August ID, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
take a bad turn at last — and German military leaders are 
not destitute of foresight — that they may be able to prepare 
again, with a nice compromise peace comfortably arranged, 
for that ■■ next time," which Mr. Lloyd George rightly declares 
must never come. That is the position. The Allies are 
slowly winning. The Geimans are slowly losing. A httle 
marc, and with American assistance, they must be com- 
pletely defeated. .Meanwhile, they are exhausting the 
resources of infamy and treachery to a\;ert their doom and 
win the war, before the United States army can cross the 
Atlantic. 
At such a time as this for a small minority of the nation 
to open up even a Consultative Conference with the agents 
of the enemy is to betray the dead aryd insult the living. 
Whatever Mr. Macdonald's " German friends" may instruct 
him to say, common Enghshmen know that we are fighting 
a terrible fight, at first against overwhelming odds, and now 
at incredible sacrifice, to the end that Junkerdom and 
milita^i!^m shall not prevail in the coming effort of the peoples 
for national, political, social and econom'c emancipation. 
I do not believe that any appreciable number of my country- 
men are eager to hurry oft to Stockholm to trade with or 
consult Social-Democrat enemy agents. 
The Labour Conference 
It is worthwhile, therefore, to examine the constitution of 
the labour Party Conference and to find out what this card 
vote of 1,800,000 to 500,000 in favour of going to Stockholm, 
which (he pacifists and pro-Geimm'Surrenderers so proudly 
emblazon on their white flag, really means. To begin with, 
I am personally convinced that the majority of the delegates 
did not understand, even after Mr. Henderson's confused 
explanation, that what they voted for amounted to a pledge 
to meet and confer, in friendly fashion, with some of the 
worst, most treacherous, vindictive and infamous of the 
Kaiser's agents. This was never put to them except by Mr. 
Sexton ; and Mr. Henderson, by covering the Scheidemann 
gang with the mantle of his approval, blanketed this, which 
was the real issue at stake. 
Why should not a general referendum of all workers be 
taken forthwith on this plain -question : *' Do you wish to 
send delegates to Stockholm for a consultative conference 
with Scheidemann. Sudekum, Heine, Ebert, Noske and other 
' Social-Democratic,' upholders of piracy at sea and wholesale 
atrocities on land ? " I believe that the dimensions of the 
vote against doing anything of the kind would be astonishing. 
For the workers at large would then see clearly that they 
were condoning the crimes of these scoundrels, if they agreed 
to have any intercourse with them at all. 
But again. Whom do these delegates at the Labour 
Party Conference represent ? As an old International 
Socialist, I have from the first been opposed to holding any 
International Socialist and Labour Conference during the 
war ; for the very sufficient reason, as it seems to me, that the 
millions of men fighting on the different fronts could not 
send, or elect delegates, without the consent and active help 
of their various Governments ; which assistance might very 
probably not' be granted. Consequently, an International 
Conference or Congress could not be, in any real sense, 
representative. 
Apply this test to the Labour Party Conference. Were 
the soldiers figliting at the front represented ? Were their 
numbers polled, without being represented, in the figures given 
as the result of the principal division ? Mr. Robert Smillie 
is the chairman of the Miners' Federation. He is an ardent 
pacifist. To show that I have no prejudice in the matter, 
1 may state that, for the past three years, I have worked 
cordially with him in domestic affairs. I am doing so to-day. 
Will he now tell the public frankly how many of the 250,000 
or 300,000 miners, who volunteered for active service against 
the invaders of Belgium and France, at the very beginning 
of the war, were represented in the mass vote cast by his 
Federati(m in favour of going to Stockholm ? He is sure to 
tell us the truth, if he knows it — which is a good deal more 
than can be said for some of his fellow-pacifists — and it would 
be interesting to learn from him how this matter really stands. 
In any case, surely, the miUions of men who are protecting 
this island for us all so magnificently, upholding at the same 
time the liberties of Europe at the risk of mutilation or death, 
are entitled to be heard from, both as voters at Labour Con- 
ferences and electors for the National Assembly, before aiiy 
decision is finally arrived at about going to Stockholm : still 
more before the terms of peace are formulated or ratified. 
