In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s 
Association, of November, 1864, we said: —“If the emancipation of 
the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are 
they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of 
criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices and squander- 
ing in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure?” * We 
defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these 
words: “Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which 
ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the laws 
paramount of the intercourse of nations.” 

No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped his power by 
exploiting the war of classes in France, and perpetuated* it by 
periodical wars abroad, should from the first have treated the 
International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of the plebiscite he 
ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative Committees 
of the International Working Men’s Association throughout 
France, at Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the 
pretext that the International was a secret society dabbling in a 
complot for his assassination, a pretext soon after exposed in its 
full absurdity by his own judges.* What was the real crime of the 
French branches of the International? They told the French 
people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite was 
voting despotism at home and war abroad.‘ It has been, in fact, 
their work that in all the great towns, in all the industrial centres 

of France, the working class rose like one man to reject the 
plebiscite. Unfortunately the balance was turned by the heavy 
ignorance of the rural districts. The Stock Exchanges, the 
Cabinets, the ruling classes and the press of Europe celebrated the 
plebiscite as a signal victory of the French Emperor over the 
French working class; and it was the signal for the assassination, 
not of an individual, but of nations. 

The war plot of July, 1870, is but an amended edition of the 
coup d’état of December, 1851.° At first view the thing seemed so 
absurd that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It 
rather believed the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as 
a mere stock-jobbing trick.* When, on July 15th, war was at last 
officially announced to the Corps Législatif,? the whole opposition 
refused to vote the preliminary subsidies, even Thiers branded it 
as “detestable” ‘; all the independent journals of Paris condemned 
it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined in almost 
unanimously. 

Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again 
set to work. In the Réveil of July 12th they published their 
manifesto “to the workmen of all nations”, from which we extract 
the following few passages: 

“Once more,” they say, “on the pretext of the European equilibrium, of 
national honour, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions. French, 
German, Spanish workmen! Let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation against 
war!... War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty, can, in the eyes of 
workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In answer to the warlike 
proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the impost of blood, and find 
in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who want 
peace, labour and liberty!... Brothers of Germany! Our division would only result 
in the complete triumph of despotism on both sides of the Rhine.... Workmen of all 
countries! Whatever may for the present become of our common efforts, we, the 
members of the International Working Men’s Association, who know of no 
frontiers, we send you as a pledge of indissoluble solidarity the good wishes and 
the salutations of the workmen of France.” 

This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous 
similar French addresses, of which we can here only quote the 
declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in the Marseillaise of 
July 22nd: 

No. 3427, July 17, 1870.— Ed. 

©‘ A. Thiers’ speech in the Corps Législatif on July 15, 1870, Le Temps, 
No. 3426, July 16, 1870.— Ed. 

“The war, is it just?e—No! The war, is it national?—No! It is merely dynastic. 
In the name of humanity, of democracy, and the true interests of France, we 
adhere completely and energetically to the protestation of the International against 
the war.” ? 

These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French 
working people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The 
Band of the 10th of December, first organised under the presidency 
of Louis Bonaparte, having been masqueraded into blouses and let 
loose on the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of 
war fever,* the real workmen of the Faubourgs came forward with 
public peace demonstrations so overwhelming that Piétri, the 
Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to at once stop all further 
street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people had given 
sufficient vent to their pent up patriotism and exuberant war 
enthusiasm.‘ 

Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte’s war with 
Prussia, the death knell of the Second Empire has already 
sounded at Paris. It will end as it began, by a parody. But let us 
not forget that it is the Governments and the ruling classes of 
Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during eighteen 
years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire. 

On the German side, the war is a war of defence, but who put 
Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled 
Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck 
who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte for the 
purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and annexing 
Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had 
been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have 
overrun Germany as the allies of Prussia.” After her victory did 
Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an 
enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all 
the native beauties of her old system, she superadded all the tricks 
of the Second Empire, its real despotism and its mock democrat- 
ism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk 
and its low légerdemains. The Bonapartist regime, which till then 
only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its 

counterfeit on the other. From such a state of things, what else 
could result but war? 

If the German working class allow the present war to lose its 
strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against 
the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous. All 
the miseries that befell Germany after her* war of independence 
will revive with accumulated intensity. 

The principles of the International are, however, too widely 
spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to 
apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the French 
workmen have re-echoed from Germany. A mass meeting of 
workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16th, expressed its full 
concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national 
antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these 
words: 

“We are enemies of all wars, but above all of dynastic wars.... With deep sorrow 
and grief we are forced to undergo a defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we 
call, at the same time, upon the whole German working class to render the 
recurrence of such an immense social misfortune impossible by vindicating for the 
peoples themselves the power to decide on peace and war, and making them 
masters of their own destinies.” 

At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates representing 50,000 Saxon 
workers adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect’: 

“In the name of the German Democracy, and especially of the workmen 
forming the Democratic Socialist Party, we declare the present war to be exclusively 
dynastic.... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the 
workmen of France.... Mindful of the watchword of the International Working 
Men’s Association: Proletarians of all countries, unite, we shall never forget that the 
workmen of all countries are our friends and the despots of all countries our 
enemies.” © 

The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the 
Paris manifesto: 

“We,” they say, “join with heart and hand your protestation.... Solemnly we 
promise that neither the sound of the trumpet, nor the roar of the cannon, neither 
victory nor defeat shall divert us from our common work for the union of the 
children of toil4 of all countries.” 

5 “Politische Uebersicht”, Der Volksstaat, No. 58, July 20, 1870.— Ed. 

July 31, 1870.— Ed. 

Marseillaise, No. 153, July 22, 1870.— Ed. 

Be it so! 

In the background of this suicidal strife looms the dark figure 
of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war 
should have been given at the moment when the Moscovite 
Government had just finished its strategical lines of railway and 
was already massing troops in the direction of the Pruth. 
Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of 
defence against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at once 
by allowing the Prussian Government to call for, or accept, the 
help of the Cossacks. Let them remember that, after their war of 
independence against the first Napoleon, Germany lay for 
generations prostrate at the feet of the Czar. 

The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the 
French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced 
that whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the 
alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill 
war. The very fact that while official France and Germany are 
rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and 
Germany send each other messages of peace and goodwill*; this 
great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista 
of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with 
its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is 
springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its 
national ruler will be everywhere the same— Labour! The Pio- 
neer of that new society is the International Working Men’s 
Association.” 

The Genera] Council: 

Applegarth, Robert Lessner, Fred. 

Boon, Martin J. Lintern, W. 
Bradnick, Fred. Legreulier ; 

Stepney, Cowell Maurice Zevy 

Hales, John Milner, George 
Hales, William Mottershead, Thomas 
Harris, George Murray, Charles 

Odger, George Shepherd, Joseph 
Parnell, James Stoll 

Pfander Schmutz 

Rihl Townshend, W. 

Corresponding Secretaries: 

Eugene Duponi, for France 

Karl Marx, for Germany 

A. Serraillier, for Belgium, Holland and Spain 
Hermann Jung, for Switzerland 

Giovanni Bora, for Italy 

Anton Zabicki, for Poland 

James Cohen, for Denmark 

J. G. Eccarius, for United States 

Benjamin Lucraft, Chairman 
John Weston, Treasurer 
J. George Eccarius, General Secretary 

Office: 256, High Holborn, W.C., 
July 23rd, 1870