Dear Kugelmann,

You must explain my long silence by the fact that during the war, which has taken most of the foreign correspondents of the General Councit to France, I have had to conduct practically the entire international correspondence, which is no trifle. Apart from that, with the ‘postal freedom’ prevailing now in Germany and particularly in the North German Confederation,” and quite ‘particularly’ in Hanover, it is dangerous—not for me, it is true, but for my German correspondents—if I write them my opinion of the war, and what else can one write about at the present moment?

For example, you ask me for our first Address on the war. I

had sent it to you. It has obviously been intercepted. Today I am enclosing the two Addresses issued as a pamphlet,’ as well as Professor Beesly’s article in The Fortnightly Review” and today’s Daily News. Since this paper has a Prussian tinge, the things will probably get through. Professor Beesly is a Comtist and is as such obliged to support all sorts of crorcuets, but for the rest a very capable and brave man. He is professor of history at London University.

It seems that Germany was not satisfied with capturing Bonaparte, his generals and his army; with him, imperialism too, with all its infirmities, has acclimatised itself in the land of the oak and the linden.

As to the German bourgeois, I am not at all surprised by his obsession with conquest. First of all, to seize things is the vital principle of every bourgeoisie and to take foreign provinces is after all ‘taking’, And then the German citizen has dutifully accepted so many kicks from his sovereigns, and particularly from the Hohenzollerns, that it must be a real pleasure to him when, for a change, those kicks are administered to the foreigner.

In any case this war has freed us from the ‘bourgeois republicans’. It has put a horrible end to that crew. And that is an important result. It has given our professors the best opportunity of damning themselves in the eyes of the whole world as servile pedants. The relations which will come in its wake are the best propaganda for our principles.

Here in England public opinion on the outbreak of war was ultra-Prussian; it has now turned into the opposite. In the cafés chantants, for example, the German singers with their Watch on the Rhine‘ are hissed off while French singers with the Marseillaise are accompanied in choro. Apart from the decided sympathies of the mass of the people with the Republic and the irritation of the RESPECTABILITY about the alliance between Prussia and Russia—now as clear as daylight—and the shameless tone of Prussian diplomacy since the military successes, the way in which the war has been conducted—the requisitioning system, the burning down of

2A reference to the pamphlet The General Council of the International Working-Men’s Association on the War, which contained the first and second Addresses of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association on the Franco-Prussian War, written by Marx. - > E. S. Beesly, ‘The International Working Men’s Association’, The Fortnightly Review, No. XLVII, 1 November 1870. - © In the original: ‘Wi-Wa-Wacht am Rhein.’

54, Marx to Kugelmann. 13 December 1870 93

villages, the shooting of francs-tireurs,° the taking of hostages and

similar recapitulations of the Thirty Years’ War '*'—all this has aroused universal indignation here. Or coursz, the English have done the same in India, Jamaica, etc., but the French are neither Hindus, nor Chinese, nor Negroes, and the Prussians are no HEAVEN-BORN ENGLISHMEN. It is a truly Hohenzollern idea that a people commits a crime in continuing to defend itself once its regular army has disappeared. In fact, the war of the Prussian people against Napoleon I was a real thorn in the side of the gallant Frederick William III, as you can see from Professor Pertz’s life of Gneisenau,’ who made the war of francs-tireurs into a system through his Landsturm regulations.’ The fact that the people fought on their own initiative and independent of the all-highest’s order gave Frederick William III no peace.

However, the last word has not yet been spoken. The war in France ‘can still take a very ‘unpleasant’ turn. The resistance put up by the Loire Army ’** was ‘beyond’ calculation, and the present scattering of the German forces right and left is merely to instil fear, but in fact only results in awakening the power of defence at every point and weakening the offensive force. The threatened bombardment of Paris is also a mere trick. On the town of Paris itself it can, by all the rules of probability, have no serious effect. If a few outworks are destroyed, a few breaches made, what help is that when the besieged outnumber the besiegers? And if the besieged made exceptionally good sorties, when the enemy defended himself behind entrenchments, how much better would they not fare when the roles are reversed?

To starve Paris out is the only real way. But if it is delayed long enough to allow armies to be formed and the people’s war to develop in the provinces, even that will do nothing except transfer the centre of gravity. Moreover, even after the surrender of Paris, which cannot be held and kept quiet by a mere handful, a large part of the invapers would be maintained in idleness.

But however the war may end, it has given the French proletariat practice in arms, and that is the best guarantee of the future.

The shameless tone which Russia and Prussia adopt towards England may have wholly unexpected and unpleasant results for them. The matter simply stands like this: By the Paris Peace Treaty of 1856 England disarmed herself.''* England is a sea power and can counterpose to the great continental military powers only

a G. H. Pertz, Das Leben des Feldmarschalls Grafen Neithardt von Gneisenau.

the weapon of naval warfare. The certain method here is temporarily to destroy, or bring to a standstill, the overseas trade of the continental powers. This mainly depends on operating the principle of seizing enemy goods in neutral vessels. This MartTIME right (as well as other similar rights) was surrendered by the English in the so-called Declaration attached to the Paris Treaty. Clarendon did this on the secret order of the Russian Palmerston. The Declaration, however, is not an integral part of the treaty itself and has never been legally ratified in England. The Russian and Prussian gentlemen are reckoning without their host if they imagine that the influence of the Queen,’ who is Prussianised from FaMity interest, and the bourgeois feeble-mindedness of a Gladstone, would at a decisive moment keep John Bull from throwing this self-created ‘charming obstacle’ overboard. And he can then strangle Russian-German overseas trade in a few weeks. We shall then have an opportunity of studying the long faces of the Petersburg and Berlin diplomats, and the still longer faces of the ‘power patriots’.— Qui vivra, verra‘ My zest compliments To Madame la Comtesse anv Franzchen.*

Your K. M.

Apropos. Can you let me have Windthorst’s various Reichstag speeches?