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The "reformists," led by Turati, were of the opinion merely that the time was not yet ripe for the action Bissolati had contemplated. But the grounds given in the resolution proposed by Turati on this occasion show that it was not on principle that he went even this far.
It was only when Bissolati secured a majority of the Socialist deputies, and this majority decided to compel the minority to accept Bissolati's neutral tactics as to the war and his readiness actively to support the war government at every point where that government was in need of support, that Turati rebelled and demanded that his minority, which announced itself as willing as a unit to obey the decisions of the Party Congress, should be recognized as its official representative in the Chamber.
That is, the "reformist" Turati denied that there is anything Socialistic about Bissolati's "ultra-reformist" faction. To this Bissolati answered that compromise and the political collaboration of the working people with other classes, was not to be reserved, as Turati had said, for accidental and extraordinary cases, but was "the very essence of the reformist method."
But in the face of all criticism Bissolati announced that he refused absolutely to pass over to the opposition to the ministry of Giolitti. Turati and his followers, now in control of the Party, might tolerate this position; the large and growing revolutionary minority would not.
There is thus always a possibility of splits and desertions in these countries, but none that the party will abandon the revolutionary path. For the question of supporting a non-Socialist ministry and of participating in it was made still more acute by the government's war against Tripoli, while the Bissolati case above mentioned was also for the first time before a national Party Congress.
Far from condemning Bissolati, the group of Socialist deputies passed a resolution that expressed satisfaction with his conduct and even appointed him to speak in their name at the opening of the new Parliament. All the deputies save two then voted confidence in the new ministry and approbation of its program.
In other words, as in France, the working people, especially those in the unions, will not tolerate a further advance in the reformist direction, but Turati and Bissolati, like Jaurès and Vandervelde are striving to compromise, just as far as they will be allowed to do so.
If only Lloyd George and Bissolati had had their way, and these reinforcements had been sent a few months earlier, if only we had been able to put a British Army Corps, with its full complement of aircraft, guns and shells, against the Hermada, if only we had had half a dozen tanks to send down the Vippacco Valley, what a different story there would have been to tell!
As Bissolati did not propose, however, that the Socialists should take part in the present ministry at the present moment, this question was not an immediate issue.
At Rome two thirds of the Socialist delegates voted a resolution condemning the action of Bissolati as "the direct and logical consequence of the thought, program, and practical action of the reformist group," and reproved both the proposal of immediate participation in a capitalist government and "the theoretical encouragement of such a possibility" as being opposed to all sound and consistent Socialist activity.
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