volution or reform, but in the
matter of secondary importance, reform or revolution, each side
tolerates in the party an attitude in diametrical opposition to its
principles and the tactics it requires. Both do this doubtless in the
belief that by this opportunism they will some day capture the whole
party, and that a split may thus be avoided in the meanwhile.

Since the Toulouse Congress the divisions within the French Party have
become much more acute. Briand's conduct in the great railway strike in
1911 is discussed below. Yet in spite of this experience of how much the
government is ready to pay for railways and how little it is ready to do
to their employees, Jaures's followers at the Party Congresses of 1911
and 1912 stood again for the policy of nationalization, and Guesde was
impelled to warn the party that Briand's "State Socialism" was the
gravest danger to the movement.

Briand's positive achievements are also defended by Jaures. The recent
workingmen's pension law, unlike that of England, demands a direct
contribution from the employees. Nevertheless, it contained some slight
advantages, and of the seventy-five Socialist members of the Chamber of
Deputies, only Guesde voted against it. Even when the Federation of
Labor was conducting a campaign against registration to secure these
"benefits," Jaures's organ, _L'Humanite_ took the other side. The
working people, as usual, followed their unions. Less than 5 per cent
registered; in Paris only 2.5 per cent, and in Brest 22 out of 10,000.

The experience with Millerand and Briand has made it impossible for
Jaures to tie the French Party to "reformism." But reformism has brought
it about that the Party is often split in its votes in the Chamber of
Deputies. In the Party Congresses, however, Jaures is outvoted where a
clear difference arises, an outcome he does his best to avoid. The
Congress of 1911 (at St. Quentin) reaffirmed the international decision
at Amsterdam which prevents the party going in for reform as a part of a
non-Socialist administration. It declared that "Socialists elected to
office are the representatives of a party of fundamental and absolute
opposition to the whole of the capitalist class, and to the State, its
tool." And Vaillant said that since the Amsterdam Congress in 1904 the
question of participation in capitalist ministries had ceased to exist
in France.

It is true that Jaures secured at this Congress, by a narrow majority,
an ind