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the Congress and the difficulties of communication were an obstacle to the spreading of information about its decisions, in the same or even in a higher degree than during the preparations. Suffice it is to mention that some Parties did not obtain any reports of the Congress even two months after its conclusion while the final text of the decisions were received over a month after the Congress," etc.
We thus see that Serati, but few weeks after the closing of the Second Congress in September, 1920, already did everything possible and impossible to lower the Congress in the eyes of the Italian proletariat, to represent the Congress in such a way as though it had been neither Communist nor International. Unfortunately we ourselves at the time were lacking the requisite foresight, and we were still clinging to the hope that Serati would yet prove himself a man adhering to the Communist International idea.
The situation in Italy, however, was such that Serati had to "make a jolly face while playing a losing game." Take the 21 conditions as an instance. He declared himsel—as, indeed, he couldn't do otherwise—for the 21 conditions. In the article quoted he declares: "We accept the 21 conditions, which have been put to the Socialists of all countries in an excessively acute form, but we make two reservations:—
"(1) No excessive leniency should be shown to those who, contaminated by nationalistic drumbeating during the war, had betrayed the proletariat in shameful fashion, and who now, in the same light-minded manner, declare their submission to the strict discipline prescribed by Moscow, and who will betray us again to-morrow. We encounter by far too many Pauls on the way of the proletariat, which should cause us some misgivings as to whether they are all genuine; and although the moral judgment of the past record of people in the revolutionary struggle is
