MARX TO ALFRED TALANDIER‘*” 
[Draft] 
[London, about 10 November 1878] 

I have undertaken to write to you regarding the letter attacking 
Mr Barry in the Marseillaise of 6 October.*” 

240. Marx to Alfred Talandier. About 10 November 1878 337 

When the Marseillaise of 6 October eventually and quite by 
chance—which I can prove—fell into Mr Barry’s hands, he at 
once wrote a reply in English which he requested me to translate 
into French for him. For several days I postponed doing as he had 
asked—why, you will understand when you have read my letter. 
Mr Barry could not divulge all the facts 

1) without compromising Hirsch, whose fate has not yet been 
decided’; 

2) without compromising Hirsch’s brother-in-law who is still 
living in Paris; 

3) without citing me and thus probably getting me involved in a 
public dispute with you; 

4) without attacking certain individuals who figure in your 
letter; 

5) without exposing the bad faith of the Marseillaise. 

In my opinion, it is not an ‘opportune’ moment to arouse the 
mirth of the reactionaries by squabbling in this way. On the other 
hand,-Mr Barry is fully entitled to defend himself. And there we 
have the dilemma. The only hope of diverting him from his 
purpose seemed to me to be Mr Hirsch’s arrival in London (which 
he had given me to expect in the event of his being expelled from 
France). Then, by the publication of a few lines in the Marseillaise, 
compromising no one, he could have satisfied Mr Barry. 
Unfortunately, there has been no sign of life from him since his 
expulsion. At length Mr Barry lost all patience and, since he 
perfectly understood my objections to the publication of his reply 
(which would have appeared, if needs be, in a Swiss newspaper), 
we agreed 

1) that he would leave his reply in my hands for the time being 
and 

2) that I would endeavour to settle the matter by writing to you. 
I now come to the nub of the matter. 

Facts 

1) The Social-Democratic Club (which was a section of the 
International while that organisation existed), 6 Rose Street, Soho, 
consists of two sections, one German, the other English. The former 
elected Mr Ehrhart as [its] representative at the congress, the latter 
Mr Barry. It having been noised about London that the congress, 

a See this volume, p. 327. - > Karl Kaub 

banned by the police, would be held in Lausanne, the mandates 
were sent to the office of the Lausanne congress.*” 

Here is a copy of Mr Barry’s credential, the original of which 
has been entrusted to me: 

* Social-Democratic Working Men’s Club, 6 Rose Street, Soho Square. 

‘English Section. London, August 31, 1878. 

‘Citizens, The bearer of this Credential—Citizen Maltman Barry—is the 
representative of the English Section of the Social-Democratic Club of London. 

‘To the Bureau Socialist Congress. Lausanne, Switzerland. 

‘Fr. Kitz, Secretary, English Section, Social-Democratic Club.’* 

Again, after Mr Barry’s return, he was called on, in a letter 
from the secretary Kitz, to account to the club for the execution of 
his mandate. This letter is also in my possession. 

It is thus completely proven that Mr Barry was the mandatory 
of a Social-Democratic (working-class) society and not, as you have 
disseminated, somewhat ‘lightly’, of the ‘international police’. 

2) You further say that, in his letter to the Marseillaise,* Barry 
complains ‘of not having been arrested by the French police’, to 
which you add: ‘Citizen Hirsch does not, for his part, complain of 
not having been arrested, etc.’, so giving the public to understand 
that you were speaking in Hirsch’s name. But, in a letter to me 
dated 14 October, Citizen Hirsch describes your letter as ‘infa- 
mous’ and says he had not been told of it until after his release. You 
forget, by the way, that Barry was not the only English delegate to 
the congress, there having been at least a dozen, not one of whom 
was arrested by the French police. The Vorwarts, the central organ 
of the German Socialist Party (now suppressed), evidently grasped 
the point of that passage in Barry’s letter when it remarked that 
‘the French government was perfectly prepared to please Mr 
Bismarck by arresting Hirsch, etc., but did not dare take 
complaisance so far as to lay hands on Englishmen’.” For that 
matter, Mr Barry, still acting in concert with Hirsch’s brother-in- 
law, expressed his opinion fairly and squarely to Mr Gigot and, 
since the latter had minutes taken of that discussion, you are in a 
position to inform yourself from official sources as to the close 
relationship between Mr Barry and the French police. 

But I forget that, for the greater glory of ‘those who govern us’, 
you seem intent on suggesting that the French police is not a 
member, but the dupe of ‘the international police’. The powers- 
that-be of the Republic thought otherwise, excusing themselves 

a M. Barry, ‘Les socialistes et le gouvernement’, La Marseillaise, No. 198, 2 October 
1878. - > ‘Die Verhaftungen in Paris’, Vorwdrts, No. 109, 15 September, 1878. 

