Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Twelve Days in Germany (1921).pdf/20

 After a long altercation the meeting was suspended, and a mixed commission was appointed to examine the stenographic report of Losovsky's speech in order to ascertain whether his speech contained anything insulting. Even the Rights were compelled to acknowledge later that the speech was absolutely free from anything offensive. Dittmann and his friends were driven to confess that it was not in the expression of the orator but in "the whole tendency of his speech," which was such as to give offence to the German trade unions.

Why were the Rights so painfully sensitive to the speech of Comrade Losovsky? Simply because, by stating mere facts concerning the activity of the notorious Amsterdam "International" Comrade Losovsky opened the eyes of those workers who still supported the Right. The Right leaders felt that they would lose their hold as soon as the workers learned the truth about Amsterdam.

All the leaders of the Right Independents, especially Hilferding and Crispien, suddenly became "experts" on the trade union movement, and ardent worshippers of Amsterdam.

How is this to be explained? Why did the leaders of the Right section of the Independents suddenly become such ardent champions of Amsterdam? The more far-sighted of them were aware, of course, that they were defending a hopeless cause, and that this advocacy would in the long run be detrimental to them. Did not the section of the Right Independents announce to all and sundry that it wished to enter the Communist International? And who does not know that the Amsterdam organisation, far from being part of the Third International, is part and parcel of the Second International? Now. at all labour meetings the leaders of the Right Independents will be taunted with being advocates of Legien, Just, Gompers, and the others, i.e., open social traitors. Why did the leaders of the Right Independents choose these tactics? Just because the Right leaders have not, and cannot have, any other mass support than the trade union group. As to Dissmann and Co., they, like Shylock, demanded their pound of flesh: "If you want us to vote for you, you must solemnly and publicly subscribe before the congress and the whole world that you are in favour of Amsterdam, i.e., in favour of Legien, Just