TO THE SIXTH CONGRESS
OF THE BELGIAN SECTIONS
OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN’S
ASSOCIATION
London, December 23, 1870
Citizens,
The General Council of the International Working Men’s
Association sends its greetings to your Sixth Congress. The
very fact that this Congress is taking place goes to prove
anew that the Belgian proletariat is tirelessly continuing
its efforts to emancipate the working class even when a
bloody and fratricidal war fills the whole of Europe with
horror and for the moment supplants all other interest in
the public mind.
It is particularly gratifying for us to see that, in regard
to the war, the Belgian sections are following the line of
action and voicing ideas that are prompted by the interests
of workers of all countries: repudiation of all idea of
conquest and upholding the Republic in France. Moreover,
in this respect, our Belgian friends are in complete harmony
with workers of other countries.
Since the Prussian occupation of Rouen, the last connections that we still had in France have been severed. But
in England, America and Germany the workers’ movement
against the war of conquest and for the support of the
Republic, has been developing rapidly. In Germany especially, the movement acquired such dimensions that the

APPENDIX 477
Prussian Government was obliged, in the interests of its
policy of conquest and reaction, to deal severely with the
workers. The Central Committee of the German Social-
Democrats, resident at Brunswick, was arrested; many
members of this party suffered the same fate; and, lastly,
two North-German parliamentary deputies, Citizens Bebel
and Liebknecht, who represented the views and interests
of the working class, were put behind bars. The International is accused of having given all these citizens the
signal for a vast revolutionary conspiracy. We have here,
without any doubt, the second edition of the celebrated
plot of the International at Paris, a plot which the Bonapartist police said they had uncovered and which, afterwards, finished up by evaporating so dismally. In spite of
these persecutions the international workers’ movement is
developing and will continue to develop.
The present Congress offers you an opportunity to
ascertain the number of sections and other affiliated
societies, the number of members in each of them, so as
to get an exact idea about the progress of our movement
in Belgium. We would like you to communicate to the
General Council the results of these statistics characterising
the position of our Association in your country; we will
do our best to complete these statistics by information
about other countries. It goes without saying that we
shall consider this communication to be confidential and
that the facts we shall get from there will not be made
public.
Furthermore, the General Council dares to hope that
the Belgian sections will be able, during the current year
1871, to recollect the resolutions of the different International’s congresses relative to the contributions to the
Council. The present war makes the contribution of funds
from most of the Continental countries impossible, and
we are well aware that the Belgian workers too feel the
general depression which is the result of this war; the

478 APPENDIX
General Council therefore raises this question only to
remind the Belgian sections that without material support
it will be unable to give the propaganda the scope it wishes
it to have.
In absence of the Secretary for Belgium, Citizen Serraillier, the General Council charged the undersigned with
addressing this communication to the Congress.
Greetings and fraternity,
' F. E.