To the Sixth Congress of the Belgian Sections of the International Working Men's Association

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Engels wrote this letter on the instructions of the General Council after a discussion of the question of the Belgian Sections at the Council’s meeting on December 20, 1870. When the letter was published for the first time (L’Internationale, No. 103, January 1, 1871), the three last paragraphs in Engels’ rough manuscript were omitted as being confidential in nature.

The 6th regular half-yearly Congress of the Belgian Federation of the International Working Men’s Association took place on December 25 and 26, 1870 in Brussels. The delegates heard the financial report and reports on the Federation’s press organ, L’Internationale, and on the position of the International Working Men’s Association in Belgium.

London, December 23, 1870

Citizens!

The General Council of the International Working Men’s Association extends its congratulations on your Sixth Congress. The very fact that this Congress is meeting proves once again that the Belgian proletariat is continuing without respite in its efforts to emancipate the working class, even while a murderous, fratricidal war is filling the whole of Europe with horror, displacing for the time being all other topics in the minds of the public.

With particular satisfaction we have seen the Belgian sections follow, with regard to this war, the line of action and proclaim the ideas prescribed by the interests of the proletariat of all countries: to repudiate any idea of conquest and to preserve the French Republic. Moreover, in this respect our Belgian friends are in perfect harmony with the workers of other countries.

Since the occupation of Rouen by the Prussians, our last remaining links with France have been temporarily severed. But in England, America and Germany the movement among the workers against the war of conquest and for the preservation of the French Republic has developed very rapidly. In Germany, particularly, this movement has grown to such an extent that the Prussian government has seen itself obliged, for the sake of its policy of conquest and reaction, to deal harshly with the workers. The Central Committee of German Socialist-Democracy, meeting in Brunswick, have been arrested, and many members of this party have suffered the same fate; finally two deputies of the North German Parliament, citizens Bebel and Liebknecht, who represented there the views and interests of the working class, have been put behind bars. The International is accused of having given all these citizens the password for a vast revolutionary conspiracy; here we have, without a shadow of doubt, the second edition of the famous plot by the International in Paris, a plot which the Bonapartist police claimed to have discovered and which later went up in smoke in such a pitiful fashion.2 Despite these persecutions the international workers’ movement is advancing and gaining in strength all the time.

The current congress will provide you with the opportunity to ascertain the number of sections and other affiliated societies, as well as the membership of each of them, and so to get a precise idea of the progress being made by our movement in Belgium. We would like you to communicate to the General Council the result of these statistics on the state of our association in Belgium, statistics that we intend to complete for other countries as well. It goes without saying that we consider this communication to be confidential, and the facts that it will make known to us will not be made public.

Further, the General Council allows itself to hope that in the course of the year 1871 the Belgian sections will likewise feel able to recall the resolutions of the various international congresses regarding the remittances intended for it. The present war makes remittances from most of the continental countries out of the question, and we are well aware that the workers of Belgium are also affected by the general depression which is ensuing from this war; the General Council is also raising this question to remind the Belgian sections that without material support it is impossible for it to disseminate propaganda on the scale it would wish.

Owing to the absence of the secretary for Belgium, citizen Serraillier, the General Council has charged the undersigned with sending this communication to the congress.

Greetings and Fraternity,

Frederick Engels