[The International Herald, No. 27, October 5, 1872] 

Citizens,*—Since our last Congress at Basel, two great wars have 
changed the face of Europe: the Franco-German War and the 
Civil War in France. Both of these wars were _ preceded, 
accompanied, and followed by a third war—the war against the 
International Working Men’s Association. 

The Paris members” of the International had told the French 
people publicly and emphatically, that voting the plebiscite '*” was 
voting despotism at home and war abroad.‘ Under the pretext of 
having participated in a plot for the assassination of Louis 
Bonaparte, they were arrested on the eve of the plebiscite, the 
23rd of April, 1870. Simultaneous arrests of Internationalists took 
place at Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, and other towns. In its 
declaration of May 3rd, 1870, the General Council stated *: 

“This last plot will worthily range with its two predecessors of 
grotesque memory. The noisy and violent measures against our 
French sections are exclusively intended to serve one _ single 
purpose—the manipulation of the plebiscite.” ° 

In point of fact, after the downfall of the December empire its 
governmental successors published documentary evidence* to the 
effect that this last plot had been fabricated by the Bonapartist 
police itself, and that on the eve of the plebiscite, Ollivier, in a 
private circular, directly told his subordinates, 

“The leaders of the International must be arrested or else the voting of the 
plebiscite could not be satisfactorily proceeded with.” 

The plebiscitary farce once over, the members of the Paris 
Federal Council were indeed condemned, on the 8th of July, by 
Louis Bonaparte’s own judges, but for the simple crime of 
belonging to the International and not for any participation in the 
sham plot.’ Thus the Bonapartist government considered it 
necessary to initiate the most ruinous war that was ever brought 
down upon France, by a preliminary campaign against the French 
sections of the International Working Men’s Association. Let us 
not forget that the working class in France rose like one man to 
reject the plebiscite. Let us no more forget that 

“the stock-exchanges, the cabinets, the ruling classes, and the 
press of Europe celebrated the plebiscite as a signal victory of the 
French emperor over the French working class.”—(Address of 
General Council on the Franco-Prussian War, 23rd July, 1870.) 

A few weeks after the plebiscite, when the imperialist press 
commenced to fan the warlike passions amongst the French 
people, the Paris Internationalists, nothing daunted by the 
government persecutions, issued their appeal of the 12th of July, 
“to the workmen of all nations’, denounced the intended war as a 
“criminal absurdity”, telling their “brothers of Germany”, that 

their “division would only result in the complete triumph of despotism on both 
sides of the Rhine”, and declaring that “we, the members of the International 

Their appeal met with an enthusiastic echo from Germany, so 
that the General Council was entitled to state, 

“The very fact that while official France and Germany are 
rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and 
Germany send each other messages of peace and good will—this 
great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past—opens the vista 
of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society with 

its economical miseries and its political delirtum, a new society is 
springing up whose international rule will be peace because its 
national ruler will be everywhere the same— Labour. The pioneer 
of that new society is the International Working Men’s Associa- 
tion.”—(Address of July 23rd, 1870.) 

Up to the proclamation of the Republic, the members of the 
Paris Federal Council remained in prison, while the other 
members of the Association were daily denounced to the mob as 
traitors acting in the pay of Prussia. 

With the capitulation of Sedan, when the second empire ended 
as it began, by a parody,’ the Franco-German War entered upon 
its second phase. It became war against the French people. After 
her repeated solemn declarations to take up arms for the sole 
purpose of repelling foreign aggression, Prussia now dropped the 
mask and proclaimed a war of conquest. From that moment she 
found herself compelled not only to fight the Republic in France, 
but simultaneously the International in Germany. We can here but 
hint at a few incidents of that conflict. 

[ The International Herald, No. 28, October 12, 1872] 

Immediately after the declaration of war, the greater part of the 
territory of the North German Confederation, Hanover, Olden- 
burg, Bremen, Hamburg, Brunswick, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklen- 
burg, Pomerania, and the province of Prussia, were placed in a 
state of siege, and handed over to the tender mercies of General 
Vogel von Falckenstein. This state of siege, proclaimed as a 
safeguard against the threatening foreign invasion, was at once 
turned into a state of war against the German Internationals. 

