aures and
Vandervelde are striving to compromise, just as far as they will be
allowed to do so. There is thus always a possibility of splits and
desertions in these countries, but none that the party will abandon the
revolutionary path.

The tactics of the Italian "reformists" were immensely clarified at the
Congress of Modena (October, 1911). For the question of supporting a
non-Socialist ministry and of participating in it was made still more
acute by the government's war against Tripoli, while the Bissolati case
above mentioned was also for the first time before a national Party
Congress. Nearly all Socialists had opposed the war, as had also many
non-Socialists--but after war was declared, the majority of the
Socialist members of Parliament voted against the general twenty-four
hours' strike that was finally declared as a demonstration against it.
This majority had finally decided to support the strike only after it
was declared by a _unanimous_ vote of the executive of the Federation of
Labor, and then its chief anxiety had been lest the strike go too far.
The revolutionary minority in the parliamentary group, however, which
had consisted of only two at the time of the Bissolati affair, was now
increased to half a dozen of the thirty-odd members, while the
revolutionary opposition to "reformism" in the Modena Congress, as a
result of these two issues, rose to more than 40 per cent of the
delegates.

At this Congress the reformists were divided into three groups,
represented by Bissolati, Turati, and Modigliani. All agreed that it was
necessary not only to vote for certain reforms--to this the
revolutionists are agreed--but also at certain times to vote for the
whole budget and to support the administration. Modigliani, however,
declared (against Bissolati) that no Socialist could _ever_ become a
member of a capitalist ministry; Turati, that while this principle held
true at the present stage of the movement, he would not bind himself as
to the future; while Bissolati was unwilling to make any pledge on this
question. As Bissolati did not propose, however, that the Socialists
should take part in the present ministry _at the present moment_, this
question was not an immediate issue. What had to be decided was
whether, in order to hasten and facilitate the introduction of universal
suffrage and other social reforms, the government is to be supported at
the present moment--when it is waging a war of colonial conquest