Dear citizen,

I believe there is a misunderstanding. In the first place, it is not a bookseller, but my friend E. Glaser de Willebrord, who had declared himself ready to undertake, at his own expense, the publication of the report in Brussels. I received a letter from him the day before yesterday, in which he writes: “I received on Sunday the enclosed letter (from M. Bigot), to which I replied that, the costs of publication being already considerable, I could not add a daily expense of fr. 100, but that, having no object of lucre in view, I offered to pay the stenographer and the correspondent out of the probable profits. I have received no answer, so that my proposal has not been accepted, which I am very glad of, for the reason that the *Figaro* and the *Gazette des Tribunaux* have made arrangements to give in extenso the report of the trial which began yesterday at Versailles. On the other hand, owing to my prolonged stay in London, I should not have found the time to make the necessary preparations.” M. Willebrord further adds in his letter that in future all further correspondence should be addressed to him direct at the following address: “E. Glaser de Willebrord, 24 Rue de la Pépinière, Brussels”.

The public prosecutor of Versailles has drawn up a grotesque indictment against the International. Perhaps it would be useful in the interests of the defence to communicate the following facts to M. Bigot:

1) Enclosed (under No. I) are the two manifestos of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian war. In its first manifesto of 23 July 1870, the General Council declares that the war was waged not by the French people, but by the Empire, and that at bottom Bismarck was as guilty of the war as Bonaparte. At the same time the General Council called on the German workers not to allow the Prussian government to turn the defensive war into a war of conquest.

2) The second manifesto of 9 September 1870 (5 days after the proclamation of the Republic) is a very strong, emphatic denunciation of the Prussian government’s plans of conquest. It is an appeal to the German workers and to the English workers to take up the cause of the French Republic. Indeed, in Germany the workers belonging to the International Association opposed Bismarck’s policy so vigorously that he had the leading German representatives of the International illegally confined and thrown into Prussian fortresses on the false charge of “conspiracy” with the enemy. In London, at the call of the Council, the English workers held great meetings to force their government to recognise the French Republic and to oppose with all its might the dismemberment of France.

3) Now, does the French government ignore the support which the International gave to France during the war? Not at all. On the contrary. Jules Favre’s consul in Vienna – M. Lefaivre – even committed the indiscretion of publishing – in the name of the French government – a letter of thanks to Messrs Liebknecht and Bebel, the two representatives of the International in the German Diet. In this letter he says among other things – (I retranslate this from a German translation made of Lefaivre’s letter) – “You, gentlemen, and your party (i.e., the International) alone uphold the old German tradition, i.e., the humanitarian spirit, etc.” Well! This letter figures in the high treason trial which the Saxon government was forced by Bismarck to initiate against Liebknecht and Bebel and which is still going on at this moment. It served Bismarck as a pretext for having Bebel arrested after the adjournment of the German Diet. At the very moment when the infamous press denounced me to Thiers as Bismarck’s agent, Bismarck imprisoned my friends as guilty of high treason against Germany and gave orders for my arrest should I come to visit Germany.

4) Some time before the armistice, “good” Jules Favre – as the General Council stated in a letter to the *Times* of 12 June, of which a reprint is enclosed (No. II) – asked us through his private secretary, Dr. Reitlinger, to arrange public demonstrations in London in favour of the “Government of National Defence”. Reitlinger, as the General Council said in its letter to the *Times*, added that no mention should be made of “the Republic”, but only of “France”. The General Council refused to lend its support to demonstrations of that sort. But all this proves that the French government itself regarded “the International” as an ally of the French Republic against the Prussian conqueror – and indeed it was the only ally of France during the war.

Fraternal greetings
K. M.