Mackey – Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry Vol. 1

INTERNATIONAL, COMMUNE, &c . 119artery of the Strand shall have been burnt, and the publicbuildings, the barracks especially, shall have been blown up,as was three years ago the Clerkenwell prison ." Perhaps thewriter was only joking ; and if I thought the leaders of theInternational possessed any Machiavellian talent, I shouldsay they themselves caused the letter to be written to givethe world an exaggerated idea of their power-therein imitatingthe President of the London Republican Club, whoboasted of his power of pulling down the monarchy, as thatwould be the readiest means of attracting fresh members ;for the idea of belonging to a powerful and universallydiffused brotherhood exercises a great fascination over theminds of only partially educated men, such as form the bulkof the working classes .506. The International Abroad . -Abroad, however, itsaction was much more marked . It fomented serious riotsin Holland, Belgium, and France ; and in the last-namedcountry it especially stimulated Communism, and supportedthe Paris Commune in all its atrocities, whichwere spoken of in the most laudatory terms in the thenrecently published pamphlet, "The Civil War in France"(Truelove, 1871) . But even continental workmen have erethis discovered the hollowness of the International . Theworking engineers of Brussels, instead of receiving during arecent strike fifteen francs weekly, as promised, were paidonly six francs ; and having imposed upon the masters anaugmentation of fifty per cent . on overtime, the masters, inorder to avoid this ruinous tariff, had no work performedafter the regular hours . The men, finding themselves losersby this rule, enforced on them by the International, sentin their resignations as members of the society, which theydescribed as the " Leprosy of Europe," and the "Companyof Millionaires . . . on' paper." At a conference held inLondon, the Russian delegate urged that his country especiallyoffered an excellent field for the spread of - socialistdoctrines, and that the students were quite ripe for revolution. Wherefore it was decided that a special appeal shouldbe addressed to the Russian students and workmen .507. The International and the Empire.-At the time when .the International was founded, the French Empire was asyet in all its strength. None of the parties that secretlystrove against it seemed to have any chance of success ; norfrom their political and social characteristics could theseparties, though all bent on the overthrow of the empire,coalesce and act as one combined force . The International