LETTER TO  THE EDITORS  OF GAZZETTINO  ROSA™
International Working Men ’s Association
256, High Holborn, London, W. C.
February 7
TO  THE  EDITOR  OF  GAZZETTINO ROSA
Citizen,
For some months now the Florentine newspaper Libero
Pensiero has been attacking the International, as if the
great Working Men’s Association could possibly be a rival
to the society of rationalist prebendaries whose interests
this newspaper stands up for. Up to now I have felt it unnecessary to answer these attacks, but when .the same paper
sinks so low as to spread in Italy the libellous fabrications
of the Bismarckian press against the International and its
General Council, the time has come to protest. I have therefore addressed the following letter to Libero Pensiero which
I beg you to publish in the Gazzettino Rosa too.
Greetings and fraternity.
F. ENGELS,
General Council Secretary for Italy
TO  MR.  LUIGI STEFANONI,  EDITOR  OF  LIBERO PENSIERO
Dear Sir,
In No. I of Libero Pensiero, for January 4, 1872, is an
article entitled “The International and the Supreme Council
23-18

354 DOCUMENTS OF THE GENERAL  COUNCIL
of London” about which I would like to say a few words.
The article contains the following query:
“We should very much  like to know by what authority Mr. Engels
claims to represent Italy.”
I have not, and have never had, any claim to represent
Italy. I have the honour of being the secretary at the General Council specially entrusted with correspondence with
Italy, in fulfdling which function my duty is to represent
the Council and not Italy.
The article continues with some London reports from
the Berlin newspaper Neuer Social-Demokrat309 which are
full of the most malicious calumnies against the General
Council and the International as a whole. I shall not reply
to them. There is no point in arguing with such a newspaper. The Neuer Social-Democrat is well known throughout
Germany as a newspaper financed by Bismarck, and the
organ of Prussian government socialism. If you require
more exact information about the newspaper, write to your
Leipzig correspondent Liebknecht, and he will doubtless
be able to provide you with plenty. I merely venture to add
that if you are so interested in similar calumnies against the
International you will find them by the thousand in Figaro,
Gaulois, Petit-Journal, and the rest of the Parisian demimonde press, in the London Standard, in the Journal de
Geneve, the Vienna Tages-Presse or the Moskovskiye Vedomosti, authorities which will enable you to dispense with
quoting that poor wretch Schneider.
A note by the editors runs as follows:
“Perhaps this is an allusion to the secret communist  society formed
by Karl Marx in Cologne in 1850; as usual in such cases, when it was
discovered many poor wretches fell into the hands of the Prussian
police while the ringleaders escaped to London.”
Whoever said such things is a lier. I was a member of
the society in question.310 It was not founded by Marx, or
in 1850 or in Cologne. It was already in existence ten years

LETTER TO EDITORS OF GAZZETTINO  ROSA 355
earlier. Marx and I had been in England for a year, having
emigrated there because of persecution by the Prussian
Government, when the Cologne section fell into the hands
of the police due to its own imprudence. If you would like
further details you can apply to Messrs. Becker, Mayor of
Dortmund and member of the Prussian and German
parliaments; Klein, doctor and town councillor in Cologne;
Burgers, editor of Wiesbadener Zeitung311; and Lessner,
tailor and member of the General Council of the International in London. All of them were convicted in this case
against the communists.312
Please be so kind as to publish this refutation in your
next issue.
Yours most respectfully,
FREDERICK  ENGELS
Published in Gazzettino Rosa Translated from
No. 50, February 20, 1872 the newspaper
23*