November 7, 1918 
LAND 5? WATER 
11 
the Allies, and the sort of terms they intended to impose 
upon us — as Socialists. Only when they grew doubtful of 
complete victory did the\-, under orders from the Wilhelm- 
Strasse, attempt to make use of Socialists among the 
Allies to organise what would have been virtually a 
pro-German International Socialist Congress at Stockholm. 
Troelstra, in fact, went to Berlin in order to receive his 
directions from Herr Zimmermann. That we all remember. 
Happily, this first attempt to hold such a Congress, at 
which Scheidemann and company would have been greeted 
with fraternal enthusiasm by Ramsay Macdonald, Jean 
Longuet, and other friends of the enemy, was frustrated, 
chiefly by the action of the National Socialist Party, at the 
Allied Socialist Conference in London. There was great 
indignation against us at the time. We were Jingoes, Anti- 
Socialists, and what not. But shortly thereafter things 
looked very much better for the German armies. The 
prospect for the Allies was, indeed, by no means cheerful : 
or so Scheidemann and the German General Staff thought. 
Straightway, the German Social-Democrats changed their 
tone again doubtless in; accordance with instructions from 
the German Foreign Office, and spoke out as ferociously in 
favour of war to a complete triumph and the annexation of 
territory West and East as the most ruthless Pan-German 
of them all. 
So furiously unscrupulous and uncompromising were they 
in their demands for wholesale domination over the nations 
they thought they had finally vanquished that Hjalmar 
Branting, who was to have been the President of the .Stock- 
holm Conference, an upright man, vehemently denounced 
these views of Scheidemann, Siidekum, Ebert. and the rest 
•of the Pan-German Socialist deputies in his own journal, 
and declared that, in view of such utterances on their part, 
an International Socialist Conference with German delegates 
present could do no good whatever. That ought to have 
put an end to this sinister effort to use International 
Socialism, in war as in peace, to further the ends of German 
expansion. 
Stale Pleas 
True, Branting's exposure of the real meaning of the 
Scheidemann intrigues and the withdrawal of his support 
■of any conference did have an eflect for a time. But the 
English and French Pacifists are not easily discouraged. 
The help of Huysmans and Troelstra could always be relied 
upon for any project which would hamper the progress of 
the Allies. It is well to bear all this in mind at the present 
moment. Then when the full triumph of Germany was no 
longer so certain, the word went round to talk assiduously 
of "stalemate," of the impossibility of either side gaining a 
■complete victory, of the cruel immorality of permitting vast 
bodies of working men to slaughter one another, since it 
was quite obvious that the Central Powers could not be seri- 
ously defeated, and were therefore entitled to hold a large 
portion of the territories they had legitimately conquered. 
Anything was better than the continuance of such bootless 
destruction of human life ! Such was tone adopted. 
A few months ago, not long after our disasters on the 
Western front, Camille Huysmans — still "Secretary of the 
International Socialist Bureau," though Europe has been 
divided into two desperately hostile camps for more than 
four years— called to see me. I used to have a high appre- 
ciation of Huysmans. His intelligence and industry in his 
important post compelled my admiration. But since he was 
■constantly passing to and fro from Belgium and the Hague by 
•consent of the Germans, and had conversed so much with the 
bitterest enemies of his country, I thought he had lost his grip 
of the situation. This opinion was confirmed by his 
•conversation when he came here. I told him that I 
was sure, we should win in the long run; that I knew 
the United States well, and that, when Americans took a job 
up they finished it ; that we English ourselves, alike as a 
race and as a nation, were never so formidable, afloat or 
ashore, as when our enemies thought wc were done for, and 
this all our long history proved. Naturally, what I said had 
no influence at all on Huysmans ; and he has been working 
in tlie closest intimacy with Arthur Henderson ever since to 
bring together an International Socialist Conference, though 
it is virtually certain that such a confercrce would attempt 
to save Germany from any adequate punishment for her 
•crimes. 