The day after the proclamation of the Republic at Paris, the 
Brunswick Central Committee of the German Democratic Socialist 
Working Men’s Party, which forms a section of the International 
within the limits imposed by the law of the country, issued a 
manifesto (5th September) calling upon the working class to 
oppose by all means in their power the dismemberment of France, 
to claim a peace honourable for that country, and to agitate for 
the recognition of the French Republic." The manifesto de- 
nounced the proposed annexation of Alsace and Lorraine as a 
crime tending to transform all Germany into a Prussian barracks, 
and to establish war as a permanent European institution. On the 
9th September, Vogel von Falckenstein had the members of the 
Brunswick Committee arrested, and marched off in chains, a 
distance of 600 miles, to Loetzen, a Prussian fortress, on the 
Russian frontier, where their ignominious treatment was to serve 

as a foil to the ostentatious feasting of the Imperial guest at 
Wilhelmshohe. As arrests, the hunting of workmen from one 
German state to another, suppression of proletarian papers, 
military brutality, and police-chicane in all forms, did not prevent 
the International vanguard of the German working class from 
acting up to the Brunswick manifesto, Vogel von Falckenstein, by 
an ukase of September 2Ist,* interdicted all meetings of the 
Democratic Socialist party. That interdict was cancelled by another 
ukase of October 5th, wherein he naively commands the police 
spies 

“to denounce to him personally all individuals who, by public demonstrations, 
shall encourage France in her resistance against the conditions of peace imposed by 

Germany, so as to enable him to render such individuals innocuous during the 
continuance of the war”. 

Leaving the cares of the war abroad to Moltke, the King of 
Prussia contrived to give a new turn to the war at home. By his 
personal order of the 17th October, Vogel von Falckenstein was to 
lend his Loetzen captives to the Brunswick District Tribunal, the 
which, on its part, was either to find grounds for their legal 
durance, or else return them to the safe keeping of the dread 
general. 

Vogel von Falckenstein’s proceedings were, of course, imitated 
throughout Germany, while Bismarck, in a diplomatic circular, 
mocked Europe by standing forth as the indignant champion of 
the right of free utterance of opinion, free press, and free 
meetings, on the part of the peace party in France. At the very 
same time that he demanded a freely-elected National Assembly 
for France, in Germany he had Bebel and Liebknecht imprisoned 
for having, in opposition to him, represented the International in 
the German Parliament, and in order to get them out of the way 
during the impending general elections.'” 

His master, William the Conqueror,’ supported him, by a decree 
from Versailles, prolonging the state of siege, that is to say, the 
suspension of all civil law, for the whole period of the elections. In 
fact, the King did not allow the state of siege to be raised in 
Germany until two months after the conclusion of peace with 
France.'”! The stubbornness with which he was insisting upon the 
state of war at home, and his repeated personal meddling with his 
own German captives, prove the awe in which he, amidst the din 
of victorious arms and the frantic cheers of the whole middle class, 

held the rising party of the proletariat. It was the involuntary 
homage paid by physical force to moral power. 

If the war against the International had been localised, first in 
France, from the days of the plebiscite to the downfall of the 
Empire, then in Germany during the whole period of the 
resistance of the Republic against Prussia, it became general since 
the rise, and after the fall, of the Paris Commune. 

On the 6th of June, 1871, Jules Favre issued his circular to the 
Foreign Powers demanding the extradition of the refugees? of the 
Commune as common criminals, and a general crusade against the 
International as the enemy of family, religion, order, and 
property, so adequately represented in his own person.’” Austria 
and Hungary caught the cue at once. On the 13th June, a raid was 
made on the reputed leaders of the Pesth Working Men’s Union, 
their papers were seized, their persons sequestered, and proceed- 
ings were instituted against them for high treason.'’” Several 
delegates of the Vienna International, happening to be on a visit 
to Pesth, were carried off to Vienna, there to undergo a similar 
treatment. Beust asked and received from his parliament a 
supplementary vote of £30,000, 

“on behalf of expenses for political information that had become more than 
ever indispensable through the dangerous spread of the International all over 
Europe”. 

