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by no means of great significance, there is at any rate a political criterion which determines the immorality of a certain kind of conversations, and this criterion must be unrelentingly applied by the proletariat in order to prevent the presence of traitors within its ranks.
"(2) The Parties affiliated to the Third International must be given the right—under their own responsibility—to undertake the necessary cleaning operation operation within their ranks in such a manner that the cohesion of the proletarian movement as well as the revolution itself, which is believed in Moscow to be so close at hand, should come to no harm."
Thus, at the outset, Serati cloaks himself in the mantle of a left-winger and a revolutionist, declaring that he would make it his first condition, that a strict attitude be maintained towards the "right," particularly towards the French comrades. Our French comrades seem to be the object of his particular hatred. I do not know what his reasons are. He attempted to play before the Italian workers the part of an orthodox who would apply the strictest severity against the right-wing. Then he put up a twenty-second condition. He said that a twenty-second condition had been adopted against the Freemasons, but that Zinoviev had tucked it away in his pocket, and that condition was no more. Serati went to Italy to peddle such wares in real earnest. But what was the real position as regards the Freemasons? It was a proposal made by the Italian comrades, which we found quite sensible to accept, but at the same time we declared it impossible for the Communist International to have it published. Yet, Serati went before the Italian working class and, in full earnest, represented the situation as though I was in all probability a Freemason, and that the majority had been on the side of Freemasonry. The Second condition proposed by Serati takes an altogether nebulous form: "The
