Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/35

 evening he had nothing to do but write it down. This he did in the editor's room of La Petite République in earlier years and later in that of L’Humanité, amid a great deal of noise.

Even from the first Jaurès' sympathies were clearly on the side of the people, and when in 1893 he definitely joined the Socialists, this was no real change, but merely that he had come to see the Socialist point of view quite clearly. At first he was, as he tells us, so much under the influence of the older Socialist leaders that he may have appeared to accept that type of revolutionary Socialism which he afterwards opposed.

But Jaurès' mind was too practical, his grip on human life was too keen for him to remain long with those who confine their energies to propaganda. He was an idealist, but he was a realist too. He believed, if anyone ever believed, in a new earth in which all men would be free and equal, but he wanted to set about realizing this by adapting all the forces for progress that were to hand. Above all it was clear to him that the great majority of the nation must become sympathetic to Socialism before Socialism could come about, and he was ready to hold out his hand to anyone—Socialist-Radical, Radical, or even moderate Republican—who gave signs of honestly working for progress. A difference of opinion arose amongst French Socialists over the part which Jaurès took, in conjunction with men