Since that time a true reign of terror against the working class 
has set in in Austria and Hungary. In its last agonies the Austrian 
Government seems still anxiously to cling to its old privilege of 
playing the Don Quixote of European reaction. 

A few weeks after Jules Favre’s circular, Dufaure proposed to 
his rurals a law which is now in force, and punishes as a crime the 
mere fact of belonging to the International Working Men’s 
Association, or of sharing its principles.'’* As a witness before the 
rural committee of enquiry on Dufaure’s Bill, Thiers boasted that 
it was the offspring of his own ingenious brains, and that he had 
been the first to discover the infallible panacea of treating the 
Internationals as the Spanish Inquisition had treated the heretics. 
But even on this point he can lay no claim to originality. Long 
before his appointment as saviour of society, the true law which 
the Internationals deserve at the hands of the ruling classes had 
been laid down by the Vienna courts. 

[ The International Herald, No. 29, October 19, 1872] 

On the 26th July, 1870, the most prominent men of the 
Austrian proletarian party were found guilty of high treason, and 
sentenced to years of penal servitude, with one fast day in every 
month.'” The law laid down was this: — 

The prisoners, as they themselves confess, have accepted and acted according to 
the programme of the German Working Men’s Congress of Eisenach (1869). This 
programme embodies the programme of the International. The International is 
established for the emancipation of the working class from the rule of the 
propertied class, and from political dependence. That emancipation is incompatible 
with the existing institutions of the Austrian state. Hence, whoever accepts and 
propagates the principles of the International programme, commits preparatory 
acts for the overthrow of the Austrian Government, and is consequently guilty of 
high treason. 

On the 27th November, 1871, judgment was passed upon the 
members of the Brunswick Committee. They were sentenced to 
various periods of imprisonment. The court expressly referred, as 
to a precedent, to the law laid down at Vienna. 

At Pesth, the prisoners belonging to the Working Men’s Union, 
after having undergone for nearly a year a treatment as infamous 
as that inflicted upon the Fenians'”° by the British Government, 
were brornght up for judgment on the 22nd April, 1872. The 
public prosecutor, here also, called upon the court to apply to 
them the law laid down at Vienna. They were, however, acquitted. 

At Leipzig, on the 27th March, 1872, Bebel and Liebknecht 
were sentenced to two years imprisonment in a fortress for 
attempted high treason upon the strength of the law as laid down 
at Vienna. The only distinctive feature of this case is that the law 
laid down by a Vienna judge was sanctioned by a Saxon jury. 

At Copenhagen the three members of the Central Committee of 
the International, Brix, Pio, and Geleff, were thrown into prison 
on the 5th of May* because they had declared their firm resolve to 
hold an open air meeting in the teeth of a police order forbidding 
it. Once in prison they were told that the accusation against them 
was extended, that the socialist ideas in themselves were incompat- 
ible with the existence of the Danish state, and that consequently 
the mere act of propagating them constituted a crime against the 
Danish constitution. Again the law as laid down in Vienna! The 
accused are still in prison awaiting their trial.’” 

The Belgian government, distinguished by its sympathetic reply 
to Jules Favre’s demand of extradition, made haste to propose, 
through Malou, a hypocritical counterfeit of Dufaure’s law. 

His Holiness Pope Pius IX gave vent to his feelings in an 
allocution to a deputation of Swiss Catholics. 

“Your government,” said he, “which is republican, thinks itself bound to make 
a heavy sacrifice for what is called liberty. It affords an asylum to a goodly number 
of individuals of the worst character. It tolerates that sect of the International 
which desires to treat all Europe as it has treated Paris. These gentlemen of the 
International who are no gentlemen, are to be feared because they work for the 
account of the everlasting enemy of God and mankind. What is to be gained by 
protecting them! One must pray for them.” 

