leaders. This was a logical step in pursuance of the Orleans Congress of the C. G. T. Congress in September, 1920, which issued a declaration of independence as against all outside political control. Merrheim, Secretary of France's leading union, the Metal Workers, at this congress denounced the Soviet Government and described Lenin as "a sanguinary megalomaniac and a pitiless tyrant, the greatest menace to the Russian revolution." When the Bolshevists yelled in protest Merrheim replied that these were the very words used only a few years before by the Franco-Russian, Rappoport, now one of the French Bolshevist leaders. Bartuel, Secretary of the next largest union, the Miners, who has also been sustained in a recent congress of his union, describes Bolshevism as a militaristic and reactionary movement worse than capitalism.
At the French Socialist Congress at Tours in December, 1920, at which the revolutionary majority accepted Lenin as Czar and changed the name of the organization to Communist Party, the minority (itself Marxian and revolutionary) showed that the French General Strike of May 1st, 1920, engineered and subsidized by the Russian Bolshevists, had almost destroyed the organized labor of France.
M. Faure presented to the delegates figures showing material decreases of the membership in the union syndicates of the Seine and of the French Confederation of Labor. The Confederation membership has decreased from 1,500,000 to 600,000, he declared, while that of the Seine syndicates has decreased from 292,000 to 140,000. He asserted this decrease was due to the extremist element, and that the party would suffer further losses if the revolutionary spirit of Moscow prevailed.
