Page:Boris Souvarine - The Third International.djvu/19

 organisation and its cost. These prospects failed in consequence of the hostility of the French and Belgian parties.

The Swiss party attempted to assemble at Zurich the Socialists of neutral countries. This resulted in another failure. At the same time the Italian Party sent Morgari to France charged with the mission to request the International Socialist Bureau to meet. The 19th April, 1915, Morgari had, at the headquarters of the Socialist Party in Paris, an interview with Vandervelde, the President of the I.S.B., and with the leaders of the party. He found himself up against the systematic refusal of the French and Belgium Socialist-patriots. Renaudel declared that the International was the hostage for right and justice (sic.) And in reply to Morgari, who stated that in spite of opposition the Socialists who were faithful to Socialism would find means of meeting, Vandervelde said, "we will prevent it."

It was thus apparent that all attempts to reconstitute the International from the elements which had betrayed it would be useless and sterile.

All that could be done was to call together the parties and the fractious which had remained Socialist and internationalist. On May 15th, 1915, the congress of Bologna, decided to convoke an international conference in spite of the hostility of official parties. On June 11th, a preliminary session took place at Berne, at which the nature and the object of the conference were established: ''it was agreed that this initiative on the part of the Italian and the Swiss parties was not taken with the intention of forming a new International. At this epoch only Lenin and the Bolsheviks had sufficient insight to discern the necessity of founding a third International.'' But their influence was not yet felt. Their help, however, was precious in the organisation of the conference.

From the 5th to the 8th September the Conference was held at Zimmerwald which was the first manifestation of the life of the renascent International, and which uttered the great call for peace. A few days before the meeting, Morgari had made a supreme attempt among French Socialists to obtain their participation in the conference, or at least that they should send a delegate without mandate or vote who would exercise, as Morgari put