SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY199(Laura's second child had died the previous year) retired to the small
resort of Bagneres-de-Luchon, suitably near the Spanish frontier. The
baby died at the end of July and Paul, fearing imminent arrest, crossed
into Spain. Laura joined him there, her only remaining child ill with
dysentery. Jenny and Eleanor left to return to London but were arrested
on the frontier, submitted to a lengthy interrogation and spent the night
111 gaol. Jenny only just managed to get rid of an incriminating letter
from Flourens, one of the Commune leaders. They were deported to
Spain, and after further difficulties with the Spanish police managed to sail
from St Sebastian, with Laura, at the end of August.^134
In Germany, now the main centre of European socialism, the Eisenach
party could not associate itself publicly with the International and anyway
no longer needed its support against the ADAV with whom the old
rivalry was beginning to decline. Although the Eisenach leaders were still
loyal to Marx and Engels, appeals from London showed that (unlike the
pre-187 1 years) the General Council needed the support of the Germans
more than they needed it. In fact, Lassalleanism continued to be the main
force in German socialism; and though Marx's prestige remained high, it
was more for personal than doctrinal reasons. In Britain, the publication
of the Civil War occasioned the resignation of Odger and Lucraft from
the General Council, but no trade union disaffiliated and the General
Council continued to be active in assisting strikers. Nevertheless, British
trade unions generally were becoming less radical: since the Reform Bill
of 1867 and the failure of their candidates in 1868 , they were looking to
an alliance with the Liberals as the most effective means of securing their
ends; and their support for Gladstone's pro-Russian policy made them
even less congenial to Marx. Apart from Belgium, the only areas where
the International made progress after the Commune were strongholds of
anarchism: Spain and Italy.
But this situation was only slowly perceived by Marx who, for almost a
year after the Commune, was imbued with a thoroughgoing revolutionary
optimism and saw a parallel between the harassment of the International
and the persecutions suffered by the first Christians which had failed to
save the Roman Empire.^135 By the autumn of 1871 there had been no
congress of the International for two years. On the General Council Marx
was instrumental in changing a proposal to hold a congress in Amsterdam
into a decision to convene a private conference in London similar to the
one held in 1865. The conference was to concern itself solely with
organisational questions, and Marx's intention was that it should check
the growing influence of Bakunin; indeed, he had already proposed a
conference to this end a year earlier, in August 1870. Bakunin's influence
was centred mainly on Switzerland where the Geneva section had split