This first English translation of Engels speaking on a coming Europe-wide war. Taken from a larger article ‘German Socialism’ written by Engels in October 1891 at the request of the Parti Ouvrier Français and printed in Almanack du Parti Ouvrier pour 1892 then reprinted in German with some additions Neue Zeit shortly after. The title and numbers here are given by its translator, ‘International Review’ editor Hermann Gerson, ‘Integer’.

‘What Shall We Do in Case of War?’ (1891) by Friedrich Engels from International Review. Vol. 2 No. 9. October, 1937.

EVERYBODY knows what war means today. It will be Russia and France on one side; Germany, Austria, and possibly Italy, on the other. Whether they are willing or unwilling, the socialists of all countries will be obliged to fight against each other. What will the German socialist party do in that case? What will become of it?

2. The German Empire is a monarchy with semi-feudal forms but dominated, in the final analysis, by the economic interests of the bourgeoisie. Thanks to Bismarck, the Empire has committed bad mistakes. Its vexatious, police-agent’s, narrow domestic policy, unworthy of the government of a great nation, has earned for Germany the contempt of all liberal bourgeois countries. Its foreign policy, on the other hand, has provoked the distrust, if not the hate, of its neighbors. Reconciliation with France has been made possible for a long time as a result of the violent annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Without gaining for Germany any real advantage, such a foreign policy has managed to make Russia the arbiter of Europe. That is so evident that immediately after Sedan, the Council General of the International could predict the present situation in Europe. In its address of the 8th of September 1870, the Council declared:

3. “Do the Teuton patriots really believe they will assure liberty and peace by throwing France into the arms of Russia? If Germany, carried away by the good fortune of her arms, by the arrogance of victory and dynastic intrigue, commits the territorial despoiling of France, either of the following things will result. She will either openly become the tool of the Russian policy of conquest, or, after a short armistice, will have to face the prospect of a new defensive war, which, unlike the modern ‘localized’ war, will be a war against the united Slav and Latin races.”

4. There is no question that over against the German Empire, The French Republic, such as it is, represents revolution—the bourgeois revolution, it is true—but still revolution.

5. But the matter is no longer the same when that Republic places itself at the orders of Russian Tsarism. Russian Tsarism is the enemy: of all the Western peoples, even of the bourgeois of these peoples. The Tsarist hordes, invading Germany, will bring slavery instead of liberty, destruction in place of development, reaction in place of progress. Moving arm in arm with the Tsar, France cannot bring Germany any liberating idea. The French general who talked to Germans of a Republic would provoke the laughter of Europe and America. The war will amount to the abdication of the revolutionary role of France. It will permit the Bismarckian empire to pose as the representative of occidental progress against Eastern barbarism.

6. But behind official Germany, is the German socialist party—the party to which belongs the future, the immediate future, of the country. As soon as the party arrives to power, it will not be able to exercise that power, or maintain its rule, without correcting the injustices toward other nationalities committed by its predecessors. It will have to prepare the restoration of Poland, so shamelessly betrayed today by the French bourgeoisie. It will have to appeal to North-Schleswig and Alsace-Lorraine to determine freely their political future.

7. All these questions will solve themselves without effort in the near future, if Germany is left alone, Between a socialist France and Germany there can be no Alsace-Lorraine question. The matter will be adjusted in an eye-wink. We must wait another ten years. The proletariat of France, England and Germany waits for its emancipation. Can not the patriots of Alsace-Lorraine also wait a while? Is theirs an issue over which a continent may be devastated and, finally, subjected to the Tsarist knout? Is the game worth the candle?

8. In the case of war, first Germany, then France, will be the principal stage. These two countries will pay the cost in the form of devastation. More, the war will from its start be marked by a series of betrayals among the allies, unequalled in the annals of the diplomacy. France or Germany, or both, will be the principal victims. It is therefore certain that neither of these countries—in view of the risks they run—will provoke open hostilities, Russia, however—sheltered as it is by its geographic position and economic situation against the very baleful consequences of a series of defeats—official Russia alone can find it worth while to provoke such a terrible war. And it is she who will lead to it. At any rate, we wager ten to one that at the first cannon roar on the Vistla, the French armies will march on the Rhine.