Further, how is the total vote of each organisation given 
by the delegates who record it ? This is done dead against 
the principle of proportional representation. It is majority 
rule with a vengeance ! For example, if a Trade Union, 
numbering 200,000, were called to vote upon the Stockholm 
\ssue by a poll of all its members, should 100,001 vote in 
favour of that ignoble mission, and 99.999 against it, the 
card vote of the delegate of the organisation at the conference 
would record 200,000 men as accepting the Macdonald- 
Henderson view of the matter ! This, though barely half 
of the whole are of that opinion, and all the men of the Union 
at the front or in the army are thus committed to the proposal 
without recourse. Is it possible to imagine a greater absurdity 
than to count as voting for a measure 99,999 men who voted 
against it ? Can anything be more unjust than to exclude ■ 
the fighters and men in training from voting on such a crucial 
subject as this, and even to count their votes on this side or 
that, without giving them any power of repudiation ? 
Then, to bring the whole anangement to the point of 
sheer idiocy, we are informed that out of the forty-four 
delegates who are told off for Stockholm, in tKe event of the 
vote of the Labour Party Conference being confirmed by 
the Trade- Union Congress, shortly to be held, the British 
Socialist Party, a vehemently pacifist body, which has cer- 
tainly not more than a thousand or two paying members, 
even including all not of British birth, is to be accorded eight 
votes at Stockholm, or fully seven and a half times more than 
the representation to which their membership entitles them. 
No wonder there is a demand on all sides for a complete 
Referendum on the question as to whether the organised 
workers of Great Britain desire to confer with Scheidemann 
and his fellows or not. Nor should we forget that even these 
organised workers, all told, do not count for much more than 
a third of the total labouring class of Great Britain. Far 
too much importance, therefore, has been attached to this 
comparatively small minority vote. It is high time that the 
nation as a whole should take a hand in the business. 
And this is the more important because it is quite clear 
that the Workers' and" Soldiers' Committees, which came to 
the front on the first flood of the revolution in Petrograd, no 
longer have any claim whatever to represent the Russian 
Government. The cablegram from Petrograd suppressed by 
Mr. Henderson clearly shows that. These committees also, 
as Thorne, O'Grady and Sanders informed us, on their return 
from Russia, are nearly all manned to the extent of at least 
a half by Jews. That was natural enough. The Jews are 
clever, educated, and by no means disinclined to use their 
ability to push their influence among their less enlightened 
Russian comrades. But, for the Jews, whether financiers, 
or workers, as Mr. Israel Zangwill points out, this hideous 
war is a Civil War. They are butchering one another in every 
army. They are undergoing most brutal treatment m Russian 
Poland, German Poland, Galicia and elsewhere. We cannot 
blame them, therefore, if, as a widely dispersed, but still 
existent nationality, they should be for peace at practically 
any price. Their watchword, " No annexations and no 
indemnities" is all right for them. Anything for peace. 
But that it now appears is not the Russian idea at all. 
Jews in Russia 
Here, too, comes in the jealousy and distrust of the Jew 
which is still very common in Eastern Europe, and not in 
Eastern Europe alone. It was a Jew, Karl Marx, who said : 
■' The Jew creeps into the pores of an agricultural society.' 
It was General TrepofI who, after the monstrous Kischeneff 
massacre, remarked to my dear old friend Michael Davitt 
" If we gave the Jews the freedom you ask for them, in six 
months they would be masters of Russia." It is at least 
possible that the revolt against the Jews of the Socialistic 
Bund may become seriously reactionary at any moment, 
and that the so-caUed Maximalists, whether of the Leninist 
or any other section, may suffer from their association with a 
race apt to be a trifle arrogant when it feels conscious of its 
superiority To say, therefore, as Mr. Arthur Henderson said, 
that it is necessary to go to Stockholm for the purpose of 
arguing the British case before a Russian jury— a jury which 
is losing ground with its countrymen every day, and the terms 
of whose formal invitation are almost contemptuously 
rejected— seems to me, to say the very least of Mr Hender- 
son's policy, a strange misconception of what is 
politically advisable. Why should any non-combatant 
section of Englishmen, however well organised they may be 
for their own domestic objects, run dead contrary to national 
opinion in order to curry favour with Russian Socialists who 
have lost control even of Petrograd, largely by their own 
There is, however, sometliing more to be said. Mr. Lloyd 
George's Administration, which is pledged up to the hilt to 
" get on with the war," to conduct our side of it to the best 
advantage, and to lose no chance of winning completely, for 
the sake of all men hold dear, actually pnded itself upon 
leaving the Labour Party Conference " whol y iminfluenced 
by the Government ! " Suc^h a policy is hopeless. 
It is the duty of leaders to lead and to act, not to indulge 
