In 1870 the International resolved to meet at the old hearth of the revolutionary movement by holding its annual congress in Paris. This plan was rendered abortive by the Franco-German war. The war, however, helped to bring the principles of the Association more prominently before the world. During the Austro-German struggle of 1866 the International had declared its emphatic condemnation of war; and now the affiliated societies of France and Germany, as well as the General Council at London, uttered a solemn protest against a renewal of the scourge. Some of its German adherents likewise incurred the wrath of the authorities by venturing to protest against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. All will agree that it is a happy omen for the future that the democracy of labour as represented by the International was so prompt and courageous in its denunciation of the evils of war. It gives us ground to hope that as the influence of the democracy prevails in the council of nations the passion for war may decline. On this high theme no men have a better right to speak than the workers, for they have in all ages borne the heaviest of the burden of privation and suffering imposed on the world by the military spirit, and have had the least share in the miserable glories which victory may obtain. The relation of the International to the rising of the Commune at Paris in 1871 is often misunderstood. It is clear that the International, as such, had no part either in originating or conducting the Commune; some of the French members joined it, but only on their individual responsibility. Its complicity after the event is equally clear. After the fall of the Commune, Karl Marx, in the name of the General Council, wrote a long and trenchant manifesto commending it as substantially a government of the working class, whose measures tended really to advance the interests of the working class. ‘The Paris of the workers, with its Commune, will ever be celebrated as the glorious herald of a new society. Its martyrs will be enshrined in the great heart of the working class. History has already nailed its destroyers on the pillory, from which all the prayers of their priests are impotent to deliver them.’[6] The Commune was undoubtedly a rising for the autonomy of Paris, supported chiefly by the lower classes. It was a protest against excessive centralisation raised by the democracy of Paris, which has always been far in advance of the provinces, and which found itself in possession of arms after the siege of the city by the Germans. But while it was prominently an assertion of local self-government, it was also a revolt against the economic oppression of the moneyed classes. Many of its measures were what we should call social-radical.