They sent two agents to Germany.The first agent, Bruhn, a member of the League, managed by false pretences to persuade certain League members and communes to join the new association for the time being, as they believed it to be the resurrected League.While reporting on the League to the Swiss Central Committee in Zurich, he simultaneously sent us reports on the Swiss association.He cannot have been content with his role as an informer, for while he was still corresponding with us, he wrote outright slanders to the people in Frankfurt, who had been won over to the Swiss association, and he ordered them not to enter into any contacts whatsoever with London.For this he was immediately expelled from the League.Matters in Frankfurt were settled by an emissary from the League.It may be added that Bruhn's activities on behalf of the Swiss Central Committee remained fruitless.The second agent, the student Schurz from Bonn, achieved nothing because, as he wrote to Zurich, he found that all the people of any use were already in the hands of the League.He then suddenly left Germany and is now hanging around Brussels and Paris, where he is being watched by the League.The Central Committee does not see this new association as a danger, particularly as a completely reliable member of the League is on the committee, with instructions to observe and report on the actions and plans of these people, in so far as they operate against the League.
Furthermore, we have sent an emissary to Switzerland in order to recruit the people who will be of value to the League, with the help of the aforementioned League member, and in order to organize the League in Switzerland in general.This information is based on fully authentic documents.
Another attempt of a similar nature had already been made earlier by Struve, Sigel and others, at the time that they joined forces in Geneva.These people had no compunction about claiming quite flatly that the association they were attempting to found was the League, nor about using the names of League members for precisely this end.Of course, they deceived nobody with this lie.Their attempt was so fruitless in every respect that the few members of this abortive association who stayed in Switzerland eventually had to join the organization previously mentioned.But the more impotent this coterie became, the more it showed off with pretentious titles like the 'Central Committee of European Democracy' etc.Struve, together with a few other disappointed great men, has continued these attempts here in London.
Manifestoes and appeals to join the 'Central Bureau of German Refugees'
and the 'Central Committee of European Democracy' have been sent to all parts of Germany, but this time, too, without the least success.
The contacts which this coterie claims to have made with French and other non-German revolutionaries do not exist.Their whole activity is limited to a few petty intrigues among the German refugees here in London, which do not affect the League directly and which are harmless and easy to keep under surveillance.All these attempts have either the same purpose as the League, namely the revolutionary organization of the workers' party, in which case they are undermining the centralization and strength of the party by fragmenting it and are therefore of a decidedly harmful, separatist character, or else they can only serve to misuse the workers' party for purposes which are foreign or straightforwardly hostile to it.Under certain circumstances the workers' party can profitably use other parties and groups for its own purposes, but it must not subordinate itself to any other party.Those people who were in government during the last movement, and used their position only to betray the movement and to crush the workers' party were it tried to operate independently, must be kept at a distance at all costs.
The following is a report on the state of the League:
i.Belgium The League's organization among the Belgian workers, as it existed in 1846 and 1847, has naturally come to an end, since the leading members were arrested in 1848 and condemned to death, having their sentences commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour.In general, the League in Belgium has lost strength since the February revolution and since most of the members of the German Workers Association were driven out of Brussels.The police measures which have been introduced have prevented its reorganization.Nevertheless one commune in Brussels has carried on throughout; it is still in existence today and is functioning to the best of its ability.
ii.Germany In this circular the Central Committee intended to submit a special report on the state of the League in Germany.However, this report can not be made at the present time, as the Prussian police are even now investigating an extensive network of contacts in the revolutionary party.This circular, which will reach Germany safely but which, of course, may here and there fall into the hands of the police while being distributed within Germany, must therefore be written so that its contents do not provide them with weapons which could be used against the League.The Central Committee will therefore confine itself, for the time being, to the following remarks:
In Germany the league has its main centres in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Hanau, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Hamburg, Schwerin, Berlin, Breslau, Liegnitz, Glogau, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Munich, Bamberg, Wurzburg, Stuttgart and Baden.
The following towns have been chosen as central districts: Hamburg for Schleswig-Holstein; Schwerin for Mecklenburg; Breslau for Silesia;Leipzig for Saxony and Berlin; Nuremberg for Bavaria, Cologne for the Rhineland and Westphalia.
