I am directed by the General Council of the International 
Working Men’s Association to solicit your favour to publish the 
following in the columns of your journal:— 

A statement has gone the round of the English press that the 
Paris members of the International Working Men’s Association 
had in so far joined the so-called Anti-German League as to 
declare all Germans to be henceforth excluded from our 
association.* 

This statement is the very reverse of fact. Neither the Federal 
Council of our association in Paris, nor any of the Paris sections 
represented by that council, have ever passed any such resolution. 
The so-called Anti-German League, as far as it exists at all, is the 
exclusive work of the upper and middle classes: it was started by 
the Jockey Club,'*” and kept up by the adhesions of the Academy, 
of the Stock Exchange, of some bankers and manufacturers, etc. 
The working-classes have nothing whatever to do with it. 

The object of these calumnies is evident. A short time before 
the outbreak of the late war the International was made the 
general scapegoat for all untoward events. This is now repeated 
over again. While the Swiss and the Prussian press accuses it of 
having created the late outrages upon Germans in Zurich," 
French papers, such as the Courrier de Lyon, Courrier de la Gironde, 
La Liberté, etc., tell of certain secret meetings of Internationals 

2 This statement entitled “Les scrupules de I’Internationale” was first published in 

Statement by the General Council to the Editor of The Times 287 

having been held at Geneva and Berne, the Prussian Ambassador 
in the chair, in which meetings a plan was concocted to hand over 
Lyons to the united Prussians and Internationals for the sake of 

common plunder.* 
Yours respectfully, 

J. George Eccarius, 

General Secretary of the 
International Working Men’s Association 

256, High Holborn, March 22