London, 10 June 1872 

Dear Cuno, 

A few words in all haste. I have today sent by first post to 
Herman 2 copies (one of them for you) of the circular of the 
General Council on the Bakuninist intrigues,” °° wrapped in a 
copy of the Kolnische Zeitung. You will find in it all the material 
you need from A to Z. 

We now possess accurate information on the Spanish secret 
society, La Aleanza—it will be quite a surprise to that gang at the 
Congress. The same society doubtless exists in Italy. If only Regis 
could get down there! But the poor devil is now peddling 
newspapers in Geneva, to earn a living as best he can. Cafiero in 
Naples and someone else in Turin whom I don’t yet know turned 
letters of mine over to the Jurassians°*; that doesn’t matter to me 
in itself, but the very fact of their perfidy is unpleasant. The 
Italians will still have to pass through a school of experience to 
realise that a peasant people as backward as they are merely makes 
itself ridiculous when it tries to prescribe to the workers of big 
industrial nations the road they should take for their emancipa- 
tion. 

Incidentally, I no longer receive any Italian newspapers, so I 
cannot send you any. Cafiero, who always used to send them, has 
obviously got a bad conscience. 

You will have received the letter from Düsseldorf, which I sent 
on to you.>* 

We know that affairs are in pretty bad shape in Belgium. The 
apathy of this neutral nation (sit venia verbo’) is the underlying 
reason for the fact that a plotter and a jackass can call the tune 
there. The International is falling apart in Belgium by the day, 
thanks to the inertia of the intelligent and reliable men among the 
leaders. Incidentally, the clique’s leaders have done us a tremen- 
dous service with their new draft Rules. The proposal for the 
abolition of the General Council** has put an end to the last 
vestiges of their influence (which was far from small, since this was 

a K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International. - > if that word can be 
used 

one of the oldest federations). The Spaniards call this downright 
treason.””’ It’s a pity that you’re not going to Spain; you would like 
these people; aprés tout* they are the most gifted of all the Latins, 
and you could be very useful there. What they need is a dose of 
German theory, and they take it very well; besides, they are 
distinguished by a fanaticism and a class hatred of the bourgeois 
such as we northerners or the vacillating Italians cannot imagine. 

The true author of the Belgian draft for the Rules is, of course, 
Bakunin again. The draft is by Hins and he is a tool of Bakunin 
both by virtue of a spiritual affinity and because of his Russian 
wife. 

Liebknecht is going into the cachot” on the 15th of this month.**8 

As soon as my friends are back in Manchester, I shall again take 
a look around on your behalf. I can do nothing for the moment. 
For all your misfortunes, you nevertheless have the luck to have a 
profession which you can follow anywhere fairly easily, at least on 
the Continent, if needs be. Here, because of the different 
employment system, it is much more difficult. 

Your recent description of the impression Dusseldorf made 
upon you made me laugh heartily. Why, for us, the philistine 
Wuppertalers, Düsseldorf was always a little Paris, where the pious 
gentlemen of Barmen and Elberfeld kept their mistresses, went to 
the theatre, and had a right royal time. But the sky always looks 
grey where one’s own reactionary family lives. Moreover, the 
process of industrial development, which has after all spread to 
Dusseldorf as well, is extremely depressing and deadly boring 
throughout Germany, so that I can well imagine that Wuppertal’s 
dreariness and wretchedness have now conquered Düsseldorf as 
well. But one fine day we shall send them packing, and then we'll 
sing the old song again that they used to sing thirty years ago in 
Milan: 

We, we, always we, 

And if we go out on a spree, 
Who'll have to pay for it? We! 

But it will be the bourgeois that will have to pay for the spree. 

Yours, 
F. Engels