Here in England public opinion at the outbreak of war was ultra-Prussian; it has now turned into the opposite. In the cafés chantants, for example, German singers with their Wi-Wa-Wacht on the Rhine have been hissed off the floor while French singers with the Marseillaise have been accompanied in chorus. Apart from the decided sympathy of the popular masses for the Republic, from the vexation of the respectability at the alliance between Prussia and Russia, now clear as daylight, and from the shameless tone of Prussian diplomacy since Prussia’s military successes, the manner in which the war has been conducted – the requisitioning system, the burning down of villages, the shooting of francs-tireurs, the taking of hostages and similar acts reminiscent of the Thirty Years’ War – has aroused universal indignation in this country. Of course, the English have done the same in India, Jamaica, etc, but the French are neither Hindus, nor Chinese, nor Negroes, and the Prussians are not heaven-born Englishmen! It is a truly Hohenzollern idea that a people commits a crime in continuing to defend itself once its regular army has ceased to exist. In fact, the war of the Prussian people against Napoleon I was a real thorn in the side of good old Frederick William III, as one can see from Professor Pertz’s historical account of Gneisenau, who transformed the war of francs-tireurs into a system through his Landsturm Ordnung. The fact that the people fought on their own initiative and independently of orders from the highest quarters gave Frederick William III no peace.
Marx channeling Fanon, I approve
