Secretary of the Second International from 1905 to 1922 who kept its Bureau alive in the war and later became Belgian prime minister
A Flemish teacher and journalist, he was secretary of the International Socialist Bureau from 1905 to 1922. When war came he moved the Bureau to the neutral Netherlands, tried to bring the belligerent parties back together and prepared the Stockholm conference of 1917. Between the wars he was a Belgian deputy and education minister; in the Second World War he fled to London and again served as the International’s secretary. He was prime minister of Belgium in 1946–1947.