AT LE PERREUX 
London, 19 October 1890 

My dear Lohr, 

At last! This week I have been, if not busy, at all events ‘occupied’ 
and ‘engaged’ over head and ears. I have sorted about 4 cubic feet of 
old letters of Mohr’s (that is to say addressed mostly to him) of the 

* Labour Exchange - > ‘The Split in France’, Justice, No. 353, 18 October 1890. 

period 1836-64. All higgledy-piggledy in a big basket, which perhaps 
you may remember. Dusting, straightening, sorting — it took more 
than a week to put them into rough order. During all that time my 
room upset, covered with paperasses* in various degrees of order and 
disorder, so that I could neither go out nor do any other kind of work. 
That was No. |. Then came the congresses with— not work, but 
loss of time for me by callers, etc. And finally, Nim has been quite out 
of sorts all this week, went to bed on her own accord on Thursday 
morning and actually sent for the Doctor,— who however told her 
there was no reason for her to stick in bed, she might sit up at least 
a few hours which she does. He cannot as yet exactly make out what it 
is, there are symptoms (jaundice) of liver complaint, she has no appe- 
tite and is weak. However since last night she is better and in better 
spirits, and I hope will be well in a few days. 

I hope Paul has got rid of his intimate friend inside. If he has 
not, it’s his own fault, a dose of felix mas or cousso will soon put an 
end to that nuisance. It will poison the brute and do him no 
harm. 

Our congresses have come off gloriously and when we compare them 
with the Possibilists,°? they come out in still bolder relief. That nui- 
sance now will soon put a stop to itself. Only I hope that our friends 
will give them every inch of rope they may require and not interfere 
in the least by approaches or otherwise. // faut qu’ils cutsent dans leur 
propre jus.” Any attempt on our side to meddle with them would only 
arrest for a time the process of disintegration and pourriture.” The 
masses are sure to come round to us by and by. And the longer we al- 
low the leaders to kill each other, the less of them shall we have 
to take over on the day of reunion. If Liebknecht had not been 
in such a hurry with regard to the Lassalleans coming over to us, he 
would not have had to take over Hasselmann and others who had 
to be kicked out six months afterwards.°? And now in France, 
as then in Germany, the whole lot of the leaders are rotten to 
the core. 

To my great surprise and relief in last Justice Hyndman declares for 
Brousse “! What a piece of good luck. I was beginning to be afraid 
I might get into a position where Hyndman would have to be taken 
on again as at least passively a friend, whereas J like him 10,000 times 
better as an enemy. 

* wretched scraps of paper-” Let them stew in their own juice. -° decay -* ‘The Split 
in France’, Justice, No. 353, 18 October 1890. 

Paul now may be right: the Possibilists may abstain again from their 
own Congress.** The date and place appear to have been fixed at 
Halle 28: Brussels, 16 August 1891. This is all I know. To-morrow 
I shall hear it all from Tussy who left Halle yesterday, her return 
ticket to Cologne expiring on that day. 

I am glad Fischer has been put on the Parteivorstand.* You have seen 
him here. He is very intelligent, very active, revolutionary, absolute- 
ly ant-philistine, and more international in his ways and manners 
than most Germans. Tussy writes that after the Lille Congress,** the 
German Reichstag men, a great portion of them, at least, made 
a rather philistine impression upon her. I fully expected that. As our 
M. P.s are not paid, we cannot get always the best men, but must ac- 
cept from those in a relatively bourgeois position the least bad. There- 
fore our masses are far better than the fraction. The latter may congrat- 
ulate themselves that they had such asses and shady fellows (many of 
them probably mouchards”) for an opposition. If they should rebel 
against Bebel, Singer and Fischer, they will have to be acted 
against but I am sure Bebel will always be strong enough to cow 
them. 

Paul est bien naif avec ses questions sur Bebel et le ‘Gil Blas’. Ht con- 
natt Bebel et il connatt le ‘Gil Blas’; est-ce qwil ne se connattrait plus 
soi-méme?* At any rate I shall send the ‘Gil Blas’ fortement souligné* 
to Bebel and tell him to disown. Such impudent lying exceeds all 
measure, even for Gil Blas. 

Tussy is quite in love with the Lille delegates, and indeed they seem 
to have been a regular élite, and shown the very qualities which it has 
been the fashion of late in France to cry down because the Germans 
showed them to a higher degree, though up to 1870 it had been the 
regular thing to claim discipline, esprit d’organisation et action combinée as 
des qualités tout ce qu’il y a de plus frangaises.© | was very much inter- 
ested in Paul’s account of these delegates °* and shall take care that it 
gets into the English and German Press. The great advantage of the 
French is that they are bred and born in a revolutionary medium. 
Both English and Germans lack that advantage and are moreover 
brought up in the religion of the bourgeoisie— protestantism. That 

* Party Executive-” police spies-‘ Paul is very naive with his questions about Bebel 
and Gil Blas. He knows Bebel and also Gil Blas; is it that he does not know himself 
better?-¢ specially underlined -‘ this spirit of organisation and collective action as 
the qualities which are French to the extreme 

gives to their habits, manners and customs a_ spiessbiirgerlichen An- 

strich which they have to shake off by going abroad, especially to 

France. Look at the redaction of the Lille and the Halle resolutions! 
That is the great progress: we cannot now do without any one of 

the three. Only the Belgians and the Swiss we could very well spare. 
Love from Nim and yours affectionately 

BE: 

As Paul has said so much in the Neue Zeit” about the fleets construct- 
ed by Mohr for you girls when you were children, I enclose him the, 
probably, last specimen extant of Mohr’s naval architecture.