“Is your socialism revolutionary?” I asked.
“No, it is more philosophical than revolutionary,” was the reply. “The opinions of your President Wilson are almost exactly ours. His war aims as stated by him find absolute echo in the French popular mind. Much more so than in the mind of the government.” This with a flash and a gesture that spelled “Clemenceau” very clearly.
“We are not Bolsheviki, we are French,” he added with emphasis.
“I wish you would explain to me, if you are solidly in favor of a peace with victory for the allies, why your group, and especially you as leader, wanted to go to the Stockholm conference and discuss peace without victory with the Germans.”
Monsieur Thomas demurred a little at my way of putting the question, and right here I began to notice the blinders.
“It is true that I was and am warmly in favor of the Stockholm conference,” he began. “I regret very much that Mr. Gompers and the American Federation of Labor have misunderstood my attitude and my object in wanting to meet in Stockholm representatives of the workers of all nations. They seem to think that my object was to fraternize with the Germans. Not at all. My object was to tell the whole German people the allies’ war aims, and their stated terms of peace.
“The German people do not know these aims. The imperial government keeps the people in ignorance. The press censorship is so complete that the real terms on which we are willing to make peace have never been published. We can not get at the German people through their newspapers.
“We could have talked to them through the Stockholm conference, because even the censored press would have published the proceedings of that conference. The Germans then would have known the truth.”
“What makes you think that the censored press of Germany would have been permitted to publish the proceedings of the Stockholm conference?” I asked. “It was not permitted to publish the war aims speeches of President Wilson or Mr. Lloyd George.”
“Why,” exclaimed Monsieur Thomas, with what appeared to me a childish innocence, “their own loyal Germans would have attended as delegates, and of course the people would insist on hearing their reports.