midable affair. There are not more
than a hundred thousand members in all of the Socialist parties, in the
Independent Labor Party and in the Communist Party combined. There are
between six and seven millions of members in the trade unions.

Perhaps the best test of the strength of the British Labor Movement came
in the summer of 1920, over the prospective war with Russia. Warsaw was
threatened. Its fall seemed imminent, and both Millerand and
Lloyd-George made it clear that the fall of Warsaw meant war. The
situation developed with extraordinary rapidity. It was reported that
the British Government had dispatched an ultimatum. The Labor Movement
acted with a strength and precision that swept the Government off its
feet and compelled an immediate reversal of policy.

Over night, the workers of Great Britain were united in the Council of
Action. As originally constituted, the "Labor and Russia Council of
Action" consisted of five representatives each from the Parliamentary
Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Executive Committee of the
Labor Party and the Parliamentary Labor Party. To these fifteen were
added eight others, among whom were representatives of every element in
the British Labor Movement. This Council of Action did three things--it
notified the Government that there must be no war with Russia; it
organized meetings and demonstrations in every corner of the United
Kingdom to formulate public opinion; it began the organization of local
councils of action, of which there were three hundred within four weeks.
The Council of Action also called a special conference of the British
Labor Movement which met in London on August 13. There were over a
thousand delegates at this conference, which opened and closed with the
singing of the "Internationale." When the principal resolution of
endorsement was passed, approving the formation of the Council of
Action, the delegates rose to their feet, cheered the move to the echo,
and sang the "Internationale" and "The Red Flag." The closing resolution
authorized the Council of Action to take "any steps that may be
necessary to give effect to the decisions of the Conference and the
declared policy of the Trade Union and Labor Movement."

Such was the position in the "Citadel of European Capitalism." The
Government was forced to deal with a body that, for all practical
purposes, was determining the foreign policy of the Empire. Behind that
Council was an organized group