then President of the new Austrian Republic. I am quite sure from his sad expression of face and the tone of his conversation that he had found more pain and anxiety than honour and glory in his new position. He is a tall and strikingly handsome man of perhaps fifty years of age. He spoke no English, but Mr. Charles Roden Buxton, our gifted English interpreter, translated his talk for us. Again it was of the children, this time of the Austrian children who, if one half of what he told us was true, were enduring things which were a disgrace not only to the conquering nations but to civilization itself.