Routledge Library Editions karl marx

The Austro-Prussian War

The time and energy which Marx devoted to the cause of the International had the disagreeable result that his efforts to earn a living were interfered with and his old financial troubles arose again.

On the 31st ofJuly he was again compelled to write to Engels informing him that for the last two months the family had been living on the pawnshop : “I assure you I would sooner cut off my finger than write this letter. It is truly crushing to have to live half one’s life in dependence. The only consolation which sustains me is that you and I are in partnership and that my job is to give my time to theoretical and party business. I am afraid this house is rather above my means and this year we have lived a little better than usual, but it was the only way to give the children an opportunity of establishing connections which might offer them some security for their future, not to mention the fact




that it was some little recompense for all they have gone through. I think you will agree with me that even purely from the business point of view a completely proletarian household would be unsuitable here, although as far as my wife and I are concerned it would be ail right, or if the girls were boys.” Engels assisted his friend immediately, but the petty worries and troubles of securing a bare existence again began to plague Marx and his family and they continued to do so for a number of years.

A few months later, on the 5th of October 1865, a letter from Lothar Bucher offered Marx an unexpected opportunity of earning money, and in a most peculiar fashion. Bucher had lived as an emigrant in London, but the two men had maintained no relations and certainly not friendly ones. Even when Bucher began to take up an independent position in the general emigrant tangle and joined Urquhart as the latter’s enthusiastic supporter, Marx remained critical towards him, but Bucher spoke very favourable to Borkheim of Marx’s answer to Vogt and wanted to review it for the Allgemeine Zeitung. No such review ever appeared, but whether this was because Bucher did not write it or because the Allgemeine Zeitung refused to print it there is now no means of telling. After the granting of the Prussian amnesty Bucher returned to Germany and in Berlin he made friends with Lassalle. With the latter he visited the Great Exhibition in London in 1862, and through him he became acquainted with Marx, who described him as “ a fine but rather confused chappie ” and thought it unlikely that he was in agreement with Lassalle’s “ foreign policy ”. After Lassalle’s death Bucher had entered the service of the Prussian government, and in a letter to Engels Marx had dismissed him and Rodbertus with the round abuse : “ A miserable pack, all that rabble from Berlin, Brandenburg and Pomerania ! ”

And now Bucher wrote : “ First of all to business : the Staatsanzeiger would like a monthly report on the movements of the money-market (and naturally of the commodity market also as far as the two cannot be separated), and I was asked whether I could recommend anyone. I replied that I knew of no one better suited to the job than you, and in consequence I have been asked to approach you in the matter. You would not be limited with regard to the length of the articles; the more thorough and comprehensive the better. With regard to the content you would naturally follow only the dictates of your scientific convictions. However, consideration for the readers (hautefinance) and not for the editorial board would make it advisable to leave the inner core of the matter visible only to ^expCTte, and to avoid all polemics.” A few business observations




then followed, a reference to a joint outing with Lassalle, whose end would always remain “ a psychological riddle ” to the writer, and then the remark that he, Marx, was no doubt aware that the writer had since returned to his first love, the files. “ I never shared Lassalle’s opinions and always thought he saw things developing more quickly than really was the case. Progress will shed its skin many times before it dies, and therefore anyone who wants to work within the State during his lifetime must rally round the government.” After recommendations to Frau Marx and greetings to the young ladies, and in particular the little one, the letter closed with the traditional flourish : “ Your obedient and respectful servant.”

Marx rejected the offer, but no detailed information is obtainable as to what he actually wrote, and what he actually thought about Bucher’s letter. Immediately after having received it he went to Manchester where no doubt he discussed the matter wit^h Engels, but there is no mention of the affair at all in their letters to each other and only one passing reference in Marx’s letters to his other friends, as far as they are known. Fourteen years later when the terrorist attempts of Hodel and Nobiling let loose a fierce campaign of incitement against the socialists, he published Bucher’s letter, and its effect was like a bomb-shell in the camp of the socialist-baiters. At the time of the publication Bucher was secretary to the Berlin Congress, and according to the statement of his semi-official biographer it was he who drew up the first anti-socialist bill which was brought forward after the Hodel and Nobiling outrages but rejected by the Reichstag.

