LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE
OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC WORKERS’ PARTY
. . . The military camarilla, the professorate, the citizenry
and pot-house politicians maintain that this*  is a way of
forever keeping Germany from a war with France. On the
contrary, it is the surest way of turning this war into a
European institution. It really is the best way of perpetuating in rejuvenated Germany military despotism as a necessary condition for domination over Alsace and Lorraine, that
Poland of the West. It is an unfailing method of turning
future peace into a mere truce until France regains strength
enough to demand the lost territory back. It is an unfailing
method of ruining Germany and France by a mutual shooting match.
* The reference is to the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine.—Ed-
Rascals and fools who discovered these guarantees of
permanent peace should have known, if only from Prussian
history, by the example of how cruelly Napoleon had to
pay for the Peace of Tilsit,353 that such coercive measures
lor bridling a viable people bring just the opposite results.
And what is France, even after the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, in comparison with Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit!
If French chauvinism, as long as the old state system
existed, had a certain material justification in the fact that
after 1815  France’s capital, Paris, and thereby France

474 APPENDIX
herself, stood defenceless after a few lost battles, what new
fodder will this chauvinism get as soon as the frontier lies
at the Vosges Mountains to the east and at Metz to the
north?
That the people of Alsace and Lorraine want to live under
the protection of a German government, not even the most
fanatical*  Teuton would maintain. It is the principle of
Pan-Germanism and “safe” borders that will be proclaimed
and that may be supposed to lead to wonderful results for
Germany and Europe in the east.
* This word, replaced in the leaflet by dots, was inserted by Engels
in his copy of the leaflet.—Ed.
Anyone not entirely deafened by the present hullabaloo
or who is not interested in deafening the German people,
must understand that the 1870 war is inevitably fraught
with the danger of a war between Germany and Russia,
just as the 1866 war was fraught with the danger of the
1870 war.
I say inevitably, unfailingly, if we discount the unlikely
event of Russia being beset by revolution before then.
If this unlikely event does not come off, war between
Germany and Russia must even now be regarded as a fait
accompli (accomplished fact).
Whether the war will be harmful or useful will wholly
depend on the present behaviour of the German victors.
If they seize Alsace and Lorraine, France together with
Russia will fight against Germany. There is no need to
point out the terrible consequences of that.
If they sign an honourable peace treaty with France,
this war will have emancipated Europe from the Moscow
dictatorship, will have made Prussia dissolve into Germany,
will have given a chance to peaceful development in the
West of the Continent and, finally, will have helped the
social revolution to break through in Russia, the elements
of which revolution need a push of this sort from outside

APPENDIX 475
to help them on their way; thus, the war will have been
useful for the Russian people too.
But I fear that the rascals and fools will continue
playing their rash game unhindered if the German working
class does not raise its voice en masse.
The present war opens up a new epoch in world history
by the fact that Germany, even with the exception of
German Austria, has shown her ability, irrespective of the
rest of the world, to go her own way. The fact that she is
initially finding her unity in Prussian barracks, is a punishment which she rightly deserves. But one result, even by
such means, she has gained all the same. The tiny pieces
like, for example, the conflict between the national-liberal
North Germans and the People’s Party of South Germans,354
will no longer stand in vain in the way. Relations will
develop on a grand scale and will be simplified. If then
the German working class does not play the historical role
that has come to it, it will be to its shame. The current war
has moved the centre of gravity of the Continental working-
class movement from France to Germany. An even greater
responsibility therefore lies with the German working
class. ...
between August 22 and 30. 1870
Translated from the German