CONTENTS - ouroboros ponderosa

1 :>- I ()]{ lt iINS ,'\NI I MI":\NIN( i (II" WWI
ht;CI1 dearly rcpuoialcti.
Albrecht-Carre, Taylor, and others have spoken of this shin away 110111
militarism at a time whcn Francc, according to von Bulow, "was Ihe only
Europcan country in which in ccrtain innuential quarters, not in Ill\'
people, it was justified to talk of 'war [ever."''' Prince Lichnnwski,
German ambassador to England, provided a still more complete picture
in a diary entry of April 27: hc described the French people's calm and
"thoroughly pacific mood," while noting the difficulties which internal
affairs presented to the governments,"
Thc April polling "proved," in Cobban's words, "that even in th"
existing state of international tension French opinion was profoundly
pacific and non-aggrcssive,"" President Poincare, in June, was forced tll
appoint a left-wing regime under Viviani. Reversal of the conscription
law was the first order of business; nevertheless, the radical and socialist
deputics agreed not to press for this in exchange for vague promises
regarding future passage of an income tax law, an obvious betrayaL
When the war crisis was played out in early August and Juarcs, dean
of the left, was assassinated by a chauvinist fanatic, it was Viviani who
issued the left's call for nationalist unity; at this moment of spontaneous
anti-war demonstrations, he announced that, "in the serious circumstances
through which our country is passing, the government counts on the
patriotism of the working class,"
That the proletariat would have been the object of fear is evidenced by
its growing militancy, Whereas in the 18908 there had been hundreds of
small, local strikes, there were 1,073 in 1913, involving a quarter of a
million workers, A good deal of alarm was generated by the scale and
persistence of the strikes, seen by many as "symptoms of a profound
unrest and social sickness," according to David Thomson," Strikes of
postal and telegraph workers in Paris called the loyalty of state employees
into question, while agricultural workers' strikes often led to riots and
the burning of farm owners' houses,
Radical tendencies on thc terrain of work cannot however be
, ,
attributed to prewar syndicalism with much accuracy, Syndicalist ideology
proved an attraction tor a time, due to revulsion with the dogma of
socialist reformism, but there was-according to Stearns and others-no
positive correlation between syndicalist leadership and strike violence, for
example," In fact, syndicalist leaders had to combat violence and
spontaneous strikes just like any other brokers of organized labor,
Syndicalist unions served the same integrative function as the others and
manifested the same movement toward bureaucratization, It is hardly
surprising that after 1910 there was growing talk of a "crisis of
'i .
.
.-.
·,\'lHlicalislII. "
I )Ul'ill)!, the firs! dccadt: of the cc:ntury) Gustave Herve's doctrine of
[, ,Ial Illilil'" Y insulTection against the officer class became quite popular.
I Clie Ilakv; saw that "no sooner conceived, it sprcad like wildfire to
",allY countries outside France,"" He added that on the eve of war it was
"slill rampant in the rank and file of the French army,""
Herve, editor of i.a Cuerre Sociale, had called for revolution as the
response to mobilization for war. But increasingly the socialist statesman,
when war came he climaxed his anti-war career by begging to be allowed
to serve in the army, Recalling Viviani's pro-war speech over the bier of
J uares, we find a fast evaporation of internationalist verbiage and observe
how thin some of this rhetoric had been all along, The young males of
the nation marched, leaving behind debasing contradictions of the left
with a scnse of relief.
By the end of 1916, however, desertions were occurring at a rate
estimated at 30,000 a year, Spring 1917 saw wholesale desertion replaced
by outright mutiny, causing open panic among the military high
command, Whole divisions from the Champagne front were involved, for
example, amid cheers for world revolution, for firing on the officers, and
for a march on Paris, " But exhaustion and a sense of futility, built up of
the war's mammoth violence and the long list of confusions and
disillusionments that predated the war, were joined by the universal
united front of unions and the left, to enforce the war and so' 'guard
class society.
France was the grand muti!ee of the war: 1,4()(),000 «lead, one of every .
24 in the land, Out of all this, not even the post-war parodies of
revolution would visit France,
Although thc United States stands apart from Europ!" s traditions
and
conditions, it is also true that revolution, or ills approach, is a . ...brld
phenomenon as of the era under scrutiny, Taking a very few words'
detour, many fe atures paralleling prewar Europe are discernible in the
American situation,
Henry May found that "During the prewar years, passion and violence
seemed to many observers to be rising to the surface in all sorts of
inexplicable ways,"" And as in Europe, organized ideology could not find
its vehicle in this upsurge, The tame Socialist Party was ebbing after
having reached its peak in 1912, and the IWW, syndicalist alternative,
failed to have much impact at any point.
The Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, sitting between 1910
and 1915, concluded that unionization was the answer to a violence, in
Graham Adams' words, "which threatened the structure of society,""