Since then there has been much discussion as to whether Bucher’s letter was an attempt by Bismarck to buy Marx, and it is certain at least that in the autumn of 1865, after the signing of the Treaty of Gastein had ineffectively patched up the threatening breach with Austria, Bismarck was inclined, to use his own hunting simile, “ to let loose any dog willing to bark ”. Bismarck himself was far too much an inveterate East ElbianJunker to flirt with the working class in the way Disraeli, or even Louis Bonaparte, did, and the droll ideas he formed about Lassalle, whom he met personally on a number of occasions, are sufficiently known, but at least in his immediate entourage he had two people who were better equipped to deal with this delicate question, and they were Lothar Bucher and Hermann Wagener. It is a fact that at the time Wagener was doing his best to decoy the German working-class movement, and as far as Countess Hatz- feldt had any say in the matter he succeeded. As the intellectual leader of the Junkers and an old friens! of Bismarck from the pre-




March days, Wagener was in an incomparably stronger position than Bucher, who was completely dependent on Bismarck’s good-will owing to the fact that the bureaucracy regarded him with suspicion as an intruder whilst the King refused to have anything whatever to do with him on account of 1848. And in any case, Bucher was a weakling, “ a fish without bones ”, as his friend Rodbertus declared.

If Bucher’s letter was really an attempt to buy Marx, it was certainly not made without Bismarck’s knowledge, but it is doubtful whether it actually was such an attempt. The way in which Marx used the letter in 1878 during the anti-socialist campaign was irreproachable and it was a clever move, but it does not even prove that Marx himself thought the letter to have been an attempt to buy him, much less that the letter was such an attempt. Bucher was well aware that since Marx had broken off relations with Schweitzer the German Lassalleans had no very high opinion of him, and further, a monthly report on the movements of the money-market in the most boring of all German newspapers can hardly have recommended itself as an effective means to pacify the general discontent with Bismarck’s policy, not to speak of winning the support of the workers for that policy. Under the circumstances therefore there is more than a little to be said in favour of Bucher’s statement that he recommended his old companion in exile to the Curator of the Staatsanzeiger without any ulterior political motive, though perhaps with the proviso that the Curator had already refused to accept a representative of the Manchester school. Having suffered a rebuff at Marx’s hands Bucher then approached Diihring, who agreed to take over the work but very soon gave it up when it turned out that the Curator of the Staatsanzeiger was very far from possessing that respect for “ scientific convictions ” with which Bucher had credited him.

Worse even than the increasing economic difficulties with which Marx had to contend as a result of his active work for the International and his own scientific work was the fact that his health began to suffer more and more. On the ioth of February 1866 Engels wrote : “ You must really do something to get rid of this carbuncle business. . . . Stop your night work for a time and lead a more regular life.” And on the 13th of February Marx replied : “ Yesterday I was on my back again with a malignant boil which formed in my left groin. If I had money enough for my family and my book were finished I shouldn’t care in the least whether I went to the knacker’s yard to-day or to-morrow, as it is, however, I do care.” And a week later Engels received the alarming information : “ This time it was




touch and go. My family didn’t know how serious the matter really was. If the thing breaks out again three or four times in the same fashion I am a dead man. I have fallen away terribly and still feel damned weak, not so much in my head as in my loins and legs. The doctors are right of course when they say that excessive night work was the cause of the relapse, but I can’t tell them what compels me to commit such extravagances, and it would be no use if I could.” However, Engels now insisted that his friend should give himselfa rest for a few weeks and Marx went to Margate.

In Margate he soon recovered his spirits and in a cheerful letter to his daughter Laura he wrote : “ I am really glad that I went to a private house and not to a hotel where I should inevitably have been bothered with local politics, domestic scandals and neighbourly tittle-tattle, but still, I can’t sing with the Miller of Dee that I care for nobody and nobody cares for me, because after all there is my landlady, who is as deaf as a post, and her daughter, who is troubled with chronic hoarseness. However, they are nice people, attentive and not intrusive. I have developed into a perambulating walking-stick. The greater part of the day I am out in the air and at ten o’clock I go to bed. I read nothing, write less and am gradually working myself into that state of Nirvana which Buddhism regards as the consummation of human bliss.” And at the foot of the letter there is a teasing remark which apparently foreshadows coming events : “ That little devil Lafargue is still plaguing me with his Proud- honism, and I suppose he won’t be satisfied until I’ve knocked some sense into his Creole skull.”

