Bakunin wanted to be on good terms with Marx, for the sake of building up the International. He desired to devote himself henceforward exclusively to the Socialist Movement. This was difficult because of Marx's injustice. Bakunin tells the story thus: -

"In the year 1848, Marx and I had a difference of opinion, and I must say that he was far more in the right of it than I. In Paris and Brussels had had founded a section of German Communists, and had, in alliance with the French and a few English Communists, supported by his friend and inseparable comrade, Engels, founded in London the first international association of Communists of various lands... I , myself, the fumes of the revolutionary movement in Europe having gone to my head, had been much more interested in the negative than in the positive side of this revolution, had been, that is to say, much more concerned with the overthrow of the extant than with the question of the upbuilding and organisation of what was to follow. But there was one point in which I was right and he was wrong. As a Slav, I wanted the liberation of the Slav race from the German yoke. I wanted this liberation to be brought about by the revolution, that is to say by the destruction of the regime of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Turkey, and by the re-organisation of the peoples from below upwards through their own freedom, upon the foundation of complete economic and social equality, and not through the power of any authority, however revolutionary it might call itself, and however intelligent it might in fact be.

"Already, at this date, the difference between our respective systems (a difference which now severs us in a way that, on my side, has been very carefully thought out) was well marked. My ideals and aspirations could not fail to be very displeasing to Marx. First of all, because they were not his own; secondly, because they ran counter to the convictions of the authoritarian Communists; and finally, because, being a German patriot, he would not admit then, any more than he does to-day, the right of the Slavs to free themselves from the German yoke- for still, as of old, he thinks that the Germans have a mission to civilise the Slavs, this meaning to Germanise them whether by kindness or force.

"To punish me for being so bold as to aim a realising an idea different from and indeed actually opposed to his, Marx then revenged himself after his own fashion. He was editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published in Cologne. In one of the issues of that paper I read in the Paris correspondence that Madame George Sand, with whom I had formerly been acquainted, was said to have told some one it was necessary to be cautious in dealing with Bakunin, for it was quite possible that he was some sort of Russian agent."

The Morning Advertiser, for September 1, 1853, published the statement by Marx that, on July 5, 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung received two letters from Paris, declaring that George Sand possessed letters compromising Bakunin, "showing that he had recently been in communication with the Russian government." One was from Havas Bureau, and the other from Dr. Ewerbeck, sometime leader of the Federation of the Just.

Bakunin described the effect of this accusation and his reaction to it:-

"The accusation was like a tile falling from a roof upon my

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