Modern History
Home > Modern History > Core Study > World War I and its Aftermath 1914 - 1919: A Source-based Study > Peace Movements and World War I: The Stockholm Conference May - July 1917
This tutorial:
- analyses and evaluates the role of key features, issues, individuals, groups and events of selected twentieth-century studies (H1.2)
- Explains forces and ideas and assesses their significance in contributing to change and continuity during the twentieth century (H2.1)
- explains and evaluates differing perspectives and interpretations of the past (H3.4)
From this tutorial you will learn about Peace Movements and World War I.
Introduction
In the previous syllabus the Stockholm Peace conference was listed as one of the major events that created a framework within which to examine the key features, concepts and groups in the study of World War I. Though it is not specifically mentioned in the current syllabus it is still worth studying under the above syllabus outcomes.
The persistent quest by socialist groups in all the belligerent countries to meet together at Stockholm to discuss proposals for ending the war; represented one of a number of serious attempts to end the war in 1917. The socialists who advocated this were simply trying to achieve what the Womens' International Congress had achieved at The Hague in 1915, that is, sit down around the negotiating table and work out some compromise proposals for ending the war that could be taken back to their national leaders for consideration.
The socialists hoped that the very public nature of such a conference would place considerable pressure on their governments to consider a negotiated peace particularly as war weariness had intensified by the end of 1917 due to the disastrous military offensives of that year. Sadly, the United States refused passports for their socialist representatives to go to Stockholm and the Allied governments happily followed President Wilson's example and also refused passports for socialists to go to Stockholm.
The Stockholm Conference
The Stockholm Conference was an attempt by international socialism to end the First World War through negotiation. [1]
From 1889 socialist parties around the world were united in the Second International. The members of the International elected a permanent executive known as the International Socialist Bureau (ISB). In conferences the members of the International pledged to work for peace and to use industrial action in the event of a European war to cripple the military machines of their governments.
The outbreak of the First World War, however, saw a crisis of conscience as the socialists of the Patriotic Right supported their governments' prosecution of the war. Those parties in the Patriotic Right were the SPD (Germany), SFIO (France), Labour Party (Britain) and trade union leaders in these countries.
As war weariness set in during 1917 the Centre 'Minority' socialists in Europe (SFIO 'minority' in France, the USPD in Germany, the ILP and UDC in Britain, and the PSI in Italy) supported moves to restore peace by re-establishing the Second International. Socialists from neutral countries joined this group. A proposal for a conference of socialist parties in Stockholm was put forward by the ISB. A large number of socialists from the Patriotic Right were also interested in attending such a conference.
At the end of May 1917, Russian socialists (Centre Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries), now sharing power with the Provisional Government, put forward their plan for a "peace without annexations and indemnities".
On 22 July Huysmanns, the ISB Secretary, issued an invitation to all socialist parties in Europe and the United States of America to attend an international conference in Stockholm. Meanwhile, Dutch and Scandinavian socialists set up a preparatory committee in Stockholm in anticipation of the conference. On 11 July the Russian socialists decided to join with the ISB, and the combined Russian-Dutch-Scandinavian invitation went out to all socialists parties to attend the conference at Stockholm.
Between May and July 1917 delegations from Austria-Hungary, Germany, the United States and Belgium separately visited the organisers in Stockholm. In June a number of socialists arrived in Stockholm with the aim of coming up with a set of peace terms based on the principles of no annexations and no indemnities. The Russian, Scandinavian and Dutch representatives were the first to arrive, followed soon after by the German, Austrian and Bulgarian delegates. However, no British, French or Italian socialists arrived in Stockholm. [2] The Allied governments had forbidden any of their citizens from attending.
The reason no socialist representatives from Britain, France and Italy came to Stockholm was that their governments refused to allow them to. Each of these governments had been considering allowing socialists from their countries to attend and was afraid of refusing passports because of the industrial unrest it might cause. However, things were made easier for the Allied governments when Wilson refused passports. President Wilson was wary of socialists and saw the Stockholm Conference as a threat to the great crusade that the USA had now embarked on by entering the war on the side of the Allies. On 11 July 1917 Wilson denied passports to the small US socialist party to attend Stockholm. However, a few "Americans", who had been refugees from Tsarist Russia, were able to slip out of the USA and arrive in Sweden.
