The First Address[1]
July 23, 1870
[The Begining of the Franco-Prussian War]
In the Inaugural Address of the International
Working Men's Association, of November 1864, we said:
"If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal
concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign
policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices,
and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure?"
We defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these words:
"Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern
the relations of private individuals, as the laws paramount of the intercourse
of nations."
No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped power by exploiting the war
of classes in France, and perpetuated it by periodical wars abroad, should,
from the first, have treated the International as a dangerous foe. On the
eve of the plebiscite[A] he ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative
Committee of the International Working Men's Association through France,
at Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the
International was a secret society dabbling in a complot for his
assassination, a pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his
own judges. What was the real crime of the French branches of the International?
They told the French people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite
was voting despotism at home and war abroad. It has been, in fact, their
work that in all the great towns, in all the industrial centres of France,
the working class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite. Unfortunately,
the balance was turned by the heavy ignorance of the rural districts. 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; and it was the signal for the assassination,
not of an individual, but of nations.
The war plot of July [19] 1870[B] is but an amended edition of the coup
d'etat of December 1851. At first view, the thing seemed so absurd
that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It rather believed
the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as a mere stock-jobbing
trick. When, on July 15, war was at last officially announced to the Corps
Legislatif, the whole Opposition refused to vote the preliminary subsidies
— even Thiers branded it as "detestable"; all the independent journals
of Paris condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined
in almost unanimously.
Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had against
set to work. In the Reveil of July 12, they published their manifesto
"to the Workmen of all Nations", from which we extract the following few
passages:
"Once more," they say, "on the pretext of european equilibrium, of
national honor, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions.
French, German, Spanish workmen! Let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation
against war!
[...]
"War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty can, in the eyes of
workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In answer to the warlike
proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the blood tax, and find
in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who
want peace, labor, and liberty!
[...]
"Brothers in Germany! Our division would only result in the complete
triumph of the despotism on both sides of the Rhine...
"Workmen of all countries! Whatever may for the present become
of our common efforts, we, the members of the International Working Men's
Association, who know of no frontiers, we send you, as a pledge of indissoluble
solidarity, the good wishes and the salutations of the workmen of France."
This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous similar French
addresses, of which we can here only quote the declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine,
published in the Marseillaise of July 22:
"The war, is it just? No! The war, is it national? No! It is merely
dynastic. In the name of humanity, or democracy, and the true interests
of France, we adhere completely and energetically to the protestation of
the International against the war."
These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French working
people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The Band of the 10th
of December, first organized under the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, having
been masqueraded into blouses and let loose on the streets of Paris,
there to perform the contortions of war fever, the real workmen of the
Faubourgs came forward with public peace demonstrations so overwhelming
that Pietri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to stop at once
all further street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people had
given sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war enthusiasm.
Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte's war with Prussia,
the death-knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at paris. It will
end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the governments
and the ruling classes of europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during
18 years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire.
On the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put Germany
to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage
war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same
Louis Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home,
and annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa
had been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have overrun
Germany as the allies of Prussia. After her victory, did Prussia dream
one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary.
While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she
super-added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism, and
its mock democratism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown
talk and its low legerdemains. The Bonapartist regime, which till
them only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit
on the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war?
If the German working class allows the present war to lose its
strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French
people, victory of defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries
that befell Germany after her was of independence will revive with accumulated
intensity.
The principles of the International are, however, too widely spread
and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such
a sad consummation. The voices of the French workmen had re-echoed from
Germany. A mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16, expressed
its full concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national
antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words:
"We are the enemies of all wars, but above all of dynastic wars. ...
With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo a defensive war as
an unavoidable evil; but we call, at the same time, upon the whole German
working class to render the recurrence of such an immense social misfortune
impossible by vindicating for the peoples themselves the power to decide
on peace and war, and making them masters of their own destinies."
At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates, representing 50,000 Saxon workmen,
adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect:
"In the name of German Democracy, and especially of the workmen forming
the Democratic Socialist Party, we declare the present war to be exclusively
dynastic.... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to
us by the workmen of France.... Mindful of the watchword of the International
Working Men's Association: Proletarians of all countries, unite, we shall
never forget that the workmen of all countries are our friends and the
despots of all countries our enemies."
The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the Paris manifesto:
"We," they say, "join with heart and hand your protestation.... Solemnly,
we promise that neither the sound of the trumpets, nor the roar of the
cannon, neither victory nor defeat, shall divert us from our common work
for the union of the children of toil of all countries."
Be it so!
In the background of this suicidal strike looms the dark figure
of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war should
have been given at the moment when the Moscovite government had just finished
its strategic lines of railway and was already massing troops in the direction
of the Pruth.[C] Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of
defense against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at once by allowing
the Prussian government to call for, or accept the help of, the Cossack.
Let them remember that after their war of independence against the first
Napoleon, Germany lay for generations prostrate at the feet of the tsar.
The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the
French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced that whatever
turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes
of all countries will ultimately kill war. 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 goodwill; 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 delirium, a new society is springing
up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national
ruler will be everywhere the same — Labor! The pioneer of that new society
is the International Working Men's Association.
Chapter 2: [Prussian Occupation of France]
[A]
A plebiscite is a direct vote by an electorate of a nation to decide a question of national importance, such as governmental policy. Conducted by Napoleon III in May 1870 the questions were so worded that it was impossible to express disapproval of the policy of the Second Empire without declaring opposition to all democratic reforms for the working class. The sections of the First International in France argued that their members should not participate in the vote. On the eve of the plebiscite members of the Paris Federation were arrested on a charge of conspiring against Napoleon III. This pretext was further used by the government to launch a campaign of persecution of the members of the International throughout France. At the trial of the Paris Federation members (June 22 to July 5, 1870), the charge of conspiracy was clearly exposed as without any basis. Nevertheless a number of the International's members were sentenced to imprisonment based solely on their socialistic beliefs. The working class of France responded to these political persecutions with mass protests.
[B]
The date when Napoleon III declared war on Prussia.
[C]
The river Prut, rising in the southwestern Ukraine and flowing southeast, forming part of the border between Roumania (within an autonomous part of Austria-Hungary) and Russia (later to join the river Danube). Length: 853 kilometers.