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Almost at the same time as the Government at Vienna was making the peace moves which I have described above, there started an important international movement which was prolonged until the autumn of 1917. It caused much agitation in European public opinion, and it undoubtedly produced a number of results which were beneficial to our cause. I am referring to the attempt to summon a congress of the Second International at Stockholm in the summer or autumn of 1917.
At the beginning of 1917, the remaining members of the Central Executive Committee of the Second Intemational, joined by the Swedes, Danes, and Dutch (also the Belgian deputy Huysmans), formed a Dutch-Scandinavian Socialist Committee. This committee, with a view to bringing about the speedy end of the war, addressed a special questionnaire to all the Socialist parties which before the war had been members of the Second International. The questionnaire contained three fundamental queries:
1. Do the parties desire the re-establishment of the International?
2. Are they willing to attend an international Socialist conference?
3. Under what conditions would it be possible, in their opinion, to arrive at peace overtures and the end of the war?
In the Allied States all the Governments were unanimously opposed to the undertaking of the Dutch-Scandinavian Committee. The possible consequences which it involved were against the Allied interests, needs, and plans at that time. It was a source of menace to the Allies because it aimed at bringing about peace during a period when their military position was unfavourable. On the other hand, the whole of the circumstances under which it was being held fitted in more or less with the situation of the Central Powers. Czernin, who neglected no opportunity for promoting his efforts towards a speedy peace, realized that in this particular instance he would do well to make use of the Social Democratic parties of the Central Powers. In this he succeeded to a very large extent with the Austro-Hungarian Socialists, and partially also with the Germans.
As it happened, this scheme was a considerable advantage
