In accusing the French Government of 

“having rendered impossible the free expression of opinion in France through 
the medium of the press and of national representatives” ,@ 

Bismarck did evidently but intend to crack a Berlin Witz. If you 
want to become acquainted with “true” French opinion please 
apply to Herr Stieber, the editor of the Versailles Moniteur, and 
the notorious Prussian police spy! 

At Bismarck’s express command Messrs. Bebel and Liebknecht 
have been arrested, on the charge of high treason, simply because 
they dared to fulfil their duties as German national representa- 
tives, viz., to protest in the Reichstag against the annexation of 
Alsace and Lorraine, vote against new war subsidies, express their 
sympathy with the French Republic, and denounce the attempt at 
the conversion of Germany into one Prussian barrack.‘ For the 
utterance of the same opinions the members of the Brunswick 
Socialist Democratic Committee have, since the beginning of last 
September, been treated like galley-slaves, and are still undergoing 
a mock prosecution for high treason. The same lot has befallen 
Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger, No. 15, January 14, 1871.— Ed. 
speech in the Reichstag on November 26, 1870, ibid.— Ed. 
numerous workmen who propagated the Brunswick manifesto.* 
On similar pretexts, Mr. Hepner, the sub-editor of the Leipzig 
Volksstaat, is prosecuted for high treason. The few independent 
German journals existing outside Prussia are forbidden admission 
into the Hohenzollern estates. German workmen’s meetings in 
favour of a peace honourable for France are daily dispersed by 
the police. According to the official Prussian doctrine, as naively 
laid down by General Vogel von Falckenstein, every German 
“trying to counteract the prospective aims of the Prussian warfare 
in France”, is guilty of high treason. If M. Gambetta and Co. 
were, like the Hohenzollern, forced to violently put down popular 
opinion, they would only have to apply the Prussian method, and, 
on the plea of war, proclaim throughout France the state of siege. 
The only French soldiers on German soil moulder in Prussian 
gaols. Still the Prussian Government feels itself bound to 
rigorously maintain the state of siege, that is to say, the crudest 
and most revolting form of military despotism, the suspension of 
all law. The French soil is infested by about a million of German 
invaders. Yet the French Government can safely dispense with that 
Prussian method of “rendering possible the free expression of 
opinion”. Look at this picture and at that! Germany, however, has 
proved too petty a field for Bismarck’s all-absorbing love of 
independent opinion. When the Luxemburgers gave vent to their 
sympathies with France, Bismarck made this expression of 
sentiment one of his pretexts for renouncing the London 
neutrality treaty.’°? When the Belgian press committed a similar 
sin, the Prussian ambassador at Brussels, Herr von Balan, invited 
the Belgian ministry to put down not only all anti-Prussian 
newspaper articles, but even the printing of mere news calculated 
to cheer on the French in their war of independence. A very 
modest request this, indeed, to suspend the Belgian Constitution, 
“pour le roi de Prusse!”” No sooner had some Stockholm papers 
indulged in some mild jokes at the notorious “piety” of Wilhelm 
Annexander,° than Bismarck came down on the Swedish cabinet 
with grim missives. Even under the meridian of St. Petersburg he 
contrived to spy too licentious a press. At his humble supplication, 
the editors of the principal Petersburg papers were summoned 
staat, No. 73, September 11, 1870.— Ed. 
before the Censor-in-Chief, who bid them beware of all strictures 
upon the feal Borussian vassal of the Czar. One of those editors, 
M. Saguljajew, was imprudent enough to emit the secret of this 
avertissement through the columns of the Golos. He was at once 
pounced upon by the Russian police, and bundled off to some 
remote province.* It would be a mistake to believe that those 
gendarme proceedings are only due to the paroxysm of war fever. 
They are, on the contrary, the true methodical application of 
Prussian law principles. There exists in point of fact an odd proviso 
in the Prussian criminal code, by dint of which every foreigner, on 
account of his doings or writings in his own or any other foreign 
country, may be prosecuted for “insult against the Prussian King” 
and “high treason against Prussia”!” France—and her cause is 
fortunately far from desperate—fights at this moment not only 
for her own national independence, but for the liberty of 
Germany and Europe. 

I am, Sir, yours respectfully, 
Karl Marx. 
London, January 16, 1871