Powerful Stuff, Vodka

Russia's 36 delegates to the World Trade Union Congress in London (TIME, Feb. 19) gave a party at the Savoy Hotel last week. It was a whopper.

The Russians invited 300 guests; 400 came. Sir Walter Citrine, Sidney Hillman, Vasili Kuznetsov and other bigwigs sat at a special table. Murmured a guest, noting that these dignitaries seemed to get more vodka than the rest: "It's almost undemocratic."

Sir Walter had dropped in for a few minutes, stayed two hours. Only four of the Russians spoke English. But they all circulated, smiled, drank with a will. Madam Ellen Shulga, Moscow's senior woman delegate, was in the brown "art-silk" dress she had worn all week.

An Englishman set about teaching Sidney Hillman some songs--first Land of My Fathers, then The Lambeth Walk. Soon everybody was dancing the Lambeth Walk. Burbled C.I.O.'s Allan Haywood when the party was over:

"Say, boy, that Lambeth Walk has done more than any of our resolutions to cement international friendship."

The vodka helped.

Toward a New International. Russia and the C.I.O. won the biggest battle of the conference. At their last session the delegates voted to establish a new international labor federation, scrap the 26-year-old International Federation of Trade Unions.

This decision was an outright defeat for Britain's delegation, a setback for the A.F. of L. (which boycotted the London conference because it let in the Russians and the C.I.O.). The old, conservative I.F.T.U. suits the old, conservative A.F. of L. and such like-minded British unionists as Sir Walter Citrine, Britain's counterpart of William Green. As a sop to Sir Walter, who headed the British delegation and led the fight against a new international, the victors agreed to give I.F.T.U. a lingering death.

Instead of scrapping I.F.T.U, and setting up the new organization right away, the London conference instructed a committee to draft the new charter, convene another world labor congress this year. Then, with or without A.F. of L., the battle may be fought out again.

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