Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/151

 The motion ended with an appeal for arbitration and general disarmament.

This motion exactly expressed Jaurès' point of view. After the Congress a great meeting was held at the Tivoli-Vaux-Hall in Paris by the French Socialists, and Jaurès gave a report of the Congress, especially in relation to peace. He there explained why the motion had not expressly affirmed the general strike and the possible necessity of insurrection in case of war. This was due to the difficulties of the German comrades, who would undoubtedly have been proceeded against for such an open declaration of the intention to rebel. He declared that the substitution of an account of what had already been done by the Socialists in various countries was his own doing. It was not unusual for Jaurès to draft the resolutions to be passed at Socialist Conferences.

In France a storm of disapproval had followed the passing of these resolutions at the Stuttgart Congress, and the cry of the reactionaries was that of all Socialists the French were the most anti-patriotic. The Matin, for example, had written: "All the foreign Socialists are patriots. It is only the French who desert and detest their country." "And," said Jaurès, evidently in good spirits that night among his friends at the Tivoli-Vaux-Hall, "and Le Radical, L'Aurore, and Les