The communes in Gottingen, Stuttgart and Brussels will remain in direct contact with the Central Committee for the time being, until they have succeeded in widening their influence to the extent necessary to form new central districts.
A decision will not be made on the position of the League in Baden until the report has been received from the emissary sent there and to Switzerland.
Wherever peasant and agricultural workers' association exist, as in Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg, members of the League have succeeded in exercising a direct influence upon them and, in some cases, in gaining complete control.For the most part, the workers and agricultural workers' associations in Saxony, Franconia, Hesse and Nassau are also under the leadership of the League.The most influential members of the Workers Brotherhood also belong to the League.The Central Committee wishes to point out to all communes and League members that it is of the utmost importance to win influence in the workers', sports, peasants' and agricultural workers' associations, etc.everywhere.It requests the central districts and the communes corresponding directly with the Central Committee to give a special report in their subsequent letters on what has been achieved in this connection.
The emissary to Germany, who as received a vote of commendation from the Central Committee for his activities, has everywhere recruited only the most reliable people into the League and left the expansion of the League to their greater local knowledge.It will depend upon the local situation whether convinced revolutionaries can be enlisted.
Where this is not possible a second class of League members must be created for those people who are reliable and make useful revolutionaries but who do not yet understand the full communist implications of the present movement.This second class, to whom the association must be represented as a merely local or regional affair, must remain under the continuous leadership of actual League members and committees.With the help of these further contacts the League's influence on the peasants' and sports associations in particular can be very firmly organized.Detailed arrangements are left to the central districts; the Central Committee hopes to receive their reports on these matters, too, as soon as possible.
One commune has proposed to the Central Committee that a Congress of the League be convened, indeed in German itself.The communes and districts will certainly appreciate that under the present circumstances even regional congresses of the central districts are not everywhere advisable, and that a general Congress of the League at this moment is a sheer impossibility.However, the Central Committee will convene a Congress of the Communist League in a suitable place just as soon as circumstances allow.Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia recently received a visit from an emissary of the Cologne central district.The report on the result of this trip has not yet reached Cologne.We request all central districts to send similar emissaries round their regions and to report on their success as soon as possible.Finally we should like to report that in Schleswig-Holstein, contacts have been established with the army: we are still awaiting the more detailed report on the influence which the League can hope to gain here.
iii.Switzerland The report of the emissary is still being awaited.it will therefore not be possible to provide more exact information until the next circular.
iv.France Contacts with the German workers in Besancon and other places in the Jura will be re-established from Switzerland.In Paris Ewerbeck, the League member who has been up till now at the head of the commune there, has announced his resignation from the League, as he consdiers his literary activities to be more important.Contact has therefore been interrupted for the present and must be resumed with particular caution, as the Parisians have enlisted a large number of people who are absolutely unfitted for the League and who were formerly even directly opposed to it.
v.England The London district is the strongest in the whole League.It has earned particular credit by covering single-handedly the League's expenses for several years - in particular those for the journeys of the League's emissaries.It has been strengthened recently by the recruitment of new elements and it continues to lead the German Workers Educational Association here, as well as the more resolute section of the German refugees in England.
The Central Committee is in touch with the decisively revolutionary parties of the French, English and Hungarians by way of members delegated for this purpose.
Of all the parties involved in the French revolution it is in particular the genuine proletarian party headed by Blanqui which has joined us.The delegates of the blanquist secret society are in regular and official contact with the delegates of the League, to whom they have entrusted important preparatory work for the next revolution.
The leaders of the revolutionary wing of the Chartists are also in regular and close contact with the delegates of the Central Committee.
Their journals are being made available to us.The break between this revolutionary, independent workers' party and the faction headed by O'Connor, which tends more towards a policy of reconciliation, has been considerably accelerated by the delegates of the League.
The Central Committee is similarly in contact with the most progressive section of the Hungarian refugees.This party is important because it includes many excellent military experts, who would be at the League's disposal in the event of revolution.