TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES
Sir,—
I am directed by the General Council of the International Working Men's Association to solicit your favour to publish the following in the columns of your journal: —
A statement has gone the round of the English press that the Paris members of the International Working Men's Association had in so far joined the so-called Anti-German League[146] as to declare all Germans to be henceforth excluded from our association.(1)
This statement is the very reverse of fact. Neither the Federal Council of our association in Paris, nor any of the Paris sections represented by that council, have ever passed any such resolution. The so-called Anti-German League, as far as it exists at all, is the exclusive work of the upper and middle classes: it was started by the Jockey Club,[147] and kept up by the adhesions of the Academy, of the Stock Exchange, of some bankers and manufacturers, etc. The working-classes have nothing whatever to do with it.
The object of these calumnies is evident. A short time before the outbreak of the late war the International was made the general scapegoat for all untoward events. This is now repeated over again. While the Swiss and the Prussian press accuses it of having created the late outrages upon Germans in Zurich,[148]
French papers, such as the Courrier de Lyon, Courrier de la Gironde, La Liberté, etc., tell of certain secret meetings of Internationals having been held at Geneva and Berne, the Prussian Ambassador in the chair, in which meetings a plan was concocted to hand over Lyons to the united Prussians and Internationals for the sake of common plunder.(2)
Yours respectfully,
/. George Eccarius, General Secretary of the International Working Men's Association
256, High Holborn, March 22
Published in The Times, No. 27018, March 23, 1871, in The Eastern Post, No. 130, March 25, 1871 and in other press organs of the International
Endnotes
[145] This statement was m a d e necessary by the false allegations about the expulsion of Germans from the International's sections in Paris, which were disseminated by the reactionary newspaper Paris-Journal. These allegations were refuted in a special letter from the Paris Federal Council in response to the General Council's request. The statement of the General Council to the editor of The Times and other papers was written by Marx and unanimously approved by the General Council at its meeting on March 21. The Statement was published in The Times, No. 27018, March 23; in The Eastern Post, No. 130, March 25; The Standard, No. 14555, March 27, 1871. The statement was included in Marx's letter to the editor of Der Volksstaat of March 23, 1871 (see this volume, p. 289), and in Marx's letter to Lafargue of the same date.
[146] In the first half of March, the French bourgeois papers, particulary the Paris-Journal and the Gaulois, were actively supporting the idea of founding the so-called Anti-German League. The League was supposed to foster in the young people a spirit of revenge for the defeat in the war, to help the French depart from Alsace and Lorraine, which were occupied by the German army, and to sow discord between French and German workers.
[147] T h e Jockey Club—an aristocratic club founded in Paris in 1833.
[148] A meeting of Germans belonging to the propertied classes was held in Zurich in March 1871 to celebrate Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian war. At the meeting, there was a clash between a group of French officers interned in Switzerland and the Germans. The reactionary press blew up a provocative campaign in order to undermine the international ties between the workers of different countries and accused the International of staging these events. The Swiss section of the International exposed the slander of the bourgeois press in a special statement. Several trades unions in Zurich likewise issued statements saying that members of the International had nothing to do with the clash.