In Britain, Arthur Henderson, leader of the Labour Party and sole Labour representative in the War Cabinet, recommended to a large Labour conference that they should send a representative to Stockholm. Henderson himself intended to go to Stockholm with ILP (Independent Labour Party) leader Ramsay MacDonald. However, Lloyd George and the War Cabinet were hardened in their resolve to oppose Stockholm after Wilson denied passports. In early August the War Cabinet decided to refuse passports and forced Arthur Henderson to resign. Meanwhile, in France a majority of the SFIO voted to attend Stockholm but the French government refused to issue passports. In Italy the PSI supported immediate peace negotiations and voted to attend the Stockholm Conference. Once again, however, Foreign Minister Sonino refused passports. In Russia the socialists were declining in influence by July 1917 and Kerensky's support of Stockholm appeared to waver though he did not prevent Russian socialists from attending. The Allied Labour and Socialist parties protested at the denial of passports to attend the Stockholm Conference. Furthermore, they accused the patriotic press in their countries of misleading the people into thinking that they were fighting for a worthy cause while in fact they were really fighting a war for imperialist conquest. However, this criticism fell on deaf ears. A separate conference of Allied socialists was convened in London instead.
So a full conference at Stockholm never took place due to the Allied governments' refusal to issue passports to socialists who wished to attend. However, the proposal for a conference at Stockholm was the subject of much discussion and speculation in the press from May to August 1917. Until Wilson refused passports, the prospects for a conference in Stockholm seemed good. Stockholm was still an item of hot debate when the Papal Peace Note was published on 15 August 1917 and tended to overshadow the Vatican peace initiative for some time. The attempts to organise a conference in Stockholm came to nothing after September 1917. Until the end of the year Centre socialists (and many Liberals in Britain and Germany) viewed Stockholm as a great missed opportunity for peace.
The historian Kent Forster commented that the Allied conservative governments "had very neatly nipped in the bud what might have been the climax of the rising tide of leftist opposition to the war". Forster argued that the British, French and American rejection of the Stockholm Conference and the Papal Peace Note "paved the way for the Russian withdrawal from the war."[3]
The following is the full text of the socialist explanation for the failure of the Stockholm Conference.
The Joint Socialist Statement on the Refusal of Passports to Stockholm, 9 September 1917 [4]
The Stockholm Conference, called at the instance of the Russian Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates to discuss and formulate the basis of a democratic and durable peace between the masses of the peoples, has been postponed because the governments of Italy, France, England, and the United States have refused passports to delegates. For this action the American government is largely responsible.
At the entente conference in Paris, it was the Italian government, through Baron Sonnino, which headed the opposition to the Stockholm conference. France also voted no, though the favorable attitude of Petrograd was known. The Russian representative did not vote. England declared herself in favor of allowing Socialists and Labor delegates to go to Stockholm.
There remained only the American government, which practically cast the deciding vote. The American government voted no. We do not understand President Wilson's course of action. When, in the Senate in December, 1916, he addressed the peoples of the world, the Socialists and Labor organizations of Europe supported him with all their strength.[5]
In all Wilson's public utterances it has been made perfectly plain that the main obstacle to American peace with Germany is the German political autocracy, and that America's object in the war is to secure the democratization of the German government.
The Stockholm conference is the best and, perhaps, the only opportunity for the representatives of the entente peoples to make clear to the German masses the conditions upon which peace is possible. And yet President Wilson refuses to allow the delegates of American Socialist and Labor groups to come to Stockholm.
The peoples of the world are sick of war, whatever policy their governments see fit publicly to adopt.
In the invitation to the Stockholm conference and its acceptance by democratic political and economic elements in all the belligerent countries is to be seen the first action of the international masses, growing conscious of their power, awakening to the colossal error of unending war and determination that government shall be of, by and for the Social Democracy.
Notes
- [1] For a detailed account of the Stockholm Conference see David Stevenson, op. cit., pp. 155-162. For a very thorough analysis of the reasons for the failure of Stockholm see Ch. 8, "The Stifling of the Stockholm Conference" in Kent Forster, The Failures of Peace during the First World War, Washington D.C., American Council of Public Affairs, 1941
- [2] Friedrich Ebert (future Weimar President) and Philipp Schiedemann headed the German delegation of nine Social Democrats. They took the conference very seriously and brought with them a proposal drawn up by the party calling for a settlement based on no annexations, indemnities or reparations. Also the SPD proposal called for national self-determination for Belgium, Poland, Finland, Ireland, Egypt, Tripoli, Morocco, India, Tibet and Korea.
- [3] Kent Forster, op. cit., p. 125.
- [4] New York Call, 9 September 1917.
- [5] It is quite amazing to note the degree to which socialists, Liberals, Catholics, trade unions and women's groups (International Women's Conference in the Hague in 1915) supported each others' peace moves. President Wilson inspired all of them with his statements while still a neutral. One can only speculate what would have happened if Wilson, as a neutral, had unified all the peace groups opposed to the war and put real pressure on all the belligerent governments. In 1917, with war weariness evident everywhere, he may have succeeded.
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