Another Alsatian of a different type was René Schickele, one of the leaders of the younger German poets. I met him also in Berne, but not at the Conference. This young and distinguished dramatist was introduced to me by Annette Kolb. He impressed me as shy and diffident; but that may have been the embarrassment of not knowing English. There is no barrier like that of not knowing the language of an acquaintance. He promised to learn English for our next meeting, and I promised myself to learn enough German to be intelligible. But how can one learn foreign languages when everybody abroad wants to practise his English?
During the war Schickele placed himself in opposition to the German Government. He was a German citizen then. Now he is in opposition to France. He is a French citizen now. The cynic would smile and talk of the passion for self-advertising; but I think there is a reasonable case for this position in a pacifist, who is out to smite the ugly spirit of militarism whenever and wherever it raises its offending head.
His play Hans in Schnakenloch was an attempt to give a just exposition of the psychology of French and Germans in Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans called it Francophile, the French considered it pro-German. It had an immense success in Germany in 1917, until it was suppressed by the military censor. Schickele belongs to the Clarté group. Fried, who died a short time ago, the kindly sentimentalist, but courageous Austrian pacifist, so long exiled in Switzerland, who won the Nobel prize, was another member of the band. René Claparéde of Geneva, Barbusse and Anatole France belong to the same group. Their policy is very much the same as that of the Union of Democratic Control in England. The poet’s ultimate aim in politics is the friendship and conciliation of Germany and France.
When I was invited to attend the French Socialist Congress in Strasburg in January of 1920, exactly one year after the first meeting of the Second International, I thought of these two personalities, the only human connexion I had with Alsace, and hoped to meet again in their capital city of ancient fame and modern interest these two able men. Neither, however, was present.
But Renaudel was there, and Longuet and Marquet, and all the hosts of fighting French Socialism.
The battle of the two Internationals was by this time waxing fast and furious. The Italians had split in two, the French were about to follow, the British were threatened. My commission to the French congress was to convey greetings from the British Labour Party to the delegates; but also to make it clear that the Labour Party intended to cleave to the Second International in spite of the efforts of a few voluble intransigéants to draw it into the Third.
These various Internationals must be confusing to the average reader. The First was founded by Karl Marx and Professor Beesly in 1866, and dissolved in the wars of 1871. The Second was re-established in 1889, and discontinued its activities during the world-war. Its meeting in Berne I have already fully described. The success of the Revolution in Russia filled with arrogance the souls of the dominant Bolsheviks who determined to unite the entire world-Socialist Movement under their flag. They would dominate, command, discipline from Moscow every country in the world. They drew up twenty-one theses which they insisted should be accepted by all who would join them—the Third International. These included dictatorship instead of democracy, revolution by violence, and the abolition by force of the whole institution of private property, as against other methods of securing a just social and industrial order.
Round these two sets of proposals and methods the conflict has raged. Every Socialist Movement in Europe was split from top to bottom. America copied. New and ever new Internationals threatened to be born of the dissident sections. Capitalist Europe rocked with laughter. To keep the working-classes divided amongst themselves has always been the wisdom and the joy of the intelligent in the possessing classes. The Socialist Movement began to look ridiculous. It has not yet got back to common sense and sweet reasonableness. In the various national movements, arrogant and conceited young men are continually making fresh “caves.” Offshoots of bumptious young people and venerable idiots, who think that wisdom will die with them, keep the general movement in a turmoil of quarrelsomeness whilst the enemy consolidates his ranks. The pity and the folly of it!
So far as I could discover there were at least five sections in the French Conference apparently hating one another far more keenly than the outsider. There was the Extreme Right, which had supported the war without question. There was the Extreme Left which had opposed it without tact. There was the following of Renaudel who opposed the Moscow International. There were the adherents of Vaillant-Couturier who supported it. There were the friends of Longuet, who did both. I do not mean that these last belonged to the cult of the jumping cat! They were not mean and “discreet.” They simply wanted to leave the door open for a future reunion of the two bodies of disputants.