Whilst Marx was still in Margate the first lightning flashes pierced the war-clouds which had gathered over Germany. On the 8th ofApril Bismarck concluded an offensive alliance with Italy against Austria, and the next day he approached the Germanic Diet with the request that a German parliament should be convened on the basis of the general franchise to discuss a reform of the League for presentation to the German governments. The attitude which Marx and Engels took up to these events reveals how far they had lost touch with the German situation. Their judgment vacillated. Referring to Bismarck’s proposal to convene a German parliament Engels wrote on the loth of April : “ What an ass the fellow must be to believe that will help him in the least ! If things really come to a head then for the first time in history future developments will depend on the attitude of Berlin. If the Berliners deliver their blow at the right moment then things may develop favourably—but who can rely on them ? ”




Three days later he wrote again, but this time with extraordinarily clear foresight : “It looks as though the German bourgeoisie will agree to the proposal (the general franchise) after a little resistance, for, after all, Bonapartism is the real religion of the bourgeoisie. I am beginning to realize more and more clearly that the bourgeoisie is not cut out to rule directly, and that therefore where there is no oligarchy (like the one in England) prepared to govern in the interests of the bourgeoisie in return for liberal rewards, a Bonapartist semi-dictatorship is the normal form of bourgeois rule. Such a form carries through the great material interests of the bourgeoisie even against the bourgeoisie, but refuses to give the latter a share in the government. On the other hand this dictatorship itself is compelled against its will to further these material interests of the bourgeoisie, and thus we now observe Monsieur Bismarck adopting the programme of the Nationalverein. Carrying it out is, of course, quite another matter, but he is hardly likely to come to grief on account of the German bourgeoisie.” Engels thought that Bismarck would fail because of the Austrian army. Benedek was in any case a better general than Prince Friedrich Karl. Austria was strong enough to force Prussia to sue for peace, but Prussia was not strong enough to force Austria to do so, and therefore every Prussian success would be an invitation to Bonaparte to intervene.

In a letter to his new friend Doctor Kugelmann of Hannover Marx described the situation in almost the same words. Whilst he was still a lad in 1848 Kugelmann had been an enthusiastic supporter of Marx and Engels, and he had carefully collected all their writings, but it was not until 1862 that, thanks to Freili- grath’s mediation, he made the acquaintance of Marx and soon became one of his confidants. Marx subordinated himself to Engels’ judgment absolutely in all military questions and with a lack of criticism unusual for him.

Still more astonishing than his over-estimation of the Austrian army was Engels’ idea of the condition of the Prussian army, because he had just dealt with the army reform, which had been the occasion of the Prussian constitutional conflict, and in this work he had shown far greater insight than the bourgeois democratic tub-thumpers. On the 25th of May he wrote : “If the Austrians are clever enough not to attack then the trouble in the Prussian army will certainly come to a head. The men were never so rebellious as they have proved themselves during this mobilization. Unfortunately we hear of only a small part of what is really happening, but even that is enough to show that an offensive war is impossible with such an army.” And on the


II th of June he wrote : “ The Landwehr ¹ will be as dangerous to Prussia in this war as the Poles were in I 806, when they represented over a third of the army and disorganized everything, with the exception that this time the Landwehr will not disband after the defeat, but revolt.” That was written three weeks before the decisive battle of Koniggratz.

Koniggratz dispelled all misunderstandings immediately and the day after the battle Engels wrote : “ What do you think of the Prussians ? They followed up their success with enormous energy. Such a decisive battle all over in eight hours is unparalleled ; under other circumstances it would have lasted two days, but the percussion gun is a deadly weapon, and then the fellows fought with a bravery seldom seen in peace-time soldiers.” Marx and Engels might make mistakes and they often did so, but they never resisted the recognition of error when the events themselves compeUed it. The Prussian victory was an unpleasant pill for them to swallow, but they made no attempt to avoid their medicine and on the 25th ofJuly Engels, who still retained the leadership in this question, summed up the situation as follows : “ The situation in Germany now seems fairly simple to me. From the moment Bismarck carried out his plan with the Prusdan army and met with such colossal success, the development in Germany took such a decided trend in his direction that, like everyone else, we must now recognize accomplished facts whether we like them or not. . . . There is at least one good side to the matter and that is that it simplifies the situation and makes the revolution easier by abolishing petty-capital brawling and will in any case accelerate development. Mter all, a German parliament is quite a different thing from a Prussian chamber. The whole petty-State particularism will be dragged into the movement, the worst localizing influences will be destroyed, and the parties will become really national instead of merely local.” And two days later Marx answered with dry composure : “ I agree with you entirely that we must take the mess as it is. StiU, it is pleasant to be at a distance during this first period of young love.”

