as Vice-Chairman, although Germany was foremost in the number of organized workers.
The representatives of Austrian trade unions perfectly understood the political significance of this fact. They understood that the allies of Germany in the war should also be its allies at Amsterdam, therefore, the Austrian trade unionists reacted to this with a purely coalitionist diplomatic solution of the problem. When one of the positions of Vice-Chairman was offered to the leader of the Austrian unions, Huber, he refused it and made the following statement: "Together with our German comrades we suffered until now; together with them we will suffer in the future."
These incidents, at the birth of the Amsterdam International, throw a curious light not only upon the structure of the International itself. These nationalistic contradictions and altercations of that period appeared also at later times, within the last couple of years, and by this time are leading to the dissolution of those organizations which were supposed to resurrect the traditions of the pre-war world labor movement.
If we will take all the decisions of this First Congress, we will find nothing of importance, except, for a few moments where they dealt with the International Labor Bureau. It is true there were attempts to talk about socialization. As you all know, 1919 was a year of budding "socialization" ideas and projects; but, about that, was more, talk in November 1920 at the London Congress. At the First Congress the participants were glad of the fact that they succeeded in spite of the national contradictions in creating the International.
A question arises: If the national contradictions were so great that they could not be overcome, which is proven by the report of the Congress, why did they create such an international at all? The reason for it is that they had to create an international, otherwise they would have lost all influence over the workers. They had to create this International at any cost, because, right after the war, even the most backward laboring masses demanded some kind of an international organization which would prevent or interfere with any repetition of the events they had just been through. The need for it was very great. Therefore, the nationalistic and patriotic leaders would have been thrown aside if they would have dared to interfere with the formation of an international labor organization.
The creation of the International was dictated, therefore, by the feelings of self-preservation of the reformist leaders, as well as by an attempt on an international scale to influence those institutions which were created as a result of the Versailles Peace.