9. Then Germany will fight for its very existence. even if victorious, it will have nothing to annex.

10. On the East as well as on the West it will find only provinces speaking foreign languages. (Germany already has too many of them, Beaten, crushed between the French hammer and the Russian anvil, it will have to cede old Prussia and the Polish provinces to Russia, Schleswig to Denmark and the entire left bank of the Rhine to France. Even should France refuse, its ally will impose this conquest on it. What Russia needs above all is a permanent cause of enmity between France and Germany. Reconcile these two great countries, and Russian supremacy in Europe comes to an end. Dismembered in the described manner, Germany will be incapable of fulfilling her part in the European civilizing mission. Reduced to the role imposed on her by Napoleon after Tilsitt, it will live only to prepare a new war of national rehabilitation. But in the meantime, it will be the humble instrument of the Tsar, who will not fail to use it—against France.

11. In view of this, what will become of the German socialist party? It goes without saying that neither the Tsar nor the French bourgeois republicans, nor the German government itself, will let pass such a good opportunity to crush the party, which all of them recognize as an enemy. We have seen how Thiers and Bismarck clasped hands over the ruins of the Paris Commune. We can therefore expect to see. the Tsar, Constans, Caprivi (or whatever successors they may have) to embrace over the corpse of German socialism.

12. But the Germany socialist party, thanks to the uninterrupted efforts and sacrifices of the last thirty years, has won for itself a position that is not occupied by any of the other socialist parties: a position assuring it of political power, upon the maturing of a brief delay. Socialist Germany occupies in the international workers’ movement the most advanced, the most honorable, the most responsible post. It has the duty of holding this post in spite of, and against, everybody.

13. Now if the victory of the Russians over Germany signifies the crushing of the socialist movement in that country, what is the duty of the German, socialists in face of this eventuality? Shall they passively endure the events that threaten them with extinction, abandoning without resistance the post they have won, and’ for which they are responsible to the world proletariat?

14. Obviously no. In the interest of the European revolution, it is up to the German socialists to defend all the positions they have gained, and not to capitulate either before the foreign or the domestic enemy. And they will be able to accomplish that only by giving relentless battle to Russia and its allies, no matter who and what are those allies. If the French Republic puts itself at the service of His Majesty the Tsar and Autocrat of All Russias, the German socialists ought to combat France also. As opposed to the German Empire, the French Republic may represent the bourgeois revolution. But contrasted to the Republic of the Constans, the Rouviers and even, the Clemenceau—the Republic that works for the Russian Tsar—German socialism represents the proletarian revolution.

15. A war in which Russians and Frenchmen invade Germany will be to Germany a war for life or death, in which, in order to assure its national existence, it will have to resort to the most revolutionary means. The present government will, it is understood, not set in motion the revolution, at least unless it is forced to do so. But there is a strong party which will force the government to do so, or, if necessary, will replace it. That is the socialist party.

16. We have not forgotten the great example France gave us in 1793. The centenary of ’93 is approaching. If the Tsar’s thirst for conquest, and the chauvinist impatience of the French bourgeoisie, stop the victorious, but peaceful, march of the German socialists, you may rest assured they will be ready to demonstrate that the German proletarians of today are not unworthy of the French sans-culottes of 100 years ago and that 1893 is as good as 1793. And when the soldiers of Constans put their feet on German soil, they will be greeted with the song of:

Quoi! ces cohortes étrangeres Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!
(What! Will these foreign cohorts Rule in our homes!)

Translated by INTEGER

International Review was a short-lived, independent Marxist journal edited by Herman Gerson, pen name Integer, which hosted writers of the anti-Stalinist left, best known for its translation and publication of Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘Reform or Revolution’.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/international-review-1936_1937_2_9/international-review-1936_1937_2_9.pdf