Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/146

 Jaurès' mode of thought. Rather he urged on the workers to use every means available to bring about lasting peace, and he earnestly begged them to make use of the ideas of International Arbitration and the Conferences of the Hague. "For a long time," he says, "Socialism was defiant of International Arbitration. It had its reasons." The royal persons and the diplomatists who smiled upon the Hague Conference did not show their sincerity by their subsequent behaviour. But it may be asked: Why, if it is merely a trick on their part, do they go to the Hague at all? They go because they know that the people really want peace and that by making this show of a "bonne petite paix à leur facon " which "will permit of a certain number of wars," they will save the proletariat from making a reality of the thing. But the right method for the people is not to laugh at all this and despise it, but to force these same diplomatic personages to put into practice their professions. ' "Messieurs les Ministres, Messieurs les gouvernants, Messieurs les diplomates, chamarrés d'or et revêtus de belles intentions, si vous voulez l'arbitrage international, nous aussi." Since they have been to the Hague they can no longer tell us that arbitration is impossible, and now we mean them to do what they have said. Hervé had said that the workers could never tell whether a war were