izations or of
preventing a foreign war, has for the past decade been the center of
discussion at many European Socialist congresses. The recent Prime
Minister of France, Briand, was long one of the leading partisans of
this method of which he said only a few years before he became Premier:
"It has the seductive quality that it is after all the exercise of an
incontestable right. It is a revolution which commences with legality.
In refusing the yoke of misery, the workingman revolts in the fullness
of his rights; illegality is committed by the capitalist class when it
becomes a provocator by trying to violate a right which it has itself
consecrated." That Briand meant what he said is indicated by the advice
he gave to soldiers who might be ordered to fire against the strikers in
such a crisis. "If the order to fire should persist," said Briand, "if
the tenacious officer should wish to constrain the will of the soldiers
in spite of all.... Oh, no doubt the guns might go off, but it might not
be in the direction ordered"--and the universal assumption of all public
opinion at that time and since was that he was advising the soldiers
that under these circumstances they would be justified in shooting their
officers.

The Federation of Labor of France has long adopted the idea of the
general strike as appropriate for certain future contingencies, as has
also the French Socialist Party--"To realize the proposed plan," the
Federation declares, "it will be necessary first of all to put the
locomotives in a condition where they can do no harm, to stop the
circulation of the railways, to encourage the soldiers to ground their
arms."

As thus conceived by Briand and the Federation, few will question the
revolutionary character of the proposed general strike. But in what
circumstances do the Socialists expect to be able to make use of this
weapon? The Socialists of many countries have given the question careful
consideration in hundreds of writings and thousands of meetings,
including national and international congresses. Through the gradual
evolution of the plans of action developed in all these conferences and
discussions, they have come to distinguish sharply between a really
general strike, _e.g._ a nation-wide railroad strike, when used for
revolutionary purposes, and other species of widespread strikes which
have merely a tendency in a revolutionary direction, such as the
Philadelphia trouble I have mentioned, and they have