632 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 633 the exploited classes, even on peace terms, is impossible. The delegations of the capitalist countries will not and cannot include real representatives of the working class.
Samuel Gompers, the anti Socialist, is the victim of the socialist epidemic that has spread through all European workingclass movements.
VICTOR ADLER The years of war have taken their toll in the international socialist movement not only from among the young. During these last five years the socialist movements of France, England and Austria have lost their best and foremost leaders, Jaurès, Keir Hardie and Victor Adler, men whom the working class could ill afford to miss at any time; their loss at such a crisis, when their counsel was so sorely needed, made its trials doubly hard to bear.
Nowhere in the entire International has the movement of a country been more inextricably associated with the name of a single man than was that of Austria with its Victor Adler. physician by profession, Adler had always keenly felt the inequality of the struggle that was being fought by the men, women and children of the poor against terrible conditions, in the factory and the home. This interest in the unfortunates of his country led him to take up an intensive study of factory legislation, and he tried, in order to put the knowledge he had gained to some practical use, to receive an appointment as factory inspector from the government of Vienna. The rejection of his application for this position because of the place that he already occupied in the labor movement, made him realize that better conditions for the working class must be won not through but against its capitalist exploiters, and Victor Adler thenceforward devoted himself whole heartedly and unselfishly to the cause of labor, Adler came into the socialista movement of his country at a time when it most needed a leader who understood its principles and aims. Torn into national groups which reflected the national struggles that threatened the very existence of the Austrian monarchy, the working class was wasting its energies in a struggle between the factions and groups of its own movement.
His tireless efforts to reconcile these antagonisms gained for him the name, the great compromiser, a role that Victor Adler played throughout his career. He was always the buffer, always the intermediary, between the various nationalistic groups at first, and later between the conservative and the radical elements of the movement.
Adler extraction and profession always inclined him toward the opportunistic wing that was particularly strong and influential in Austria. The physician in him was tortured by the misfortune and misery he saw on every hand and was impelled, sometimes at the expense of our revolutionary aims, to support every measure that would ameliorate these conditions, often to oppose revo lutionary tactics when they seemed to threaten the success of immediate reforms. But in spite of this, Adler was always a Socialist in the largest and best sense of that word, a great man, intellectually better fitted than any of those who to day lead the European proletariat, to stand at the head of his class.
This same tendency toward overemphasis of the importance of reform measures gained under a capitalist government led Adler, when first the war broke out, to cast his lot with the nationalist elements in the socialist movements of Germany and Austria. Though he was far removed from the position taken by the Scheidemanns and Davids of Germany and the Renners and Seitz in his own party, he was never in complete sympathy with the small group of revolutionary radicals to which his son, Friedrich Adler, belonged. The shooting of Count Stürghk by his son was a double blow to him, because he was incapable of understanding the motives that prompted this desperate act.
In Victor Adler the International loses one of its pioneers and real statesmen. That this man should become Minister of Foreign Affairs of the German Austrian Republic, after a life of untold labors and sacrifices for the proletariat, was a fitting climax to the career of the noblest and kindest among the Socialists of the old school.
L,