At the same time Engels wrote, “ Brother Liebknecht is spurring himself into fanatical pro-Austrianism ” and he did not mean this as praise. He, Liebknecht, was responsible obviously for “ an outburst of anger ” from Leipzig which had appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung. This regicidal paper had even trimmed its sails so far as to reproach Prussia for its shameful treatment of “ the noble Prince of Hesse ” and its heart was warming to the poor blind Guelph. At the same time Schweitzer in Berlin ¹ The Reserve.—Tr.




was taking up the same attitude as Marx and Engels, and almost in the same words, and for this “ opportunist policy ” the memory of the unfortunate man still suffers from the moral indignation of those ponderous “ Statesmen ” who swear by Marx and Engels, but do not understand them.

5. 
   The Geneva Congress
   

Despite the original plan, the first congress of the International had not taken place when the battle of Koniggratz decided the fate of Germany. It had been necessary to postpone the congress until September, although in the second year ofits existence the organization had made much quicker progress than in the first.

Geneva began to develop into the most important centre of the movement on the Continent, and both the German Swiss and the Franco-Italian -Swiss sections founded party organs. The German Swiss section issued Der Vorbote, a monthly publication founded and edited by the veteran revolutionary Becker, and even to-day its columns represent one of the most important sources of information concerning the First International. It first appeared in January 1866 and styled itself the “ Central Organ of the German Language Group ”, for the German members of the International also regarded Geneva as their centre owing to the fact that the laws of Germany prevented the formation of a specifically German section, and for much the same reason the influence of the Franco-Italian Swiss section in Geneva extended into France.

The movement in Belgium also issued a paper of its own entitled le Tribune du Peuple, and Marx recognized it as the official organ of the International equally with the two Geneva papers, but there were one or two papers issued in Paris and representing the cause of the workers in their own way which he did not recognize as official mouthpieces of the International. The cause of the International made good progress in France also, but it was more like a fire sweeping over stubble than a steady blaze. Owing to the complete absence of any freedom of the press or any right to meet, it was difficult to found any real centres of the movement, and the ambiguous toleration of the Bonapartist police tended to sap the energy of the workers rather than encourage it. Further, the dominating influence of Proud- honism was not favourable to any development of working-class organizational strength.




“ Young France ”, as the fugitives in Brussels and London styled themselves, made a deal of noise and trouble. In February 1866 a French section of the International which had been founded in London violently opposed the General Council for having placed the Polish question on the agenda of the congress. Under the influence of Proudhonism its representatives asked how one could possibly think of opposing Russian influence by the restoration of Polish unity at a time when Russia was freeing the serfs whilst the Polish aristocracy and clergy obstinately refused to do so. And at the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War the French members of the International caused the General Council a lot of trouble with what Marx described as their “ Proudhonised-Sdrnerism ”. They announced that the nation as an idea was obsolete. The nations should be dissolved into little “ groups ” which would then form an “ association ” in place of the State. “ And this ‘ individualization ’ of humanity and the corresponding mutual^m will proceed whilst in all countries history conveniently comes to a full stop and the whole world waits until the individuals are ripe to make a social revolution. They will then carry out this experiment and the rest of the world be overwhelmed by the force of their example and will proceed to do the same.” This sarcasm was directed against Marx’s “ very good friends ” Lafargue and Longuet, who were later to become his sons-in-law, but who at the time were making themselves a nuisance as “ apostles of Proudhon ”.

