When we read the resolution and came to this point we said: "Why all the waste of words; if you are promising a strike in the distant future, let us better make it in the present; as long as you are ready to organize a strike, in view of the threatened occupation of the Ruhr, let us start the strike the 15th of January (we were debating that question on the 17th of December), and by that action we will surely prevent the occupation of the Ruhr, as the French imperialists and allies of France will see that the workers of all countries represent quite a solid power."
Our proposal about a strike not distant in time or place, but right there and on the 15th of January, brought great excitement, for it is quite one thing to talk about a strike in general, and quite another to talk about one in the concrete—these are two entirely different things, and our resolution was, of course, not adopted.
Our other proposals, it is true not of the moving-picture character, as for instance to conduct an anti-militaristic agitation among the white and colored soldiers, were not only rejected but brought forth objection from the Chairman of the Congress and the Chairman of the Amsterdam International, the famous hero of "Black Friday," J. H. Thomas, who said, "It is not fitting for us to agitate among the soldiers." Of course, if it isn't fit, then, only the moving pictures bourgeois at that—are left. If it is not acceptable to conduct the class struggle then nothing else can be imagined but the pacifist resolutions.
I will not go into details about the work of this peculiar-in-all-respects Congress. All the Amsterdam congresses are like the heroines of Gogol: "pleasant in all respects," or "just pleasant." This Congress was "plesant in all respects," and mainly because it satisfied absolutely everybody, except, of course, the Russians.
It is necessary to say that even on the question of strikes, in their drafting, on the question of educating the youth, there were also curiosities. One of the bourgeois pacifists who did not understand that a threat of strike was inserted in the resolution merely for the gallery—(that is, for the workers—"You see what kind of revolutionists we are")—tried to prove that the strike is, of course, a good thing, but first it is necessary to educate the youth and the children to an understanding of it. After all, this declaration of the bourgeois pacifist does not contradict the general spirit of the decisions of the Hague Congress.
This was a typical bourgeois pacifist convention and although there were many present as representatives of labor, in its character it was a bourgeois pacifist meeting. Its fundamental desire was to destroy war without touching capitalist society, it tried to interfere with war not by wry of the class struggle, but through the League of Nations; it tried to interfere with war by creating a bourgeois pacifist bloc; refusing a united front with us, the Communists.
