Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/214

 German aggression has more or less suspended the existence of the International. Belgium, where it used to have its headquarters, was invaded. The Maison du Peuples at Brussels, where its offices were, was guarded by German sentries. Its Executive Committee was scattered and could not meet. The President was at Havre, member of the Committee of Public Safety—that is what the Belgian Government has become; his colleagues, Bertrand and Anseele, could not leave their town without a special permit from the Kommandantur, and it was in such conditions, in a strenuous struggle for their national existence, that Belgian Socialists had still before them the duty of keeping alive the sacred fire of the International, of maintaining a bond, however feeble, between the working classes of every country, both neutral and belligerent.

Camille Huysmans, the secretary of the International Socialist Bureau, undertook this difficult task.

He began with the Dutch. He had admitted, in spite of the reservations of the French, that the Dutch Delegation