Letter to the Organising Committee of the International Festival in Paris

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Engels wrote this letter on the occasion of the international festival of brotherhood held in Paris on February 19, 1887 on the initiative of a number of organisations of foreign socialists in France. Taking part in it were German, Scandinavian, Polish and Russian socialist émigrés. The purpose of the festival was to voice protest against the military build-up and war preparations in Europe. Engels’ letter was read out at the festival and printed in the Socialiste on February 26. A German translation was carried by Der Sozialdemokrat on March 11, by the Austrian paper Gleichheit on March 5, and by the New York Sozialist on March 19.

Citizens,

We find ourselves face to face with a terrible danger. We are threatened by a war in which those who loathe it and have only common interests—the French proletariat and the German proletariat—will be forced to butcher each other.

What is the real cause of this state of things?

It is militarism, it is the introduction of the Prussian military system in all the major countries of the Continent.

This system claims to arm the whole nation for the defence of its territory and its rights. That is a lie.

The Prussian system ousted the system of limited conscription and substitution bought by the wealthy, because it placed at the disposal of rulers all the resources of their countries, both manpower and materials. But it has not been able to create a popular army.

The Prussian system divides the citizens who are called up into two categories. The first are drafted into the army of the line, while the second are straightway assigned to the reserve or to the territorial army. The men in this second category receive no military instruction at all, or almost none; but the first serve with the colours for two or three years, sufficient time to turn them into an obedient army, accustomed to discipline, in other words an army ever ready to embark on foreign conquests and to suppress by violence any popular movements at home. For let us not forget that all the governments which have adopted this system are much more frightened of the working people within their frontiers than of rival governments beyond them.

Thanks to its flexibility this system is capable of enormous expansion. For as long as there remains a single young man who has not been drafted into the army, the available resources have not been exhausted. Hence the frantic competition between the states as to which of them possesses the largest and strongest army. Every addition to the military force of one state prompts the other states to do the same, if not more. And all this costs an enormous amount of money. The peoples are crushed by the burden of military expenditure. Peace becomes almost more expensive than war, so that eventually war no longer seems like a terrible scourge, but like a salutary crisis which will put an end to an impossible situation.

This is what has allowed intriguers of all countries keen to fish in troubled waters to press for war.

And the remedy?

Abolish the Prussian system, replace it with a truly popular army, an ordinary school into which any citizen capable of bearing arms will be drafted for the time strictly necessary in order to learn the soldier’s job; group the men graduating from this school into a reserve list, firmly organised by districts, so that every town, every canton has its own battalion, made up of men who know one another, united, armed, equipped, ready to march at twenty-four hours’ notice if necessary. This means that every man will keep his rifle and equipment at home, as they do in Switzerland.

The first nation to adopt this system will double its real military strength while halving its war budget. It will prove its love of peace by the very fact of arming all its citizens. For this army, which is the nation itself, is as ill suited to conquest abroad as it is invincible in the defence of its own territory. And what government would dare lay a finger on civil liberties, if every citizen has at home his rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition?

London, February 13, 1887

Frederick Engels