240. Marx to Alfred Talandier. About 10 November 1878 339 

vis-a-vis Hirsch’s brother-in-law by insinuating that ‘those who 
govern us’ should show some consideration for ‘neighbouring 
powers’. 

3) Now, what are the grave facts which authorised you to 
become ‘the disseminator of so terrible an accusation, namely that Mr 
Barry ‘owed his appointment as delegate to those men’ (the men, 
that is to say, of the international police)? 

They are founded on nothing, i.e. on futile tittle-tattle which a 
highly suspect private individual by the name of Schumann retailed 
to you in secret, without Mr Barry’s knowledge.* 

Let us revert for a moment to Schumann. After his return to 
London, he had nothing more urgent to do [than] announce the 
happy news of his release to The Standard, a “Tory and Bonapartist 
newspaper’. Then this same individual, wholly unknown to me up 
till then, gained entry to my house on a false pretext. As I was 
hauling him over the coals for the tittle-tattle repeated in your 
letter, he replied: ‘But Mr Talandier did wrong; I told him 
expressly that all I was retailing was mere hearsay, that I 
personally knew nothing about Barry, etc.’> 

Of his own accord he asked me for Barry’s address, in order that 
he might be able to apologise to him. In fact he did nothing of the 
kind but, on the contrary, confided to a refugee, of whose 
connections with myself he knew nothing, that in an interview 
with him Marx had affirmed that he had also denounced Barry as 
a spy. This would seem to render superfluous any further 
discussion of the honourableness of your client and guarantee. Since 
then I have received some particulars about him which will find 
their way to Copenhagen. 

In your letter you ask: ‘How did Mr Maltman Barry ... come to 
write to the Marseillaise?’ Very simply, if you please. Mr Barry, to 
whom I had given a letter of recommendation to Hirsch, was 
taken by the latter to the Marseillaise and presented to Mr Maret. 
After his return to London, Mr Barry sent a letter in English to 
Hirsch’s brother-in-law, who was supposed to decide when the 

4 The following sentence is crossed out in the manuscript: ‘And you find it strange 
that Mr Barry did not reply publicly to the accusations secretly directed against him? - 
5 The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript: ‘As for me, I know very 
well whence all this tittle-tattle about MR Barry comes. It is spread 
by some intriguers from the so-called INTERNATIONAL LABOUR LEAGUE*** which is 
actually neither “international” nor a “LABOUR LEAGUE”. They have a grudge 
against Barry because at the International Congress at The Hague (1872) he shared 
the opinion of the vast majority of the General Council against these gentlemen, 
ete.’ 

time was ripe for its insertion in the Marseillaise. The said 
brother-in-law, thinking it might be of service to Hirsch, translated 
the letter into French and handed it in person to the editorial 
department of the Marseillaise. Hence, by publishing your denuncia- 
tion without any comment whatsoever, that paper perpetrated a 
gross impropriety, which can only be explained by your letter to 
Mr Henri Maret, published in the same issue of the paper.* This is 
especially improper when it is taken into consideration that you 
are a friend and correspondent of Mr Bradlaugh**” who is a 
personal enemy of Mr Barry and of the late International. 

4) Another complaint weighing on Mr Schumann’s_ tender 
conscience and mentioned by you, is Mr Barry’s alleged activity in 
Paris as ‘correspondent ... of The Standard, an English Tory and ... 
Bonapartist. newspaper’. 

To call The Standard a ‘Bonapartist’ newspaper is a joke. So long 
as Louis Bonaparte remained a useful ally, exploitable by England, 
he was cosseted by The Standard, but not in such a disgusting 
manner as by The Times, nor so naively as by Messrs Bright and 
Cobden, then the leaders of the English radicals, and The Standard 
never sold itself to him as did the liberal newspaper, The Daily 
Telegraph. Today—and still in the English interest— The Standard, 
along with almost the whole of the English press, has changed, 
where French affairs are concerned, into a partisan of the 
‘moderate’, if not ‘opportunist’ republic.*” 

All that remains, then, is the epithet ‘Tory’. Kindly note that the 
said Tory newspaper never ceases to attack the new Holy 
Alliance '* and its chief, Mr Bismarck, whereas The Times acts as 
his semi-official organ, as he himself declared in the German 
Reichstag. Well, now, Mr Eccarius—one of the delegates of the 
so-called JInrerRNATIONAL Lasour Union, to which Schumann and Mr 
Bradlaugh belong, acted as Times correspondent at the Paris 
Congress. So why should Mr Barry not have done likewise for The 
Standard? You have lived long enough in England to know that the 
English working class has no newspaper at its disposal and is 
therefore compelled, on the occasion of working men’s congresses, 
etc., to look for publicity to the papers of its masters, whether 
Whig or Tory, and that in neither case is it expected to accept 
responsibility for the opinions of either. You have lived long 
enough in England not to seek to attach labels, borrowed from the 
vocabulary of the French parties, to English political relations. For 

a La Marseillaise, No. 202, 6 October 1878. 

