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Special pages :
Letter to the Editor of The Times, August 7, 1871
| Author(s) | Frederick Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 7 August 1871 |
London 7th August 1871
First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XIII, Part II, 1940
Reproduced from the rough manu script
See Note 241.
First published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On the Paris
Commune, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971, pp. 260-61.
Sir,â
The remarks of The Times on the repeated postponement of the trial of the Communist prisoners at Versailles[1] have undoubtedly hit the nail on the head and have expressed the feeling of the French public. The angry note of the Journal officiel[2] in reply to these remarks is but one of the many proofs of the fact. In consequence of the article in The Times, many reclamations have been addressed to the Paris press, reclamations which, under these circumstances, had no chance of being published. I have before me the letter of a Frenchman whose official position enables him to know the facts he is writing about, and whose testimony as to the motives of this unaccountable delay ought to have some value. Here are some extracts from this letter:
âNobody as yet knows when the 3rd Court-martial will open its sittings. The cause of this appears to be that Captain Grimai, Commissaire de la RĂ©publique (public accuser), has been superseded by another and more reliable man; it has been found out at the last moment, on perusal of his general report which was to be read in court, that he was perhaps a little bit of a republican, that he had served under Faidherbe etc in the Army of the North etcâWell; all at once another officer presents himself at his office saying: here is my commission, I am your successor; the poor captain was so surprised that he went nearly mad....
âM. Thiers has the pretention to do everything by himself, this mania goes so far that not only has he called together, contrary to all rules of fairness, all the juges dâinstruction[3] in his cabinet, but he pretends even to regulate the composition of the public to be admitted into the Court; he himself, through M. B. St. Hilaire, distributes the tickets of admission....
âIn the mean time the prisoners at Satory die like fliesâpitiless death works faster than the justice of these litde statesmen.... There is in the Versailles Cellular prison a big fellow who does not speak a word of French, he is supposed to be an Irishman. How he got into this trouble is still a mystery.â Amongst the prisoners there is a very honest man called..., he has been in his cell for two months and has not yet been examined. It is infamous.â
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Justitia