Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/212

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OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS

The Congress considers, judging from the facts of the situation, that these attacks do not emanate from the Russian proletariat and that the latter could not be regarded as in any degree responsible for them. Further, the Congress considers that these caluminous criticisms and this declaration of war prove either a total ignorance of the composition and actions of the International Federation of Trade Unions or else an evident bad faith arising out of the unwholesome desire to destroy the workers' organizations in every country. (From Justice, December 2, 1920.)

Throughout Europe the labor elements supporting the International Trades Union Federation and those supporting the Second or Socialist Internationale are largely identical. Perhaps because it had been longer under attack, the Second Internationale at its meeting in Brussels, a few weeks before the International Trade Union Congress of London, passed a far more resolute anti-Bolshevist resolution signed:

Arthur Henderson, M.P. (Great Britain).
Emile Vandervelde (Belgium).
J. Ramsay Macdonald (Great Britain).
P. J. Troelstra (Holland).
Otto Wels (Germany).
Arthur Engberg (Sweden).
Camille Huysmans (Belgium), Secretary.

From this resolution we may quote the following:

They [the Bolshevists] trod the desires of the Russian people in the dust, and in place of democracy they established an armed dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but of a committee. Now they are attempting to impose their will and their decrees upon the Socialist and Labour