"We didn't fail; socialism did. Europe's socialist leaders - the ones on whom we had counted - did indeed oppose the war, although none of them dared call the general strike they had committed themselves to at the 1911 Vienna Congress. But even if they had, it would have made no difference. The proletarian masses, that great powerful force for peace and brotherhood, everywhere ignited like tinder in a patriotic firestorm. You know, he went on sadly, "It's popular now to blame the diplomats and the businessmen for World War I, and they were reckless. But the ones who really wanted war were the great Socialist masses. They whupped it up. They brought about the 'total immersion' of Europe that Jaures had warned -and that was the end of Socialism.

Of course you'll tell me that there are more socialism voters around in Europe these days than there were before 1914. But then socialism was based on hope and not on numbers. Now it is based on envy. That unspeakable clown down in Rome (Ed: Mussolini), understands this. Before the war he was the most militant Socialist and always tried to make up to us and get our people to write for his newspaper. At that Vienna Congress of 1911 he was the firebrand who promised to deliver 'the revolution' should war come to Europe. But then he saw what really happened- and he understood, I'm afraid. to be sure, socialists here in Austria, and those in Germany and France, and the labor party in England are decent enough chaps; I prefer them to the clericals and priests who now rule us here in Austria. Indeed, if I had been in a visible position in the civi service as the one your father held, I would have resigned with him when the Monsignors took over the Austrian government two years ago. But still, that's all the socialists are today - decent chaps who won't do any good or too much harm by timidity and stupidity. But if Socialism really should come to power anywhere in Europe from now on, it will either be a tyranny like the ones you see it Russia and Italy, of it will be a government by chief clerks and paper pushers. The dream is gone. ...."

"But wheather Traun-Trauneck exeggerated his own role- and his own guilt is beside the point. For socialism did indeed die with the guns of August of 1914 when the socialist masses rejected proletarian solidarity and enthusiastically embraced nationalism and fratricidal war instead. It was not the end of Marxism as a theology; theologies do outlive faith. It was not the end of socialism as a political force. But it was the end of Socialism as a dream - at least for a generation, if not forever. Since then power has won in every conflict between the promise of socialism and the reality of power; since then, above all, nationalism has won in every conflict between the promise of socialism and the passion of nationalism. Again and again some dreamers of the earlier dream- the best known is the American Michael Harrington - appeal to the original vision and declare that the reality of Socialism is an unnecessary and deplorable perversion of the true faith. But to no avail. This explains why Socialism has been intellectually sterile since 1914. Earlier the ablest minds of Europe had wrestled with the intellectual promises and problems of Socialism. Since 1914, only one truly first-rate mind in Europe has concerned himself with Socialism at all; the Italian Antonio Garamasci, who could maintain his prewar innocence because Mussolinio kept him imprisoned and thus protected him from exposure to reality.

The socialist parties in Europe did have the votes the period between the two world wars. But that was all they had- and it did not make the slightest difference. For they no longer had vision, belief, commitment, creed, or credence. ..."