Much to Marx’s satisfaction the main strength of the International was still in the English trade unions, and in a letter to Kugelmann on the 15th of January 1866 he expresses delight at the fact that it had been possible to draw these, the only really big working-class organizations, into the movement. He was particularly pleased with a monster meeting which had taken place a few weeks earlier in St. Martin’s Hall under the intellectual leadership of the International in favour of the reform of the franchise. In March 1866 Gladstone’s Whig Cabinet brought in a Bill for electoral reform, but it proved too radical for a section of Gladstone’s own party, which went over to the Tories and caused the fall of the government and its replacement by a Tory Ministry with Disraeli as Prime Minister. When Disraeli then attempted to postpone the question of electoral reform indefinitely the movement in its favour grew more and more vigorous. Writing to Engels on the 7th of July Marx declared : “ The workers’ demonstrations in London, marvellous compared with anything we have seen in England since 1849, are purely the work of the International. Lucraft, for instance, the leader of the Trafalgar Square demonstration, is a member




of our council.” At a meeting of 20,000 people in Trafalgar Square Lucraft proposed a demonstration in Whitehall Gardens, “ where we once chopped off the head of a King ”, and shortly afterwards a great demonstration of 60,000 people in Hyde Park almost developed into an insurrection.

The trade unions freely recognized the services of the International in furthering the movement which was sweeping the country, and a delegate conference in Sheffield representing all the big trade unions adopted a resolution : “ That this conference fully recognizes the services of the International Working-men’s Association in furthering fraternal solidarity between the workers of all countries and urgently recommends all the societies represented at its deliberations to affiliate to this body in the conviction that such affiliation is of great importance for the progress and welfare of the whole working class.” As a result of this resolution many trade unions then affiliated to the International, but although this was a great moral and political success it did not yield proportionate material advantages. It was left to the unions to pay what affiliation subscriptions they thought fit or none at all, and when they did decide to pay anything their contributions were extremely modest, for instance, the boot and shoemakers with 5,000 members paid an affiliation subscription of five pounds annually, the carpenters with 9,000 members paid two pounds annually, whilst the bricklayers with from 3,000 to 4,000 members paid only a pound.

However, Marx was very soon compelled to recognize that “ the damned traditional character of all English movements ” was making itself felt in the Reform movement too. Before the founding of the International the trade unions had approached the bourgeois Radicals in connection with the reform movement, and the more the latter promised to yield tangible fruits the closer these relations became. “ Payments on account ”, which would formerly have been rejected with great indignation, now appeared as acceptable prizes in the struggle. Marx missed the fiery spirit of the old Chartists and deeply regretted the incapacity of the English to do two things at once, pointing out that the more progress the reform movement made the cooler the trade- union leaders became “ in our own movement ”, and that “ the reform movement in England, which was brought into being by us, has almost killed us ”. A strong bulwark against the advance of this tendency was removed owing to the fact that Marx’s illness and his convalescence in Margate prevented him from intervening in person.

The Workman's Advocate, a weekly paper which the conference of 1865 had raised to the dignity of an official organ of the Inter


national and wkich changed its name to The Commonwealth in February 1866, caused him a lot of trouble and worry. He was a member of the management of the paper, which was compelled to fight ceaselessly against financial difficulties and was therefore dependent on the assistance of the bourgeois electoral reformers. He did his utmost to counteract this bourgeois influence and at the same time he had to compose the jealous disputes which arose in connection with the editorial work. For a time Eccarius was the editor of the paper and he published his famous polemic against John Stuart Mill in it.¹ Marx rendered him very much assistance in the writing of this work. In the end, however, Marx was unable to prevent The Commonwealth from degenerating “ into a purely reform organ for the moment . . . partly for economic and partly for political reasons ”, as he wrote to Kugelmann.

This general situation explains completely why he harboured lively misgivings concerning the coming congress of the International and feared that it would “ expose us to European ridicule ” . The French members insisted that the decision of the General Council to hold the congress in May should be adhered to and Marx wanted to go to Paris to convince them of the impossibility of this date, but Engels declared that the whole affair was not worth the risk of falling into the hands of the Bonapartist police where he, Marx, would be without protection. It was not so important whether the congress made any valuable decisions or not so long as a public scandal was avoided and that would be possible somehow. In a certain sense, of course—at least, towards themselves—any such demonstration would be a failure, but it need not necessarily be one which would ridicule them in the eyes of Europe.

