The strike has spread to South Africa and New Zealand
and it has been felt here specially at Southampton and Avonmouth. The Port of London has been less affected. Behind all this there are, as we have pointed out elsewhere, minds which are working for general chaos in the ultimate interests of an international unity about some impossible doctrine. The Trade Unions, we repeat, can end the danger quickly if they will. They have to choose between sober leaders like Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Clynes, and Mr. J. H. Thomas and fanatics who will lead them into a morass, peopled by the demons of war, suffering, and want. The extremists arc fewer and much less powerful than they seem. Many events of the week show that the united front of which the dreamers dream is not really possible. The recent Socialist conferences have hardly been able to agree upon any single common principle, and both in France and Germany the Communists have been rebuffed. Mr. A. J. Cook has visited Berlin and, as we learn from the Morning Post, has scolded the Socialists there for their backwardness, but did not get at all an encouraging reception. In France the Confederation Generale du Travail has just banned the Communists.
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