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Hjalmar Branting

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"HJALMAR BRANTING (1860-), Swedish statesman, was born in 1860. As a student he seemed at first destined for a scientific career. He early devoted himself to astronomy and for a period he acted as junior official in the observatory of Stockholm. His keen interest in political and social questions, however, soon drew him into journalism and into active politics, and he threw in his lot with the then small group of Social Democrats in Sweden. In 1886 he assumed control of the weekly journal Socialdemokraten, their leading organ, which later was converted into a daily. In 1888 he was condemned to a short term of imprisonment on account of his articles. He was elected a member of the Second Chamber of the Riksdag in 1896. An able speaker and tactician, he exercised in Sweden an influence proportionate to the growing numbers of his supporters. He joined the Eden Government in the autumn of 1917 as finance minister, and when this ministry fell in 1920 Branting became prime minister and formed an entirely Social-Democratic administration which, however, resigned office in the autumn of the same year ( see Sweden). Meanwhile he had played an important role in international labour politics. He acted as representative of Swedish Social Democracy at all the congresses of the First International, and in the summer of 1917 he was chairman of the Dutch-Scandinavian delegation which sat in Stockholm and conferred in turn with delegations from the Socialist parties of most of the belligerent countries with a view to devising a platform for joint intervention by them in the interests of peace, the moving power being Camille Huysmans, the secretary to the International. Their efforts were unavailing. In Jan. and Feb. 1919 Branting was chairman of the International Social-Democratic Conference in Berne, at which British, French and Germans met for the first time since the war. He was a member of the executive committee of the Second International, which later .sat in London with Mr. Henderson as its chairman. He had taken an active part in most of the Scandinavian workmen's congresses since 1886; and at the ninth congress in Copenhagen in 1920 he introduced the question of " democracy and dictatorship," the debate on which ended with the passing of a resolution by a solid majority, representing up to 800,000 organized workmen, against a small Norwegian minority, disapproving of the Bolshevik policy and adhering to the Second International.

Branting took a warm interest in the claim of the inhabitants of the Aland Is. to be allowed to decide the permanent position of the islands by means of a plebiscite, and he represented Sweden in this matter at the first attempt in Paris in 1919 to secure a decision from the Supreme Council, at the consideration of the problem by the Council of the League of Nations in London in July 1920, in Paris in Sept. 1920, and at Geneva in July 1921 (as Sweden's leading delegate). He was Sweden's leading delegate also at the first meeting of the League of Nations at Geneva in Dec. 1920 and chairman of the sixth commission which dealt with the questions of disarmament, of blockade and of mandates. He was elected by the Council a member of the " Commission temporaire pour la reduction des armements," for the carrying-out of which the commission made an appeal.