Letter to Paul Lafargue, January 3, 1894

ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 3 January 1894 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

My dear Lafargue,

First, seasonal greetings to Laura and you from Louise and myself. And now for your disarmament plan. I saw the Vaillant motion in Le Parti Socialiste, I did not have it from Laura. 317 Neither this paper nor your letter tells me whether it has already been tabled or if that is still to come.

The Germans have been demanding for years that the standing army should be turned into a militia, this is repeated in all their Reichstag speeches on militarism, the war budget, etc., repeated ad nauseam. I fail to see that the formal tabling of a Bill could add anything to it. Nevertheless, they will look into it.

As for the proposal to be made concerning a disarmament congress, that would be—like Vaillant's motion also—a matter to be settled by a conference of delegates from the three parliaments: French, German and Italian. One delegate from each nation would be enough. Any international action must have as a necessary premise a previous agreement both as to the basis and as to the form. It strikes me as inadmissible that one nationality should take the initiative publicly and then invite the others to fall in. The French, themselves pretty punctilious at times on matters of etiquette, should for their part observe democratic considerations. I shall not call the Germans' attention to this point, but I should not be surprised if this rather naïve invitation, to follow in the footsteps of the

French party, which has only just got into Parliament and is made up of such diverse and in some respects such little known elements, is not immediately accepted.

Now for the substance. The Vaillant motion will be opposed by the military on the ground that militias on the Swiss model, possibly good enough for a mountainous country, lack the stability needed for a large army that has to operate on every kind of terrain. And there they will be right. To build a good militia army the foundation must be laid by the athletic and military training of the young; so it's a thing which would take from five to eight years; you would not have this militia until about the end of the century. Therefore if there is to be a Bill against which the bourgeois and the military cannot raise valid objections, this fact must be taken into account.

That is what I tried to do in the articles which appeared last year in Vorwärts and which I sent you.^[1] I am sending you a further copy today. Here I am proposing an international agreement for the reduction—simultaneous and agreed jointly in advance—of the period of military service. To meet the usual prejudices as far as possible, I am proposing for a start a period of two years' enlistment, to be reduced as soon as possible to 18 months (two summers and the winter between), and then to one year and so on, until a class of young men have reached military age who shall have been through that athletic and military instruction which shall have fitted them to bear arms without further training. And then there would be a militia that would require no more than large-scale manoeuvres every 2 or 3 years to find its feet and to learn how to operate in large formations.

Now that the two-year period is already generally recognised one could demand 18 months at once, and reduction to 1 year in 2 or 3 years; during that time, the athletic and military training of young men between 15 and 18 could be set going, not forgetting that of boys between 10 and 15.

Vaillant's Bill has great need for revision by someone who knows what's what in military affairs, it contains things written in haste on which we could not stand up to serious argument. According to art. 9 {all the children of the country), the girls, too, are to be put through "all the evolutions of the infantry, cavalry and artillery", etc., etc.

I am sending a copy of my articles to Vaillant, too. Now then, if you could reach agreement with the Germans and the Italians for tabling a motion aimed at calling for a congress on disarmament and the transition—by simultaneous stages laid down in advance— to a militia system, that would be a splendid thing and have a big effect. But for mercy's sake don't spoil it by openly taking the initiative without preliminary consultation with the others. The conditions of internal policy as well as those governing each parliament are so different from each other that a certain manner of proceeding may be excellent for one country and utterly impossible or even disastrous in another.

The anarchist bomb 309 will become a thing of the past as have the glorious 2,500 francs of the Germans. 278 This will have an effect vis-à-vis the police; look at the Madrid verdict in the Munoz case where the police was found guilty, too; 318 and in France it risks being openly implicated in the affair of bombs; if it slips off this time, it might be glad. This pitcher has been going to the well long enough, and it is about to be broken at last.

I hope that Laura has received her manuscript. 310 Kiss Laura on my behalf. Greetings from Louise.

Ever yours,

F. Engels