Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/98

 92 send each other messages of peace and goodwill; this great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries, and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labour! The Pioneer of that new society is the International Working Men's Association.

July 23rd, 1870.

our first manifesto of the 23rd of July we said:—

"The death-knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the Governments and the ruling classes of Europe who enabled Louis Napoleon to play during eighteen years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire."

Thus, even before war operations had actually set in, we treated the Bonapartist bubble as a thing of the past.

If we were not mistaken as to the vitality of the Second Empire, we were not wrong in our apprehension lest the German war should "lose its strictly defensive character and degenerate into a war against the French people." The war of defence ended, in point of fact, with the surrender of Louis Bonaparte, the Sedan capitulation, and the proclamation of the Republic at Paris. But long before these events, the very moment that the utter rottenness of the Imperialist arms became evident, the Prussian military camarilla had resolved upon conquest. There lay an ugly obstacle in their way—King William's own proclamations at the commencement of the war. In his speech from the throne to the North German Diet, he had solemnly declared to make war upon the Emperor of the French, and not upon the French people. On the 11th of August he had isssuedissued [sic] a manifesto to the French nation, where he said: "The Emperor Napoleon having made, by land and sea, an attack on the German nation which desired and still desires to live in peace with the French people, I have assumed the command of the German armies to repel his aggression, and I have been led by military events to cross the frontiers of France." Not content to assert the defensive character of the war by the statement that he only assumed the command of