James Connolly

INTERNATIONALISM

From The Harp, 1908-1910:  HARP STRINGS (January,1908)

LET no Irishman throw a stone at the foreigner;  he may hit his own clansman.  Let no foreigner revile the Irish;  he may be vilifying his own stock.

Talking of France. What do you think of the comments upon the recent proceedings of the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, especially upon the militarist resolution?  I mean the resolution of the French delegate, Hervé, calling upon the soldiers to mutiny or desert in case of war in order to prevent the capitalist class from again uselessly shedding the blood of the workers in murderous wars.

The comments of some American Socialists upon it have been, to say the least, more interesting than instructive.  I read the other day where one leading American Socialist said that the militarist question was one of those which we considered settled in America, and could not come up for discussion in our locals though it was a live question still in Europe, the inference being that we were so much ahead of Europe on that question.  But are we?

Almost all the speakers and writers of the same party as he whom I have quoted agree with the Hervé resolution, or think they do!  I think they only think they do.  For I do not recall that, when the United States and Spain went to war, that any organised body of Socialists in America called upon the United States soldiers to mutiny or desert.

The most they did was to pass academic resolutions on the causes of the war;  resolutions such as the most reformist body of Socialists in Europe would have passed without a dissenting voice.

And I am quite sure that, if the United States and Japan were to go to war next year, there would not be the smallest possibility of getting the National Conventions of either the SP [Socialist Party of America, ed.] or SLP [Socialist Labor Party] to pass a resolution in favour of an active campaign to induce the United States soldiers to mutiny or desert.

Why, then, talk of this as a settled question in America, and inferentially condemn those who objected to the wording of the Hervé resolution?  If that resolution was put, not as a general proposition, but as a concrete one in the sense I have just spoken of (a war between the United States and Japan), we would soon find out whether it was or not a settled question.

The conflict between the French delegate and the Germans was not a conflict between revolution and reaction.  The Germans, all criticisms to the contrary notwithstanding, are not reactionary.  It was a conflict between the French method of doing things and the German method.

The German is cool, cautious, patient, given to analyse all the results of his words before uttering them, is determined and never recedes from a vantage ground once gained.  And the German Socialist is the incarnation of the German spirit.  He does not shrink from the idea of a fight, but he is resolved to fight in his own manner and, above all, in his own time.  Hence he will adopt no resolution that might allow his enemies to fix the time and condition of the final struggle.

The French, on the other hand, are ardent, enthusiastic, optimistic, ready to sacrifice their all for a principle, recking little of consequences when a truth is at stake, and willing at all times to face a world in arms for a righteous cause.

As the Irish poet finely says:

“Like the tigress of the Deluge as she heard the waters seethe, And sprang onto the topmost peak, her cubs between her teeth; So stood Red France, so stands Red France, her head bared to the sleet, With Paris girdled to her heart and Freedom at her feet.”

I consider that both French and German are earnestly and determinedly revolutionary.  But they do things different ways.  And one is needed as a check upon the other.

And American Socialists do not help the matter by adopting the Pharasaical attitude of thanking God we are not as these people.”

Labour Comment Note:  Although the lines are famously quoted by Connolly in his 1908 essay, “Harp Strings”, he introduces them by saying, “As the Irish poet finely says”. 

Connolly was referring to William James Linton, an English-born wood-engraver and poet who was deeply involved in radical politics and the Chartist movement.  Linton was an ardent supporter of Irish independence and the revolutionary movements in France, which is why Connolly—and many others in the Irish socialist tradition—adopted his work as part of their own literary heritage. 

The quatrain describes the resilience of revolutionary France:

Like the tigress of the Deluge as she heard the waters seethe,

And sprang onto the topmost peak, her cubs between her teeth;

So stood Red France, so stands Red France, her head bared to the sleet,

With Paris girdled to her heart and Freedom at her feet.

Like the tigress of the Deluge as she heard the waters seethe,
And sprang onto the topmost peak, her cubs between her teeth;
So stood Red France, so stands Red France, her head bared to the sleet,
With Paris girdled to her heart and Freedom at her feet.

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