by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The news and headlines  from The Daily Capital Journal:

GRAND DUKE MAKES THE ALLIES WORRY; WILL RUSSIA QUIT
Says; “Victory in Poland Permits Our Troops to Turn to Other Tasks”
MAY LEAVE ALLIES TO FIGHT GERMANY
While Russia Turns Her Attention to Turks and Capture of Constantinople

RUSSIAN ADVANCE REMARKABLY SWIFT
Both German and Austrian Lines of Communication Are Cut

AUSTRIANS CUT OFF
Petrograd Dispatch Says the Czar’s Troops Are Ten Miles Across Border
EXPECT TO CAPTURE BRESLAU AND CRACOW
Germans and Austrians Suffer from Lack of Winter Clothing

STORY OF THE WAR AS TOLD BY WIRES FROM ALL POINTS
Allies Declare Germans Have Made Their Supreme Attempt and Lost
ALLIES WORRIED BY RUSSIAN STATEMENT
Reported Turkish and Russian Fleets Are Looking for Each Other

The attempts of workers to organize into trade unions was a struggle that did not recognize national boundaries. It was an uphill struggle in which workers found themselves in adversarial relationships, not only with their employers, but with the state as well. Laboring people and the organizations to which they belonged recognized a sense of solidarity that transcended national boundaries. This sense of worker solidarity held as an ideal that workers, loyal to their common cause, would not fight each other in the event of war. In Europe, planning for war contemplated the possibility that the state would have to suppress its workers. Labor parties were not expected to support the war. This concern proved groundless. The international labor movement, The Second International, which had advocated for worker solidarity above national loyalty, was not able to translate that sentiment into action. Labor organizations in the United States did propose a world without war:

FEDERATED LABOR SUGGESTS SOCIETY TO END ALL WARS
Only When Society Realizes Human Life Is Sacred Will War Cease
WAR’S GREATEST BURDEN FALLS ON TOILERS
Convention Represents More Than Two Million American Workingmen

Philadelphia, Nov. 9 – The formation of an international society for the prevention of war was urged by the executive council of the American Federation of Labor in its annual report to the convention representing 2,027,671 members of the allied organizations here today.

Convinced that the greatest burdens of the European war are falling on the shoulders of toilers, the council declared:

“The working people, the masses of the world’s population, can end all wars if they but have the independence to think and to give their convictions reality by daring to do so. Wars will cease only when society is convinced that human life is really sacred and when society establishes agencies, international as well as national, for protecting lives.”