Meanwhile the League of Nations had been born, and there Branting was to win his enduring laurels. As the Prime Minister of Sweden he made his first appearance on the League Council at Geneva, and by a wise decision of Governments to which he did not belong he was allowed to continue his work there. Twice I saw him there. Once, being in the neighbourhood when the Council was sitting, I dropped in to hear the discussion on the Treaty of Mutual Assistance which was being hammered into form. He was doubtful of the prospects. His heart was not in what was being done. He was making the best of a bad job. He did not believe in military pacts. The next time was when the Protocol was being arranged last year. He was happy like a man who saw the threads of his life's work being drawn together. We were both aware of the risks, the discussions and adjustments which would be necessary, the danger of a reaction towards Conservatism in Europe, and the opposition of military experts; but this was a beginning which neither of us really ever expected to see, and we felt that once made it could not be permanently undone.

Branting was a pacifist and came under the opprobrium of this much-abused word. But here again he was the man who had systematised his thought and his policy. His pacifism was a part of his constitutionalism. To him, war as a method belonged to the same category as revolution. It was a test of power. True, the spirit of a nation entered into its chances of success or failure. Thrice is he armed who believes that his quarrel is just. But both sides in every great war believe that their quarrel is just, so that in the end power settles the matter. As a constitutionalist he had no faith in any arbitrament except that of a judicial body, no confidence in any security except that founded on justice and sound policy. The humanitarian defence of pacifism, or the Tolstoyan defence, therefore had but a small place in his mind. He thought primarily of the evolution of consequences, and that is the characteristic of Socialist pacifism distinguished from other schools of peace advocates. Disarmament was not a good in itself; it was an essential part of the constitutional policy of peace and security.

The Branting of the League of Nations, the Branting of the Socialist International, the Branting who was Prime Minister of Sweden, was the same Branting who believed in constitutional evolution, as I have defined it, who was always alive to the progressive life of States and institutions, and who stood like a rock for orderly adaptation as the means of progress however it was assailed. That belief in improvement by rational adaptation was to him something akin to the eternal verities,' and was composed of elements far more substantial than expediency or sentimentality. It was the touchstone he applied to every

suggested political solution, and when the test was successful he had chosen his attitude. This keen sense of the practical did not destroy his idealism. Again and again, though no man knew better the times and the seasons of compromise, he stood alone in League Councils, and sometimes almost alone in his own party. Manfully he fought against the French illegal administration of the Saar, against Italy's conduct to Greece, against Poland's excesses, and as manfully did he urge his country to accept the disappointing League decision regarding the Aaland Islands. He only cared for the right as he saw it, and the right method. He was a scientist in politics, and he thought that the greatest, the most interesting, the most important of all the sciences is politics.

Both Branting and Ebert presented the mystery of personality to those who, only meeting them occasionally, followed their work and knew their influence. A scene stands out in clear line and colour in my memory. One day I went into the garden of the President's residence by the gate in the Königgrätzerstrasse and found Ebert and his wife in Presidential state standing far up the lawn by a tea-table covered with a white cloth under the trees. Honour and status had not changed them. They were a homely German couple in their Sunday clothes, dignified, selfrespecting, hospitable. But there was something indicating strength and wisdom in the upright carriage of the man, the precision of his handshake, his straightforward eye. He was the workman, no longer at the saddler's bench, no longer as the leading spirit in Bremen advising his fellows about their rights, but still the workman called upon to keep the government of his country going. Competence, craftsmanship, were the impressions he gave. He spoke definitely; when discussing difficulties he never mused like one who turns possibilities over leisurely in his mind. He was precise and expressed himself in short, comely sentences in good English. He was rectitude without imagination, friendship without enthusiasm, principle without flare, strength without impetus. Those with a more intimate knowledge of the man may be able to add qualities that did not lie open to the observation of acquaintances; but such is the man I knew-a man admirably fitted for the work that fell to his lot as first President of the German Republic. Well did he do that work. He represented the strength of the mass of ordinary people.

Branting was different. An awkward man, awkward in speech and appearance, a man who often lumped his English into a heap of almost unintelligible unsorted words, whose aspect had nothing to attract the stranger, who introduced himself with confusion, he was, in reality, the most kindly and considerate and lovable of men-a man to whom his fellows, especially young men, became ardently devoted-with a firm backbone and an unclouded vision.

When his shy and clumsy exterior was penetrated, as one of his friends said, he was found to be ' embracing, warm and helpful.' At one time when there was trouble in the Socialist Party and all sections were being represented on a party committee, the leader of the opposition to Branting refused election, giving to his confidants the reason that, had he served, he would thus be brought within the magnetic field of Branting's influence, 'which would disarm him.' He was always active and foremost. In his earlier years he was the most hated and persecuted man in Sweden. The respectable mob are always frightened by a man who shows a romantic loyalty to liberty and right. He was sent to prison for three months for reprinting a 'free-thinking article, not because he believed in it, but because the writer had been victimised by an outworn and therefore a bad law. Anything but an extremist, he was essentially a man of feeling, and the emotions of the masses were never far from his heart. He therefore used sometimes to confuse his friends, to whom he appeared to be audacious at one moment and super-cautious the next. Like all men who trust much to intuition, he presented those apparent contradictions; but the loyalty of intuition to the workings of the creative spirit is as steadfast as the more formal consistencies of logic to reason. He was certainly never afraid to stand up to the masses: he was no flattering demagogue; when he thought them to be wrong, he stood by them, shared their responsibilities, and did his best to get them out of their self-made difficulties; but he then never concealed from them his opinions about them. So they came to trust and revere him, raging jealousies, caves and plots against his leadership ceased, and in his later years he enjoyed the confidence, envied by all leaders, which made the people follow him, saying when in doubt of his policy: 'Well, it generally turns out that in the end he is proved to be right.'