The matter was finally settled by the Geneva organization. which had not c^pleted its preparations for the congress and therefore decided to postpone it until September, and this was agreed to everywhere except in Paris. Marx had no intention of attending the congress, for his scientific work no longer permitted any considerable interruption and he felt he was doing sometking more important for the working class than anything he might be able -to do at the congress, but for all that he devoted very much of his time to assuring the best possible auspices for the congress. He drew up a memorandum for the London delegates and deliberately limited it to such points as would “ permit immediate co-operation and understanding between the workers and serve the immediate needs of the class struggle and the organization of the workers as a class ”. One can pay

¹ A WorAwg-^man’r lUJutation of J. S. MiU.—Tr.


this memorandum the same compliment which Professor Beesly paid to The Inaugural Address: it sums up the immediate

demands of the international proletariat more thoroughly and more strikingly than ever before in a few pages.

The President of the General Council, Odger, and its General Secretary, Cremer, went to Geneva as the representatives of the Council together with Eccarius and Jung, and it was on the two last named that Marx chiefly relied.

The congress took place from the 3rd to the 8th of September under the chairmanship of Jung and in the presence of 60 delegates. Marx found that it had been “ better than I expected ”, but he expressed himself bitterly about “ the gentlemen from Paris ”. Their heads were “ full of the emptiest Proudhonist phrases. They babble about science and they are uttely ignorant. They scorn all revolutionary action, that is to say, action arising out of the class struggle, and all concentrated social movements, movements which can be carried out with political means (for instance, the legal limitation of the working day). Under the pretext of freedom and anti-governmentalism or anti-authori- tarian-individualism these gentlemen, who have meekly tolerated sixteen years of the blindest despotism and are still tolerating it, actually preach a vulgar bourgeois economic system idealized a little by Proudhonism.” And so on in even harsher terms.

Marx’s judgment was severe, but a few years later Johann P^topp Becker, who was present at the congress and one of its foremost delegates, expressed himself even more harshly concerning the chaos which marked its sessions, except that he did not forget the Germans on account of the French, or the supporters of Schulze-Delitzsch on account of the Proudhonists : “ How much politeness we had to waste on the good people in order to avoid with decency the danger of their enthusiasm running away with the congress ”. The reports published at the time in Der Vorbote ori the deliberations of the congress are written in a different tone and they must be read with all the critical faculties alert.

The French were relatively strong at the congress and they controlled about one-third of the mandates. In the upshot they did not achieve very much, but they spared no eloquence. Their proposal that only manual workers should be accepted as members of the International and that all others should be excluded was turned down, as was also their proposal to deal with the religious question in the programme of the International, a rebuff which marked the end of this abortion. On the other hand, a fairly harmless resolution calling for the study of international credit was adopted. Its aim was to secure later on the founding of a




central bank for the International along Proudhonist lines. Much more disagreeable was the adoption of a resolution, brought forward by Tolain and Fribourg, declaring that female labour represented a “ principle of degeneration ” and that a woman’s place was in the home. However, this resolution was opposed even by other French delegates, including Varlin, and it was adopted together with a resolution of the General Council on female and child labour which in effect killed it. For the rest the French delegates succeeded in smuggling a little Proudhonism into the resolutions of the congress here and there, but although these blemishes which disfigured his hard work annoyed him Marx did not fail to recognize that on the whole the congress had been fairly satisfactory.

Only in one point did he suffer a rebuff which might be considered painful, and probably was, and that was in the Polish question. Thanks to his experience with the London conference, he had carefully worked out this point in the memorandum he drew up for the London delegates. He declared that the European working class must take up the question because the ruling classes suppressed it (despite their effusive enthusiasm for every other sort of nationality) because the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie regarded the threatening Asiatic power in the background as the final bulwark against the advancing working class. This power could be checked only by the restoration of Polish unity on a democratic basis. Whether Germany remained an outpost of the Holy Alliance or became an ally of republican France would depend on the solution of this question. So long as this great European question remained unsolved the working-class movement would be continually hampered, held up and interrupted in its development.

The English delegates supported the proposal vigorously, but it met with an opposition no less vigorous from the French delegates and a number of the Franco-Italian Swiss delegates. In the end Becker, who had supported the resolution but was anxious to avoid a split on the question, put forward a compromise resolution declaring that the International was opposed to any form of rule by violence and that therefore it would strive for the abolition of Russian imperialist influence in Europe and for the restoration of Polish independence on a social democratic basis, and this evasive solution was adopted. Apart from this, the English memorandum triumphed all along the line. The provisional rules were adopted with one or two alterations and no debate at all took place on the inaugural address, which thenceforth was invariably referred to in the decisions and proclamations of the International as a fundamental official document.