THE INTERNATIONAL^354hredom had been beaten off; the International had grown enormously
in prestige, if not in resources, as a result of help negotiated for
.inkers; in Germany, the Social Democrats had at last declared their
adherence to the principles of the International; and finally, the General
( uuncil had had its authority over local sections enhanced, at least in
piiiiciple, by the Basle Congress. Even so the International was too fragile
i 11 instruction to be able to withstand the storm of the Franco-Prussian
Wur.
IV THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE DECLINE
OF THE INTERNATIONALI lie General Council decided to hold the 1870 Congress in Paris, but
growing persecution of the International by the French Government
pcisuaded them to change the meeting-place to Mainz. But two weeks
belore the Congress was due to meet, Napoleon III (outmanoeuvred by
hismarck's deliberate editing of the Ems telegram into a calculated insult)
1 lei hired war on Germany. The Paris section of the International immedi-
ately denounced the war; in Germany opinion was divided but the great
majority of socialists considered the war to be a defensive one: the Lassal-
li ans in the Reichstag voted for war credits and Liebknecht and Bebel
writ- isolated in their decision to abstain. Marx seemed at first to have
approved of Liebknecht's stand - although he saw the advantages of a
tie 1111 an victory since he considered Germany 'much riper for a social
vcment' than France. Before the abstention of Liebknecht, he wrote
in I' ngels:
l lie French need a drubbing. If the Prussians are victorious then the
centralisation of the State power will give help to the centralisation of
I lie working class. German preponderance will shift the centre of the
win king-class movement in Western Europe from France to Germany,
II id one has only to compare the movement of 1866 until now in both
nmntries to see that the German working-class is theoretically and
III ganisationally superior to the French. The superiority of the Germans
nvei the French in the world arena would mean at the same time the
nperiority of our theory over Proudhon's and so on.^86
( >1 1 1 $ July 1870 , four days after the outbreak of war, the General
1 uuncil endorsed the first of the Addresses drafted by Marx. It began by
ipiiituig from manifestos of the French section declaring the war to be
pin ely dynastic. After predicting that 'whatever may be the incidents of
I 1 mis Bonaparte's war with Prussia, the death knell of the Second Empire