Karl Marx 
The freedom of the press and of debate in Germany. 

To the Editor of the "Daily News" 

The Daily News. 
Nr. 7714, 19. Januar 1871 

The freedom ofthe press and of debate 
in Germany. 
To the Editor ofthe Daily News. 

Sir, —In accusing the French Government of "having rendered impos- 
sible the free expression of opinion in France through the medium of the 
press and of national representatives", Bismarck did evidently but intend 
to break 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 plea of high treason, simply because they dared to 
fulfil their duties as German national representatives, viz., to protest in 
the Reichstag against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, vote 
against new war subsidies, express their sympathy with the French Re- 

15 public, and denounce the attempt at the conversion of Germany into one 

Prussian barrack. For the utterance ofthe 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 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 

Karl Marx 

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, pro- 
claim throughout France the state of siege. The only French soldiers on 
German soil moulder in Prussian gaols. Still the Prussian Government 5 
feels itself bound to rigorously maintain the state of siege, that is to say, 
the crudest and most revolting form of military despotism, the suspen- 
sion of all law. The French soil is infested by about a million of German 
invaders. Yet, the French Government can safely dispense with that Prus- 
sian method of "rendering possible the free expression of opinion". Look 10 
at this picture and at that! Germany, however, has proved too petty a 
field for Bismarck's all-absorbing love ofindependent 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 15 
sin, the Prussian ambassador at Brussels, Herr von Balan, invited the 
Belgian ministry to put down not only all anti-Prussian newspaper arti- 
cles, 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 20 
some Stockholm papers indulged in some mild jokes at the notorious 
"piety" of Wilhelm Annexander, than Bismarck came down on the Swe- 
dish cabinet with grim missives. Even under the meridian of St. Peters- 
burg he contrived to spy too licentious a press. At his humble supplica- 
tion, the editors of the principal Petersburg papers were summoned 25 
before the Censor-in-Chief, who bid them beware of all strictures upon 
the feal Borussian vassal ofthe Czar. One of those editors, M. Saguliaw, 
was imprudent enough to emit the secret of this avertissement through 
the columns of the Gobs. He was at once pounced upon by the Russian 
police, and bundled off to some remote province. It would be a mistake 30 
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 35 
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, 
London, January 16, 1871 KARL MARX 40