240. Marx to Alfred Talandier. About 10 November 1878 341 

otherwise, I feel sure, you would never have accepted the post of 
English government official. 

5) The circumstances being what they were, this would only 
have been considered reprehensible had you—like that great 
republican Karcher, correspondent of the République frangaise— 
dedicated a book to His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge.* 

Finally, I come to the last item in your accusation against Mr 
Barry. In the first place, it seems that he committed an 
unpardonable offence in having acted in a manner contrary to the 
views of L’Homme libre and of Mr Bradlaugh on the Eastern 
Question. It has to be admitted that, if this places a man under 
suspicion of being affiliated to the international police, then the 
great majority of socialists in all the countries of Europe and in 
the United States would have to share the ill-fortune of Mr Barry. 

7)” And now I come to the last item in your philippic. And very 
grave indeed it is—Mr Barry allowed a week to go by before 
deigning to reply to one of the scurrilous articles published by Mr 
Bradlaugh in The National Reformer**’! ... But there are attenuat- 
ing circumstances.© 

8) Mr Barry was the less concerned about Mr Bradlaugh’s 
articles dated 22 and 29 August in that, as early as 13 July, he had 
published in The Spectator an article under his own name in which 
he explained at some length the line of conduct adopted by him 
during the dispute among the English parties provoked by the 
Eastern War. He took care to ‘disseminate’ that article by getting it 
reprinted in the form of a flysheet. 

It was for the compatriots of Mr Barry to decide between the 
latter and Mr Bradlaugh for—be it noted—the articles in The 

a T. Karcher, Les écrivains militaires de la France. - » There is no point 6 in Marx’s 
draft. - © The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript: ‘First of all, rightly 
or wrongly, The National Reformer exercises no influence on English public opinion. 
Again, MR Barry was a member of the General Council of the International when 
the latter publicly denounced MR Bradlaugh as a “Bonapartist”’: his connections (in 
London) with Plon-Plon earned him widespread notoriety; as to his intimacy with 
the “PETTY COAT” diplomacy of the Bonapartist party (in London),#48 Citizen 
Leblanc can enlighten you; finally his interviews with Bonapartists in Paris were 
described by me at the time in a London paper,*49 a time when Longuet, 
Serraillier, etc., and other French refugees were publicly condemning the man who 
dared to reprint the infamous comments in the Bonapartist and gutter press upon 
the expatriate Communards; when he was publicly dressed down even by men such 
as Hales, Jung, etc. who now keep company with him in the so-called 
“INTERNATIONAL LABOUR LEAGUE”, for his attacks on the International. Remember- 
ing all this, MR Barry could well afford to ignore Bradlaugh’s scurrilous articles in 
The National Reformer.’ 

24* 

National Reformer of 22 and 29 August were nothing more than a 
‘rehash’. And decide his ‘compatriots’ did— on the 22nd of July. On 
that day there was a big public meeting (in London), convened by 
the Social-Democratic Club, to uphold the cause of the German 
Socialist Party vis-a-vis Bismarck; all the newspapers published 
verbatim accounts of it and did not conceal from the public that 
the chairman, elected chairman of that meeting was—Mr Maltman 
Barry. 

9) I will not touch on the attitudes adopted by the various 
parties during the Eastern War. If all those who failed to follow 
the line set by Mr Bradlaugh, not to say L’Homme libre, have 
incurred the suspicion of being affiliated to one kind of police or 
another, I very much fear that the vast majority of socialists in 
Europe and the United States will find themselves tarred with the 
same brush as Mr Barry. But we should be perfectly capable of 
calling in question the competence of a tribunal which seems to us, 
at any rate, to be an abettor of the new Holy Alliance. On 
top of everything else, Mr Barry had one particular reason for 
overlooking Mr Bradlaugh’s impertinence, namely the resolution 
passed in 1871 by the members of the majority on the former 
General Council of the International (to which Mr Barry belonged) to 
ignore Mr Bradlaugh until such time as he had refuted the public 
denunciations by that Council in respect of 1) the intimate 
relations between the editor of The National Reformer and 
Plon-Plon and other Bonapartists, both male and female; 2) the 
lies he published about the International; 3) the calumnies directed 
against the Communards in London, deriving from the muddied 
waters of the Bonapartist and gutter press. 

At all events, you now know that there is no substance whatever 
in your letter attacking Mr Barry. All that is wanted of you is a 
declaration in the Marseillaise, stating in a few lines that, after 
having received the required information, you withdraw your 
denunciation. 

Yours very faithfully, 
Karl Marx