emain
in doubt as to the exact meaning and methods of socialism. This work of
definition and clarification was the immense service performed by the
International in its eight brief years of life. Throughout Europe and
America, after 1872, these two forces openly declared that they had
nothing in common, either in method or in philosophy. To them at least
the International had been a university.

FOOTNOTES:

[S] In the English report of the discussion Professor Hins's remarks are
summarized as follows: "Hins said he could not agree with those who
looked upon trade societies as mere strike and wages' societies, nor was
he in favor of having central committees made up of all trades. The
present trades unions would some day overthrow the present state of
political organization altogether; they represented the social and
political organization of the future. The whole laboring population
would range itself, according to occupation, into different groups, and
this would lead to a new political organization of society. He wanted no
intermeddling of the State; they had enough of that in Belgium already.
As to the central committees, every trade ought to have its central
committee at the principal seat of manufacture. The central committee of
the cotton trades ought to be at Manchester; that of the silk trades at
Lyons, etc. He did not consider it a disadvantage that trade unions kept
aloof more or less from politics, at least in his country. By trying to
reform the State, or to take part in its councils, they would virtually
acknowledge its right of existence. Whatever the English, the Swiss, the
Germans, and the Americans might hope to accomplish by means of the
present political State the Belgians repudiated theirs."--pp. 31-2.

[T] These are almost the exact words that Aristide Briand uses in his
argument for the general strike. See "_La Greve Generale_," compiled by
Lagardelle, p. 95.

[U] One of the resolutions prohibited the formation of sectarian groups
or separatist bodies within the International, such as the _Alliance de
la Democratie Socialiste_, that pretended "to accomplish special
missions, distinct from the common purposes of the Association." Another
resolution dealt with what was called the "split" among the workers in
the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Still another resolution
formally declared that the International had nothing in common with the
infamies of Nechayeff, who had fraudulently usurped a