Vive l'Association Internationale!

The late Col. William B. Greene, then whom no keener philosopher has yet been produced in America, speaking in 1873, in a pamphlet, of the International Working-People's Association, of which he was a member, said: "No man can claim the merit of having made it; it came of itself. No man can destroy it. It may dissolve a hundred time; but, every time it dissolves, it will crystallize anew. Its soul is immortal, and its body can never be annihilated: it is fore-ordained that it shall live under a thousand successive names. Multitudes of labor-organizations which never heard of it, and of which it never heard, are natural, integral parts of it. It is vital in every member, and will live forever, or, at the least, until the wrongs of man upon this earth are righted."

The truth of these memorable words was proved afresh on the 16th of July this year, when the Revolutionary Congress, then in session in London, revived the famous International, which had then for some years lain dorment. To this momentous event, which marks an epoch in the progress of the great labor movement, and to the proceedings of the body entitled to the credit of it, Liberty, in the present issue, devotes a large portion of her space. From the letter of our correspondent, who was a delegate to the Congress, and whom we have engaged to write regularly to Liberty from Europe, and from additional information gleaned from "Le Révolté," a tolerably accurate idea may be formed of what was done in London. Beyond the meagre and unsatisfactory cable dispatches received at the time, ours is the first report, we believe, to be published in America, and will be read with more interest on that account.

A significant feature of this re-establishment of the International is the thorough accordance of its new plan of organization with strictly anarchistic principles. Every precaution has been taken to avoid even the show of authority and to secure the largest liberty to the component parts of the association. Good! In Liberty there is strength. Henceforth the International is secure against destruction from within by ambition or from without by malevolence.

Only the future can determine how far the Congress, was wise in subordinating propagandism by voice and pen to what it calls "propagandism by fact." It will not do, as Wendell Phillips says, to judge the methods on reformers 3,000 miles away. And yet we must affirm our conviction that no question is ever finally settled until it is settled peaceably and by consent. A revolution, to be permanent, must first be mental. Almost the only excuse for the use of force is the suppression of mental life, and its only legitimate function to remove, where absolutely necessary, the obstacles to peaceful agitation. That such a removal has become necessary in Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy we have little or no doubt; that it may be avoided in France, Belgium, and Switzerland is still within the limits of possibility; that a comparatively peaceful solution will be effected without it in Great Britain and the United States is more than probable.

But, however this may be, all friends of labor must rejoice at seeing the most effective instrumentality ever in existence, for the advancement of labor's claims, once more in full operation, taking up its work of justice where it was compelled to drop it several years ago. We hail its revival with delight and renewed hope. We predict for it a future even more glorious than its past. We trust that it has experienced its last dissolution, and wish that Col. Greene were here to shout with us: Vive l'Association Internationale!