{[London,] 14 September 1870 

Dear Citizen, 

Herewith two copies of our Address,* one for L’Internationale, 
one for La Liberté. I have no time to translate it, Dupont is in 
Manchester, and Serraillier in Paris as delegate of the General 
Council. My time is fully occupied with correspondence with 
Germany and with the agitation amongst the English working 
men. 

On 5 September our Central Committee at Brunswick published 
an appeal “To the German Workers’ to oppose the annexation of 
French territory and to support peace with the Republic.’ On the 
orders of General Vogel von Falckenstein, the infamous Prussian 
who (in 1866) distinguished himself by his vandalism in Frank- 
furt,''? not only were the copies of the manifesto seized, but all 
the members of the Committee—as well as the unfortunate 
printer” of the manifesto—were arrested, clapped in irons like 
criminals and transported to Létzen,° a town in East Prussia.'!> As 
you know, on the pretext of a French landing, the entire coast 
of Northern Germany has been placed under martial law, thus 
enabling those gentlemen, the military, to arrest, pass sentence 
and shoot whenever they think fit. But even in those parts 
of Germany where martial law has not been proclaimed, the 
Prussians, aided and abetted by the middle classes, have intro- 
duced a reign of terror directed against all independent opinion. 
Despite this terror and despite the hubbub raised by the bour- 
geois patriots, the German working man is conducting himself 
admirably. 

Unfortunately I cannot say the same of our French comrades. 
Their manifesto was absurd.”*' ‘Recross the Khine!’ They forget 
that, in order to return home, the Germans have no need to 
recross the Rhine: rather they can simply withdraw to the 
Palatinate and the Khine (Prussian) Province. You can imagine 

a K. Marx, ‘Second Address of the General Council of the International 
Working Men’s Association on the Franco-Prussian War’. - > Sievers - ¢ Polish 
name: Gizycko. 

how this chauvinist catchphrase has been exploited by Bismarck’s 
official journals! The whole tone of the manifesto is absurd and 
contrary to the spirit of the International. 

I have not had the time to copy out for you the whole of the 
letter I received from Serraillier, but the following passage should 
suffice to enlighten you on the state of affairs in Paris. It is our 
duty not to deceive ourselves with illusions. 

‘It is unbelievable that for six years people can be Internationalists, abolish 
frontiers, no longer recognise anyone as a foreigner, and arrive at the stage they 
have now reached, simply in order to preserve a factitious popularity to which they 
will sooner or later fall victim. When I express indignation at their conduct, they 
tell me that, were they to speak otherwise, they would be sent packing! Accordingly 
it seems to them more appropriate to deceive these unfortunate fellows over the 
true situation in France than to seek, at the risk of losing their popularity, to bring 
them back to their senses, a course that would, I believe, be of much greater use to 
our France. Moreover, what a situation they are creating for the International by 
their ultra-chauvinist discourses! How many generations may it not take to erase 
the profound antagonism of nationality which they are seeking to revive by 
whatever means their feeble imagination can suggest! Not that they are stupid, far 
from it. But like me they know that when you flatter the people, you deceive them; 
they feel they are cutting the ground from under their own feet and, I might even 
say, they are afraid of openly saying they are Internationalists, a foolishness from 
which it follows that they can think of nothing better than to parody the revolution of 
93. 

This state of affairs will, I trust, all be over come the early and 
inevitable capitulation of Paris. The misfortune of the French and 
even of the working men, is to hark back to great things! It is 
essential that events should once and for all destroy this 
reactionary worship of the past! 

The manifesto printed in the supplement to La Solidarité did 
not surprise me.'”? I well knew that those who preach total 
abstention from politics—as though working men were monks 
who established a world of their own away from the world at 
large—would always revert to bourgeois politics at the first 
summons of the historic tocsin. 

With the exception of a very few papers the English press has 
been bought, the majority by Bismarck, the minority by Louis 
Bonaparte, the latter having saved enough money to buy an entire 
army. Nevertheless I have found the means to wage a war to the 
death against those gentry, the Prussians. 

Our friends in Paris have been bombarding me with telegrams 
telling me what I ought to do in Germany. I believe I am a little 
more familiar than the Parisians with the way in which one must 
deal with my compatriots. 

You would oblige me by dropping me a few lines on the state of 
affairs in Belgium. 

Fraternal greetings, 
Karl Marx