The partisans of the Possibilist Paris Congress—the unmistakeable Mr. Smith Hedingley in the Star, Mr. H. Burrows and Mrs.
Besant in the weekly Press—are repeating over and over again
that their Congress was a really representative one, while the
Marxist Congress contained people who represented only themselves, and for that reason dared not accept the challenge of the
Possibilists to show them their credentials. The English delegates
to the Marxist Congress will no doubt seek, and find, an
opportunity to prove the untruth of the charges brought against
them; so we may for the present dismiss that part of the subject,
and merely observe that the Possibilists could hardly offer a
greater insult to the Marxist Congress than to ask it to ignore the
process of the verification of its own credentials, completed as far
back as the second (or third?) day, and to submit their credentials
to a fresh examination; while the Possibilists, in their resolution on
the subject, carefully avoided engaging themselves to an examination of their credentials by the Marxists.

That the above is the correct view of the matter, and that the
Possibilists, much more than the Marxists, had reason to show
their credentials to none but friends, was proved by the
observations of Dr. Adler, in the Marxist Congress, of what he
had learnt about the “Austrian” Possibilist delegates. As the thing
is characteristic of the way in which the Possibilists manufactured
truly representative delegates, it deserves reproduction.

In the Possibilist list of delegates we find under “Austria” the
following bodies represented: — “Bakers Union of Vienna,” “Federation of Upper Austria and Salzburg,” “Federation of Working-
men of Bohemia-Moravia, and Silesia.”» Now Dr. Adler, who has

Possibilist Credentials 543

during the last three years, with wonderful energy, tact, and
perseverance, reorganised the Socialist movement in Austria, and
who knows every workmen’s society in every town in Austria, told
the Congress that these various societies, whatever may be their
other merits, have one fatal defect: they do not exist.

When it became known in Paris that the Marxist Congress had
met on the Sunday, and that there were delegates from Austria,
there came to it on the Monday two Austrians and saw Dr. Adler.
They told him they were bakers, for some time past working in
Paris; that a Hungarian baker, of the name of Dobosy, had
engaged them as “delegates” for a workingmen’s congress; was
this the same congress? Adler questioned them and found out that
they were engaged for the Possibilist Congress, for which they had
cards of membership; that they had told the people who had
engaged them that they represented absolutely nobody but
themselves, that they were told that did not matter, Austria being
a despotic country, regular credentials were not required; that
they now found the true Austrian delegates were at the other
Congress; what were they to do? The Austrian delegates told them
they had no business to play at delegates at any Congress. Well,
they arranged for another interview. They came again a day or
two after, assisted at the meeting of the Marxist Congress, and
then declared they saw themselves they must get out of this false
position, but how? They were told to return their credentials.
They had none. Then return your cards of membership. This
they promised to do, and returned to say they had done so.

This is a sample of what the Possibilists and their English
partisans call “strictly representative.” And the imposing list of
Hungarian societies with names so well hidden under misprints
that only with a few of them is the pretended locality recognizable,
are, according to the true Hungarian delegates at the Marxist
Congress, equally non-existent outside the wonderland of Possibilist fancy. Indeed, the concoction here is too flagrant. “Circles of
Social Study and Federation of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia,
Trieste, and Fiume’”—this pompous title bears the stamp of its
Parisian origin too conspicuously. And to think that behind all this
there are not even the—three tailors of Tooley Street! *?

We are further told that it is absolutely false that the Possibilist
Congress was a mere Trades Unions Congress. Mr. Herbert
Burrows is quite indignant at such a calumny; with the exception
of a few English Trades Unionists “the whole of the delegates”
were revolutionary Socialists, and as such represented their
respective societies. Well, to give but one example, what does El

Socialista, of Madrid (26th July) say of the Spanish Possibilist
delegates? That “they say they represent 20,000 Socialists, when
they are but delegates of societies in which there is room for the
Carlist**’ as well as for the revolutionary Socialist” —entirely
non-political clubs, in fact, what is called, in England, Trades
Unions.