The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-06-17 00:00:00

THE "INTERNATIONAL" WORKING

MEN'S ASSOCIATION.

On Tuts lay was issued an address of the General
Council of the above association, to "All tbe mom-
bore of the Association in Europe and the United
States." It is very voluminous, and traces political
events in France from the 4th September, Is7o, when
the working men of Paris proclaimed the Republic,
down to the collapse of the Commune. it-ferring to
recent events in Paris, which have startled the world,
the Council says

"The workii.g men's Paris, In the act of Ka heroic self-
holocaust, Involved in Its names buildings and mfieuments.
While Wart .ig to pieced the living body el the er.letarlat, Its
niters most no longer espeat to return trinmphantly Into the
Intent nrchltecture of their abodes.... If the acts of the
Parts working men were Vandalism, It was the Vandalism of
defence In despair, not the Vandalism of triumph, likv that
which the Christians perpetrated upon the really priceless
treasures of heathen antiquity."

Speaking of the murder of the Archbishop of Paris
the Council says

The real murderer of Archbishop Dartioy Is Tillers. The
Commune again and again had offered to excharge the Arch-
bishop, and ever Co many priests In the bargain, sgalust the
single Blavitai then lathe bands of Thin. 1 dens obstinately
refivel"

The address in ilB concluding paikages goes on to
say :

" After Whit-Sunday, 1?71, there can be neither peso a nor
truce possible between the working men of France and the
appropriators of their produce. . . While the European
Governments testify before Earls to the international charsc•
ter of class rule, they cry down the "International" Working
Men's Association—the International c muter organlasi lon of
labour against the cosmopolitan conspiracy of capital—as
the tend fountain of all these dtaastere. Tillers denounced
it as the despot of labour pretending to be Its liberator.
Phard ordered that all communications between the
trench" International." and those abroad should be cut oft;
Count Jauberd, Thierlia mummified accomplice of
declare. it the preat problem of al. civilised Governments to
weed It out. An honourable French writer, completely
foreign to our association speaks as follow. The mem'sers
of the Central Committee of the Notional Guards, as well
as the greater part of the member, of the Commune, are
the most active, Intelligent, and energetic minds of the
" international" Working Men's Association—men who are
thoroughly honest, sincere, intelligent, devoted, pure.
and fanatical In the good sense of the ord.'
Ihe police-tinged bourgeois mind figures to Reel( the
association acting in the manner of a secret ern-
epiram—tts central holy ordering front time to time explo-
sions In different countries. Otir moct.tion in. in Wg,
nothing but the international bond between the most ad.
'armed working men In the various countries In the civilised
world. ... The soil out of which It grow. Is modern society
itself. It cannot be stamped out by any amount of carnage,
To stamp It out the Governments would have to stamp out
the despotism of capital over labour—the condition of their
own parasitical existence."