Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/105

 us. But he, irrepressible and inexhaustible, keen and good-humoured, came out into the night with us, still laughing, arguing, explaining, revelling in the finished fight, as mischievous as when he opened his attack on his German assailants hours before."

At the Congress itself Jaurès stood almost alone, for the majority of the French delegates followed Guesde in this matter and not Jaurès, and the German Social Democrats took the same line. This was enough to make an overwhelming vote against Jaurès' policy. He was not, however, dismayed by the host arrayed against him, but attacking the German Social Democrats he accused them of powerlessness. He pointed out that under the undemocratic constitution of the German Empire, even a majority in the Reichstag did not give power into the hands of the Socialists. If a political and democratic revolution had previously taken place in Germany as in France the German Socialists would not have to fight at such a disadvantage. Propaganda, organization, a splendid array of Socialist newspapers, none of these efforts secured such results as might be expected while power remained in the hands of an autocracy. Jaurès laid great stress on this weakness of German Social Democracy. German Socialists could not go forward. "And so," Jaurès told them, "you concealed your powerlessness of action by taking refuge in the