Introduction to the German Edition
The invitation to prepare another edition of the address of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association concerning the Civil War in France, and to preface it with an introduction, came to me quite unexpectedly. I can only, therefore, take up the most essential points and touch upon them very briefly.
I prefix the two shorter addresses of the General Council to the longer pamphlet on the Franco-Prussian War. Firstly, because in the pamphlet on the Civil War reference is made to the second address, which itself would not be intelligible without the first. Secondly, because these two addresses, which are also the work of Marx, are, not less than the Civil War, excellent specimens of that marvelous gift of the author, first exhibited in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, of apprehending clearly the character, the import, and the inevitable consequences of great historical events, at the very time when these events are still unfolding themselves, or have only just taken place. And lastly because, as I write, the German people are still suffering from the evils consequent upon the events here considered, as clearly foreseen and foretold by Marx.
Has it not, indeed, come to a fulfilment, as predicted in the first address, that should Germany's war of defense against Louis Bonaparte degenerate into a war of con-
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