INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONFERENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8514, 20 August 1907, Page 5

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONFERENCE.

Received August 19, 9.34 p.m. BERLIN, August 19. Nine hundred delegates, representing twenty-five nationalities, attended the International Socialist Conference at Stuttgart. The United States sent 21, Germany 300, Britain 130 including 59 representatives of the Social Democratic Federation, 38 representatives of the Labour Party, 16 representatives of the Fabian Society, six Trade Unions representatives, and two Labour Party representatives. South Africa and Australia were also represented. Herr Bebel, on rising to address the inaugural meeting in the Liederhalle, which was draped in red, was received with frantic enthusiasm, and cheered for fully two minutes. He reviewed the progress of the movement, claiming that much progress had been made in France, Finland, Austria, Holland and Switzerland. Continuing, he said that though the number of Socialist seats in the Reichstag had been reduced, the party had gained a quarter of a million more votes than at the last : election. So royalty had failed to ride down social democracy. He re- ; joiced at the brilliant acquittal of William Haywood, from scandalous prosecution by the capitalist classes in connection with the murder of Steunenberg, a for;r.er Governor uf Idaho. He hoped the Socialist Conference would do better than The Hague Conference, which was destined to bring forth a most ridiculous still-born mouse.

Herr Ringer was elected President. The first plenary sitting' will be held on Tuesday. A hundred thousand persons attended a mass meeting in the fields at Cannstalt, a suburb of Stuttgart. The meeting was quite orderly, though speeches that were delivered by Herrs Rebel and Ringer and others inspired immense enthusiasm.