The Political Situation
where the Dutch, such as Vliegen or Van Kol, whose Entente sympathies were obvious, tried to convince us with an insistence which had a touch of national egotism. With rare exceptions, the neutrals are, on the whole, for the Allies, but they are governed by the fear of being sooner or later drawn into the conflict.
This statement would not be complete if we did not give the main points of an interview which we had on our way through Christiania with Hjalmar Branting, who is certainly, of all the Socialists in neutral countries, the most influential and the one who shares most nearly our own point of view.
His views, which Huysmans shared, can be summed up in the following words:
"You would be wrong not to come to a general Conference. Except for the Danish and the Dutch, all the Socialists of neutral countries sympathize with the Socialists of the Entente. There are serious cracks in the solidarity of Central Europe. The Bulgarian Socialists, who were ignorant of all that was happening on the West, were
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