Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/217

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EUROPEAN LABOR DISILLUSIONED
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Also Kautsky of Germany and De Brouckere of Belgium, after visiting Armenia, recommended military intervention and Huysmans, Secretary of the Second Internationale sent the appeal to that effect to the Socialist parties affiliated with that Internationale (including the British Labor Party). As between Turkish and Bolshevist armies and those of Great Britain and France, not only Georgia and Armenia, but also MacDonald, Kautsky and Huysmans were for the armies of the capitalist governments—a far cry from the summer's policy of assisting in the forcible Sovietizing of Poland!

The French labor unionists, especially, are lucid, consistent and outspoken. The Executive of the C. G. T., the French Federation of Labor, issued an appeal to French workmen to remain faithful to the union labor movement as against the Communist element that recently split the Socialist Party at Tours, and on February 15th (1921) this Executive was re-elected, though by a narrow margin—Moscow having spent millions of dollars in an attempt to purchase the Congress. In a long manifesto the Federation Executive charged the Communists with the intention of "destroying international syndicalism that comprises 27,000,000 workers," and asked labor to support a program of social improvement, rather than "personal ambitions and greeds."

The Federation Council squarely accepted Lenin's declaration of a war to the finish and authorized Jouhaux by a vote of 103 to 3, with twenty-two abstentions, to take any necessary measures (including expulsion) against any members who obeyed the orders of the Third Internationale and organized nuclei of Communists for the purpose of throwing out all non-Bolshevist