ies. It would seem that in these cases the same cause that drives
the movement to abandon aggressive tactics also checks its numerical
growth.

For example, it is a matter of principle among Socialists generally to
contest every possible elected position and to nominate candidates in
every possible district. The revolutionary French Socialist, Jules
Guesde, even stated to the writer that if candidates could be run by the
party in every district of France, and if the vote could in this way be
increased, he would be willing to see the number of Socialists in
Parliament reduced materially, even to a handful--the object being to
teach Socialism everywhere, and to prepare for future victories by
concentrating on a few promising districts rather than to make any
effort to become a political factor, at the present moment. Similarly,
August Bebel declared that he would prefer that in the elections of 1912
the Socialists should get 4,000,000 votes and 50 Reichstag members
rather than 3,000,000 votes and 100 members. In the latter case, of
course, the Socialist members would have been elected largely on the
second ballot by the votes of non-Socialists.

The policy actually carried out in both Italy and France has of late
been exactly the opposite to that recommended by Guesde and Bebel. In
the elections of 1909, the Socialist Party of Italy put up 114 less
candidates for Parliament than they had in the election of 1904, while
the number of candidates nominated in France was 50 less in 1910 than it
had been in 1906. The consequence was that the French Party received an
increase of votes less absolutely than that gained by the conservative
republicans and scarcely greater than that of the radicals, while in
Italy the Socialists actually cast a smaller _percentage_ of the total
vote in 1909 than they did in 1904, while the party membership
materially decreased.

This policy had a double result; it sent more Socialists to the
Parliaments, in each case increasing the number of members by about 50
per cent; on the other hand, it helped materially those radical and
rival parties most nearly related to the Socialists, for in many
districts where the latter had withdrawn their candidates these parties
necessarily received the Socialist vote. A vast field of agitation was
practically deserted, and even when the agitation was carried on, the
distinction between the Socialist Party and the parties it had favored,
and which in turn favored