Once again an examination of passports, this time by French officials, and again a swaying mass of people in front of the narrow, wooden door, and a hideous scrimmage to enter every time the little French soldier opened it to admit the two or three persons who were permitted to go through at once!
The delegates lost one another in the general confusion. We made a bee-line for the refreshment room as soon as we got through our business, hats awry, hair blown, cheeks flushed with hot air and suppressed fury. Some had lost their umbrellas in the scramble. One missed a good overcoat which he afterwards found. A moderate recovery of spirits and temper followed the appearance on the scene of hot coffee and flaky rolls, the good-natured waitresses smiling a coquettish welcome as we took our seats at the little square tables. Another wave of feeling threatened to overwhelm us when the bill was presented, but this we conquered, and paid up like lords! After all, there were a few food profiteers in England, and it was a little early to complain!
Our indefatigable secretary and comrade, Jim Middleton, had engaged seats for us in the Paris train which left Boulogne two hours after our landing. “Jim,” as he is affectionately and familiarly called by his many friends in the Movement, is one of the rarest souls in the British Labour Party. When the history of the Party comes to be written his name will figure in it very importantly if there is any sense of right and proportion in the historian. What the Labour Party owes already to his selfless and unremitting devotion to the work of its organization can never adequately be estimated or expressed. His is the sort of work which is done quietly, out of the public gaze, with no newspaper advertisement and no clamour of praiseful tongues. But it is there. It is done well and without stint. And it is of the very stuff and fabric of the great machine which Labour is slowly but steadily building for its uses in the struggle for its economic and political emancipation.
Jim is slim and fair as a Norseman. His kind eyes are forget-me-not blue. His blond hair has turned to grey, but he is young. His patience and good nature are inexhaustible. He is never too tired to oblige a friend, and he can always find an excuse for an enemy. He is as good as gold and as true as steel.
So are the other young men on the headquarters staff. There is “little Gillies” as he is everywhere called, whose clear brain and Scottish capacity for hard work have contributed big things to the international side of Labour’s work; and I know no department of future Labour activity more important than the ideas and schemes the Party may develop for the conduct of international relations. By these, even more than by its domestic policy, will Labour government be judged and justified by public opinion.
There is Will Henderson, already a Parliamentary candidate, who will surely follow in his father’s footsteps; Herbert Tracey, excellent writer, full of a fine idealism as well as a practical common sense, who gave rich gifts to the cause until a larger opportunity called him temporarily abroad; Captain Hall, as straight as a die, the Party’s financial secretary; Fred Bramley, the brilliant young under-secretary of the Parliamentary Committee (Trades Congress); E. P. Wake, the very able chief organizer of the Party—but it is impossible to mention them all and the conscientious women who assist them. They are young men of whom any Party is entitled to be proud.
The great strength of the Labour Party lies in the amount of devoted, unpaid work which it is able to command from its members. “But the men you have mentioned are paid good salaries. Why so much praise of men who only do what they are paid to do?” says the carping critic. The query is a common one, and pitifully mean. And it embodies a stupid lie. A few hundred pounds a year is no payment for the work done for the Labour Movement by these admirable servants of the Party from Mr. Arthur Henderson downwards. There are things which cannot be paid for in cash.
We arrived in Paris at seven in the evening. There we stayed several days. We wanted, if possible, a preliminary conversation with certain of the French delegates. We hoped to meet the Belgians. Some of us had designs on the Hôtel Crillon and a possible interview with Colonel House. The Crillon was the headquarters of the American section of the Peace Delegation. Paris, alas! was the ill-chosen seat of the Allies for the Peace Conference. The fate of mankind might have been vastly different had some other centre of discussion been selected.
Paris was likewise a very crowded and uncomfortable city at the time of our visit. Every hotel was full. The enormous staffs of the various national Peace Delegations were a large element in the overcrowding—they, their friends and their visitors. Suppliants to the Conference or to individual members of the Supreme Council were so numerous that hotel accommodation for the ordinary traveller about his simple business scarcely existed; but then the ordinary traveller was not encouraged to travel. A deliberate policy of embarrassment and inconvenience was adopted to persuade him to stay at home; and if he suffered for his wilfulness he had nobody but himself to blame. With a new world in the making, what business abroad had any ordinary person which mattered a tinker’s curse? Thus the official view of affairs.
So that when Miss Bondfield, Miss Sanger, and myself found ourselves without beds, and with no quarters suitable for women to go to, nobody in Paris was surprised. A generous fellow-countryman, hearing of our plight, placed at our disposal his own large and elegant bedroom. There were two beds and a comfortable sofa in it. One of us occupied the sofa for two nights, when we were able to take up our quarters in the Hôtel Moderne overlooking the Place de la Revolution.