...The military camarilla, professors, middle-class people and public-house politicians are pretending this(1) is the way to protect Germany from war with France forever. On the contrary, it is the most tried and tested way of turning war into a European institution. It is, in fact, the surest means of perpetuating military despotism in the rejuvenated Germany, as a necessity for maintaining a western Poland—Alsace and Lorraine. It is the most infallible way of turning the imminent peace into a mere armistice, until France is sufficiently recovered to demand the lost territory back. It is the most infallible way of ruining Germany and France through internecine strife.
The villains and fools, who have discovered these guarantees for eternal peace, should surely know from Prussian history, from Napoleon's drastic remedy in the Peace of Tilsit,[126] how such coercive measures to silence a viable people have precisely the opposite effect to that intended. And what is France, even after losing Alsace and Lorraine, compared with Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit!
If French chauvinism had some material justification, as long as the old state relations persisted, in the fact that since 1815 the capital, Paris, and thus France itself, were exposed after a few lost battles — will it not derive new vigour once the eastern border runs along the Vosges and northern at Metz?
Not even the most rabid (2) Teuton dares to claim that the people of Alsace and Lorraine desire the blessings of German government. It is the principle of pan-Germanism and "secure" borders which is being proclaimed here, and which would lead to fine results for Germany and Europe from the eastern side(3)!
Anyone who is not deafened by the clamour of the hour, and has no interest in deafening the German people, must realise that the war of 1870 just as necessarily carries within it the seed of a war between Germany and Russia, as the war of 1866 does the war of 1870.
I say necessarily, inevitably, except in the unlikely event of revolution in Russia breaking out first.
Should this unlikely event not occur, the war between Germany and Russia must already be treated as a fait accompli (an accomplished fact).
It depends entirely on the present conduct of the German victors whether the war will prove useful or harmful.
If they take Alsace and Lorraine, France will join with Russia to wage war on Germany. There is no need to point out the disastrous consequences.
If they conclude an honourable peace with France, that war will emancipate Europe from the Muscovite dictatorship, make Prussia merge into Germany, allow the western continent peaceful development and, finally, help a social revolution to break out in Russia, whose elements only need such an impulse from without for their development — thus benefitting the Russian people, too.
But I fear that the villains and fools will play their mad game unhindered unless the German working class en masse raises its voice.
The present war is opening up a new epoch in the history of the world in that Germany has proved that, even without German Austria, it is capable of going its own way, independently of foreign countries. That, to begin with, it is finding its unity in the Prussian barracks is a punishment which it amply deserves. But one result has been achieved immediately. Petty trifles, such as, for example, the conflict between North German National Liberals and South German supporters of the People's Party,[127] will no longer pointlessly get in the way. The state of affairs will develop and become simpler on a grand scale. If the German working class then fails to play the historic role allotted to it, it will only have itself to blame. This war has shifted the centre of gravity of the continental labour movement from France to Germany. This means that greater responsibility now rests with the German working class...
Included in the text of the Manifesto of the Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party published as a leaflet on September 5 and in the newspaper Der
Volksstaat, No. 73, September 11, 1870
Endnotes
[125] The letter to the Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party was written in reply to a request from the members of the Brunswick Committee that Marx elucidate the attitude of the German working class to the Franco-Prussian war. Marx considered it necessary to express his opinion because the editorial board of the Volksstaat (Liebknecht and others), while, on the whole, taking an internationalist position, had, at the beginning, when the war, as far as Prussia was concerned, had a defensive character, shown a one-sided attitude to it and somewhat ignored the task of national unification. Some members of the Brunswick Committee, on the contrary, underestimated the expansionist tendencies of the Prussian ruling circles, which became obvious even in the inital stages of the war. The correspondence between Marx and Engels deals with this matter in detail. Thus, in a letter of August 15, 1870, Engels drafted the tactics for German Social-Democracy; he stressed the need to come out against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, while participating in the movement for the unification of Germany; to distinguish between the German national and Prussian dynastic interests; always to put forward the common interests of the German and French workers (see present edition, Vol. 44). Marx considered the answer to the leaders of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party to be of exceptional importance, as the question concerned the "directives guiding the policy of the German workers" (see Marx's letter to Engels of August 17, 1870, present edition, Vol. 44). The final variant of the reply was prepared by Marx and Engels during Marx's stay in Manchester from August 22 to 30, 1870. The letter was signed by Marx and sent to Germany. He reported on it at the General Council meeting on September 6. Part of the letter to the Committee was included in the text of the Manifesto on the war issued by the Committee as a leaflet on September 5, 1870 des Ausschusses der social-demokratischen Arbeiterpartei, (Manifest Braunschweig, 5. September 1870). The Manifesto proclaimed the German working class's loyalty to the cause of the international solidarity of the proletariat and called on German workers to organise mass meetings against the Prussian government's annexationist plans. The Manifesto noted that the text included in it had been written by "one of our oldest and most worthy comrades in London". Only the part of the letter reproduced in the Manifesto has been preserved. The copy of the leaflet obtaining at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow bears notes and corrections in Engels' hand, which testify that Marx and Engels worked together on it. The Manifesto was published by many newspapers in German, and also in English, French and Russian. It was also published in C. Koch, Der Prozeß gegen den Ausschuß der social-demokratischen Arbeiterpartei..., Braunschweig, 1871; W. Bracke, Der Braunschweiger Ausschuß der socialdemokratischen Arbeiter-Partei..., Braunschweig, 1872 as well as in Leipziger Hochverrathsprozeß..., Leipzig, 1872, 1874, and other publications. It was first published in English in The Echo, October 15, 1870.
[126] The treaties of Tilsit—peace treaties signed on July 7 and 9, 1807 by Napoleonic France, and Russia and Prussia, members of the fourth anti-French coalition. In an attempt to split the defeated powers, Napoleon made no territorial claims on Russia and even succeeded in transferring some of the Prussian monarchy's eastern lands to Russia. The treaty imposed harsh terms on Prussia, which lost nearly half its territory to the German states dependent on France, was made to pay indemnities and had its army reduced. However, Russia, like Prussia, had to break its alliance with Britain and, to its disadvantage, join Napoleon's Continental System. Napoleon formed the vassal Duchy of Warsaw on Polish territory seized by Prussia during the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, and planned to use it as a springboard in the event of war with Russia. Dictated by Napoleon, the Treaty of Tilsit caused dissatisfaction among the German population and paved the way for the liberation movement that broke out against Napoleonic rule in 1813. pp. 26, 266
[127] National Liberals (Die Nationalliberale Partei) was the party of the German, mostly Prussian, bourgeoisie, which emerged in the autumn of 1866 as a result of the split in the Party of Progress. The policy of the National Liberals reflected the rejection by a considerable section of the liberal bourgeoisie of claims to broader political rights and its capitulation before Bismarck's Junker government after Prussia's victory in the Austro-Prussian war (see Note 5) and the establishment of her hegemony in Germany. The German People's Party (Die Deutsche Volkspartei) was established in the second half of the 1860s, its members being democratically-minded bourgeois, mostly from South German states. In contrast to the National Liberals, it opposed Prussia's hegemony in Germany and supported the plan for a so-called "Great Germany", including both Prussia and Austria. While pursuing an anti-Prussian policy and advancing general democratic slogans, the German People's Party voiced the particularist aspirations of some German states. It propagated the idea of a federal German state, but opposed Germany's unification in the form of a centralised bourgeois-democratic republic.