Hang them first and pray for them afterwards! 

Supported by Bismarck, Beust, and Stieber, the Prussian 
spy-in-chief, the Emperors of Austria and Germany met at 
Salzburg in the beginning of September, 1871, for the ostensible 
purpose of founding a holy alliance against the International 
Working Men’s Association.'” 

“Such a European Alliance,” declared the North German Gazette,” Bismarck’s 
private moniteur> “is the only possible salvation of state, church, property, 
civilisation, in one word, of everything that constitutes European states.” 

Bismarck’s real object, of course, was to prepare alliances for an 
impending war with Russia and the International was held up to 
Austria as a piece of red cloth is held up to a bull. 

Lanza suppressed the International in Italy by simple decree. 
Sagasta declared it an outlaw in Spain,'”? probably with a view to 
curry favour with the English stock exchange. The Russian 
government which, since the emancipation of the serfs, has been 
driven to the dangerous expedient of making timid concessions to 
popular claims today, and withdrawing them tomorrow, found in 
the general hue and cry against the International a pretext for a 
recrudescence of reaction at home. Abroad, with the intention of 
prying into the secrets of our Association, it succeeded in inducing 
a Swiss judge to search, in presence of a Russian spy, the house of 
Outine, a Russian International, and the editor of the Geneva 
Egalité, the organ of our Romance Federation.'*° The republican 
government of Switzerland has only been prevented by the 
agitation of the Swiss Internationals from handing up to Thiers 
refugees of the Commune. 

Finally, the government of Mr. Gladstone, unable to act in Great 
Britain, at least set forth its good intentions by the police 
terrorism exercised in Ireland against our sections then in course 

of formation, and by ordering its representatives abroad to collect 
information with respect to the International Working Men’s 
Association. 

But all the measures of repression which the combined 
government intellect of Europe was capable of devising, vanish 
into nothing before the war of calumny undertaken by the lying 
power of the civilised world. Apocryphal histories and mysteries 
of the International, shameless forgeries of public documents and 
private letters, sensational telegrams, followed each other in rapid 
succession; all the sluices of slander at the disposal of the venal 
respectable press were opened at once to set free a deluge of 
infamy in which to drown the execrated foe. This war of calumny 
finds no parallel in history for the truly international area over 
which it has spread, and for the complete accord in which it has 
been carried on by all shades of ruling class opinion. When the 
great conflagration took place at Chicago, the telegraph round the 
world announced it as the infernal deed of the International; and 
it is really wonderful that to its demoniacal agency has not been 
attributed the hurricane ravaging the West Indies. 

In its former annual reports, the General Council used to give a 
review of the progress of the Association since the meeting of the 
preceding Congress. You will appreciate, citizens,* the motives 
which induce us to abstain from that course upon this occasion. 
Moreover, the reports of the delegates from the various countries, 
who know best how far their discretion may extend, will in a 
measure make up for this deficiency. We confine ourselves to the 
statement that since the Congress at Basel, and chiefly since the 
London Conference of September 1871, the International has 
been extended to the Irish in England and to Ireland itself, to 
Holland, Denmark, and Portugal, that it has been firmly 
organised in the United States, and that it has established 
ramifications in Buenos Aires, Australia, and New Zealand. 

The difference between a working class without an Internation- 
al, and a working class with an International, becomes most 
evident if we look back to the period of 1848. Years were required 
for the working class itself to recognise the Insurrection of June, 
1848, as the work of its own vanguard. The Paris Commune was 
at once acclaimed by the universal proletariat. 

You, the delegates of the working class, meet to strengthen the 
militant organisation of a society aiming at the emancipation of 
labour and the extinction of national feuds. Almost at the same 

moment, there meet at Berlin the crowned dignitaries of the old 

world in order to forge new chains and to hatch new wars. 

Long life to the International Working Men’s Association!