"When the devil was sick,, etc." So long as the devil 
was well our fierce enemy the Kaiser's tame Socialist, Philip 
Scheidemann, was an out-and-out chauvinist, and all his 
German friends with him. But now' that the devil is mortal 
•sick, sick almost unto death, and Scheidemann, as i German 
Minister, feels the end of German superhumanity approaching. 
nothing will serve but an International Socialist Conference 
again : not in the interest of deserted Germany — of course, 
not ! — ^^but in the best interests of the world. This, like 
Scheidemann's hypocritical pretence of democracy, has one 
object alone in view. That is to use the Pacifists and anti- 
patriots ,of Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, and the 
United States to save the most arrogant, treacherous, and 
brutal nation of our epoch from retribution. The hope of 
the Pacifist officials who control the Labour Party is that 
such a conference may be held in London next week ! So 
I hear from the Labour Party itself. 
Now, do not let us underrate the danger of all this Pro- 
Germanism. Scheidemann, as we know, is a Minister. He 
can make treaties and treat them as "scraps of paper" just 
as well as his predecessors in office. And he will, if we are 
fools enough to let him. Kiihlmann will assiduously help 
him to that end. As to conventions, all these men will enter 
upon as many of them as you like to-da}-, and repudiate the 
whole lot of them to-morrow. Punica fides, indeed ! The Car- 
thaginians were high-souled gentlemen compared with the 
Germans. Having been betrayed by them every time, it 
would be sheer madness for British Labour men to repose 
any faith in them now. 
But then there is Victor Adler, of Vienna, Austrian 
Foreign Minister — "surely," it may be said, "you believe in 
him ? " As an admirably dexterous and self-sacrificing 
leader of the workers of Vienna, certainly : as a man to be 
relied upon in his dealings with the Allies, not a little bit. 
Adler is strongly anti-British, an intimate friend of Scheide- 
mann, a thorough believer in the beneficent influence of 
Germanic intelligence and organisation over the Slavs. We 
cannot blame him for that ; what else can we expect horn a 
German Jew ? He can argue out his position. He did so 
with me at the International Socialist Bureau a few years 
before the war. Then Adler thought that the British 
Foreign Office was intriguing in the Balkans, and that our 
proceedings — the truth of which I disputed — were antagon- 
istic to the legitimate permeation of those States by Austro- 
German influence. During the war, Adler has been quite 
as rigorous against the Allies as his friend Scheidemann. 
Both these enthusiastic Teutonists will, according to the 
views of Huysmans, Henderson, Troelstra, Longuet, and 
company, be fully entitled, enemy Ministers though they are, 
to be received with true brotherly Socialist effusion in London. 
Both will again pose as sincere Internationalists. But, if 
we are foolish enough to believe a word they say we shall 
deserve to lose at the Council Table what we are gaining 
on land and on sea. 
The war will not have been really won until Germany 
and her Allies, whatever their form of government, have 
been forced to make full compensation for their infamous 
breaches of all international law, and are placed in such a 
position that they will not try the same game again. That 
is how matters stand to-dav. 
The Mountain Cemetery 
IN the valley whose freedom they kept inviolate, cradled 
by the hills they have loved and fought for, lie the 
warrior sons of the hill people who have fallen, battling 
gloriously against the invader. Neither great statesman 
nor noble prince has ever won a better resting-place, for 
while such noble ones are brought into historic buildings 
which are the work of men's hands, these are buried beneath 
the cloisters \ and the colonnades of the mountain forest, 
they sleep on beneath the piUars and the arches of God's 
•own cathedral, the dark fir-trees which grow in the hills 
which God has made. 
No great organ has lent its solemn tones to dignify their 
burial rites ; but to their honour a i;iever-ending funeral 
march is played by the soft soughing of the breeze in the 
branches and the low rumble of the unquiet gun%. 
Nor brick nor mortar rings about the forest clearing in 
which they lie, but only a simple fence of untrimrned fir 
branch, and the lych-gate which gives entrance to the sacred 
soil is built of fir branch, too. On many a simple cross a 
faded wreath is hung, but with or without flowers, most 
await the last reveille wrapped in a soft-falling, symbolic 
mantle of virgin snow. 
And in the centre of all is a great mountain boulder, and 
on it, roughly carved in simplest Italian, are the words : 
" It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one's country : 
here rest awhile the sons of two great nations who, to their 
eternal honour, fell fightins side by side against the common 
foe." ' H.W. 