In 1917 he fought his last great battle for supremacy, and came through the test of leading a revolution which changed the constitution without shedding a drop of blood. The Swedish Party, like all others, was confused by war issues and the red gleams of the Russian Revolution. Branting's leadership was attacked. He was out of date; he was conservative; he gave no bold and dramatic lead. Driven to bay, he fought; he deliberately split his party; he cut its tail off,' as was said. The result was that in time the left opposition party dwindled, quarrelled, became insignificant, and Swedish Socialism grew in favour and in power. In the neighbouring country of Norway, where the party was left exposed to compromise with Communists and unbalanced influences, it posed for a brief day in glittering bravado, it spoke boldly, and postured as a revolutionary movement; then the Nemesis of being lath and pre

tending to be iron overtook it; it decayed, and for a time ceased to count. Meanwhile, as was shown in the recent elections, the Swedish Socialist Party has the support of 44 per cent. of the electors of Sweden, and is relatively the strongest Socialist party in the world. Communism is almost extinct in Sweden, as it would be here had it not been used by the Conservative Party for its own ends. Wherever Communism is strong, it has been nourished and advertised by the Reaction; wherever it is weak, it has been fought by the Socialists.

There was nothing of the charlatan or the demagogue about this man, but a genuine soul pursuing righteousness throughout his life, taking honours when they came, but never buying them by any coin by which men purchase them. His first intimate contact with the workers is the prelude which contains all the motifs of his completed life. When he was a student at Upsala he heard that at Stockholm an institute was being founded where by lectures and classes the workers were to be instructed in science, in literature, and in public affairs. The promoters applied for a grant of 3000 kroner to the Stockholm County Council, but that body, fearing lest it should become a nursery for Socialists and Radicals, refused. Branting at once supplied the money. Always reckless with his possessions and incapable of looking after his own affairs, his wise father left him a house under a trust, so that this middle-class man might be protected in his liberality from penury.

There are striking contrasts between the two men and striking similarities. Branting's lot was the better of the two for leaving a good reputation. The story of the constitutional revolution in Sweden in 1918 cannot yet be told, and in that silence Branting's experiences as a leader in a revolution must for the time being be wrapped. But as the executive head of his State he never had to handle a country seething with disturbances promoted now from the Right, now from the Left-disturbances that had to be put down in no rose-water way. He never had to stand apart as the embodiment of a State whose very existence he had to protect by the same means as assailed it. He never was called upon to choose or reject a Noske as an instrument. And yet, it is not only the time of their passing that links them together. Both were colleagues in thought and in ideal; both marked the arrival of new forces in government; both, lovers of their country, worked for the founding of an international order of peace and co-operation; both drew their inspiration from the thoughts and feelings of the working classes. It may be that amongst the names of men who have led their people that of neither of them will be written in unquenchable flames of fire, but they will certainly be preserved in letters of untarnishable gold.

J. RAMSAY MACDONALD.

POLAND AND DANTZIG

THE CASE OF POLAND

I

THE Free City of Dantzig was established in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, which stipulated for Poland certain important rights.

It is Poland's complaint that she has been compelled, and is being compelled, to acquiesce in a drifting away from the state of affairs created by the Treaty of Versailles—a state of affairs in itself a compromise-and that the results do not benefit Dantzig, while they damage Poland and can only help a third party to use Dantzig in order to weaken Poland.

Poland's claim is that the state of affairs created by the Treaty of Versailles should be maintained; or at least, since that state of affairs was afterwards changed to Poland's disadvantage, that further changes which would derogate still more from Poland's rights should be prevented: she desires an interpretation of treaties in accordance with accepted rules.

II

Poland's main river is the Vistula. It is on that river that lie Cracow, Warsaw, Toruń (the birthplace of Kopernik). The economic life of the country centres on the Vistula and its tributaries. The whole course of the Vistula lies in Polish territory, and the mouth of the river flows through Dantzig, forming the port of Dantzig.

By far the greater part of Polish trade must pass by way of the Vistula and the port of Danzig. . . . If a powerful nation like Germany . . . is to control the main outlet of Polish trade, she will in the end make Poland a mere vassal. . . . For the Polish nation the possession of Danzig, in some form or other, is a matter not of mere economic convenience but rather of life and death. . . . (Temperley, A History of the Peace Conference, VI., 258.)

..

Dantzig, originally a city in Polish territory, though inhabited mainly by German settlers, was conquered in the fourteenth