International: Peace & the Working Class

In London's handsome County Council Chambers, overlooking the Thames River, 240 trade-union delegates from 45 Allied and neutral countries, claiming to represent 50,000,000 workers, met for the first international labor congress in six years. The war was being won. In a dozen different tongues, labor was eager to say what it wanted from the postwar world.

The Big Three—the U.S., Britain, Russia—dominated the polyglot gathering. The Soviet Union (in numbers at least) dominated the Big Three. Russia had sent a team of 36 delegates, plus nine "advisers and interpreters," to London.

The chief of its delegation (which included seven women) was...

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